

Wilmington By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: 50/50
50/50 (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Jonathan Levine, 2011 Your best friend looks you in the face and tells you that he’s dying. Wait a minue, it’s not quite like that…He tells you that he has a rare form of spinal cancer and that his chances of survival, according to the doctors, are 50/50….
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic, Blu-ray. Strike
PICK OF THE WEEK: Classic/Blu-ray Strike (Stachka) (Four Stars) U.S.S.R./Russia: Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (Kino Classics) 1. Eisenstein In 1925, Sergei Eisenstein, a rich architect’s son who had become a passionate convert to Communism during the Russian Revolution and afterward a brilliant theatrical director with the Proletkult Theatre of Moscow, directed two silent films…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Transformers Dark of the Moon
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Also Blu-ray) (Three Stars) U.S.: Michael Bay, 2010 Mindless, soulless, heartless, mechanical, and shamelessly mercenary as it might be, director Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon — the latest in the often obnoxious movie series, starring Shia LaBeouf and a lot of Hasbro toys — is still one of…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Carlos
Carlos (Three and a Half Stars) France: Olivier Assayas, 2010 (Criterion Collection) In his excellent political thriller/biographical drama Carlos, Olivier Assayas makes an epic of 20th century revolution, an incendiary subject, but a film hot at heart yet cool on the surface, out of the ugly, exciting story of the terrorist “Carlos,” a would-be political idealist who became a killer…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Love Crime
Love Crime (Three Stars) France: Alain Corneau, 2010 Movie murder mysteries can sometimes get too tricky and convoluted for their own good, and that’s pretty much what happens in Love Crime (Crime d’Amour), a fine, itelligent, neatly made little French film neo-noir that would have been even better if it didn’t try so hard to outsmart us…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Moneyball
(Four Stars) U. S.: Bennett Miller It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s how you read the spreadsheet. For many Americans, baseball is a great American game, and a great American sports myth as well — and it’s also, at times, a business, a gamble, a crud-boatload of media hype, and, last…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Killer Elite
(Two Stars) U.S.: Gary McKendry, 2011 There are lots of reasons to get irritated with Killer Elite — a big-bucks, big-star, mucho-macho, heavy-duty actioner that throws up several hours of murkily photographed violence, preachy dialogue and byzantine plot twists, while wasting three good actors — Jason Statham, Clive Owen and, sadly enough, Robert De…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Captain America: The First Avenger, Dziga and His Brothers, The Killer is Loose, The Song of Songs,This is the Night
“Captain America: The First Avenger” (Two Stars) U.S.: Joe Johnston, 2011 I don’t mean to be a grouch, but Captain America — stalwart crime and monster-buster of the new Marvel epic Captain America: The First Avenger — struck me as one of the duller superheroes I’ve seen recently. That’s despite one of the more amazing special effects…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Box Set/Blu-ray. Visions of Europe
(Three and a Half Stars) U.S.; Roy A. Hammond (aerial director/executive producer), Sam Toperoff (producer/editor/writer), 2001-9 (Acorn Media) One of the most visually stunning travelogue series ever, the “Visions” sets from WLIW in New York offer spectacular aerial tours of the great sights of Europe, shot in gorgeous high definition cinematography, accompanied by fairly typical…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic/Box Set. The Complete Jean Vigo
(Two Discs) (Four Stars) France: Jean Vigo, 1930-34 (Criterion Collection) I. Jean Vigo, The Rebel He died at 29: Jean Vigo, in many ways, the spirit of youth, of art, of cinematic rebellion, of France between the wars. He was the sacred enfant terrible and the laughing rebel and grand martyr of French…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Picks of the Week: New. Bridesmaids, Le Quattro Volte
Bridesmaids (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Paul Feig, 2011 (Universal) Kristen Wiig is one funny lady, and Bridesmaids — in which she is both star and co-writer — is one funny movie. That’s hardly news. “Bridesmaids” is one of the best reviewed, best liked Hollywood comedies of the year. By current consensus, it’s…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies and DVD; Straw Dogs (Peckinpah and Lurie)
Film: Straw Dogs (Two Stars) U. S.: Rod Lurie, 2011 DVD: Straw Dogs (Blu-ray) (Three and a half Stars) U.S.: Sam Peckinpah, 1971 (MGM) I. Bloody Sam Straw Dogs, Rod Lurie‘s remake of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 classic — with Dustin Hoffman as a Vietnam era intellectual forced to face the beast in himself and…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: I Don’t Know How She Does It
U.S.: Douglas McGrath, 2010 (Two Stars) I Don’t Know How They Do It Summary You think you’ve got problems? Let me tell you, you don’t know what “problems” mean until you’ve had a peep at the Perils of Parker in the movie I Don’t Know How She Does It, Sarah Jessica’s…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Drive
Drive (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011 Drive is an L. A. action movie that can really tighten your throat and twist your guts. Story-wise, it’s lean, mean and stripped to the bone, but it’s also drenched with visual style. Directed by Nicolas Winding-Refn, the flashy Dane of The “Pusher”…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: X-Men The First Class, Thor, The Colossus of New York, Monkey Business
X-Men: The First Class (Also Blu) (Two Discs) (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Matthew Vaughn, 2011 Maybe I’m getting tired of super-heroes and super-heroines. Or maybe X-Men: First Class just has too many of them. In any case, the latest Marvel movie, by my reckoning, puts a first-rate cast into a third-rate story,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Co-Picks of the Week: New. Meek’s Cutoff, Secret Sunshine
Meek’s Cutoff (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Kelly Reichardt, 2011 Meek’s Cutoff, like the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, is an art film Western for a contemporary audience, and an unusually good one — made by a director and writer (Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond), who show a real feeling for what it must have been…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
CO-PICK OF THE WEEK: BLU-RAY O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Four Stars) U.S.: Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000 (Touchstone/Disney) O Brother, Where Art Thou? — for whose title alone Joel and Ethan Coen deserve a medal — is an outrageously entertaining and inventive movie that still hasn’t gotten its due. The Coen…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Mozart’s Sister
(Three and a Half Stars) France: Rene Feret, 2010 Mozart’s Sister, a film often lovely to see and hear, by French writer-director Rene Feret, is the fictionalized semi-biographical tale of a remarkable girl, her extraordinary family and of the beautiful music they all made together. But it’s also a very sad story, as stories…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Contagion
(Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Steven Soderbergh, 2011 Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion begins with a cough in the dark — something mundane, and ordinary, if irritating and unhealthy, that soon grows into something else: an explosion of fear, death and hysteria. As the movie proper begins, a title soon informs us that it‘s Day…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Warrior
Warrior (Three Stars) U.S.: Gavin O’Connor, 2011 Improbabilities won’t necessarily knock out a good fight film, if the feeling and the footwork are there. Warrior is a movie about a high profile, multi-million-dollar TV Mixed Martial Arts tournament in which too long-estranged brothers are both competing, and in which they finally meet in the ring….
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