MCN Originals Archive for June, 2013
Wilmington on Movies: This is the End
Just when I’d practically given up buddy-buddy movie comedy for dead, after the wipeouts of The Hangover III and The Internship, along comes This is the End, from writer-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, to revive your faith in bad taste and arrested development.
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: Badlands
What really disturbed, and disturbs, some people about both these films are the ways that Malick and Penn make their deadly protagonists beautiful—make us like them, even get crushes on them. All four pretty miscreants—Bonnie, Clyde, Kit, Holly—are stunningly attractive, which gives them all the classic movie short-cut to sympathy, something we also see in other Bonnie and Clyde-inspired films like Gun Crazy. But they’re also almost cripplingly naïve and childlike—and that’s why we tend to like all of them, right up to the very last moments of their stories.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »The DVD Wrapup
The Great and Wonderful Oz, Hansel & Gretel, Taste of Money, Vivan Los Antipodans!, Manson, Clip, Labor of Love, Monk, House of Cards, Allen Ginsberg… And so much more.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Review: Man of Steel (spoilers)
“By the end, there is no real discussion at all about what Superman’s existence means to the people of Earth, other than being grateful that one alien force was able to stop the one that was actively trying to annihilate them. That’s not acceptance. That’s, “Thanks for not letting us all die… We can talk about all that philosophical bull—- you were spewing for the first hour of the movie after we get a shower to get all this cheaply-9/11-referencing soot off of us and an estimate on the rebuilding of midtown Metropolis.”
Read the full article » 194 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: The Enforcer; Les Visiteurs du Soir; Oz, the Great and Powerful; Snitch
The Enforcer, the last movie Humphrey Bogart made for Warner Brothers, begins with one of the grimmest scenes in all of film noir. It’s night, deadly night…
Read the full article »An interview with WHAT MAISIE KNEW’s Scott McGehee and David Siegel
In her first feature role, Onata Aprile gives a performance of such grace, confidence, and naturalism that she calls to mind other great child actors’ movie debuts, including those of Hayley Mills in J. Lee Thompson’s Tiger Bay and Tatum O’Neal in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon. You’d have to have a heart of obsidian not to fall for this little girl in a big, big way.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Weekend Report
Well, no one saw that coming … or did they? It was the scrappy little sci-fi thriller The Purge that emURGEd as the weekend movie favorite with an estimated debut of $36.3 million. Meanwhile, its presumed competition The Internship mustered less than 50% of its opening to rank fourth overall with $18.2 million.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on Movies: The Internship
Vince Vaughn is an actor who tends to work better with partners—Jon Favreau in Swingers, for example. Still, when it came to 2005’s Wedding Crashers, he and Owen Wilson hit the motherlode of buddy-buddy comedy. It’s one of the funnier movies of the millennium, and Vaughn and Wilson, as two swinging young lawyers who crash weddings for the goodies and the women, had sizzling early-Martin & Lewis-style chemistry. Like all comedy teams that click, they were, are, a study in contrasts. Vaughn was fast-talking; Wilson was slow. Vaughn was tall and hunky; Wilson was average and clunky. Vaughn was tart; Wilson was sweet. Vaughn was something of a cynic; Wilson was something of a romantic. We liked Wilson; we were a little leery of Vaughn.
Read the full article »Friday Estimates
The weak showing of The Internship probably made Fox execs want to Purge. Fast & Furious 6 will pass Star Trek: Into Darkness domestically by the end of the weekend, which should make Disney/Lucasfilm a little nervous.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Purge
What happens on Purge night? The people, including everybody but some select national leaders (of course) are unrestrained but also unprotected. They can do anything, break any law—because for those 12 hours, no police will patrol the streets or make arrests or even gather and keep evidence, no doctors will tend the injured in the hospitals, and every violation of the law, no matter how heinous, will be forgiven automatically, in advance—including armed robbery, murder, rape and green-lighting violent movies with potentially terrific ideas that wind up making no sense and indulging the violent fantasies they seem to be criticizing.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Gronvall Report: THE EAST’s Batmanglij and Marling
The East is that rarity among espionage thrillers: a film that offers intricate plotting without being plodding; privileges characters over action sequences; and introduces a credible, memorable female protagonist. Brit Marling, an actress with arresting presence, plays an intelligence agent newly poached from the FBI by the head of a private security firm (Patricia Clarkson) whose mandate is to clean up messes created by high-profile companies before the public catches on.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup
El Sicario, Warm Bodies, Identity Thief, Die Hard, In Old Arizona, Mosquita, James Dean, Last Ride, Mad Max and so much more.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: The Odd Couple, Warm Bodies; A Good Day to Die Hard; Identity Thief
Nervous, punctilious white collar fussbudget Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon) and wise-cracking slob sports writer Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) are long time poker buddies thrown together as temporary roomies in Oscar’s N.Y.C. apartment, thanks to Felix’s marital troubles. Can these two mismatched friends, with several failed (or failing) relationships between them, survive their own semi-conjugal non-bliss together? Or will they clamor for a divorce, when the magnitude of Oscar’s laissez-faire housekeeping sinks in?
Read the full article »DVD Geek: Cloud Atlas
Directed by the Wachowski siblings Lana and Andy, and by Tom Tykwer, the film, like Intolerance, is broken into different stories set in different eras, with dazzling editing that jumps from story to story like fingers sweeping down the keys of a piano. The prominent cast members have multiple roles, figuring centrally in some stories and peripherally in others. Tom Hanks is top billed, and his performances are no stunt—he’s really, really good in each of his highly varied roles. Running a grand 172 minutes, the film is dazzling and intelligent, and is never tedious or introspective. It will take multiple viewings before people begin to recognize how elaborate its breakdown of religion is—how events that happen hundreds of years earlier change in the telling across the centuries while retaining the essen It is a thrilling movie, and is easily the best theatrical feature to come out of 2012, not only for its unrestrained entertainment, but for the boundaries it breaks as it advances the art of filmmaking.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Weekend Report
Fast & Furious 6 was dominant in second gear as it sped away to an estimated $34.5 million. That propelled a couple of newcomers to a tight race for second place with the unexpected winner the offbeat caper tale Now You See Me prestidigitating a gross of $27.9 million. A disappointing step behind with $27.2 million was the futuristic survival lesson After Earth.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: After Earth
You’ve got to feel, a little, for Will Smith and M. Night Shyamalan as you watch their misbegotten science-fiction movie After Earth—of which Will was the producer, co-star and original story writer, and his 14-tear-old son Jaden the star and which became a critical punching bag last week. It’s not a good movie, but its heart, or hearts, were in at least some of the right places.
Read the full article »Richard Linklater On His “Best Film You’ve Never Seen”: An Excerpt from Robert K. Elder’s New Book
“When you first watch a movie, you pay your money. Maybe you’re on a date. I mean, movies have two lives, obviously. Their short-lived economic life is just how you hook up with an audience at that moment. If you’re breathing the same air and it fits into the culture, then you’re lucky that the planets have aligned and people respond to your movie at that moment.”
Read the full article »Friday Estimates
Fast 6 is still furious, the magic show is good for some surprises, and Will Smith is dragged to earth by the weight of a bad choice to play a non-Will Smith character after 5 years away from his last original hit, Hancock, and the box office he long ruled.
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