Reviews Archive for August, 2012
Wilmington on DVDs: Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
A long time ago, back in ’71, In a season of tumult and fear,
The good Dr. Seuss, with his pens sharp and loose, Wrote a book called “The Lorax,” we hear.
It was all about greed , about Oncelers and thneeds, About chopping down Truffula trees…
Wilmington on DVDs: Le Havre
That’s an awful lot of allusions or maybe-allusions and I probably don’t even have them all. (Thanks to Jim Hoberman and the Criterion booklet’s Michael Sicinski for some of them.) Le Havre, a great favorite at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, has a dimension of reality but it also exists in its own private world of cinephilia and Kaurismakiana. It’s simply not intended as a believably realistic film — and even its seeming realism (the straight-on slow camera style, the drab locations, the terse dialogue), is, in its way, yet another filmic allusion, this time to Italian neo-realism or to Robert Bresson.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: The Babymakers
I think it’s safe to say though that Jay Chandrasekhar will never win the Nobel Prize for Physics, or even for sperm preservation research, though he might well open up his own bank, if his customers have good shoes and a Farrellyesque sense of humor.
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: Total Recall
Another Philip K. Dick movie. Another terrific opportunity wasted. It bewilders me. Why are so many of the current makers of the super-action-movies so seemingly uninterested in writing good or clever dialogue or in devising original plots or in creating interesting characters?
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Marilyn Monroe, Hatfields & McCoys, Le Havre, Waves of Lust … More
As we approach the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death, at 36, expect the media to peel away from the Olympics and Aurora massacre long enough to celebrate the life and career of one of Hollywood’s brightest and most misunderstood stars. Sadly, one of the central mysteries of the 20th Century – did she jump or was she pushed – isn’t likely to be solved anytime soon.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Marilyn Monroe
She was blonde and beautiful and often late. She grew up poor and unhappy. Her life changed. She became a starlet and a notorious nude calendar model and finally she became a movie star to the world, and the dream girl of many people, and many cultures. She played dumb in a lot of her pictures –but she was actually very smart and very talented and well-read and the friend or favorite star of major writers and artists, and even of one great French philosopher.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: La Grande Illusion
PICK OF THE WEEK: Classic GRAND ILLUSION (“La Grande Illusion”) (Also Blu-ray) Four Stars France: Jean Renoir, 1937 (Lions Gate) 1. A Grand Illusion: The Great War That Can Be Stopped Few films about war and the men who fight them have the beauty and power and resonance of Jean Renoir’s 1937 Grand Illusion — based…
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