Wilmington By Mike WilmingtonWilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: The World’s End
I’ve let The World’s End go unremarked—so far—even though this cheerfully outrageous new comedy by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (all of Shaun of the Dead) is one of my favorite movies so far this year—and judging by the reviews, the favorite of lots of other critics (and audiences) too.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Winged Serpent (Q), The Iceman, Now You See Me
A sleazy little semi-classic from the more daffily glorious times when horror movies had less gore, smaller budgets and more personality, The Winged Serpent (or Q, as it was called when I caught it in New York City on its first release) is a delightfully cheesy monster movie from Larry Cohen in his heyday.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Great Gatsby
This is Luhrmann’s Gatsby (yet Fitzgerald’s also). But the novel’s original qualities shine though as well. It becomes not only a beautiful movie and the best Gatsby film adaptation of the several made so far, but for me, an instant classic.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: RIP Elmore Leonard; 3:10 TO YUMA
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Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Lee Daniels’ The Butler
The Butler is a stretch, and a sentimental exaggeration of course.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Kick-Ass 2; Kick-Ass (DVD)
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Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: George Bernard Shaw on Film; G. I. Joe Retaliation
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Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: To the Wonder
To the Wonder is one of those pictures that either knocks you out or irritates you—or maybe does a little of both.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Ran; Kagemusha
Akira Kurosawa’s lavish and violent epic Ran, inspired by “King Lear,” is one of the most famous and admired of all Shakespearean films. Most aficionados rank it at or near the top of the Bard’s film canon, even though Ran dispenses with the main element that makes Shakespeare so great and imperishable, jettisoning all of the bard’s British poetry (substituting a spare Japanese translation), along with a good deal of the play’s brilliant plot and unforgettable characters.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Elysium
We are shown a future world where things have gone to hell and are about to get worse (maybe), due to the devastating consequences of greed, violence, brutality, authoritarian government, social and racial prejudice, and the insane selfishness of that era‘s one-percenters. It’s our world, of course, taken to extremes, Philip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein style.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: We’re the Millers
The disrobing of the legendary Rachel isn’t the epic sex fantasy scene one might imagine, but just another misjudged scene in a somewhat daring but basically lousy movie comedy—a forced, crude, often senseless show about a group of misfits or outsiders (played by Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts and Will Poulter), pretending to be a typical American suburban bourgeois family (called the Millers), while smuggling dope across the border from Mexico,
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Planes
In movies, especially movies intended for kids, originality isn’t everything. Adults are sometimes another story.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Guys and Dolls
If there was ever a part Frank Sinatra was born to play—and sing—it was Sky Masterson, the lady-killing, dice-rolling, high-living gambler who is the main man and big shooter of the classic New York-Broadway musical (and the Hollywood movie made from it) Guys and Dolls.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Oblivion
Dunes out of Lawrence of Arabia, those cloud castles out of Up, those moody dreamy interiors out of Solaris: The way Oblivion looks is one of its main attractions.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Heaven’s Gate (Director’s Cut)
The restored director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate has been released theatrically in the U.K.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Blue Jasmine
Perhaps that’s because the performance is a kind of culmination of Allen’s attitudes toward the moneyed white culture Jasmine represents. Jasmine lives what seems a charmed life as a member of the Manhattan financial social elite whose vagaries Allen loves to have fun with — but then finds herself hurled into the chaos of the 2008 financial collapse, and turning into Woody’s version of Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’ lady on the edge, wandering, desperate, talking to herself, at the end of the line.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: 2 Guns
It’s at the service of one of those stories that begins to crumble and fall apart when you start thinking about it. That’s okay if you‘re up for the ride. You can turn off your brain for most of the show, and have a fairly good time—even if, when you walk out afterwards, the story has gone up in flames.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Tristana; Mamma Mia! The Movie; Trance
Tristana is a masterpiece, but it’s also a grimmer, sadder, more psychologically wounding film than Belle de Jour, which was regarded as a great art film turn-on of the 1960s, during the somewhat frenzied romps of Sexual Revolution. But, if audiences thrilled to the whorehouse fear, desire and wayward beauty of Belle de Jour, what were they to make of Tristana, in which the most memorable erotic encounter occurs when a one-legged woman exposes herself to the lustful deaf-mute son of her guardian-husband’s house servant?
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Wolverine
The Wolverine was directed by the almost bizarrely versatile James Mangold and the script is credited to a gifted threesome that includes Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback and Scott Frank—and their show pours on the action and the production values. But it also ladles out the personality, and emotion that these kinds of movies often skimp on—and even throws in some humor. It’s a good show, full of zip and style—maybe not as good as I may be making it seem. But you can’t say this film doesn’t do what it’s meant to do, or that it doesn’t joyously exceed some of the usual parameters. Man of Steel, eat your heart out.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The To Do List
The movie is cute and so is Aubrey Plaza—though, with her pouty, sexy, full-lipped looks, I don’t know if she ‘s the right actress to play an all-time valedictorian, or a virgin. (An Ellen Page type might have been better.) On the other hand, if Plaza had played the bad sister Amber, she probably would have stolen the movie, as Bilson almost does.
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