3D BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS

Young owl Soren (voiced by Jim Sturgess) marvels at tales of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, mythic winged warriors who battled to save all owlkind from the evil Pure Ones. When he and brother Kludd (Ryan Kwanten) fall into the talons of the Pure Ones, it's up to Soren to make a daring escape with the help of other brave owls and seek out the Great Tree, home of the Guardians.

The marketing for this film wasn't very enticing, but the story has a lot of heart and is very entertaining. Director Zach Snyder (300, Watchman) makes his animation debut with this fantasy adventure based on the beloved books by Kathryn Lasky.

Narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, Imax Deep Sea guides you on an astonishing adventure that lets you swim alongside our planet's most exotic creatures. You'll follow green sea turtles as they gather at the cleaning stop so surgeonfish can strip harmful algae from their shells, see Humboldt squid change color four times per second like a strobe light, and witness a mantis shrimp fight off an octopus.

This is the second time I've seen this documentary on home video, but experiencing it in 3D blows away the DVD. Our oceans house some of the most interesting creatures on our planet and this Imax presentation takes you right into the action with freakishly realistic visuals.

Young owl Soren marvels at tales of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, mythic winged warriors who battled to save all owl kind from the evil Pure Ones. When he and brother Kludd fall into the talons of the Pure Ones, it's up to Soren to make a daring escape with the help of other brave owls and seek out the Great Tree, home of the Guardians.

This was one of the best looking animated films on Blu-ray with its 2D release, and the 3D sacrifices nothing in terms of contrast, clarity of depth. The 3D aspect isn’t as aggressive as some of the other titles on the market, but it does add some immersion to the experience. I didn’t see any troubling artifacts such as ghosting or line twitter, and the depth of the 3D presentation adds a lot to the overall dimensionality of the film. The DTS-HD Master Audio mix is also first rate with incredible dynamic range and an immersive sound mix.

Imagine a world of incredible color and beauty. Of crabs wearing jellyfish for hats. Of fish disguised as frogs, stones and shag carpets. Of a kaleidoscope of life dancing and weaving, floating and darting in an underwater wonderland. Now, go explore it! Howard Hall and his filmmaking team, who brought you "Deep Sea" and "Into the Deep", take you into tropical waters alive with adventure: the Great Barrier Reef and other South Pacific realms. Narrated by Jim Carrey and featuring astonishing camerawork, this amazing film brings you face to fin with Nature's marvels, from the terrible grandeur (and terrible teeth) of a Great White to the comic antics of a lovestruck cuttlefish. Excitement and fun run deep "Under The Sea".

IMAX cameras capture considerably more resolution than the traditional 35mm cameras mainly used to shoot films today. While there have been quite a few IMAX films released on Blu-ray, many lack the jaw dropping quality they should exude. This is one of the better presentations I’ve seen of an IMAX film, and the 3D aspect only adds to it. The only issue I had was the focal point of the image. Sometime there are multiple layers to the 3D and it becomes difficult to figure out where to focus, which caused some mild fatigue.

When three ghosts take penny-pinching Scrooge on an eye-opening journey, he discovers the true meaning of Christmas - but he must act on it before it's too late.

This is by far one of the most impressive 3D Blu-ray presentations I’ve seen yet. Zemeckis has definitely shown that he knows how to do 3D well. Depth is pronounced the most and can almost give you a sense of vertigo at times. The bigger the screen, the richer the sensation with this one. I also didn’t notice anything in terms of ghosting. There is a fair amount of 3D that comes out of the screen at you, but thankfully they didn’t go to gimmicky with this one. The soundtrack is delivered in blistering 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio.

Flint Lockwood has been obsessed with science and inventing since grade school. He lives on an isolated island that has long since lost its vitality when the sardine trade, its major industry, went under. But Flint has a plan that could change all that, with the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, or, as Flint puts it, FLD SM DFR (flid sim difur) for short. It turns water into food.

The invention accidentally rockets into the stratosphere, where it remains fixed over the island, soaking up the plentiful water from passing clouds. Soon hamburgers begin to fall from the sky, complete with all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame-seed bun. And that’s just the beginning. At first it’s manna—or at least Big Macs—from heaven, but things quickly spiral out of hand. The town’s ambitious mayor starts living large in more ways than one and turns the town into an all-you-can-eat cruise ship buffet.

Coraline Jones is a lonely little girl. She has just moved into a creepy old house, has no real friends, and her parents are so preoccupied with their work on a gardening catalog that they have no time for her. But she soon discovers a small, papered-over doorway in the living room. It leads to another universe—similar to her own but different in important ways. Her “other” parents in that universe are devoted to satisfying her every whim. Her only new friend there doesn’t talk much (actually, not at all), the neighbors who share the old, subdivided house are fascinating rather than merely eccentric, and everything is colorful and fun.

All is not what it seems. Coraline is, at its core, a bloodless horror story. Much like the recent computer-animated film 9 (the first post-apocalyptic sock-puppet movie, and another dynamite audio/video transfer), it gets under your skin in ways that animated fare rarely does and could seriously frighten young children. It also uses stop-motion animation as refined by stop-motion expert Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monkeybone, James and the Giant Peach).