DVD Reviews Archive for March, 2011
The DVD Wrap: Tangled, Black Swan, Made in Dagenham, Ten Commandments, I Vinti …
Tangled: Blu-ray 3D According to the people who keep track of such things, “Tangled” is Disney’s 50th full-length animated feature film. In many ways, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the very first one, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” released 74 years ago. Not only are both movies inspired by fairy tales written by…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVD: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Tourist, The Twilight Zone Season Two, The Clowns, Exit Throught the Gift Shop, Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed.
Appropriately bracketed as a classic pick this week with Fellini’s I Clowns“ Alexander Kluge’s Artists at the Top of the Big Top: Perplexed is also a European art film about circuses and circus people. But this is a film in black-and-white, where the filmmakers would have answered the question Fellini dodged in The Clowns about symbolism, and then done something symbolic to illustrate the answer, and had an illustrated lecture on symbolism and the history of art, and the politics of circuses.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »DVD Geek: Elia Kazan’s America America
As Kazan historian Foster Hirsch puts it on his commentary, “This is a film whose time has still not come. I’m hoping that the release of this DVD will change that.”
Read the full article »The DVD Wrap: The Tourist, Yogi Bear 3D, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Andy Sidaris Collection, Skyline …
The Tourist: Blu-ray Ten months out of every year, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is ignored by everyone in Hollywood, except the publicists assigned to wiping the reporters’ bottoms and keeping their bottles full of expensive wine and booze. For the better part of December and January, however, the mainstream media does its part to…
Read the full article » 8 Comments »Wilmington on DVD: The Fighter, Hereafter, Last Tango in Paris, TCM Greatest Classic Legend John Ford Westerns
“Bale looks and acts something like a Dead End Kid on crack, an elongated mix of Huntz Hall and the younger Mean Streets De Niro, oscillating frantically between the goony and the near-tragically self-destructive.”
“What’s most impressive about Hereafter is, first of all, that Eastwood had the guts to do it.”
“The torrid memento of a time — post-Sexual Revolution, pre-herpes outbreak, pre-Aids plague — when quick anonymous sex between partners who barely knew each other.”
“He was John Ford. He made Westerns.”
Read the full article » 6 Comments »The DVD Wrap: Hereafter, The Switch, The Fighter, The Wildest Dream, Yi Yi, Sharktopus …
Hereafter: Blu-ray In the opening minutes of “Hereafter,” tourists along a Thai beach are enjoying another leisurely day in paradise. A French reporter, Marie, played by Cécile De France, has just agreed to leave the hotel to buy souvenirs for her boyfriend, who’s too lazy to do it himself. Just as she’s about to pay…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVD: Inside Job, Senso, TCM Greatest Classic Legends: Jean Harlow & more…
“Inside Job is an essential movie. It shows, pretty conclusively I think, why documentaries are such an important cinematic and journalistic form these days. After you see this picture, you won’t be able to say you weren’t informed, won’t be able to see you weren‘t warned. You’ll know, if not the whole story, a big important part of it.”
Read the full article »WILMINGTON ON DVD: 127 Hours, Bambi, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, Burlesque, Faster
“Watching Franco here, as he plunges himself into a part so taxing physically, psychologically and even spiritually, and does it so brilliantly, you tend to forgive him for that awful, howlingly embarrassing turn he gave as co-host at the last Oscar Show.”
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The DVD Wrap: Love & Other Drugs, Jackass 3D, Rivers and Tides, Rage, Zombie Farm …
Love & Other Drugs: Blu-ray Anyone who spends more than a couple hours each year killing time in the waiting room of a GP, internist or psychiatrist should be able to attest to the accuracy of the portrayal of pharmaceutical sales reps in “Love & Other Drugs.” The only resemblance most bear to Willie Loman,…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The DVD Wrap: 127 Hours, Road Movie, Faster, Bambi, Germany in Autumn, The Last Train Home …
127 Hours The title of this alternately horrific and exhilarating movie references the length of time spent by outdoors enthusiast Aron Ralston trapped in a narrow chasm, as far from the people he loved as any astronaut who walked on the moon. Farther, maybe, because Ralston’s hubris allowed him no way to contact his parents…
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