Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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

The first act of this lightweight horror film draws you in, starting with ancient palace intrigue and moving to turn of the (20th) century Egypt. The second act is OK, if implausible. The third is loaded with action, but also suggests the CGI artists just got a new software sandbox and just had to play in it.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
David Vaughn  |  Dec 15, 2008  |  First Published: Dec 16, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/mummy3.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Doomed to spend eternity in suspended animation, China's ruthless Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and his 10,000 warriors have lain forgotten for eons, entombed in clay. Tricked into awakening the ruler from eternal slumber, Alex O'Connell (Luke Ford) turns to the only people he can think of with the skill and knowledge to combat the undead: his parents, Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Maria Bello).

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Music Man (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Feb 01, 2010  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/musicman.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When conman Harold Hill (Robert Preston) arrives in River City, he intends to employ his usual scam of equipping and training a boys marching band and then getting out of dodge as fast as he can. Things go awry when he falls in love with the town librarian (Shirley Jones) and inadvertently enriching the town with a love of music.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Natural (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 23, 2010  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/natural.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is a country hick who has one dream in life; to play professional baseball. But that's not enough, when he walks down the street he wants people to say, "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game." At 19, his boyhood dream catches a glimpse of reality when he's summoned to Chicago for a tryout with the Cubs. On the journey he meets Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey), who turns out to be a psychotic killer who shoots a silver bullet into Hobbs' abdomen. Left for dead in a Chicago hotel room, Hobbs miraculously survives and disappears for 16 years until he finally realizes his dream of playing baseball by signing a contract with the hapless New York Knights.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Neverending Story (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Mar 08, 2010  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/neverend.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Fleeing from a pack of bullies, Bastion (Barret Oliver) finds himself in a used bookstore where he becomes enthralled with a mysterious book, He ends up stealing it the unsuspecting clerk and takes refuge in his school attic. Drawn into a timeless and wondrous world of fantastic beings he discovers his imagination and belief can save it from destruction.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Nice Guys
Corey Gunnestad  |  Jan 13, 2017  | 
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The year is 1977 in Los Angeles, California. Disco reigns supreme, the porn industry is flourishing, killer bees are emigrating from South America, and smog has reached epidemic levels. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a hard-hitting thug for hire, taking work wherever he can find it. Most times, it involves beating the crap out of some guy who’s bothering a young lady and breaking numerous bones in the process. Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a burnt-out ex-cop now private detective who’s not above deceiving a client to maintain a steady paycheck. And these are the Nice Guys.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Nightmare Before Christmas
David Vaughn  |  Aug 20, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/nightmare.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Bored with his perennial role as Halloween Town's frightening Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington discovers the cheerful village of Christmas Town. Determined to shake things up in Halloween Town, he schemes to kidnap Santa Clause and takes over the job of delivering gifts to the children himself. When his plan goes awry, Jack attempts to restore Santa to his rightful place, but he must first rescue him from the evil clutches of Oogie Boogie.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Normal Heart
Josef Krebs  |  Dec 10, 2014  | 
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This powerful and moving story (screenplay by Larry Kramer, based on his own play), starts in 1981 with shy screenwriter Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) only able to watch the summer bacchanal at Fire Island, New York—gay-male heaven—too unconfident to join in the revelries. It ends with a gay prom at Yale in 1984 where he’s found his confidence but is now too sad to dance. In between, what starts with the first warning cough from a buff-bodied, seemingly healthy man announcing the arrival of AIDS in the community leads to the spreading of a plague that fills the newly liberated gay men with fear. The mysterious disease is a complete unknown, with no one able to say how it spreads, how to treat it, or how to protect yourself beyond completely abstaining from sex.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Office: Season 5 (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Sep 14, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/office5.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In the fifth season of this workplace comedy, the employees of Dunder Mifflin are enmeshed in surprise office hook-ups, break-ups, romantic triangles, and new business ventures. Insensitive regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) still thinks he's the best boss ever&#151;despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As he leaves the security of Dunder Mifflin, Andy (Ed Helms) and Dwight (Rainn Wilson) do battle for the affections of Angela (Angela Kinsey), and Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) finally plan their long-awaited nuptials.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Original Cult Classic: Harold and Maude
Shane Buettner  |  Oct 16, 2012  | 
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1971’s Harold and Maude, a cult classic before there was such a thing, undoubtedly remains the weirdest rom-com of all times (classifying this movie as such has me laughing out loud as I type!). Harold (Bud Cort) is an odd young man who lives with his wealthy, high-society widow of a mother and gets his kicks (and much-needed attention) from elaborately acting out his own death. Over and over. While Harold’s mom’s ideas for straightening him out are to put him in the military or marry him off, another of Harold’s hobbies, attending strangers’ funerals, leads him to Maude (Ruth Gordon), a daring older woman and the freest spirit you’ve ever seen. She lives in a renovated boxcar, fights the system in her own inimitable ways, ruffles a lot of feathers, and steals a hell of a lot of cars. She’s a gas and is absolutely as obsessed with life as weird Harold is with death. They fall in love.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Orphanage (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 22, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/422orphanage.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Returning to her childhood home—a creepy, seaside orphanage—Laura (Belen Rueda) unknowingly unleashes a long-forgotten, evil spirit. When her son, Sim&#243;n (Roger Pr&#237;ncep), mysteriously disappears, she is thrust into a chilling nightmare in which she must confront the memories of her past before the ghosts of the orphanage destroy her.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Other Boleyn Girl
David Vaughn  |  Jun 13, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/061308boleyn.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, <i>The Other Boleyn Girl</i> is the story of Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary as they rival for the bed and heart of Henry VIII. Discovering that the king's wife, Katherine of Aragon, is unable to provide him with a male heir, the girls' ambitious father and uncle devise a bold plan to advance the family's power and status by courting the affections of the king.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Pacific (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 25, 2010  | 
Executive producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, who brought us Band of Brothers, deliver another WWII masterpiece about the battles in the Pacific. The 10-part miniseries follows the true-life stories of Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), John Basilone (Joe Mazello), and Eugene Sledge (Jon Seda) as they fight their way across the Pacific Theater from 1941 to 1945. It all starts with the horrific conflict of Guadalcanal, continues to Cape Gloucester and Peleliu, then to the famous combat at Iwo Jima, the terror of Okinawa, and finally their return home after V-J Day and how the mental scars of battle aren't easily forgotten.

Given its massive budget (estimated to be $195 million), I expected the battle scenes to rival those in Saving Private Ryan—which they do in their scope and visceral impact—but it's the psychological struggles of our three heroes that kept me riveted. Not only do they have to fight a relentless enemy in the Japanese, but they must cope with the elements—suffocating heat, malaria, tropical rainstorms—and somehow keep a grasp on their own humanity. If they're fortunate enough to survive and return home, how will they acclimate to the civilized world after spending four years in hell?

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Palm Beach Story
Fred Kaplan  |  May 08, 2015  | 
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Preston Sturges, whose rise and fall were as sudden and steep as any in cinema (except for that of Orson Welles), had his peak years from 1940–44, writing and directing seven of the greatest American film comedies ever, and The Palm Beach Story sprung forth in precisely the middle of the run. A head-spinning romp through the joys and foibles of love, marriage, money, and class, it practically defines “screwball comedy,” with its Alpine plot twists, nonstop mayhem, rapid-fire dialogue, razor-sharp wit, and madcap but extremely good-natured characters.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Peacemaker (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Sep 19, 2010  | 
When ten atomic warheads disappear in the former Soviet Union, a newly promoted U. S. nuclear specialist (Nicole Kidman) teams with Colonel Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) to track down the missing weapons before they fall into the wrong hands.

For some odd reason, I missed this in theaters and on DVD last century. The story grabs you in the very first scene and doesn't let go until the end. My one criticism of it is the third act is a little far-fetched with Clooney and Kidman running around New York bossing everyone around and taking matters into their own hands, but hey, it's Hollywood.

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