Michael Wilmington

Michael Wilmington was born in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, on November 23, 1946. He was the son of Martin Wilmington, an economics professor at Pace College in New York City, and of Edna Tulane Wilmington, a cum laude masters degree graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and a painter, sculptor, portrait artist, illustrator, draughtsman, newspaper columnist and teacher. His parents were divorced and Edna brought him up, in Arlington, Virginia, Chicago and Williams Bay, Wisconsin, as a single mother, without child support or alimony. (She died, at 94, in 2009.) Michael graduated from William Bay (Wisconsin) High School, where he was on the basketball and football teams, was captain of the forensics team and was sports editor of the annual. He graduated in 1964, and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in English (Honors), where he was also active in dramatics as both actor and director, was chair of the Memorial Union Film Committee and was the movie critic for two years for the student paper, the Daily Cardinal. In Madison, Wilmington also co-wrote the book, "John Ford" with Joseph McBride and became the movie critic for the alternative weekly, Isthmus of Madison, winning five Milwaukee Press Club Awards at Isthmus for best arts criticism. He eventually left for Los Angeles, to become movie critic and editor for both the L. A. Weekly and L. A. Style. From 1984 to 1993, he was a movie critic and writer for the Los Angeles Times and, in 1993, he was elected Vice President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. In 1993, Wilmington was named the lead movie critic at the Chicago Tribune, after the departure of Dave Kehr, who had replaced longtime Tribune movie critic and "At the Movies" TV host Gene Siskel in 1986. (Siskel became movie columnist at the Tribune from 1986 until his death in 1999.) While at the Tribune, Wilmington won or shared two Peter Lisagor awards for arts criticism. He was also the the on-air movie critic for cable channel CLTV, where he was nominated for two other Lisagors. Wilmington left the Tribune in 2007. In 2008, he became movie and DVD critic for Movie City News.