

Columns By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: Gone Girl

Even if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie (which may well be the case), you probably think you sort of know what’s going to happen next. But you probably don’t. Gone Girl, which Flynn has cunningly imagined and craftily, stunningly wrote, and which Fincher has visualized with all the eerie expertise which usually marks his high-style crime movies (including Fight Club, Se7en, The Game, Zodiac, Panic Room, and even The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), is, like many another thriller of its type, dependent on how far we’re willing to suspend disbelief. But, in the realms of bestseller-turned-moviedom, Gone Girl is a cut or two above and definitely better than most — full of not always guessable tricks and twists, told in a tense, taut, racy, mostly engrossing style and boasting a lot of tangy, sharply drawn characters, very well played by a very good cast.
Read the full article »Halloween Gift guide: Universal Monsters, Vincent Price, Pee-wee, Nightbreed and More

Even Charlie Brown couldn’t have imagined the extent of the violence caused by pumpkin fanatics in New Hampshire and, traditionally, by students in Madison and Carbondale. I can think of several better ways to kill time while waiting for dawn to rise on All Saints Day or, if you prefer, Día de Muertos. It is in this spirit that DVD Wrapup presents the first of its annual gift guides.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Le Chef, For a Woman, Canopy, Snowpiercer, Sexina, Sleeping With Fishes, Johnny Thunders, Dorothea Lange … More

In a setup that could have been written by climate-change deniers, Snowpiercer describes what happens after an untested cooling agent – think, Ice-nine from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” – is introduced into the upper atmosphere. In 20 years, it turns what might have been an inconvenient loss of beachfront property into a global catastrophe. Survivors of the freeze-out have been packed on a very special “miracle” train, in which passengers are divided into haves and have-nots, and frozen seas allow access to global destinations. Those in the rear half of the train look has if they had been shoved aboard the 1:10 to Siberia, while the passenger in front enjoy privileges commonly reserved for the ruling elite.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Venus in Fur, Witching & Bitching, Chinese Puzzle, Persecuted, Bill Morrison, Kingpin, Courage the Cowardly Dog … More

Say what you will about Roman Polanski–now 81, believe it or not–the man still knows how to make a movie.
Read the full article »The Gronvall Report: Damien Chazelle on WHIPLASH

Artistry plus adrenaline proves the winning formula for Whiplash the pulsating new musical drama and second feature from French-American writer-director Damien Chazelle. The Sony Pictures Classics release won both the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) and the Audience Award (Dramatic) when it premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, setting off a chain reaction of kudos that is reverberating months later, well into awards season.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Million Dollar Arm, Edge of Tomorrow, Million Ways to Die, Sleeping Beauty, To Be Takei, Zappa, Dusk Till Dawn, Hemlock Grove, Houdini … More

Because of baseball’s unique learning curve, Million Dollar Arm probably could have been set in any country where cricket, soccer or, even, camel racing are king. The only thing known about baseball by the boys who participated in the contest is that it requires a player to throw an orb covered in horsehide toward an opponent with a bat in his hand, pretty much like cricket.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Transformers, Are You Here, Sordid Lives, American Muscle, Last of the Unjust, Ida, Lucky Them, Hellion, Wolf, Ivory Tower … More

In this way, Age of Extinction is the cinematic equivalent of a really explosive fireworks display on the 4th of July. Lots of things sparkle and go “boom,” but nothing lingers for very long. In addition to returning to Chicago for a while, Bay takes us to Hong Kong, Beijing, Monument Valley, Iceland and Detroit, which was redressed to fill in for other locations.
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