Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Marc Horowitz | Oct 23, 2008 |

Paramount

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures Corey Gunnestad | Dec 06, 2012 |

In May 1977, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were vacationing in Hawaii together. Spielberg already had the biggest box-office hit of all time under his belt: a little film called Jaws; and Lucas was hiding out from what he was certain would be a monumental disaster: a pet project of his called Star Wars. After Star Wars exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations and then some, Spielberg and Lucas sat and mused about future projects. Spielberg expressed a boyish desire to direct a James Bond adventure. Lucas replied, “I’ve got that beat.”

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Inkheart (Blu-ray) David Vaughn | Jun 23, 2009 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/inkheart.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) has an extraordinary gift for bringing characters from books to life when he reads aloud. But there's a dangerwhen a character is brought to life from a book, a real person disappears into its pages. On a trip to a secondhand-book shop, Mo hears voices from <i>Inkheart</i>, a book he's been searching for since his wife vanished into its mystical world 12 years earlier, at which point Mo vowed that he would stop at nothing to reunite his family.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Inside Llewyn Davis

Shane Buettner | Sep 08, 2014 |

Have You Heard About the Lonesome Loser?

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The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis is a fascinating but bleak amalgam of people, places, and events at the dawn of the folk music scene in 1961 Greenwich Village, viewed through a visual pastiche inspired by the album cover for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and a titular character who channels early folk institution Dave Van Ronk (in look and vocation, not temperament). While outrageously funny at times, with superbly chosen music exuberantly performed, this isn’t a farcical romp through the ’60s; it’s a black comedy about the artist versus the entertainment business that’s thematically reminiscent of the Coens’ polarizing Barton Fink.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Insomnia (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Jul 15, 2010 |

Two LAPD homicide detectives, Will Dormer (Al Pcino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), are dispatched to Nighmute, Alaska, to help the small town solve a murder of a teenage girl. While chasing a suspect (Robin Williams) through the fog, Dormer accidentally shoots his partner and blames the shooting on the suspected killer. There's only one problem, there was a witness who knows what really happened.

Christopher Nolan became a household name because of his Batman films, but film lovers have known about him due to his fabulous films like Momento, The Prestige, and to a lesser extent Insomnia. Here he weaves an interesting and suspenseful tale of a man attempting to cope with his guilt of killing his friend and a stressful bout of insomnia.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Insurgent

David Vaughn | Oct 09, 2015 |

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Picking up five days after the thrilling conclusion of Divergent, we find Tris and her companions in exile with the Amity group while they decide what their next move will be. Riddled with guilt over the death of her parents, Tris does her best to look strong, but she’s carrying around some serious emotional baggage. When the authorities finally catch up to her in the second act, the back story of the isolated community starts to make more sense, and as shocking as it sounds, Tris is the gateway to the past as well as their hope for the future, despite the Erudite’s leader doing her best to silence the rebellion.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Interstellar

Chris Chiarella | Jul 09, 2015 |

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Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a swell, resourceful dad… and pilot… and engineer… and farmer. In short, he’s the perfect candidate for a dangerous mission to other worlds to help save mankind. The future that he and his family inhabit is bleak, cynical, and full of toxins that are rapidly making life on Earth unsustainable. The only glimmer of hope requires Coop to leave behind everyone and everything he knows to lead a crew across time and space in search of a new home. Back on Earth, our brightest minds are struggling to do their part, and these home and away teams will intersect in a most unexpected way.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Into the Woods

Josef Krebs | Aug 04, 2015 |

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Screenwriter James Lapine and director Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the brilliant Stephen Sondheim’s stage musical (book by Lapine) is a highly entertaining, moving, and inspiring film that, in this Blu-ray’s presentation, makes for great home theater.

The story cleverly weaves together four fairy tales through a plot device centering on a baker and his wife who are unable to have children because of a witch’s curse. In order for the witch to lift the curse, the baker must bring her the cow from Jack (of the beanstalk), Little Red Riding Hood’s cape, Rapunzel’s hair, and Cinderella’s slipper.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Invictus (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | May 23, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/invictus.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Newly elected President Mandela (Morgan Freeman) believes he can bring his racially and economically divided people together by rallying behind the country's rugby team. He partners with the captain (Matt Damon) of the underdog team as they make an unlikely run in the 1995 World Cup.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Invincible (Blu-ray)

Tom Norton | Apr 09, 2007 |

Another sports flick about a new coach, a team down on its luck, and a player struggling to succeed. But the variations on that theme are seemingly endless. In the Hollywood vernacular, this one was "inspired by the true story" of a 30-year old substitute teacher/bartender who never played college football but won a shot at a spot on the Philadelphia Eagles roster thanks to an open tryout held by the NFL team's new coach. The tryout was little more than a publicity stunt, but for the player, die-hard Eagles fan Vince Papale, it was a chance to prove himself.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Ip Man 3

Brandon A. DuHamel | Aug 12, 2016 |

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Director Wilson Yip returns to helm the third and ostensibly final installment in the Ip Man saga with Ip Man 3. As with the previous films, international star Donnie Yen returns to the role as wing chun legend Ip Man, and the film also, questionably, brings Mike Tyson on board as a ruthless and violent American real estate developer.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Iron Man

David Vaughn | Sep 26, 2008 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/ironman.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a self-absorbed engineering genius who runs Stark Enterprises, a technology company that specializes in military hardware. Surviving an unexpected attack while in Afghanistan demonstrating his latest missile system, he builds a high-tech suit of armor to escape and vows to protect the people his company has put in harm's way with the weapons it has developed.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

It Happened One Night

Fred Kaplan | Mar 04, 2015 |

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A charmer of a film, deeper, even grittier than its Capra-corn romantic populism might suggest, It Happened One Night swept the 1934 Oscars—winning Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, and Director—and if it hadn’t edged out The Thin Man in doing so, I’d say, Bravo, well deserved. The story is a classic class-crossing fable: A spoiled rich girl runs away from her father to join the king she wants to marry; a hardscrabble newspaperman finds her, blackmails her into letting him come along to write a story; they take to the road, by bus, foot, thumb, and jalopy, squabbling, scolding, and, of course, falling in love with each other.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Chris Chiarella | Jun 06, 2014 |

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Patently rejecting the notion that brevity is the soul of wit, IaMMMMW is Hollywood’s first (and last?) “epic comedy,” clocking in at two hours and 24 minutes in its popular version. Just about every A-list comedy actor of the era is involved in this sprawling tale of some everyday folk who drop everything for an unplanned dash to find a deceased criminal’s buried loot.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

It's Complicated (Blu-ray) It's Complicated (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Apr 22, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/complicated.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Jane (Meryl Streep) has spent the past 10 years raising three children, running a popular Santa Barbara bakery, and surviving a bitter divorce from Jake (Alec Baldwin), who has since remarried a much younger woman. While attending their son's college graduation in New York, Jane and Jake partake in one too many bottles of wine and end up in the sack complicating both of their lives. Was it a one night stand or has the old flame been rekindled?

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