Michael Wilmington Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Michael Wilmington

Michael Wilmington

Agrees with the Tomatometer 78% of the time.

Publications:: Chicago Tribune , Las Vegas Weekly , Los Angeles Times , Metromix.com , Movie City News
Critics' Group:: Chicago Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics

Total Reviews:: 1160

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Showing 51 - 100 of 1160

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	56%	Unknown (2011)	" The snow and haze that Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra keeps pumping into the street scenes seem to have drifted into the script as well." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 18, 2011
	38%	The Eagle (2011)	" Exciting and even moving, this robust epic is filled with action, male bonding, and a terrifying sense of wilderness." — Chicago Reader Posted Feb 10, 2011
3.5/4	90%	Winnebago Man (2010)	" It isn't perfect, but hell, neither was the Winnebago." — Movie City News Posted Dec 8, 2010
3/4	86%	The House of the Devil (2009)	" Ti West knows how to set up his prey for the kill" — Movie City News Posted Nov 2, 2009
3.5/5	95%	Star Trek (2009)	" The movie, typically for Abrams, is almost continuously exciting." — Movie City News Posted May 15, 2009
2.5/5	66%	The Brothers Bloom (2009)	" ... it's not important, but it's fun ..." — Movie City News Posted May 15, 2009
4/5	93%	L'Heure d'été (Summer Hours) (2009)	" One of my favorites of the year is this wonderful French family ensemble film ..." — Movie City News Posted May 15, 2009
2.5/5	37%	Angels & Demons (2009)	" For sheer off-the charts looniness, it'll be hard to top the furious plot and flabbergasting climax of Angels and Demons ..." — Movie City News Posted May 15, 2009
3/4	56%	The Soloist (2009)	" The writer, Susannah Grant, director Joe Wright, and especially the two superb leading actors all give the film life and humanity." — Movie City News Posted Apr 24, 2009
3/4	64%	Watchmen (2009)	" This is good stuff, and perhaps we shouldn't fault it for not being great stuff." — Movie City News Posted Mar 5, 2009
3/4	62%	Valkyrie (2008)	" As a high-gloss, high-powered, high tech (WW2 era) thriller, with real-life overtones, it's often hell on wheels." — Movie City News Posted Dec 31, 2008
	41%	Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008)	" ... it's a lapdog of a script, all gussied up. And the Beverly Hills scenes made me want to arf." — Movie City News Posted Oct 29, 2008
3/5	54%	Body of Lies (2008)	" It's an exciting movie, done in the flashy, breath-catching hyper-visual mode we expect from Scott. But in the end, it gets bogged down ..." — Movie City News Posted Oct 10, 2008
3.5/4	87%	Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Hellboy 2) (2008)	" We should be glad that del Toro is operating at his peak right now, getting all the money and latitude he needs to weave his spells." — Movie City News Posted Jul 10, 2008
3/4	29%	Lucky You (2007)	" Hanson and Roth shuffle the two sides of the movie, the poker tournament and the love affair, with a Howard Hawksian feel for casual professionalism." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 10, 2008
	80%	Anthem (1997)	" It's enjoyable precisely because Hahn and Gabel give us both sides of the experience: the interviewer and interviewee. Though there's an undercurrent of melancholy, Anthem is a bright ride, a welcome shot of 60's optimism in a gray post-modern age." — Chicago Tribune Posted Sep 24, 2007
—	——	Bad City (2006)	— Chicago Tribune Posted Jul 14, 2007
3/4	58%	First Snow (2007)	" A smart, tense modern film noir." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 30, 2007
—	23%	Psychopathia Sexualis (2006)	— Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 30, 2007
—	98%	Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (Esma's Secret - Grbavica) (2007)	— Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 30, 2007
—	22%	Typhoon (2006)	— Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 30, 2007
—	73%	Pulse (Kairo) (2005)	— Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 30, 2007
3/4	92%	Up for Grabs (2005)	" Even if you didn't follow the story then, Wranovics tells it so wryly your interest never flags -- and there's more suspense for newcomers, since the mystery and court verdict remain in doubt until the end." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 26, 2007
3/4	86%	Steel City (2007)	" Steel City is one of the most hopeful movies I've seen recently -- not just for its humane, realistic story line (about a small-town family in crisis), but in its very being." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 14, 2007
3/4	64%	Day Watch (2007)	" One hell of a movie." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 14, 2007
3.5/4	72%	Golden Door (2007)	" An often lyrical and moving movie." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 14, 2007
	64%	Labyrinth (1986)	" A real masterpiece of puppetry and special effects, an absolutely gorgeous children's fantasy movie." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 14, 2007
4/4	79%	Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs) (2007)	" A film about love and blunders done from the perspective of age, crafted by writer Alan Ayckbourn, 68, and director Alain Resnais, 85. Our younger directors and screenwriters should show this much brilliance and feeling." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 8, 2007
3/4	36%	Hollywood Dreams (2007)	" Jaglom's Hollywood Dreams are far closer to reality than they might seem. Unfortunately." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 7, 2007
2.5/4	44%	Angel-A (2005)	" We all have our own view of paradise, but as long as Besson has Arbogast, his camera and those surreal bare Parisian streets, his schlocky heaven enchants the eye, if not the mind." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 7, 2007
2.5/4	78%	Crazy Love (2007)	" A documentary about a mad love affair, a movie that's about as compulsively watchable as a great tabloid headline story is compulsively readable -- and also a lot more rewarding." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 7, 2007
3/4	83%	Paprika (2006)	" The movie keeps flooding us with strange, scary imagery." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 7, 2007
	——	The Climb (1999)	" John Hurt, the star of The Climb, is an actor with an often staggering capacity for conveying human suffering." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jun 4, 2007
3/4	90%	Stephanie Daley (2006)	" A movie that can wound you." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 31, 2007
4/4	100%	Voyna i Mir (War and Peace) (1967)	" If you haven't seen it, you have an incredible treat in store." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 31, 2007
2.5/4	96%	Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (2004)	" If it's not likely to send you scurrying off to the place on your next vacation, it's still a fascinating, nutty story, a kind of Chinatown gone wrong (or gone more wrong )." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 31, 2007
3/4	61%	Bug (2006)	" A nerve-rending, extremely unpleasant experience but also a compelling one." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 24, 2007
3/4	88%	Poison Friends (Les Amities malefiques) (2006)	" It's intellectual without being dry, dramatic without bombast, smart without posturing." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 24, 2007
3.5/4	86%	Paris Je T'aime (2007)	" You couldn't call it perfect -- the episodes are uneven -- but it has something that sometimes is better than perfection: real love for its subject and themes." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 24, 2007
3.5/4	44%	Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007)	" The most visually spectacular, action-packed and surreal of the adventures of Capt. Jack Sparrow." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 23, 2007
3/4	86%	Sacco and Vanzetti (2007)	" Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and the incredible firestorm of outrage generated by their criminal trials have been largely neglected in recent years, but Peter Miller's absolutely engrossing documentary Sacco and Vanzetti brings it all back." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 17, 2007
3/4	67%	Everything's Gone Green (2007)	" Everything's Gone Green is a romantic comedy/social satire that, on a modest budget, manages to be hip, charming, funny and dressed to kill." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 17, 2007
2.5/4	45%	Fay Grim (2007)	" Hal Hartley's Fay Grim strikes me as something of an elaborate mistake, a wasted opportunity and a script Hartley should have discarded. But I liked it anyway." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 17, 2007
3/4	88%	Waitress (2007)	" Written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly, it's a scrumptious romantic comedy, a mostly adorable movie from a witty and winning movie talent whom we lost all too soon." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 10, 2007
2.5/4	48%	Exterminating Angels (Les Anges Exterminateurs) (2007)	" The content may be dubious, but the execution is hypnotic." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 10, 2007
2/4	17%	Georgia Rule (2007)	" Maybe Georgia Rule should be required viewing for Paris Hilton during her term in the slammer. But not for us." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 10, 2007
4/4	94%	Away from Her (2007)	" Bergmanesque and beautiful, set in a wintry landscape fitfully lit by one woman's flickering awareness and one man's long-term, stubborn love, Away from Her is one of the most remarkable and moving love stories the movies have recently given us." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 10, 2007
3/4	49%	The Flying Scotsman (2006)	" Tells a tale both fast and moving. And when Miller as Obree takes his whirls around the track, it gets your heart pumping and your blood up." — Chicago Tribune Posted May 4, 2007
3/4	75%	Ping Pong (2002)	" The movie has some of the feel of a good graphic novel and offers a lot of Japanese pop pleasures as well. The images are eye-catching and highly colorful, the pacing is fast, and the story and the characters are simple, grabby and archetypal." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 27, 2007
4/4	88%	The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2007)	" [Loach is] the master of the docu-drama or the realist social film, and Wind is one of his masterpieces." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 27, 2007
3.5/4	52%	Disappearances (2007)	" Shot for only $1.7 million, but it's a thoroughly entertaining, first-class job in every way." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 26, 2007
1/4	15%	The Condemned (2007)	" Despite a slick production and good actors, The Condemned is a real stinker." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 26, 2007
3/4	70%	Year of the Dog (2007)	" It's enjoyable in a dry but fervent way that most American comedies aren't." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 23, 2007
3/4	96%	The Cats of Mirikitani (2006)	" If you're not moved by his movie, you're really a hard case." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 20, 2007
4/4	95%	Offside (2006)	" Jafar Panahi of Iran is one of his country's great filmmakers, and Offside is his best movie to date." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 20, 2007
3/4	56%	Vacancy (2007)	" The kind of sleazily effective horror/genre movie Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were trying for in Grindhouse. Vacancy catches you by the throat and puts you through the wringer." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 19, 2007
3.5/4	76%	Black Book (Zwartboek) (2007)	" The movie scrambles our responses and covers so much ground, with such zest, that its two and a half hours race past like a firestorm." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 12, 2007
2/4	68%	Disturbia (2007)	" Comparisons [to Rear Window] are probably something the makers of Disturbia don't want us to make, since Disturbia, for all its glitz and gadgets, is markedly inferior in everything but teen appeal." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 12, 2007
2/4	11%	Pathfinder (2007)	" Though you can't say Pathfinder doesn't deliver the goods, action-wise, the movie often has trouble sticking to its story between battles or involving us with its characters and its self-consciously mythic hero." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 12, 2007
3/4	85%	The Hoax (2007)	" The filmmakers catch the right glittery look and paranoid intensity, and they make gutsy speculations about the story beneath the story." — Chicago Tribune Posted Apr 5, 2007
3/4	78%	The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages) (2006)	" A classical music thriller." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 29, 2007
3.5/4	87%	Into Great Silence (2007)	" Into Great Silence is a film of great spiritual intensity and haunting minimalism that enlarges your concepts of movies and of life." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 29, 2007
3/4	66%	Meet the Robinsons (2007)	" It's a real technical breakthrough, a cartoon feature done in 3D computer images of unusual depth and plasticity that creates its own crazy world and then dunks you in it." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 29, 2007
2/4	——	Chasing October ()	" Chasing October is probably a movie only a diehard Cubs fan could love." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 22, 2007
3/4	50%	Color Me Kubrick (2007)	" John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 22, 2007
3/4	63%	Reign Over Me (2007)	" It's better than you'd expect but not as good as you'd like it to be." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 22, 2007
2/4	53%	The Last Mimzy (2007)	" The movie fails to supply us with an antagonist to work up some dramatic conflict. Nor are the toys themselves very interesting and Mimzy is a toy bunny of no distinction." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 22, 2007
4/4	86%	The Namesake (2006)	" The Namesake brims with intelligence, compassion and sensuous delight in the textures, sights and sounds of life -- all the way from the Taj Mahal to Pearl Jam." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 15, 2007
3/4	73%	The Bothersome Man (Den Brysomme mannen) (2007)	" Made with formidable assurance, a compelling look, quiet skill and impressive economy." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 15, 2007
3/4	73%	Glastonbury (2007)	" The portrait is spectacular and inclusive, if sometimes a bit overwhelming and confusing." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 8, 2007
3/4	89%	Starter for 10 (2006)	" Starter for 10 is cute and smart, just like its star triangle, and it's also well-written, acted and directed." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 8, 2007
3/4	75%	Becket (1964)	" Ripe with homoerotic undercurrents -- which O'Toole mines with relish in his great hysterical performance, full of cunning, eloquence and mad outbursts." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 8, 2007
3.5/4	81%	L'Ivresse du pouvoir (Comedy of Power) (2006)	" It's not often that you see the craft of cinema so perfectly executed -- or a group of fancy scoundrels so ruthlessly caught and skewered. Comedy of Power, like all of [Cluade] Chabrol's Hitchcockian films, is dark, smart and delicious." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 1, 2007
3/4	74%	Fah talai jone (Tears of the Black Tiger) (2007)	" The result is something so old it's new, so corny it's funny. And while Tears of the Black Tiger is nothing more than entertaining, at least it's that." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 1, 2007
3/4	92%	An Unreasonable Man (2007)	" Surely, Ralph Nader deserves better press than he's been getting ever since the 2004 elections -- and the legendary consumer advocate and so-called presidential spoiler receives his due, from both sides, in the documentary An Unreasonable Man." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 1, 2007
1/4	6%	Full of It (2007)	" A wish fulfillment fantasy of staggering silliness, both smirkingly cutesy and gratingly offensive, this is one for the movie ash heap. Watching it, your heart goes out to the actors, floundering through the cliches." — Chicago Tribune Posted Mar 1, 2007
4/4	94%	2 ou 3 Choses que je Sais d'Elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) (1967)	" Two or Three Things I Know About Her is one of the most beautiful films of the young Jean-Luc Godard, a great French cineaste, poet and frustrated lover." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 22, 2007
3.5/4	82%	Days of Glory (Indigenes) (2007)	" Few [war movies] are as moving as Days, but even so, this film doesn't romanticize. It's hard, clear, full of empathy for its characters and lucid in its insight into their plight." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 22, 2007
3.5/4	93%	The Lives of Others (2006)	" The Lives of Others works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 15, 2007
3/4	84%	Bridge to Terabithia (2007)	" Elaborately mounted, expensively produced and filmed with style and empathy, it's an adaptation of Paterson's Newbery Medal-winning book that manages to expand the original vision, yet preserve much of its intense emotion." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 15, 2007
2/4	9%	Norbit (2007)	" The movie seems a weird nightmare of rampaging femininity and gross gags." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 9, 2007
2/4	66%	Screamers (2006)	" Screamers is a commendably brave piece, but less focused and powerful than you'd like." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 8, 2007
2.5/4	51%	Puccini for Beginners (2007)	" A sharp-witted romantic comedy that takes the old Woody Allen screwball style and mood and amusingly applies them to a story about tangled gay and straight relationships in modern Manhattan." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 8, 2007
3/4	33%	Breaking and Entering (2007)	" A smart, well-mannered film that could use a little more juice and fire." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 8, 2007
2/4	19%	Factory Girl (2007)	" Hickenlooper likes to observe chaos and artistic extremes with a friendly eye, and there are hints all through Factory Girl of the shattering film it could have been. But the story falls too easily into 'live fast, die young' laments and postures." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 8, 2007
2/4	70%	Backstage (2006)	" From that very first scene, which plays like a berserk fantasy erupting into the movie's 'reality,' I found Backstage almost impossible to believe." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 1, 2007
3/4	63%	Masai: The Rain Warriors (Massai, les guerriers de la pluie) (2006)	" The beauty and excitement of Masai: The Rain Warriors comes partly from our sense that we're intimately entering a whole, rich new world whose people and customs were previously foreign to us." — Chicago Tribune Posted Feb 1, 2007
3/4	72%	Inland Empire (2006)	" While you suspect Lynch's digital video acumen will flower into something extraordinary in coming projects, this one's intermittently extraordinary at best." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
2.5/4	50%	Highway Courtesans ()	" Highway Courtesans carries a feeling of truth, of bravely facing problems that are pressing and real. It's a good, informative piece on the oldest profession--and on how the world differs from what we usually see in the movies." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
3/4	96%	Romántico (2006)	" ... a fine example of how the new technologies enable filmmakers to tell stories hard to capture before." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
3.5/4	55%	Seraphim Falls (2007)	" Seraphim Falls is a movie some will relish and others will find a bit anachronistic." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 26, 2007
3.5/4	89%	Venus (2006)	" Peter O'Toole, still a British cinematic lion at 74, performs another movie miracle in the Roger Michell-Hanif Kureishi film Venus." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 18, 2007
3/4	79%	Le Petit Lieutenant (2006)	" Beauvois makes the milieu his own, too, showing us credible and affecting human beings caught up in a world that often reveals humanity at its worst." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 11, 2007
3/4	21%	Arthur and the Invisibles (Arthur and the Minimoys) (2007)	" It's a pretty good picture, albeit a strange one." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 11, 2007
3/4	71%	The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006)	" A bit like wandering into a slice of life that suddenly turns into a Tennessee Williams play, with upper-class Eastern accents replacing the Southern ones." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 4, 2007
2/4	4%	Happily N'ever After (2006)	" Happily N'Ever After, with its pseudo-Shrekkeries, tries to be too many things -- and in too many styles and dimensions -- at the same time." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 4, 2007
3/4	69%	Freedom Writers (2007)	" Hilary Swank gives a powerhouse performance as a maverick high school teacher in Freedom Writers, an often gripping and sometimes even inspiring film." — Chicago Tribune Posted Jan 4, 2007
3/4	73%	Family Law (Derecho de Familia) (2006)	" Family Law, from Argentina, is a very articulate comedy about fatherhood and marriage." — Chicago Tribune Posted Dec 28, 2006
4/4	96%	Pan's Labyrinth (2006)	" Pan succeeds both as a spectacular special-effects fantasy and as a psychological drama, with superb actors." — Chicago Tribune Posted Dec 28, 2006

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