Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Josef Krebs | Apr 05, 2019 |

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After her father is jailed for treason at the end of World War II, Alicia Huberman, a disillusioned, hard-drinking, but patriotic party girl is recruited by Devlin, a suave, cynical government agent. Her mission is to romance a wealthy friend of her father's, Sebastian, infiltrate his palatial home, and observe his associates that are suspected of Nazi conspiracy in Rio, Brazil.

Oblivion

Shane Buettner | Dec 16, 2013 |

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Based on director Joseph Kosinski’s (Tron: Legacy) unpublished graphic novel “treatment,” Oblivion plays like a patchwork quilt of samples from just about every popular science-fiction movie made since 2001: A Space Odyssey. While Kosinski’s graphic novel concept supposedly predates Pixar’s 2008 blockbuster Wall-E, the similarities aren’t at all subtle, especially with flying drones that look and act so much like EVE that I’m surprised Universal isn’t getting dinged for likeness royalties.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Ocean's 11: 50th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Dec 10, 2010 |

Eleven WWII veterans reunite for New Years Eve to rob five Las Vegas casinos. Everything goes as planned until one of the men dies of a heart attack and Duke Santos (Cesar Romero) figures out their scheme and wants a cut of the action.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Angie Dickinson, and Cesar Romero—what a cast! Unfortunately the entertainment value pales in comparison to the 2001 Steven Soderbergh remake. Sure, it's fun to see the rat pack strut around and witnessing the state of the Las Vegas strip 50 years ago, but the pacing is a tad slow (like most 1960s films) and the acting is laughable from some of the stars.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Office Space

David Vaughn | Feb 26, 2009 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/officespace.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) has reached the breaking point with his mind-numbing white-collar job at Initech Corporation. His girlfriend Anne (Alexandra Wentworth) convinces him to get a new outlook on life by visiting a hypnotherapist, and it changes his life forever. Armed with a new attitude, he is quickly promoted to upper managementbut is that what he really wants?

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Old Dogs (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Mar 02, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/olddogs.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Dan (Robin Williams) and his best friend and business partner Charlie (John Travolta) are on the verge of a big sports marketing deal when their lives are turned upside down by a surprise visit from a former one night stand of Dan's. Their brief liaison seven years earlier produced twins and his ex-fling (Kelly Preston) needs him to watch the kids for a couple of weeks while she spends some time in the pokey.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

On The Waterfront

Fred Kaplan | Jun 11, 2013 |

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All of you know the taxicab scene from On the Waterfront in which Marlon Brando tells Rod Steiger, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let’s face it.” But I’d bet not many have recently seen the whole movie—and never have you seen it looking as breathtaking as it does on this Blu-ray Disc, a wondrous collaboration between Sony’s 4K digital-restoration lab and the Criterion Collection’s special-features team.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

One Missed Call (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Apr 19, 2008 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/419onemissedcall.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>College students start dropping like flies when they receive voicemails from their future selves with the exact date, time, and horrid details of their eventual deaths. Psychology student Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) becomes concerned when a number of her friends are murdered, so she enlists the help of detective Jack Andrews (Ed Burns) to search for answers as quickly as possible, because Beth has received her own disturbing voicemail from the future.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Our Kind of Traitor

Josef Krebs | Mar 10, 2017 |

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This elegant, suspenseful adaptation of John le Carré’s novel, Our Kind of Traitor, makes for a marvelous companion piece to the recent excellent TV miniseries adaptation of the writer’s The Night Manager. Here, a bored and lost university poetry professor whose marriage is in crisis—one of le Carré’s endless supply of honorable and principled innocent civilians who, seeking purpose and redemption, allow themselves to become involved in international intrigue—is seduced into helping Dima, a charismatic money launderer for the Russian mafia desperate to defect to England and save his family.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

P.S. I Love You

David Vaughn | May 23, 2008 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/052308ps.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>As Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank) celebrates her 30th birthday, she receives a most unusual gift from her husband, Gerry (Gerard Butler). It's a cake and a recorded message preparing her for the letters she will be receiving over the next few months from him. The kicker is that Gerry recently died from an illness at the tender age of 35, and his passing has ripped Holly's heart apart. With the help of her mother (Kathy Bates) and her two best friends (Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gerson), Holly learns to live without her soul mate.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Papillon (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | May 13, 2011 |

Based on the true story about French ex-convict Henri Charriére (Steve McQueen), a petty criminal who is unjustly convicted of murder, and his constant struggle to escape to freedom from the brutal French penal system at Guiana's infamous Devil's Island. On the way to the hellhole, he meets Dega (Dustin Hoffman), a convicted counterfeiter who relies on Henri for protection. The two men end up becoming good friends and they rely on each other for their survival.

While the performances are marvelous from

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This isn't a genre of film that I particularly

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both McQueen and Hoffman, the pacing of this movie is horrendously slow. I understand that director Franklin J. Shaffner is trying to show the struggle that Charriére endured to secure his freedom, but a good 45 minutes could have been left on the cutting room floor improving the overall enjoyment of the film.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Paramount Presents: Elizabethtown, Love Story and The Greatest Show on Earth Chris Chiarella | Mar 26, 2021 |

The Paramount Presents line kicked off last April, reintroducing viewers to some of the most enduring titles in the studio's vast library in reverent new Blu-ray editions. Thomas J. Norton recently reviewed the 13th release, The Court Jester, and three more are now available, spanning quite different eras of filmmaking.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Paranormal Activity 2 (Blu-ray) David Vaughn | Feb 11, 2011 |

When a young couple bring a newborn baby home, someone or something begins terrorizing the family. In order to gain some piece of mind, the father (Brian Boland) installs some security cameras in and around the house in order to catch the hooligans in the act but the "real life" footage shows there's much more going on than meets the eye. enjoy, so I never caught the first Paranormal Activity but I knew the general premise due to its popularity. My expectations weren't high and while I've seen far worse, I felt the screenplay took too long to introduce the characters and build up the tension (or lack thereof).

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Parasite Josef Krebs | Feb 14, 2020 |

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Awards for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and International Feature, director, co-producer, and co-writer Bong Joon Ho's classist farce, Parasite, focuses on the Kims, a family of poor but proud con artists. Presently scrabbling to get by on lowest-paid jobs in a bug-infested basement apartment in Seoul, South Korea, they dream of climbing up to a better life by tricking the rich using flattery, charm, and well-rehearsed scripts.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Partying Like It's 1996: Broken Arrow, Chain Reaction And Speed On Blu-ray Shane Buettner | Apr 21, 2007 |

They say there's nothing new under the sun, and nothing drives home that old adage like the birth of a new format or two. The first movies that come out on a new format invariably aren't the <I>Citizen Kanes</I>, or even the <I>Titanics</I> of film history. No, it's the star-studded action warhorses that are considered at least somewhat tried and true that are trotted out by the studios.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Passengers (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | May 11, 2009 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/passengers.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>After a plane crash, a young therapist, Claire Summers (Anne Hathaway), is assigned to counsel the flight's five survivors. When she begins to uncover conflicting accounts of the accident, she chalks it up to traumatic stress disorderuntil the survivors start vanishing one by one.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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