MCN Weekend Reviews
Wilmington on Movies: Fast and Furious 6
If you’re looking for a slam-bang movie full of spectacular car chases and mindbending action, Fast & Furious 6—the latest installment in the tire-burning, dumbfounding Fast & Furious series—is obviously your pedal-to-the-metal hot ticket. It‘s the kind of movie where the only logical (or illogical) response from longtime fans may be ‘”Wowie,“ “yowie“ or “zowie.” But if you’re looking for a movie that makes a lick of sense, or has a line of dialogue worth repeating, or a character or situation that isn’t either a howling cliché or a howling absurdity—take your pick—you’ve come to the wrong pit stop.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: Jubal, 3:10 to Yuma, Safe Haven, Parker
Jubal (Also Blu-ray) (Three Stars) U.S.: Delmer Daves, 1956 (Criterion Collection) My grandma Marie Tulane, who was born in Sweden and died in Wisconsin, often said she liked Westerns because the scenery was so beautiful. I think she would have liked Delmer Daves’ 1956 Jubal, starring Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine and Rod Steiger…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Mrs. Miniver
Mrs. Miniver will probably never again look as good, or as inspiring, as it did in 1942, when it helped solidify the Anglo-American wartime bond. It’s a typically polished Wyler production, with pristine-looking black-and white cinematography by ace Joseph Ruttenberg.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Star Trek Into Darkness
In many ways, it’s a relief watching this picture. After a decade of Patrick Stewart and company, and then more than a decade of franchise silence, 2009’s Star Trek ingeniously brought the original seven Enterprise crew members back together—in the process, demonstrating a flair for matching the new younger actors playing the old characters with our memories of the original crew—and, as it turns out here, some others memories as well.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
There are three Deborah Kerrs in Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s strange and wonderful British war epic, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and like many young male moviegoers, I fell in love with all of them the first time I saw the movie.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Starlet; Cloud Atlas
CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW — STARLET (Three Stars) U.S.: Sean Baker, 2013 (Music Box) There’s ’at least one redeeming thing about the movies. Sometimes, they don’t really need hundreds of millions of dollars worth of superstars and special affects and expensive stuff to engage and move us. Sometimes pretty much all they have to…
Read the full article »DVD Geek: Red Hook Summer
Once Spike Lee made Malcolm X, he seemed to lose all of his relevance as a filmmaker, thus reinforcing the adage about being careful what you wish for. But he really has only himself to blame. His first films were genuinely edgy, exciting, and revelatory. Other than his documentaries, his later films have all been flailing around in the dark, trying to find any kind of edge at all. His 2012 feature, Red Hook Summer, is heartbreakingly bad, because it almost isn’t.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on Movies: The Croods
It’s a millennium-old clash. Grug lies to cuddle up to a nice warm rock after an evening of watching cave drawings. But Eep believes there’s a great big wonderful non-Neanderthal world out there, and she doesn’t want to spend so much of her life huddling in the cave while the sun sets, and listening to Grug’s cautionary bed-time tales about how you should never not be afraid.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
They may call Steve Carell ” The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” the title character in his new movie, but he‘s really part of a team, like Dean Martin or Jerry Lewis. Carell and Steve Buscemi play a pair of fancy pants superstar Las Vegas magicians in this mostly misfiring comedy—roles that should have been slices of cake for both of them, but wind up looking and playing like Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis leftovers.
Read the full article »The Weekend Report
About 56% of weekend moviegoers turned out for the debut of Oz the Great and Powerful and that translated into an estimated $80.2 million opening. The frame’s only other new wide release, Dead Man Down, did little for the notion of counterprogramming, with a $5.3 million tally. Quirky romantic fable Somebody Up There Likes Me generated $43,200 from a single screen in Chicago.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Identity Thief
Up to that point, Identity Thief actually looks as if it might be a good movie, or at least a bad funny one. I was actually looking forward to it. (The more fool me.) But then, in a bewildering, mind-numbing plot twist that bewilders and mind-numbs me still…
Read the full article » 4 Comments »Wilmington on Movies: Django Unchained
Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained—his most entertaining movie since Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and a movie of almost inspired tastelessness—pulls us into a movie land that movie buff Tarantino knows well: the world of mid-to-late ’60s-early ’70s Italian spaghetti Westerns—a roost ruled by director Sergio Leone and star Clint Eastwood with their “Man With No Name” Trilogy, but also home to a variety of trashy offshoots by men with lesser names.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Torontonian Reviews: Django Unchained
Riding up as the sunset of 2012 falls, Quentin Tarantino’s latest revenge narrative spurs another fire in the hearts of cinemagoers who have grown to love the director’s particular brand of raucous story-telling. Although boiled twenty minutes too long, this spaghetti Western is nonetheless thrilling, meaty, and immensely enjoyable.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »DVD Geek: Lawrence of Arabia
One of the greatest color films ever produced, David Lean’s 1962 Lawrence of Arabia shows the Earth unadorned by its decorative vegetation or man-made blemishes, with landscapes so vast that humans are no more than tiny specks passing across the surface, hardly larger than the grains of sand beneath the feet of their camels. Set during World War I in the Middle East, the film concerns not only battles, but the political maneuvering which would set the stage for power equilibriums in the region that are continuing to this day.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Bourne Legacy; Ice Age: Continental Drift
I miss Jason Bourne already — missed him, in fact, even before I saw The Bourne Legacy, fourth in the multi-million-dollar-grossing Bourne spy movies, based on Robert Ludlum’s books. That series, you’ll recall, initially starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, super-spy on the run, and now, with Damon gone (after three outings), stars Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, another super-spy on the run. Cross, however, is not in any way related or connected to Jason Bourne, or to any other Bourne, beyond the fact that they were both involved in top secret “skill enhancement” programs that the government has now discontinued, and wants forgotten, along with Jason Bourne and anyone like him.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: Rio Grande
Among Ford buffs and aficionados, this has walways been the least admired of the three cavalry films—perhaps because it was shot quickly as a favor to Republic Pictures so Ford could go to Ireland and make his longtime pet project, The Quiet Man—but also because the script, by studio vet James Kevin McGuiness (who died in 1950, the year Rio Grande was released), isn’t as good as the ones Frank S. Nugent and Laurence Stallings wrote for the other two. (All three movies are based on stories by James Warner Bellah, who wrote the screenplay for Ford’s masterpiece, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Red Dawn
Red Dawn, a thoroughly idiotic movie, is an amazingly daffy remake of John Milius’ Cold War bang-bang fantasy of the same title. That 1984 jaw-dropper was an action teen movie about high school guys and footballers turned anti-Red guerillas: a band of letterman brothers led by Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell, battling a Soviet invasion in Colorado. 1984, in the height of the Reagan era, was probably a good time for the original movie. I doubt a good time exists for its feckless, dopey, off-the-wall cinematic progeny.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2
Some movies become mass cultural lollapaloozas and pop ultra-phenomena — and they assume an importance they may not quite deserve. So it is with the cinematic Twilight Saga, a series that zillions adore, but to which some critics (including me) remain unhappily immune.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on Movies: Holy Motors
As far as I could glean or remember, M. Oscar impersonates, with Celine’s help — and thanks to a well-stocked supply of makeup and costumes in the back of the limo — a financier, an old beggar-woman, a motion capture lover/dancer in a black unitard, a wild sewer-dwelling hooligan named M. Merde, a dying father, a charismatic accordionist, a hired killer and his victim/double, and the lover of a heart-breaking chanteuse played and sung (to the hilt) by Kylie Minogue.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on Movies: Flight
Denzel Washington, as advertised, gives an extraordinary performance in Flight, a Robert Zemeckis movie about the limits and contradictions of heroism, the perils of celebrity, and the corrosive effects of lies and alcoholism. Its a very good film, at times an excellent one, and definite Oscar nomination material. It’s also a very welcome movie.
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