Wilmington on Movies: 42

I would have been happy as a hot dog and a Coke in old Ebbets Field to follow the Jackie Robinson story—excuse me, the Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey story—as it unfolded in 1945-47 and as it’s told here.

The Weekend Report

42 estimates 27. Scary Movie 5 has a scary opening… smallest of the series.

More to come.

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.

Wilmington on DVDs: Ruthless; Despicable Me; Battleship; Lawless

Who is Edgar G. Ulmer and what is he doing in any pantheon, or semi-pantheon of world classical filmmakers? It’s been a classic nagging anti-auteurist question ever since Andrew Sarris introduced him.

The DVD Wrapup

Down the Shore, Into the Cold, Gate of Hell, Phantom Father, Hong Kong Confidential, We Are Egypt, Crush, Sexcula…. More

Wilmington on DVDs: The African Queen; Casablanca

PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC The African Queen/ Casablanca (Also Blu-ray) (Four Stars) U.S.: John Huston/ Michael Curtiz (Warner Bros.) Here, of course, are two of Humphrey Bogart’s best—and two of the most wonderful shows that American Movies in their celebrated Golden Age, ever concocted. If you don’t have these pictures in some format, or (worse) if you haven’t even seen them at all,…

The Weekend Report

The debut of a re-booted Evil Dead led weekend box office, shocking an estimated $25.8 million. The session’s only other national release was the 3D-enhanced reissue of the venerable Jurassic Park that ranked fourth with $18.2 million.

Friday Estimates

Evil Dead will be Sam Raimi’s second biggest opening ever as a producer… solid mid-20s launch for a horror film. The Jurassic Park 3D re-release launches a little behind Titanic 3D, but like the Cameron, the real money for this Spielberg film is overseas, where theatrical exhibition is significantly greater than it was when JP was first released. In limited release, both Trance and The Company You Keep will be in the $20k-30k per-screen range this weekend… signifying that no one knows how they will do when they go wider.

Roger & Renee

They say that bad things happen in threes but this past week two was more than sufficient. Two heavyweight critics, colleagues and friends left this mortal coil.

Wilmington on Movies: Evil Dead

In what I guess you can safely call the now-legendary original Evil Dead, there was a furious satiric energy that hurled you along and repeatedly zinged up the movie, which was, after all, a show begat by other movies, especially 1969‘s trail-blazing zombie nightmare Night of the Living Dead and 1974’s gruesome body-parts shocker The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Wilmington on Movies: Trance

Trance, a new erotic thriller from Danny Boyle, is a fast and fancy dance over a whirl of a dance floor of crime, suspense and sex.

The DVD Wrapup

Dolly, Lincoln, Bible, John Dies, Sweeney, LUV, Vietnam, Knuckleball, Untouchables, Phillip Roth… and more.

Wilmington on DVDs: Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d’un Ete)

We watch those people from long ago, and the fact that, in the movie images, they’re still young (or still middle-aged) and that they have still (in the film) not yet met the problems and wars and tragedies and reversals that we know are coming, gives them a privileged position, an immortality conferred by hand-held camera. It’s a more casual immortality, not endowed with any of the painstaking ardor and expense routinely spent in preserving a movie superstar for the ages, or even of a cover girl for a shoot at Cannes. These are people talking about how they live and how to change it for the better, as we all did once, as we sometimes do now. Death is temporarily banished.