Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spartacus
David Vaughn  |  May 23, 2010  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/spartacus.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) was born a slave although when sold to Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) he became a gladiator. Life was mildly improved although fighting to the death for the entertainment of the wealthy is a rough way to make a living. Spartacus gains new perspective on life when he falls in love with the slave girl Varinia (Jean Simmons) and develops a thirst for freedom.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spartacus
Guido Henkel  |  Jan 29, 2016  |  0 comments
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Stanley Kubrick’s legendary depiction of a slave uprising in ancient Rome has long since entered the annals of cinema history, so there’s little else to say about this beloved movie. Produced long before the advent of digital filmmaking, it is an ambitious masterpiece, an incredibly lavish undertaking with scenes that assemble thousands of extras while driving home the story of one man making all the difference in the world.
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Spartacus
Chris Chiarella  |  Sep 11, 2020  |  1 comments
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The timeless overclass/underclass struggle was never more memorably explored than in Spartacus, a film adapted from Howard Fast's fact-based, heavily dramatized book. Directed by young up-and-comer Stanley Kubrick and starring old-school movie idol Kirk Douglas in the title role, it's the sort of epic spectacle often aspired to but seldom achieved.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spectre
Chris Chiarella  |  Jun 17, 2016  |  3 comments
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After an acclaimed reboot that successfully shed the sillier trappings of the long-running James Bond franchise, the creators of the recent Spectre have now curiously chosen to embrace the clunky clichés and cartoon villains not only of the 007 canon but seemingly every thriller of the past decade. Big Brother has arrived! It’s the death of privacy! “We must stop this doomful technology before it goes online, or it will be too late!” (Not an actual quote, but you get the idea.)
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Speed Racer
David Vaughn  |  Sep 15, 2008  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/speedracer.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Based on the popular Japanese cartoon, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a natural behind the wheel of his Mach 5. His loyalty to the family racing business, led by his father (John Goodman), is put to the test when Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam) attempts to lure Speed to the Royalton Industries race team. Speed declines and joins forces with the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) in order to save the family business and protect the sport he loves.

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Spider-Man: Far From Home
Chris Chiarella  |  Nov 15, 2019  |  0 comments
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The true superpower on display in the current Spider-Man franchise might be its irresistible charm. Marvel's beloved signature character has certainly had some Hollywood ups and downs, but in his most recent iteration he seems content to exist in the shadow of Tony Stark/Iron Man rather than stand truly alone. Add to that irksome choice an abundance of high school drama and perhaps an over-reliance upon comedy and big-screen Spidey is at risk of alienating longtime fans. Still, Spider-Man: Far from Home somehow manages to engage us from start to finish.
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Spider-Man: Homecoming
Chris Chiarella  |  Mar 29, 2018  |  0 comments
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Following his introduction to Marvel’s well-established “Cinematic Universe” in Captain America: Civil War, the beloved Spider-Man has been fully rebooted (again) in the wildly enjoyable Homecoming. Decked out in a new high-tech costume, he’s eager for big adventures, but until then, he occupies himself as a local do-gooder in his Queens neighborhood—when not attending high school. Young star Tom Holland is a perfect fit for Peter Parker and his alter ego, an agile dancer/athlete with an irresistible wide-eyed enthusiasm.
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Chris Chiarella  |  Apr 19, 2019  |  1 comments
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An animated Spider-Man movie? In the midst of the character's latest live-action reboot? Using six different iterations of the character, all but one of which are only known to die-hard comic book fans? A direct-to-video tie-in, right? Wrong: Not only was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse a big-screen box-office success, it also snagged an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of 2018.
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Spider-Man: No Way Home
Chris Chiarella  |  May 06, 2022  |  0 comments
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Nostalgia--that "twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone" as Don Draper famously explained it--can be a potent ally to the modern filmmaker. With its risky and highly publicized meta-twist (which I won't spoil here, just in case), Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to complete director Jon Watts' arachno-trilogy on an epic scale, capping not only this story arc but one far grander, much as Avengers: Endgame did for the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spider-Man: The High Definition Trilogy
Tom Norton  |  Oct 28, 2007  |  1 comments

When does a trilogy become a quadrilogy? (Is there such a word? There is now.) When they release the third sequel, of course. And the Spider-Man films have been such a rousing success that you can be sure another one is in the pipeline.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Splice (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 13, 2010  |  0 comments
Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) specialize in splicing DNA from different animals to create new hybrids. In an attempt to revolutionize science and medicine, they're looking for a bigger challenge and want to use human DNA, but when their funding gets pulled, they secretly take the experiment underground.

Other than the unwelcome horror elements, Splice kept me mildly entertained with its thought provoking premise. One thing's for sure, don't screw around with Mother Nature unless you're willing to deal with the consequences of raising a most unusual being as your own.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spotlight
Anthony Chiarella  |  Jul 15, 2016  |  0 comments
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A team of four Boston Globe journalists headed by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) is searching for their next exposé when their editor-in-chief (Liev Schreiber) suggests they investigate pedophile priest John Geoghan: a controversial assignment for a newspaper with a 53 percent Catholic subscriber base. Six-hundred articles later, Boston’s Cardinal Law had resigned, and the church was forced to confront an international pedophilia crisis.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spring Breakers
Corey Gunnestad  |  Apr 29, 2014  |  0 comments
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The American tradition of the spring break was invented to give hard-working college students a much-needed reprieve from their rigorous course studies and a means to blow off some steam in a reasonably safe environment. At what point then did it become a callow justification to take complete leave of your senses and shamelessly plunge headlong into a sexually hedonistic, drug-induced crime spree? Oh, well. You’re only young once, I guess.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Stand By Me (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  0 comments
During the Labor Day weekend in 1959, a group of friends go in search of a young boy's dead body on the outskirts of a woodsy Oregon town. The two day trek turns into an adventure of self-discovery as Gordy (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) must overcome some town bullies and find an inner strength they never knew they possessed.

Based on the Steven King novella "The Body," Stand by Me is one of my favorite films from my high school years. Director Rob Reiner takes you on a wonderful journey and reminds me of some of my own adventures (although I never went looking for a dead body). The performances from the young cast showed each had the talent to become Hollywood stars, but Phoenix threw it all away with a drug overdose in 1993.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Stand Up Guys
Corey Gunnestad  |  Jul 16, 2014  |  0 comments
Old wiseguys never die. They just look that way.

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For the first time ever, two of Hollywood’s most respected and iconic tough guys are finally sharing the screen together. Putting Christopher Walken and Al Pacino together in a mobster movie seems like a no brainer and you have to wonder why it took so damn long. You’d think that a pedigree like that alone would be worth the price of admission but the tragic irony is that hardly anyone saw Stand Up Guys when it came out.
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