DVD Reviews Archive for November, 2011
Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Friends With Benefits; 30 Minutes or Less; One Day; Island of Lost Souls
“Friends with Benefits” (Two Stars) U. S.: Will Gluck, 2011 Falling in love is such great movie material that it’s a pity Hollywood screws it up so often, especially these days. Friends with Benefits is supposed to be smarter and funnier than the usual pseudo-romantic comedy of today, but it’s really ust another rommie-commie with more (and…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Blu-ray. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Also Two Disc Blu-ray/3D Blu-ray combo) (Four Stars) Germany/France: Werner Herzog, 2011 (MPI Home Video) Perhaps 30,000 years ago, or less, in the age of the paleoliths, a man or woman, or a group of them, stood before the walls of the cave of Chauvet, in France,…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Sarah’s Key
Sarah’s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) (Three Stars) France: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010 (Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay) Sarah‘s Key (Elle s’appelait Sarah) is a movie about public and private tragedies, based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay and filmed with much fidelity and feeling by director-screenwriter Gilles Paquet-Brenner. It’s a good movie, with one…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Super 8, Spy Kids 4, Devil’s Double, Sarah’s Key, Family Tree, Trigger, Helldriver …
Super 8: Blu-ray Spy Kids 4: All Time in the World As residents of the placid Ohio town of Lillian are being rounded up and bussed to an Air Force base – ostensibly to protect them from a mysterious virus – I remembered that I’d seen this movie before, dozens of times in the last…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Box Sets: Georges Melies, The Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913); Melies Encores
This week, happily on my birthday, November 23, a truly wonderful film is opening: Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s amazing and beautiful fiction feature about an inventive boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) who lives in a spectacular Parisian railroad station (Modeled on the Gare Montparnasse), and the bearded, embittered shopkeeper he meets there, a man who…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. 12 Angry Men (Lumet); Twelve Angry Men (Schaffner)
DVD PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC 12 Angry Men (Two Discs) (Four Stars) U.S.; Sidney Lumet, 1957 (Criterion) The court will rise… 12. Twelve men, jurors in a ’50s murder trial, gather together in the sweltering heat of a New York City afternoon, in a box-like jury room where the fans give little…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Super 8
Super 8 (Four Stars) U.S.: J. J. Abrams, 2011, Paramount Remember what it was like when you were 12? 14? Twelve, wishing you were fourteen? Remember how magical the world was then? And how magical the movies were: the ones that you really loved and remembered and were really affected by? For me, that was 1958…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classics. The Phantom Carriage, The Outlaw and His Wife, A Man There Was, Ingeborg Holm
The Phantom Carriage (Four Stars) Sweden: Victor Sjostrom, 1921 (Criterion Collection) I. The Swedes Victor Sjostrom, a Viking of a 20th century Swedish artist, a great actor-director with sad, somber eyes, infallible instincts and a granite chin, is best known for his masterful performance, at 78, as the dying, memory-tormented professor Isak Borg in Ingmar…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. The Rest: Larry Crowne, Bellflower, The Trip, Despair, Phaedra
“Larry Crowne” (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Tom Hanks, 2011 In Larry Crowne — a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts that should have been a timely, funny show, but isn’t — Hanks plays the title character, an up-from-working-class managerial guy suddenly cut adrift from his life, and forced to…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Co-Picks of the Week: Blu-ray. Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides; The Big Lebowski
Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides (Blu & DVD Combos) (Three Stars) U.S.: Rob Marshall, 2011 (Disney) Johnny Depp isn’t acting at full pressure in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — the fourth in the lucrative comedy pirate adventure movie series inspired by the great Disneyland theme park ride. But then, how…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. The Rolling Stones Some Girls Live in Texas — 1978
The Rolling Stones: Some Girls Live in Texas 1978 (Also Blu-ray and DVD/CD Combo) (Three and a Half Stars) U.S. (Eagle Rock Entertainment) 1978-2011 It was 1964, the summer after my senior year in high school, and the song blasting out of the juke box at the Arctic Circle, a frozen custard drive-in and…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVD. The Rest: The Change-Up, 13, Bolt
“The Change-Up” (Two Stars) U.S.: David Dobkin, 2011 (Universal) The Change-Up, a big star body-swap comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman, is a movie that begins with baby poop jokes and climaxes with its two “heroes” urinating together in a public fountain, before an audience. And you can almost hear the moviemakers yelling at each…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. Park Row.
Park Row (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Samuel Fuller, 1952 (MGM Limited Edition Collection) Sam Fuller, one of the toughest of the tough guy auteur/directors, is best known for his two-fisted war movies (The Big Red One) and his hard-as-nails film noirs (Pickup on South Street). But the show he often called his best…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Harry Potter, Better Tomorrow, Atlas Shrugged, Identification of a Woman, In a Glass Cage, Blue Velvet, Sleeping Beauty …
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2: Blu-ray Any attempt to provide a concise synopsis of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” would require spoiling surprises that have been gestating for 14 years. Longtime fans of the amazing series of movies and books probably will have already seen the finale, however, and…
Read the full article » 4 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Box Set. Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas.
Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas (Four Discs) (Three and a Half Stars) Italy: Raffaello Matarazzo’s, 1949-1955 (Criterion Collection) Eclipse One of the great pleasures of covering a DVD beat is opening another Eclipse set from Criterion, especially if, as in this case — a four disc box of postwar romantic melodramas directed by the lesser known…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two” (Three and a Half Stars) U.S./U.K.; David Yates, 2011 (Warner Bros.) Part I. Hallows Eve All fine things must come to an end, and so finally has the Harry Potter series: the books first of all, and now the movies, climaxing at last in a final explosion, a…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: The Rest. Water for Elephants, The Last Mountain, Rare Exports/Santa Claus Conquers the Martians; Haunted Summer; Sands of the Kalahari; The Man in the Net
Water for Elephants (Three Stars) U.S.: Francis Lawrence, 2011 Water for Elephants is an old-fashioned romantic picture done in new-fangled ways, and it‘s so good for such a long time, that it seems a shame, at the end, to feel so let down by it. But that’s how it goes… Director Francis Lawrence’s show, co-starring…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Cars 2, Tabloid, Crazy Stupid Love, Water for Elephants, Snow Flower Trespass, Phantom of Opera …
Cars 2: Blu-ray If you loved the first “Cars,” which rolled off the Pixar production line in 2006, it’s better than even money that you’ll enjoy “Cars 2.” If not, the sequel probably won’t change your mind. You either dig anthropomorphic automobiles or you don’t. Neither am I’m sure kids will care to sit through…
Read the full article » 6 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Box Sets. Toy Story Ultimate Toy Box Collection;Toy Story 3D Trilogy
The Toy Story Ultimate Toy Box Collection (Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3D/DVD/Digital) (10 discs) (Four Stars) U.S.: John Lasseter/Lee Unkrich, 1995-2010 (Walt Disney Video) The Toy Story 3D Trilogy (Blu-ray 3D) (Three Discs) (Four Stars) U.S.: John Lasseter/Lee Unkrich, 1995-1999-2010 (Walt Disney Video) The Great American Feature Cartoon Trilogy, The Godfather Trilogy of feature cartoons actually (see below),…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. Crazy, Stupid, Love
“Crazy, Stupid, Love.” (Three and a Half Stars) U.S.: Glenn Ficara & John Requa, 2011 1. Crazy, Crazy, Stupid, Love. That’s the name of the new Steve Carell-Ryan Gosling-Julianne Moore romantic comedy, from the directorial team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You, Phillip Morris), and the title actually does consist of those three…
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