Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Ken Korman  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 
Miramax
Movie •••• Picture/Sound •••• Extras •••
Now known for the vivid, otherworldly look of movies like The City of Lo
Marc Horowitz  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 
Sony
Movie •••• Picture/Sound •••• Extras •••
Unlike The Crying Game, writer/director Neil Jordan's other film a
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 

With a slew of superheroes in theaters this summer - X-Men: The Last Stand, Superman Returns, My Super Ex-Girlfriend - we feel a musclebound DVD assessment is in order. Batman Begins, a benchmark title, ascended beyond this list to the pantheon of torture test discs and will be revered in a future issue.

Rad Bennett  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 
Disney
Movie •••½ Picture/Sound •••• Extras ••••
Cowritten and directed by Andrew Adamson (who also brought us
Rad Bennett  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 
Time Travel Borg Paramount
Collectives •••• Picture/Sound •••• Extras •••
Paramount has already released all of the original Star Trek shows and
Sol Louis Siegel  |  Jun 09, 2006  | 
Sony
Movie •••• Picture/Sound •••• Extras •••
Michelangelo Antonioni took the premise for an intrigue-filled thriller - burne
Tom Norton  |  May 30, 2006  |  First Published: May 31, 2006  | 

As submarine movies go, <I>U-571</I> is far from a classic. It includes scenes we've seen in countless other submarine films, and its history is warped (implying that the U.S. Navy and not the Royal Navy captured the Nazi Enigma machine and broke the German naval codes&mdash;though the end titles do correct the record).

Tom Norton  |  May 30, 2006  |  First Published: May 31, 2006  | 

As noted in another blog, I've been having fun lately with unexpectedly good movies that fell through the critical and audience cracks during their theatrical releases. And <I> The Greatest Game Ever Played</I> certainly surprised me as much as any of them.

Tom Norton  |  May 30, 2006  |  First Published: May 31, 2006  | 

I have mixed feeling about the Bourne films. This one is the sequel to the first, <I>The Bourne Identity</I>. The two movies feature a rogue, on-the-run, amnesiac CIA hit man trying to discover who he really is, and in the process discovering "talents" that he didn't know he had.

Tom Norton  |  May 28, 2006  | 

I've been experiencing an unusual run of good films on standard definition DVD lately, though most are not of any special demonstration quality, nothing gets blowed-up real good in most of them, few were big hits, and several are set in the past. But I'm a sucker for almost any historical film or TV miniseries (HBO's two part <I>Elizabeth I</I> resides on the HD PVR in my cable box even now waiting for me to find the 4 hours I need to invest in watching it!)

Tom Norton  |  May 28, 2006  | 

Yes, I know. This film was received by critics as if it was the sequel to <I>Battlefield Earth</I> instead of the follow-up to the cult favorite, <I>Pitch Black</I>. Riddick, you may recall, was once a dangerous, sociopathic villain. Here, like a gravel-voiced Captain Kirk, he arrives just in time to save the universe from the Underverse.

Tom Norton  |  May 28, 2006  | 

A bored, rich widow, Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) buys a failed London theater on the eve of World War II. But she soon discovers she has no idea what to do with it. After she hires an experienced producer (Bob Hoskins) the theater is briefly successful running music hall reviews. But soon reality sets in and the competition drives them into the red.

Tom Norton  |  May 18, 2006  | 

And now for something entirely different. Film critics and theater audiences had a mixed reaction to this computer-animated release. So mixed, in fact, that it moved in and out of theaters last fall before it had a chance to develop any word of mouth.

Tom Norton  |  May 18, 2006  | 

When a rogue Russian extremist seizes control of enough of Russia's armaments to nuke the US, the <I>USS Alabama</I>, along with other nuclear missile subs, is sent in harm's way as a deterrent or possibly even a first-strike weapon to take out the Russian missiles before they can be launched.

Tom Norton  |  May 17, 2006  | 

Start with a look at Marine boot camp not much different than what we've seen in countless war movies. Move on to a boring look at bored Marines killing time in the desert in the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War. They're depicted as dumb, disorganized, rowdy, and undisciplined. The promotional copy for the movie, included in the cover art, says that the troops are "in a country they don't understand, against an enemy they can't see, for a cause they don't fully grasp. Believe me, the troops in the first Gulf War were fully briefed on the country they were going to, could usually see the enemy (his back, typically), and understood that they were fighting to free a country occupied by the forces of an expansionist dictator. That promotional copy was clearly written as a not-too-subtle analogy to the <I>current</I> Iraq war.

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