Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
High Noon
Chris Chiarella  |  Jun 09, 2017  | 
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An undeniable dramatic masterpiece, High Noon has lost none of its considerable power to enthrall an audience with its relentless suspense born of inexorable doom. We know at once that Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is a damned good man. Yet when news breaks that a murderer he sent to hang is instead returning with his gang for revenge, he is heartlessly shunned by the townsfolk he has risked his life to protect.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
High Plains Drifter
David Vaughn  |  Apr 02, 2014  | 
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Clint Eastwood has been a household name for over 50 years thanks to his impressive Hollywood résumé that includes work in TV as Rowdy Yates on Rawhide and as a movie star playing such iconic characters as Dirty Harry, Josey Wales, and Philo Beddoe, but it’s his work as a director that has had the greatest impression on me. Believe it or not, the iconic actor has directed 35 films since 1971 winning two Oscars in the process for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
David Vaughn  |  Feb 19, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/hsm3.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>America's favorite Wildcats are back for their exciting final year at East High. Amidst a basketball championship, prom, and the big spring musical, Troy (Zach Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) vow to make every moment count, as their lifelong college dreams put the future of their relationship in question.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
His Girl Friday
Fred Kaplan  |  May 26, 2017  | 
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This is the funniest classic film that doesn’t star the Marx Brothers and one of the best—certainly the most frantic—newspaper movies (outgunned only by the very different All the President’s Men). It also marks the peak in director Howard Hawks’ fling with super-fast pace and overlapping dialogue, which he’d pioneered over the previous two years, with Bringing Up Baby and Only Angels Have Wings, and which influenced many future directors, notably Robert Altman.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hitman
David Vaughn  |  Apr 03, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/403hitman.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Based on the popular video game, <i>Hitman</i> stars Timothy Olyphant as a genetically engineered assassin known as "Agent 47." When an assassination doesn't go as planned, the hunter becomes the hunted as he is pursued across Eastern Europe by both Interpol and Russian agents.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hollywoodland (HD DVD)
Shane Buettner  |  Mar 03, 2007  | 

Ben Affleck drunk, and wearing tights- threat or menace? Actually <I>Hollywoodland</I> reminded me that we once knew Ben Affleck's name because of his acting talent and not the sheer tonnage of projects he was involved with or who he was engaged to. This well crafted movie tells the story of the death and then life of George Reeves, the Superman of 1950s camp TV. Coming in I knew nothing of Reeves' mysterious death let alone his life beyond the tights. <I>Hollywoodland</I> weaves through Reeves' life by way of a private investigator's look into his death, a character the film's creators acknowledge is an amalgam of several people and not a real person. The other chracters names have apparently not been changed to protect the innocent (or guilty).

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Home Theater Workout
Al Griffin  |  Jun 29, 2003  | 

The following reviews appeared as "Reference DVD" features in the Movies section of Sound & Vision. Out of the 22 discs chosen for their exceptional audio and video from September 2000 through July/August 2003, I consider these five the standouts. BLUE CRUSH Universal

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hoosiers (Blu-ray)
Tom Norton  |  Apr 09, 2007  | 

All the clichs are in place. New coach with a checkered past and something to prove. Down-on-its-luck team. Hostile, meddling townsfolk. The big game. You've seen it all before.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Horrible Bosses
David Vaughn  |  Oct 12, 2011  | 
Three friends, Nick (Jason Bateman, Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dales (Charlie Day), are slaving away at their jobs in Los Angeles and have one thing in common; they each have horrible bosses. One night they hatch a foolproof plan to murder them and hire an ex-con (Jamie Foxx) as an adviser. Well, he isn't what they expected and their foolproof plan has a very likely chance to get them thrown behind bars for the rest of their lives.

At some point in your life, you're going to end up with a horrible boss. In fact, I've been unfortunate enough to have a few of them over the years. But as bad as things were, I never once contemplated murder (torture, maybe, but never murder!). Anyway, I found this movie to be mostly entertaining for the first two acts and I actually felt a little something for the characters. Sadly, the third act falls apart with childish antics and plenty of foul language.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hot Fuzz
David Vaughn  |  Sep 16, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/hotfuzz.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Simon Pegg's and Edgar Writt's ode to buddy-cop films was one of the best-looking HD DVDs ever released, and Universal has actually improved things on Blu-ray. Both VC-1 encodes are flawless, but the audio is improved with a kick-ass DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray version. The surround channels are extremely active, the bass rocks, and the dialog sounds as if the actors are sitting in the room.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Sep 16, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/hotfuzz.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>London police officer Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is too good for his own good. His arrest record is tops in the department, which makes everyone else look bad, so his supervisor arranges a promotion and he's transferred to Sanford, a small, quiet town in the country. The crime rate is very low, but something is amiss because there are so many fatal accidents, so Nicholas and his bumbling new partner Danny (Nick Frost) are on the case.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hot Tub Time Machine (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jul 02, 2010  | 
Looking to cheer up one of their old friends (Rob Corddry) who just attempted suicide, Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Adam's nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) take a road trip to a ski resort where they hung out in the 1980s. After a wild night of partying and hot tubbing, the quartet finds themselves transported back to 1986 and they must relive their experiences without causing a "butterfly effect."

Judd Apatow has ruined the typical Hollywood comedy with his sick sense of humor. Granted, he had nothing to do with this production, but it's a pure rip-off of his brand of humor that I personally don't find very funny. The language is so harsh a sailor would blush, there are multiple scenes with projectile vomiting, and too many crude sexual references befitting teenage boys and not grown men. It's pretty sad when the most mature member of the groups is actually a teenage boy.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hotel For Dogs (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 28, 2009  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/hoteldogs.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Two orphans, Andi (Emma Roberts) and her younger brother Bruce (Jake T. Austin), find themselves in a foster home with a strict "no pets" policy, so they set out to find a home for their dog Friday. Using an abandoned hotel in their neighborhood, they soon realize it can house more than just their own dog, and they end up creating a haven for all the strays in the city.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hotel Rwanda (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  May 23, 2011  | 
Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) is put between a rock and a hard place when he's confronted with saving his family or doing whatever he can to save over 1,200 Tutsi refugees from being massacred by Hutu extremists.

The world can be an ugly place and in 1994 the situation in Rwanda resulted in over 1 million deaths. Men such as Rusensabagina show us that despite all the bad in the world, there are truly good people that will stop at nothing to do what is right, even if it means sacrificing their own life. Cheadle's performance earned him an Oscar nomination, but in my opinion he was robbed when Jamie Foxx won for his portrayal of Ray Charles.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Hotel Transylvania
David Vaughn  |  Jun 10, 2013  | 
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When Toy Story launched the digital animation genre in 1995, you just knew that every Hollywood studio would eventually set up its own department to cash in on the latest movie trend. Throw in vampires with the Twilight phenomenon and 3D with Avatar, and it was just a matter of time before all three concepts would be mixed together into one picture, hence we get this entertaining animated tale from Sony Pictures.
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