Reviews Archive for May, 2011
The DVD Wrapup: Blue Valentine, Something Wild, Sledgehammer, Justin Bieber, Broken Hill …
Blue Valentine: Blu-ray No matter how joyous it is to watch love bloom, on and off screen, it’s that much more painful to watch it wither and die on the vine. It’s even worse, knowing children are trapped inside their parents’ mad world, as well. Long ago, John Cassavetes set the standard by which all…
Read the full article » 5 Comments »Wilmington on Movies: The Princess of Montpensier
The Princess of Montpensier (Four Stars) France: Bertrand Tavernier, 2010 The Princess of Montpensier is a splendid French historical drama, a movie in the tradition of Jean Renoir, of Luchino Visconti, of Jean-Paul Rappeneau — and of course, in the best tradition of the filmmaker who made it, the usually first-rate, sometimes magnificent Bertrand Tavernier (Coup…
Read the full article »At the TCM Classic Film Festival: From An American in Paris to Fantasia
The second edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood…. It began and it ended in that most magical of all super-Hollywood movie palaces, Grauman‘s Chinese Theatre — with two great examples of the kind of things Hollywood does best: A classic Gene Kelly Hollywood Musical and a classic Walt Disney feature length cartoon: An…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: The Dilemma, 12 Angry Men, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Green Hornet
PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW The Dilemma (Three Stars) U.S.: Ron Howard, 2011 (Universal) Vince Vaughn and Kevin James make a nice couple in The Dilemma, a buddy-comedy-drama (or maybe a drama-buddy-comedy) in which they play a couple of Chicago pals-since-college and business partners. Vaughn is fast-talking huckster Ronny Valentine and James is slower-talking design…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Thor: The big, the blonde and the arrogant
“Thor himself, who has by now yanked off his shirt, and in so doing, rendered Jane, her assistant and even her gray-haired mentor speechless at the sight of his deliriously well-formed body. Even a rowdy IMAX audience in Los Angeles fell silent as Thor’s gigantic man-boobs and superhero six-pack molested our eye sockets in all of their 3D glory.”
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Review: Thor-y… But It Kinda Thucks
Thor is not painful. You just can’t think about it too much. You can’t think about the Marvel movie cliche’ of “asshole finds inner goodness by having his power stripped or trumped temporarily.” You can’t think about all of the really good actors slumming through leaden dialogue and characters that have virtually nothing to do….
Read the full article » 76 Comments »The DVD Wrapup: The Green Hornet, Mao’s Last Dancer, A Somewhat Gentle Man, Julian Assange, Brian Eno, Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies …
The Green Hornet: Blu-ray 3D If ever a marriage were made in comic-book heaven, it was the one that joined French fantasist Michael Gondry and the venerable “Green Hornet” franchise. The ceremony originally was arranged for 1997, after Gondry had completed a series of music videos for Bjork, but before he and Charlie Kaufman collaborated…
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