DVD of the Week
The Way We Were
dvr this I must admit I didn’t see The Way We Were until it was referenced, and part of it recreated, in the season finale of Season 2 of Sex and the City, the great episode Ex in the City. Sydney Pollack’s 1973 film features one of the more iconic Barbra Streisand performances in a…
Crazy, Stupid, Love
dvd of the week One of the better movies of the summer was also its most under-watched. Crazy, Stupid, Love is about the divorce of Steve Carell and Julianne Moore; Carell’s friendship with an expert lothario played by Ryan Gosling and Gosling surprisingly falling in love with Emma Stone. It’s quite funny and enormously insightful…
Captain America: The First Avenger
dvd of the week I don’t think there’s much argument that Captain America: The First Avenger ended up being the best surprise of the summer movie season, at least as far as action films go. As I wrote in the middle of July, “Captain America is the fourth massively expensive comic book superhero movie to…
Bad Teacher
Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher dvd of the week As I wrote in the spring, I laughed out loud several times while watching Bad Teacher. The younger men in the audience when I saw the movie were particularly enamored with the movie, especially when the issue of breasts was first and foremost. While Bad Teacher…
The Tree of Life
dvd of the week The winner of the Palm D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Terrence Malick’s tone poem about love, family and the meaning of life is not widely loved. Some people hate it, but I am not one. I think it’s one of the great achievements in film of at least the…
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
dvd of the week As I wrote back in June, “If you are the kind of moviegoer who is happy, even gleeful, about paying $16 to see Michael Bay’s special effects bonanzas in 3-D, then you will need to see, and may love, Dark of the Moon. It is by far the best of the…
DVD of the Week: ‘Bridesmaids’
I would hope that everyone has already seen the funniest movie of the year. But if by some bizarre reason you didn’t see Bridesmaids, it’s now on DVD. (Which means you can own it!) As I wrote in my original review, “Surrounding this tale of thirty-something angst are some of the most brilliant comic scenes…
DVD of the Week: ‘Thor’
Tom Hardy’s body in Warrior is as bizarrely and suspiciously inhuman as Chris Hemsworth’s in Thor. In one scene, Hemsworth wanders around shirtless in Natalie Portman’s apartment while the other actors and the audience just gawk. It’s absurd. So is the movie. And I loved it. One of the deluge of superhero movies this past…
DVD of the Week: ‘X-Men: First Class’
Some people seem to think that the X-Men prequel that came out earlier this summer is the greatest superhero movie in years. It’s not, not by any means, but James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, as Professor X and Magneto respectively, are both perfectly cast and have a lot of fun chewing scenery. (Jennifer Lawrence and…