DVD Reviews Archive for August, 2012
Wilmington on DVDs: A Separation
DVD PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW A SEPARATION (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) (Four Stars) Iran: Asghar Farhadi, 2011 (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Movies can open up a whole world for audiences, revealing even the most remote people and places. That’s especially true of movues like A Separation, last year’s much-praised, much-awarded foreign language Oscar-winner…
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Battleship, Lonesome, Monsieur Lazhar, Penumbra … More
Those fans of the movie “Battleship” born after Nintendo and Sega were introduced to American consumers might find it difficult to believe that one of Hollywood’s most expensive movies was inspired by one of the least costly pastimes of all. Back in the day, all it took to play the Battleship guessing game was a pencil; illegally mimeographed sheets of papers replicating the grids on the Milton Bradley board; and a folded-over checker board to prevent cheating. Players used their pencil to indicate where various sized warships are located and guess the location of their opponent’s fleet, using a bingo-like alphanumeric system. It provided simple, time-consuming and free fun on a rainy day.
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: Darling Companion; Headhunters; Down by Law… more
The movie has its flaws — an outlandishly implausible ending chiefly among them — but compared to most of the un-naturalistic, unfunny, unserious, totally phony and sometimes obnoxiously ageist and condescendingly smart-ass gloppy stuff that often passes for American movie comedy-drama these days (and that sometimes gets a pass from the same people who pile on movies like Darling Companion), it’s a movie that deserves some encouragement.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: High Noon, 60th Anniversary Edition
High Noon became one of the most influential of all movie Westerns, exerting lasting effects even on films and filmmakers you wouldn’t expect it to, like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (four men, like the Miller gang, walking alone at the end, instead of one), Clint Eastwood‘s hip, dark High Plains Drifter (which might have been the last vengeful nightmare of a dying Will Kane) and Sergio Leone‘s operatic Once Upon a Time in the West.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Porno Gang, A Separation, Dictator, Chimpanzee, Bernie … More
Even before the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and subsequent wars for self-determination, the country’s filmmakers could be counted on to deliver closely observed tales of a society driven insane by Cold War politics and the realization that any freedoms they’ve enjoyed could disappear overnight. Now that an uneasy truce appears to have taken hold in Bosnia, Kosovo and once-disputed parts of Croatia, the savagery that marked those struggles continues to haunt the cinemas of the newly independent states.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Wilmington on DVDs: The Dictator; The War Room; Simba: The King of Beasts
Sacha Baron Cohen is no Charlie Chaplin, and he probably never will be. But at least he‘s willing to give his comedy a shot of social and political consciousness, like Charlie did
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Battleship, Tonight You’re Mine
Battleship? Why? The idea of spending of two hundred million dollars and change to try to adapt a Hasbro board or video game (called “Battleship,” natch) into a huge would-be blockbuster war-action movie (likewise Battleship)’ toplining TV star Taylor Kitsch (“Friday Night Lights,” John Carter), and swimsuit model and would-be movie star Brooklyn Decker (What to Expect When You‘re Expecting), struck me as a waste of time, sight unseen.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Jaws, Hunger Games, Dardennes, Kill List, more…
News reports of shark sightings and bitings pick up every time a new addition to the “Jaws” franchise is about to be released and, like clockwork, the critters didn’t disappoint the media last week. They’ve occurred with such frequency over the course of the last 37 years as to be attributed to the marketing stealth of Universal’s publicity team. As if.
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Shallow Grave
This seems a typical set-up for Boyle, whose propensity for cautionry break-the-bank films might well earn him the nickname “Get Rick Quick” Danny Boyle. But here’s where I stop the synopsis. Believe me, you don’t want me to go any further, and not out of skittishness or fear, but because you likely and sensibly don’t want to miss the deliciously macabre surprises and ingenious suspense set-pieces Boyle and Hodge keep detonating throughout the movie.
Read the full article »The DVD Wrapup: Warriors of Rainbow, Full Metal Jacket, Bunny Game, Scalene, Ladda Land, High Fidelity, Zombies …
The most important thing for American audiences to know about “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale” is that it comes with the imprimatur of the great Hong Kong action director, John Woo. Although his presence can’t guarantee a positive reaction, it gives us more reason for optimism than the usual stuff found on a DVD cover. I found it to be immensely entertaining, but recommend potential viewers to take a minute beforehand to read the Wikipedia entry on the history of Taiwan.
Read the full article »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 »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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