Blu-ray Movie Reviews

David Vaughn | Feb 08, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/couplesretreat.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Eight friends group-rate vacation comes at a price when they discover that participation in the resort's unconventional couples therapy is anything but optional.

Coyote Ugly

David Vaughn | Apr 03, 2008 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/403coyote.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Aspiring songwriter Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) moves to New York to pursue her dreams. Desperate and broke, the shy and innocent Violet is hired as a barmaid in one of the hottest nightclubs in the city—Coyote Ugly. The small-town girl is in for a wild adventure as she chases her dream in the Big Apple.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Crazy Stupid Love

David Vaughn | Oct 31, 2011 |

Straight-laced Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is living the dream with a good job, nice house, and a seemingly happy marriage to his high school sweetheart. But when his wife drops the bomb that she's been having an affair and wants a divorce, he becomes a fish out of water when he enters the dating game again. Enter young Jacob (Ryan Goling), a guy Cal meets at a local bar who takes the older man under his wing in order to teach him how to be a ladies' man and to forget his ex-wife.

As far as romantic comedies go, they rarely break from the script, but that isn't the case here. In many ways, this film pokes fun at the clichéd moments found in the genre and the stars do a good job portraying their characters. I especially liked the young actor, Jonah Bobo, as he swoons over his babysitter (Jessica Tipton).

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Creed

Brandon A. DuHamel | Jul 01, 2016 |

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With Creed, director Ryan Coogler (Frutivale Station) reboots the long-running Rocky franchise for a new generation of fans. Like The Force Awakens, Creed, from a screenplay by Aaron Covington and Coogler, plays it safe, never deviating far from the fundamentals that made the original film such a success.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Crime & Punishment (Web exclusive!)

Steve Simels | Jul 28, 2003 |

Ah, crime and punishment. They go together like . . . Leopold and Loeb, Donny and Marie, Rimsky and Korsakov. Except, of course, in the movies or on TV, when folks sometimes get away with murder (think Body Heat or The Player).

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Criminal

Josef Krebs | Dec 23, 2016 |

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When a CIA operative is killed by a team of anarchists, invaluable information is lost—or is it? Not now that a scientist has developed an experimental procedure for transferring memories from a dead man into another man’s brain. The scientist’s name, of course, is Doctor Franks. Not Frankenstein or Frahnkensteeen, but close. The concept’s made all the more unlikely by the choice of recipient—an imprisoned psychopathic murderer called Jericho.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Crimson Peak

Josef Krebs | Jun 24, 2016 |

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Set in the late 19th century, Crimson Peak is a Gothic romance, a mystery mixture of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, with a dollop of Young Frankenstein. After the death of her mother from cholera when Edith is 12, the hideously deformed ghost comes back to warn of Crimson Peak. Fourteen years later in bustling, modern Buffalo, New York, the child, daughter of a self-made American building magnate, has become a beautiful aspiring author. She’s swept off her feet by a mysterious, darkly handsome English aristocrat who’s come to America seeking financing for his steam-powered digger of the clay his house is built upon.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

D-Theater Update

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 10, 2003 |

Independence Day Aspect ratio: 2.35:1. Dolby Digital 5.1. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 2005772. PG-13. $34.95. Picture *** (3) Sound **** (4) Film **

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dan in Real Life

David Vaughn | Mar 04, 2008 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/403dan.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Newspaper columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carell) dispenses advice to families in his column, but his own personal life is in shambles. The widowed father of three girls is afraid of letting go and letting his kids grow up. He's so consumed with their lives that he has no time to live his own.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dan in Real Life

Rad Bennett | Jul 30, 2008 |

Touchstone

Movie ••• Picture •••^½ Sound •••^½ Extras •••

Steve Carell is Dan, who writes an a

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dark Shadows

Corey Gunnestad | Jan 31, 2013 |

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There was a time long before the Twilight era when vampires were stylishly suave, spoke with heavy European accents, resided in palatial gothic stone mansions, and didn’t get their wardrobes from Abercrombie & Fitch. Based on the popular cult soap opera from the late ’60s that ran for more than 1,200 episodes, Dark Shadows tells the story of a young 18th century aristocrat, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) who foolishly spurns the love of a vindictive witch ironically named Angelique (Eva Green). Proving that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Angelique places a curse on him and his entire family line. After witnessing his beloved fiancée take a suicide plunge off a seaside cliff while under a spell, Barnabas is condemned to be a vampire and then promptly sealed in a coffin and buried. And you thought your ex was a raving psychopath.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Darkest Hour

Tom Norton | Jun 15, 2018 |

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Darkest Hour shows the other side of the 1940 events depicted in 2017’s equally superb Dunkirk. The latter showed the evacuations that enabled the British army to survive, the former depicted how Churchill, taking the office of Prime Minister almost by default, navigated around the pacifists in his cabinet who wanted to negotiate a settlement with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In doing so he cemented his status as arguably the most important national leader of the 20th century.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Darkman (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Jun 15, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/darkman.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>While working one night to perfect his invention of artificial skin, scientist Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is horribly disfigured when an explosion engulfs his lab. Barely alive, he takes some experimental medication leaving him with super-strong strength and immunity to pain, although he's prone to fits of uncontrollable rage. He proceeds to rebuild his lab in an underground hideout and seek revenge against the men responsible for his disfigurement.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Das Boot

Joshua Zyber | Aug 23, 2011 |

Is it OK to sympathize with Nazis? That’s a thorny question, and not just for American viewers who’ve been raised on a diet of rah-rah patriotic war films about freedom-loving Yanks kicking the butts of dastardly Nazi scum. Germany itself has a very complicated and uncomfortable relationship with its past and rarely broaches the topic on film. Wolfgang Petersen’s superlative submarine thriller Das Boot takes us inside a World War II U-boat patrolling the Atlantic in 1941. Technically, its crew members are Nazis. Yet few are ideologues, and none are jackbooted villains. Mostly, they’re young boys who know nothing of politics but hunger for the adventure of war and believe themselves to be serving their country.

The film depicts the camaraderie of these men, their conflicts, their boredom, their excitement, their terror, and their growing disillusionment. In its most profound scene, the crew cheers at having destroyed a British cargo ship and then watches in horror as the sailors from that ship leap off its flaming deck and desperately try to swim to the submarine for help they will not get. It’s a sobering moment, both beautiful and haunting.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

David Crosby: Remember My Name

Mike Mettler | Feb 28, 2020 |

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Subtitle it The Ballad of Never-Easy Rider. Produced by Cameron Crowe, David Crosby: Remember My Name is a self-actualized love letter to one of rock's most significant rollercoaster-ride careers. Croz's admitted goal for the film's wished-for postscript is some level of interactive redemption with his chief collaborators of years past—i.e., Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young—all of whom he doesn't speak with to this day. (Why? As he readily admits, the combination of anger and adrenaline always turn him into "instant asshole.")

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