Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kind of Blu
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 09, 2008  | 
Will Blu-ray’s state-of-the-art audio codecs become the format’s killer apps?

High-resolution audio is like a drowning man who, just when all seems lost, suddenly bobs back up to the surface for a convulsive gulp of air. CD replaces vinyl—he’s down. CD mastering improves—he’s up. Bad CD mastering squashes dynamic range—he’s down. SACD and DVD-Audio make their debuts with new 5.1-channel recordings and/or mixes—he’s up. The high-rez audio formats tank—he’s down. Vinyl makes a comeback—he’s up. Low-quality lossy downloads gut CD sales—he’s down. Oh Lord, he’s been down there a long time now. Will we ever see his head above water again?

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
King Kong
David Vaughn  |  Jan 21, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/kingkong.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>A desperate young actress, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), and an ambitious and unscrupulous movie producer, Carl Denham (Jack Black), travel to a mysterious jungle island to shoot a film. There they discover an extraordinary lost world and encounter Kong, a gigantic, savage gorilla who becomes enthralled with the leading lady. Their mutual empathy and affection eventually leads to the beast's tragic downfall.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
King Kong (2005)
Brent Butterworth  |  Feb 24, 2009  | 
Universal
Movie •• Picture ••••½ Sound ••••• Extras ••
When HD DVD died, home theater enthusiasts fretted
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
King Kong (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 04, 2010  | 
A desperate young actress, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), and an ambitious and unscrupulous movie producer, Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), travel to a mysterious jungle island to shoot a film. There they discover an extraordinary lost world and encounter Kong, a gigantic, savage gorilla who becomes enthralled with the leading lady. Their mutual empathy and affection eventually leads to the beast's tragic downfall.

Released at the height of the Great Depression, King Kong wowed packed movie houses across the country due to the vision of Merian C. Cooper with help from Hollywood legend David O. Selznick. Not only did the film mainstream the use of stop-motion animation it also revolutionized how a score became an integral part of the story.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
King Kong—HD DVD
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 28, 2006  |  First Published: Dec 29, 2006  | 

I haven't seen director Peter Jackson's extended cut of this movie, now available on ordinary DVD. And I don't plan to do so until Universal sees fit to release it in high definition. After viewing this gorgeous HD DVD release of the original, theatrical version, I don't think I ever want to see the film again in standard definition.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut (Blu-ray)
 |  Dec 28, 2006  |  First Published: Dec 29, 2006  | 

With all due respect to director Ridley Scott's other efforts, including Black Hawk Down, this medieval crusade drama may well be his finest work to date. The theatrical cut was seriously compromised when it was cut down from the director's preferred length, but this version is far more coherent.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
David Vaughn  |  Nov 05, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/americangirl.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) is a young girl growing up during the Great Depression. Interrupting her happy childhood, her father (Chris O'Donnell) loses his business and must leave home to look for work. Kit and her mother (Julia Ormond) end up taking in an assortment of boarders in order to keep their home.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Knocked Up
David Vaughn  |  Oct 17, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/knockedup.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Ben (Seth Rogan) and Alison (Katherine Heigl) have nothing in common. He is a stoner meandering his way through life without a job or any long-term goals. She is an up-and-coming career-minded girl recently promoted to host a show on E!. To celebrate, she and her married sister (Leslie Mann) venture out for some drinks when they meet Ben in a bar. Although Alison isn't physically attracted to Ben, he makes her laugh. They have quite a few drinks together, ending the night drunk and in bed. When the condom doesn't work due to operator error, both are in for the surprise of their lives when the pregnancy test is positive eight weeks later.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Knowing (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  Jul 09, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/knowing.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><i>In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one mysterious girl fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead. Fifty years later, a new generation of students examines the capsule's contents and the girl's cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury). But it's Caleb's father, professor John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As John further unravels the document's chilling secrets, he realizes the document foretells three additional events - the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve John and his son.</I>

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kubo and the Two Strings
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 24, 2017  | 
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In old Japan, young Kubo lives in a mountain cave with his mother, whose mental clarity comes and goes. As an infant he lost an eye, and his father is long gone. Every day he goes to the market in a nearby town to entertain the locals with his three-string shamisen and wondrous stories, told with magic origami that fold and unfold into lifelike characters. His stories never have an ending, much to the disappointment of the townsfolk. Nevertheless, they’re ready for more the next day (Kubo apparently invented the miniseries cliff-hanger).
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kung Fu Panda
David Vaughn  |  Nov 10, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/kungfupanda.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Po (voiced by Jack Black) is an enthusiastic panda who works in his family's noodle shop while daydreaming about becoming a Kung Fu master. His dreams are soon realized when he is unexpectedly chosen to study the martial arts alongside his idols&#151;the legendary fighters Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Monkey (Jackie Chan)&#151;under the leadership of their guru, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Before they know it, the vengeful and treacherous snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) returns, and it's up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
l’Avventura
Josef Krebs  |  Mar 18, 2015  | 
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A modernist masterpiece as revolutionary as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon made in a time when film was important, L’Avventura tells the story—or anti-story—of a wealthy young woman on a boating trip who disappears off an island. After a search of the barren rock, her fiancé and best friend set off to find her, investigating sites where she’s supposedly been seen. Over the course of their travels, they become involved and gradually forget about what they’re searching for. L’Avventura is a whodunit without a who, a mystery without a solution, a dislocation of the already dislocated. In the process, director Michelangelo Antonioni peels away the skin of society as characters play at love without enthusiasm, sincerity, or context in ennui of unaware existential numbness. As in Blow Up and other Antonionis, L’Avventura is about absence—feelings are forgotten, meaning and purpose are misplaced, and “words are more and more pointless.”
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
La Dolce Vita
Fred Kaplan  |  Jan 15, 2015  | 
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La Dolce Vita was Federico Fellini’s breakout hit: a critical and commercial sensation, even in America, where foreign films till then were strictly art house fare. It’s the winding tale of a litterateur-turned-gossip columnist wandering the streets, bars, and parties of newly decadent modern Rome, seeking love, meaning, and value but finally realizing their futility and wallowing in the miasma. The film coined archetypes of the era: a character named Paparazzo, a tabloid photographer who chases after sensational shots, spawned the word paparazzi; another, Steiner, a refined man of culture who commits a gruesome crime, became the prototype of the modern ineffectual intellectual.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
La Grande Illusion
Fred Kaplan  |  Jan 23, 2013  | 
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Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion remains, 75 years on, one of the greatest films ever made. To some, it may seem a bit clichéd, but that’s only because so many movies since have cribbed from its plot lines. It takes place in German POW camps during the First World War and was shot on what many recognized at the time as the eve of a Second World War. One of the things it’s about is the world that vanished, for better and for worse, in the two decades between the two wars. There has been much debate over just which “great illusion” Renoir was referring to in his title. Some have assumed it’s war. But this is not a simple anti-war movie; at the end, our French heroes, who have escaped from the camp, can’t wait to get home so they can reenlist in the fighting.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Labor Day
Anthony Chiarella  |  Aug 13, 2014  | 
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Increasingly depressed and agoraphobic since her divorce, Adele (Kate Winslet) relies upon her doting son, Henry (Gattlin Griffith). At the start of the 1987 Labor Day weekend, mother and son are confronted by escaped convict Frank (Josh Brolin), who demands their assistance in eluding the authorities. Over the next few days, Frank’s kindness and innocence are manifest, and the trio has become a family—almost. Confused by conflicting emotions and threatened with the prospect of a competitor for his mother’s love, the awkward adolescent facilitates Frank’s capture. Adele has loved and lost again. Or has she?
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