MCN Weekend Archive for November, 2011
Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classics. The Phantom Carriage, The Outlaw and His Wife, A Man There Was, Ingeborg Holm
The Phantom Carriage (Four Stars) Sweden: Victor Sjostrom, 1921 (Criterion Collection) I. The Swedes Victor Sjostrom, a Viking of a 20th century Swedish artist, a great actor-director with sad, somber eyes, infallible instincts and a granite chin, is best known for his masterful performance, at 78, as the dying, memory-tormented professor Isak Borg in Ingmar…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Larry Crowne, Bellflower, The Trip, Despair, Phaedra
“Larry Crowne” (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Tom Hanks, 2011 In Larry Crowne — a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts that should have been a timely, funny show, but isn’t — Hanks plays the title character, an up-from-working-class managerial guy suddenly cut adrift from his life, and forced to…
Read the full article »Box Office Hell — November 17
Our Players|Coming Soon|Box Office Prophets|Box Office Guru|EW|Box Office . com The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1|146.8|n/a|148.0|n/a|150.0 Happy Feet Two |36.2|n/a|37.0|n/a|42.5 Immortals|15.0|n/a|13.0|n/a|13.0 Puss in Boots|14.0|n/a|13.5|n/a|10.7 Jack and Jill|13.0|n/a|11.0|n/a|10.5
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Co-Picks of the Week: Blu-ray. Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides; The Big Lebowski
Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides (Blu & DVD Combos) (Three Stars) U.S.: Rob Marshall, 2011 (Disney) Johnny Depp isn’t acting at full pressure in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — the fourth in the lucrative comedy pirate adventure movie series inspired by the great Disneyland theme park ride. But then, how…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: West Side Story, Perfect Age of Rock, The Tree, Beginners, Rio Sex Comedy, Bellflower, Money Matters, It Takes a Thief …
West Side Story: 50th Anniversary Edition Box Set: Blu-ray When “West Side Story” opened on Broadway in 1957, audiences and critics understood immediately they were watching something new and possibly revolutionary in musical theater. The book was as topical as tabloid, with a message that was as old and familiar as “Romeo & Juliet.” The…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. The Rolling Stones Some Girls Live in Texas — 1978
The Rolling Stones: Some Girls Live in Texas 1978 (Also Blu-ray and DVD/CD Combo) (Three and a Half Stars) U.S. (Eagle Rock Entertainment) 1978-2011 It was 1964, the summer after my senior year in high school, and the song blasting out of the juke box at the Arctic Circle, a frozen custard drive-in and…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: Melancholia.
What can you say about a film which begins and ends with the end of the world — and imagines that end in the most extravagantly arty 19th century way, with a musical lament from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” Prelude, falling birds and images of star Kirsten Dunst (who plays the movie’s depressive heroine Justine, von Trier’s emotional stand-in) floats by in the water like Millais’ Ophelia, while images of apocalypse resound like Wagnerian chords, or the prelude of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, restaged for some lunatic Festival of Armageddon? It better be beautiful — or von Trier will look like a fool. It better be striking; it better be memorable. It is.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: J. Edgar
J. J. Edgar (Also 2 or 3 Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Clint Eastwood, 2011 (Warner Bros.) J. Edgar isn’t the movie I expected, but I liked it. Clint Eastwood’s noirish, moody bio-drama on the repressed life and powerful career of the FBI’s longtime founder-director, J. Edgar Hoover, with Leonardo DiCaprio…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »The Weekend Report, November 13, 2011
The Greeks had a word for it and it certainly wasn’t lost in translation as Immortals ascended to the Olympus of weekend movie going with an estimated $31.4 million. The session featured two other national bows that ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. The two title Adam Sandlers of Jack and Jill slotted into third with $25.1 million while G-Man J. Edgar arrived with $11.4 million.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies. Jack and Jill
In comedy, shamelessness is sometime a virtue, sometimes a vice — and Adam Sandler hits both those keys in Jack and Jill. It’s his drag comedy movie. Sandler plays identical male and female twins, Jack and Jill Sadelstein, who live on opposite coasts (and, in many ways, in different worlds), but are getting together for Thanksgiving, with a possibility, as it turns out, of a stay through Hanukah and beyond. They have, to put it mildly, a complicated relationship. It’s a complicated movie too — funnier than most recent Sandlers, but also sometimes violently obnoxious.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Friday Estimates, Novemeber 11, 2011
The Immortals opens solidly while Sandler’s two-sex romp opens in his normal non-summer range. And the J. Edgar releasing choice – opening wide, but only on 1910 screens – produces decent, but unclear results.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Red Desert
Red Desert (Four Stars) Italy; Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964 Red Desert — Michelangelo Antonioni’s first feature in color, and a landmark of ‘60s Italian cinema — is a hypnotic portrait of a neurotic woman, Guiliana (played by the director’s then muse/lover, Monica Vitti), whose psyche begins to disintegrate in the bleak terrain of the…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVD. The Rest: The Change-Up, 13, Bolt
“The Change-Up” (Two Stars) U.S.: David Dobkin, 2011 (Universal) The Change-Up, a big star body-swap comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman, is a movie that begins with baby poop jokes and climaxes with its two “heroes” urinating together in a public fountain, before an audience. And you can almost hear the moviemakers yelling at each…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. Park Row.
Park Row (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Samuel Fuller, 1952 (MGM Limited Edition Collection) Sam Fuller, one of the toughest of the tough guy auteur/directors, is best known for his two-fisted war movies (The Big Red One) and his hard-as-nails film noirs (Pickup on South Street). But the show he often called his best…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Harry Potter, Better Tomorrow, Atlas Shrugged, Identification of a Woman, In a Glass Cage, Blue Velvet, Sleeping Beauty …
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2: Blu-ray Any attempt to provide a concise synopsis of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” would require spoiling surprises that have been gestating for 14 years. Longtime fans of the amazing series of movies and books probably will have already seen the finale, however, and…
Read the full article » 4 Comments »Box Office Hell — November 10
Our Players|Coming Soon|Box Office Prophets|Box Office Guru|EW|Box Office . com Puss in Boots|23.5|n/a|26.0|n/a|26.5 Jack and Jill |23.0|n/a|24.0|n/a|21.5 Immortals|21.3|n/a|20.0|n/a|23.5 Tower Heist|14.0|n/a|13.0|n/a|11.8 J. Edgar|11.5|n/a|11.0|n/a|12.5
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Box Set. Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas.
Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas (Four Discs) (Three and a Half Stars) Italy: Raffaello Matarazzo’s, 1949-1955 (Criterion Collection) Eclipse One of the great pleasures of covering a DVD beat is opening another Eclipse set from Criterion, especially if, as in this case — a four disc box of postwar romantic melodramas directed by the lesser known…
Read the full article »Critics Roundup — November 10
J. Edgar |Yellow||||Green Jack and Jill |||||Yellow Melancholia (limited) |Green||Green|Green|Green Into the Abyss |||Green|Green|Green Elite Squad 2 |Green||||
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two” (Three and a Half Stars) U.S./U.K.; David Yates, 2011 (Warner Bros.) Part I. Hallows Eve All fine things must come to an end, and so finally has the Harry Potter series: the books first of all, and now the movies, climaxing at last in a final explosion, a…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on Movies: A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Todd Strauss-Schulson (2011) Comedy sometimes thrives on taboos transgressed and sacred cows slaughtered, and very few cows are left standing after the irreverent and cheerfully offensive bad taste orgy that is A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. The movie, a comedy…
Read the full article »