Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jul 24, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/bsg.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>The Cylons were created by man to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies. Then one day, the Cylons decided to kill their masters. After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared. The Cylons left for another world to call their own, and a remote space station was built where Cylons and humans could meet and maintain diplomatic relations. Every year, the Colonies sent a representative, and every year, the Cylons sent no one. Humans haven't seen or heard from the Cylons in over 40 years. Until now…

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Battlestar Galactica - The Plan (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 20, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/bsgplan.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Throughout the terrific four-season run of <I>Battlestar Galactica</I> on the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy), we witnessed humanity's fight for survival through the eyes of the humans. In <i>The Plan</i>, viewers revisit events of the first two seasons from the perspective of the skinjobs (Cylons made to look like humans) and why they're hell-bent on genocide.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Dec 22, 2010  | 
Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite shows from the last decade. Razor tells the untold story of the battlestar Pegasus and provides chilling clues to the fate of humanity as the two-hour episode reaches its conclusion.

In present day, Lee Adama (Jamie Bamber) assumes command of the Pegasus and through a series of flashbacks we see what happened to the ship during and after the initial Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jul 19, 2010  | 
Season 3 takes the series in a new direction as the Cylons occupy New Caprica with little resistance from new President Baltar. Colonel Tigh leads a group of resistance fighters and Commander Adama undertakes a daring near-suicidal mission to free the humans from their mechanical captors.

The middle of Season 3 has its ups and downs, but finishes with a flurry with five of its best episodes starting with "Dirty Hands" and culminates with a two-part "Crossroads" with Baltar being tried for treason with Lee has one of his defenders. The finale revolves around some mysterious music that only a select group of humans can hear, but why?

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Battlestar Galactica: Season Four (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jan 03, 2011  | 
Season four of the series was an up and down experience for numerous reasons. When it first aired on the SciFi Network (now Syfy), the 20 episodes were spread over 12 months, with a seven month hiatus between the first eleven and last nine, frustrating the audience. Furthermore, the scripts had a "been there, done that" aspect and I think the writers were filling time in order to get to the tidy conclusion.

Season four does have some great episodes that include "Guess What's Coming to Dinner," "Revelations," "Sometimes a Great Notion," and "No Exit." One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is in "Revelations" where Tigh (Michael Hogan) reveals his secret to Adama (Edward James Olmos). This emotional scene captures the essence of the series of being a story about people and relationships and not about technology.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Beauty and the Beast
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Sep 01, 2017  | 
Picture
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Extras
Director Bill Condon brings his experience adapting the Broadway smash Dreamgirls to this lavish, live-action reimagining of Disney’s 1991 Golden Globe–winning (Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical) animated film Beauty and the Beast. The CGI-laden visual spectacle stars the lovely Emma Watson as the titular beauty Belle who is imprisoned in a castle by an irascible prince cursed by a witch for his failure to aid her on a stormy night and forced to live life out as the Beast (Dan Stevens).
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Beauty and the Beast (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 06, 2010  | 
Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara) is a bright and beautiful young woman who finds escape from her ordinary life by reading books. When her father is taken prisoner by a cursed young prince (Robby Benson), Belle comes to the rescue and agrees to take her father's place. With the help of the castle's enchanted staff, she sees beneath the Beast's exterior and discovers the heart and soul of a human prince.

Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (plus five other nominations) and won two Oscars for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. The talent behind the voices includes Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts, Jerry Orbach as Lumiere, the candelabra, and David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth, the mantel clock. The story is engaging and filled with adventure, but it's the score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman that makes this film a classic.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Bedtime Stories (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 09, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/bedtime.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) is a handyman at a hotel in Los Angeles. When asked by his sister Wendy (Courteney Cox) to baby-sit her two kids for a week, he spins tall-tale bedtime stories before putting them down for the night. Amazingly, the stories start to impact Skeeter's life in impossible ways, and his dream of running the hotel rests in the kid's imagination.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Bee Movie
Marc Horowitz  |  Jul 30, 2008  | 
DreamWorks
Movie ••• Picture •••• Sound ••• Extras ••••

Jerry Seinfeld fans who are still going through withdrawal

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Before All is /Lost/ . . .
Mike Mettler  |  Feb 28, 2001  | 
Touchstone
Series ••••½ Picture ••••½ Sound ••••½ Extras ••••½

With Se

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Before Midnight
Fred Kaplan  |  Feb 05, 2014  | 
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
Before Midnight is the unplanned Part 3 of what may turn out to be a lifetime series—one episode every nine years, so far—following the romance of Jesse and Céline. Before Sunrise (1995) had them, at 23, meeting on a train in Europe, getting off together in Vienna, walking and talking all day and night, and making love at dawn. Before Sunset (2004) found Jesse, author of a best-selling novel about that brief affair, running into Céline at a reading in Paris, resuming their walking and talking through the winding streets, and ending in her apartment on an ambiguous note: Will he catch his plane back to Chicago, returning to his wife and child, or stay with Céline, for whom he’s been pining all these years?
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 14, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/414devil.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Phillip Seymour Hoffman stars as Andy, an overextended payroll executive who coerces his younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) into robbing a mom-and-pop jewelry store. The robbery doesn't go according to plan, and the "victimless" crime touches off a series of events that will forever change the brothers' lives.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Belfast
Josef Krebs  |  Jul 08, 2022  | 
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Based on incidents from writer-director Kenneth Branagh's own childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and set against the outset of the Troubles in 1969, this bloody masterpiece—a joy from beginning to end—is a moving comic-tragedy on both personal and historical levels, one that's filled with warm sentiment, great Irish humor, and a touching sense of loss.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Best of the Boxes, Summer 2024
Chris Chiarella  |  Sep 15, 2024  | 
What’s better than a movie on Blu-ray or 4K? How about a whole bunch of movies on Blu-ray and/or 4K, thoughtfully assembled with impressive A/V quality and copious bonus content? Some of these collections were obviously easier to configure, presenting as they do beloved movie series in their entirety, while others no doubt took a bit more effort to populate across a common theme, and we tip our summer bucket hats to the folks who made ‘em all happen.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Best TV Shows on Disc
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 03, 2024  | 
Even in the face of streaming’s runaway success, TV shows on physical media remain pretty damned popular, aided in large part by the studios’ aggressive ongoing HD and 4K remastering of the classics—largely in service to archiving and to providing the best possible quality on the aforementioned streamers—in addition to the collectability of the latest and greatest series. Whatever the reason, a generous and eclectic new crop has arrived for our viewing enjoyment, so clear some room on those shelves.

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