Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Friends With Benefits; 30 Minutes or Less; One Day; Island of Lost Souls

     “Friends with Benefits” (Two Stars) U. S.: Will Gluck, 2011 Falling in love is such great movie material that it’s a pity Hollywood screws it up so often, especially  these days. Friends with Benefits is  supposed to be smarter and funnier than the usual pseudo-romantic comedy of today, but it’s really ust another rommie-commie with more (and…

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. Cave of Forgotten Dreams

      Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Also Two Disc Blu-ray/3D Blu-ray combo) (Four Stars) Germany/France: Werner Herzog, 2011 (MPI Home Video)   Perhaps 30,000 years ago, or less, in the age of the paleoliths, a man or woman, or a group of them, stood before the walls of the cave of Chauvet, in France,…

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Sarah’s Key

      Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) (Three Stars) France: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010 (Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay) Sarah‘s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) is a movie about public and private tragedies, based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay and filmed with much fidelity and feeling by director-screenwriter Gilles Paquet-Brenner. It’s a good movie, with one…

Wilmington on Movies: The Artist

        The Artist (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.-France: Michel Hazanavicius The Artist, a movie about the Golden Age of Hollywood, is a superb silent film in black and white by the French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius. It’s an utterly wonderful show: a gloriously anachronistic little film with actors who don’t talk and pictures that…

Wilmington on Movies: My Week with Marilyn

    My Week With Marilyn (Three Stars) U.K.: Simon Curtis, 2011 Marilyn Monroe: She was a dream of sex and the ultimate blonde fantasy. She was a smart girl who got rich and famous playing dumb. She was an innocent who played with fire and whose angel-wings burst into flame. And she was a…

The Weekend Report: November 27, 2011

There was no sunset for Twilight as its fourth incarnation Breaking Dawn ascended to the top of weekend movie sales with an estimated $41.9 million for the three-day slice of the Thanksgiving holiday session.

Three new national releases – all targeted toward family viewing – failed to enliven the festive spirit that came early last weekend but didn’t sustain the merriment. The re-booted The Muppets ranked second with $29.3 million (all figures reflect three-day box office). Two other films targeted that segment with 3D offerings. The animated Arthur Christmas bowed to $12.3 million while the period adventure Hugo arrived at the station with $11.3 million.

Friday Estimates: November 25, 2011

To no one’s surprise, Twilight continues on top of the heap. It’s followed by FOUR family films, with The Muppets dominating over the other 3, which are right on top of each other.

Wilmington on Movies: The Descendants

  The Descendants (Four Stars) U.S.: Alexander Payne, 2011  Good things often take a while. But should they? It took director-writer Alexander Payne seven years to make a new film  after his Oscar-winning/box-office/critical triumph with Sideways in 2004.  Considering how good Sideways was, and how much it was liked, that’s a long time. (Too long)….

Wilmington on Movies: The Muppets

  The Muppets (Three Stars) U.S.: James Bobin, 2011 It’s good to have them back. Jim Henson’s Muppets — among the most delightful puppets and most engaging fuzzy-furry fictional beasties to ever pop out of a TV or movie screen — haven’t been around much in recent years. Oh, once in a while we’ve seen them: a…

The DVD Wrapup: Super 8, Spy Kids 4, Devil’s Double, Sarah’s Key, Family Tree, Trigger, Helldriver …

Super 8: Blu-ray Spy Kids 4: All Time in the World As residents of the placid Ohio town of Lillian are being rounded up and bussed to an Air Force base – ostensibly to protect them from a mysterious virus – I remembered that I’d seen this movie before, dozens of times in the last…

Critics Roundup — November 24

The Muppets |Green||Red||Green Hugo |Yellow|Green|Green||Green Arthur Christmas ||||| A Dangerous Method (NY, LA) |Green|Green|Green|Green|Green My Week With Marilyn (limited) |Green|Green|Yellow||Green Rampart (NY, LA – 1 week Oscar run |Yellow|Green|Green|| The Artist |Green|Green|||Green

Box Office Hell – November 24

Our Players|Coming Soon|Box Office Prophets|Box Office Guru|EW|Box Office . com The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1|43.0|39.7|41.0|55.0|36.0 The Muppets|33.5|35.9|31.0|45.0|37.0 Happy Feet Two |19.5|11.6|16.0|18.0|n/a Arthur Christmas|18.0|18.8|14.0|19.0|15.5 Hugo|8.5|8.7|8.0|10.0|7.0

Wilmington on DVDs. Box Sets: Georges Melies, The Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913); Melies Encores

  This week, happily on my birthday, November 23, a truly wonderful film is opening: Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s amazing and beautiful fiction feature about an inventive  boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) who lives in a spectacular Parisian railroad station (Modeled on the Gare Montparnasse), and the bearded, embittered shopkeeper he meets there, a man who…

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. 12 Angry Men (Lumet); Twelve Angry Men (Schaffner)

  DVD PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC 12 Angry Men (Two Discs) (Four Stars) U.S.; Sidney Lumet, 1957 (Criterion) The court will rise…   12. Twelve men, jurors in a ’50s murder trial, gather together in the sweltering heat of a New York City afternoon, in a box-like jury room where the fans give little…

Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Super 8

    Super 8 (Four Stars) U.S.: J. J. Abrams, 2011, Paramount Remember what it was like when you were 12? 14? Twelve, wishing you were fourteen? Remember how magical the world was then? And how magical the movies were: the ones that you really loved and remembered and were really affected by? For me, that was 1958…

Wilmington on Movies: Happy Feet Two

      Happy Feet Two (Three Stars) U.S.: George Miller, 2011 　 I’ve got to admit: The first ten minutes or so of Happy Feet Two had me worried — even though I was quite partial to the first 2006 installment of the original, George Miller’s 2006 tale of a tap-dancing penguin named Mumble…

The Weekend Report: November 20, 2011

Twilight pretty much ran over Happy Feet Two that was expected to open with at least $30 million and rising to more than $35 million. It also had a majority female audience of 60% and despite its younger appeal wound up with an audience of 53% aged 25 years and more upwardly mature. A studio spokesman cited the comparably disappointing opening of Polar Express and crossed fingers that the picture will sustain through the holidays.

Critics Roundup — November 17

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 |||Green||Red Happy Feet Two |Green||||Green The Descendants |Green||Green||Green Tomboy |||Green|| Rid of Me |||Green|| Tyrannosaur (limited) |||Green|Green| The Lie (limited) ||||Green|

Wilmington on Movies: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part One

  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part One (Two Stars) U.S.: Bill Condon, 2011 You would have thought that the eagerly awaited marriage of Bella Swan (as played by Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (as played by Robert Pattinson) of the Twilight movie saga would solve that series’ ongoing sex and repression issues.  But…

Friday Estimates, November 18, 2011

As anticipated, Part One of the final entry in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, strongly leads the pack, while kiddie entry Happy Feet Two battles for space against Puss in Boots. Meanwhile, The Immortals and Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill arm wrestle for the third and fourth place slots.