Daniel Radcliffe never ignites in spooky The Woman in Black House of horror Marjorie Baumgarten on Thursday 02/02/2012 Oh, where's that boy wizard from Hogwarts when you need him? It turns out that Daniel Radcliffe did not bring his sorcerer's wand with him when he graduated to his first adult film role since the conclusion of the Harry Potter series. Too bad. Magic powers would have come in handy when dealing with the malevolent ghost that haunts The Woman in Black, the first film in 35 years to be shot in Great Britain under the venerable Hammer banner. >MoreWith great power comes great irresponsibility in telekinesis tale Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten on Thursday 02/02/2012 From out of left field comes Chronicle, a PG-13 thriller breathing new life into the found-footage formula that has become so popular in the dozen or so years since The Blair Witch Project. Like a marriage of Cloverfield and Carrie, Chronicle blends its faux naïve techniques with a teen telekinesis plot to create something that feels fresh and authentic. >More
REVIEWS
A Dangerous Method looks at the origins of psychoanalysis Freud vs. Jung Kimberley Jones on Thursday 01/26/2012 Hear the words "David Cronenberg" paired with "erotic drama," and you might feel a sudden shudder of unease, thinking back on the Canadian filmmaker's earlier works like Crash or Dead Ringers. This isn't that kind of Cronenberg picture, however. In fact, it's a period piece about the origins of psychoanalysis and the sexual confusions of its progenitors. It's eloquent and handsomely made, if never quite revelatory. >MoreHaywire star Gina Carano is a knockout Brawny beauty Kenneth Burns on Thursday 01/19/2012 Steven Soderbergh has a knack for finding talent in unlikely places. In casting The Girlfriend Experience, he looked to porn and found the appealing Sasha Grey. Now, with the action thriller Haywire, he has looked to mixed-martial-arts fighting and come up with Gina Carano, a glowering fighter who is a lovely, lively presence. >More
Joyful Noise is a mess, and that's the gospel truth Heaven help us Kenneth Burns on Thursday 01/12/2012 Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton have built up much goodwill, and it carries them through the regrettable Joyful Noise. There are some appealing moments in writer and director Todd Graff's overlong backstage musical about a gospel choir, but the film collapses under too many dull characters and too many silly plot threads. >MoreTinker Tailor Soldier Spy understates the espionage Cold War, cool agent Kimberley Jones on Thursday 01/05/2012 The modern movie spy has become defined by so much running and rappelling and cool seducing that it feels like a luxury to nestle in with the staid and resolutely unsuave George Smiley (Gary Oldman). A longtime operative in Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Smiley is forced into early retirement at the outset of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. >More
Wilmington on DVD: Midnight in Paris, Kung Fu Panda 2, Buck Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 12/28/2011 10:00 am Midnight in Paris is a funny valentine to the City of Light, a sweet, jazzy fairy tale about the wonders of Parisian art and artist cliques in the '20s. It shows us writer/director Woody Allen at his current best -- which, for me, is plenty good enough. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Friends with Benefits Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 12/21/2011 10:00 am I liked Rise of the Planet of the Apes very much -- even though it's obviously better directed (and acted) than it is written. The best of Rise is so damned wonderful, and the worst of it so damned silly, that it's sometimes hard to believe, as you watch it, that you're in the same movie you were in 10 minutes or so ago. >More
Wilmington on DVD: 50/50, Real Steel, Identification of a Woman Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 02/01/2012 10:00 am Your best friend looks you in the face and tells you that he has a rare form of spinal cancer and that his chances of survival, according to the doctors, are 50/50. What do you say? What can you say? In 50/50, the best friend, a good-hearted loudmouth named Kyle (played by Seth Rogen), listens and points out to Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) -- with whom he works at a Seattle radio station -- that in casino, 50/50 would be the best odds at the table. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Moneyball, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Ideas of March Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 01/25/2012 10:00 am Baseball is a great American game, and a great American sports myth as well -- and it's also, at times, a business, a gamble, a crud-boatload of media hype, and last, and maybe best of all, a kind of national secular bridge-building semi-religion. Amazingly, Moneyball -- based on a real-life season with the Oakland Athletics and their real-life general manager, Billy Beane -- hits all those bases and sometimes more. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Contagion, The Adjustment Bureau, Jane Eyre Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 01/18/2012 10:00 am Steven Soderbergh's Contagion begins with a cough in the dark -- something mundane, and ordinary, if irritating, that soon grows into something else: an explosion of fear, death, lawlessness and hysteria. As the movie proper begins, a title soon informs us that it's Day Two of the epidemic, or pandemic. Whatever happened on Day One? Eventually -- but not for a while -- they'll tell us. >MoreWith Haywire, screenwriter Lem Dobbs completes a Steven Soderbergh 'trilogy' Kenneth Burns on Monday 01/16/2012 8:41 am On Tuesday, Jan. 17, Madison filmgoers get a treat, an opportunity to see director Steven Soderbergh's new film, Haywire, before it opens Jan. 20. And that's not the only treat. In attendance at Sundance Cinemas Madison will be Lem Dobbs, who wrote the screenplay for the action thriller. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Tokyo Drifter, Straw Dogs, Colombiana, Love Crime Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 01/11/2012 10:00 am Off the wall and over the edge from its first scene to its last, Tokyo Drifter is one of the outrageous crime melodramas and outlandish neo-noirs made in the '60s for Nikkatsu Studio by super-cult Japanese director Seijun Suzuki. It's a classic B-movie, made cheaply and quickly and with maximum audacity. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Dragon Tattoo Trilogy, Dolphin Tale, Warrior Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 01/04/2012 1:00 pm In scorcher of a Swedish crime thriller trilogy, Noomi Rapace, as Lisbeth, the tattooed beyond-the-fringe investigator/suspected murderess/hacker heroine, and Michael Nyqvist as Mikael, her muck-raking leftist journalist/ally, tear off the scab-memories from some old sociopolitical wounds. >More
The best films of 2011 This year's releases kept viewers guessing Scott Renshaw on Thursday 12/29/2011 Welcome to 2011 at the movies -- when the only thing certain about the best movies was their uncertainty. People, as a rule, don't particularly like ambiguity. A much-talked-about university study earlier this year suggested that "spoilers" are actually welcome to many people, which explains why average viewers get annoyed at pointy-headed movie critics embracing films in which it's not instantly clear what's going on, how things are going to end, or even why a film ends the way it does. >MoreBruce Beresford to direct Frank Lloyd Wright movie Prairie preproduction Jay Rath on Thursday 12/22/2011 The life of Frank Lloyd Wright may be coming to the big screen. "We're in the very early stages of planning," says co-producer J. Todd Harris, of Branded Pictures Entertainment. "The current instinct is to base in Chicago with some potential location work in a few other sites, including Wisconsin." >More
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