Blu-ray Movie Reviews

This action thriller may deepen the paranoid fever dreams of those who imagine that the feds are watching, listening-in on, and recording every aspect of their routine lives. But for those of us who know better, it's nevertheless an entertaining action thriller that moves along at a heady pace and is populated by a superb cast.

When it comes to dystopian movies of the 1980s, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York clearly stands out as one of the hallmarks of the period and genre, creating a futuristic vision of a society that has deteriorated to the point where the prison system has become a world entirely of its own. In fact, crime in America has gotten so out of hand the entire island of Manhattan is converted into a maximum-security prison from which there is no parole, and where the inmates—a merciless yet colorful lot—are left to govern themselves. But after terrorists strike Air Force One, tough-as-nails convicted bank robber Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) cuts a deal to rescue the president, who has survived a crash-landing within the walls of New York City only to be held hostage on the eve of a critical global summit.

When you're all-in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you take the good with the bad, and Jack Kirby's lesser-known 1970s comic book has yielded the latter. With Eternals, we are introduced to a diverse team of never-aging otherworldly protectors, each with a different superpower, who are tasked with defending humanity from some nasty creatures.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/eventhorizon.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In the year 2040, the pioneering research vessel Event Horizon vanishes without a trace. Seven years later, it suddenly appears in orbit around Neptune, and the United States Aerospace Command sends out a rescue crew headed by Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne) to salvage the vessel. Where has the ship been all this time and what happened to its crew?

Capturing zeitgeist moments as they happen are a filmmaker's dream. Lucky for us, drummer/rhythmatist extraordinaire Stewart Copeland picked up a Super 8 film camera when The Police were but budding bleached-blonde young punks, and he filmed, well, practically everything they did both onstage and off.

Computer programmer Caleb Smith wins an inter-company competition to spend a week at the remote estate of the company’s brilliant, yet quirky CEO and founder, Nathan Bateman. He soon learns that the vacation will be anything but when he’s coerced into signing a nondisclosure release in order to administer a Turing Test on a new AI program that could revolutionize the world. It turns out that the AI has been placed in a fully functional—and human-looking—robot named Ava, who has been locked in a glass enclosure and can’t be freed unless she proves to Smith and Bateman that she’s achieved full consciousness and is not just copying human behavior.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/extract.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Joel Reynolds (Jason Bateman) is sitting pretty with a beautiful wife, a comfortable home, and the almost finalized acquisition by General Mills of the culinary extracts business he has built with his loyal lieutenant Brian (J.K. Simmons). Joel seems to have it all, but his wife isn't interested in him, his employees want a big payoff, and the new office hottie (Mila Kunis) is really a con artist with ulterior motives.