Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Knowing (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  Jul 09, 2009  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/knowing.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><i>In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one mysterious girl fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead. Fifty years later, a new generation of students examines the capsule's contents and the girl's cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury). But it's Caleb's father, professor John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As John further unravels the document's chilling secrets, he realizes the document foretells three additional events - the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve John and his son.</I>

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Kong: Skull Island
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 13, 2017  |  2 comments
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It’s 1973, and a U.S. survey and mapping expedition, supported by an Army helicopter unit recently released from the wind-down of the Vietnam War, heads toward the previously unexplored Skull Island.

If they’d brushed up on their old movies, they wouldn’t have been gobsmacked, and soon simply smacked, when they spot and engage with a really big ape. Big enough to squish all previous versions of the character under his big toe. Big enough to easily challenge the helicopters and crews. I mean really, really big.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kubo and the Two Strings
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 24, 2017  |  0 comments
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In old Japan, young Kubo lives in a mountain cave with his mother, whose mental clarity comes and goes. As an infant he lost an eye, and his father is long gone. Every day he goes to the market in a nearby town to entertain the locals with his three-string shamisen and wondrous stories, told with magic origami that fold and unfold into lifelike characters. His stories never have an ending, much to the disappointment of the townsfolk. Nevertheless, they’re ready for more the next day (Kubo apparently invented the miniseries cliff-hanger).
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Kubo and the Two Strings
Chris Chiarella  |  May 05, 2023  |  2 comments
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Endless kudos to Kubo’s studio, Laika, for doing more than anyone to keep the waning art of stop-motion animation feature films alive. Shout! Factory has been celebrating their most popular titles in recent 4K upgrades (available in standard or steelbook); among them The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman and Coraline; and now Kubo and the Two Strings. An original story with classic underpinnings, Kubo takes us along on a boy’s quest to acquire some mystical armor in anticipation of a showdown with a powerfully malevolent foe.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Kung Fu Panda
David Vaughn  |  Nov 10, 2008  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/kungfupanda.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Po (voiced by Jack Black) is an enthusiastic panda who works in his family's noodle shop while daydreaming about becoming a Kung Fu master. His dreams are soon realized when he is unexpectedly chosen to study the martial arts alongside his idols&#151;the legendary fighters Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Monkey (Jackie Chan)&#151;under the leadership of their guru, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). Before they know it, the vengeful and treacherous snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) returns, and it's up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
l’Avventura
Josef Krebs  |  Mar 18, 2015  |  0 comments
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A modernist masterpiece as revolutionary as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon made in a time when film was important, L’Avventura tells the story—or anti-story—of a wealthy young woman on a boating trip who disappears off an island. After a search of the barren rock, her fiancé and best friend set off to find her, investigating sites where she’s supposedly been seen. Over the course of their travels, they become involved and gradually forget about what they’re searching for. L’Avventura is a whodunit without a who, a mystery without a solution, a dislocation of the already dislocated. In the process, director Michelangelo Antonioni peels away the skin of society as characters play at love without enthusiasm, sincerity, or context in ennui of unaware existential numbness. As in Blow Up and other Antonionis, L’Avventura is about absence—feelings are forgotten, meaning and purpose are misplaced, and “words are more and more pointless.”
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
La Dolce Vita
Fred Kaplan  |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
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La Dolce Vita was Federico Fellini’s breakout hit: a critical and commercial sensation, even in America, where foreign films till then were strictly art house fare. It’s the winding tale of a litterateur-turned-gossip columnist wandering the streets, bars, and parties of newly decadent modern Rome, seeking love, meaning, and value but finally realizing their futility and wallowing in the miasma. The film coined archetypes of the era: a character named Paparazzo, a tabloid photographer who chases after sensational shots, spawned the word paparazzi; another, Steiner, a refined man of culture who commits a gruesome crime, became the prototype of the modern ineffectual intellectual.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
La Grande Illusion
Fred Kaplan  |  Jan 23, 2013  |  0 comments
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Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion remains, 75 years on, one of the greatest films ever made. To some, it may seem a bit clichéd, but that’s only because so many movies since have cribbed from its plot lines. It takes place in German POW camps during the First World War and was shot on what many recognized at the time as the eve of a Second World War. One of the things it’s about is the world that vanished, for better and for worse, in the two decades between the two wars. There has been much debate over just which “great illusion” Renoir was referring to in his title. Some have assumed it’s war. But this is not a simple anti-war movie; at the end, our French heroes, who have escaped from the camp, can’t wait to get home so they can reenlist in the fighting.
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La La Land
Chris Chiarella  |  Jul 14, 2017  |  0 comments
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Right or wrong, writer/director Damien Chazelle knew what he wanted. From the cinematographic techniques to the costumes and sets to the staging of the elaborate song-and-dance numbers, he employed every tool at his disposal to bring this uniquely Hollywood tale to life.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Labor Day
Anthony Chiarella  |  Aug 13, 2014  |  0 comments
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Increasingly depressed and agoraphobic since her divorce, Adele (Kate Winslet) relies upon her doting son, Henry (Gattlin Griffith). At the start of the 1987 Labor Day weekend, mother and son are confronted by escaped convict Frank (Josh Brolin), who demands their assistance in eluding the authorities. Over the next few days, Frank’s kindness and innocence are manifest, and the trio has become a family—almost. Confused by conflicting emotions and threatened with the prospect of a competitor for his mother’s love, the awkward adolescent facilitates Frank’s capture. Adele has loved and lost again. Or has she?
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Labyrinth
Chris Chiarella  |  Nov 05, 2021  |  0 comments
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After making Return of the Jedi, Executive producer George Lucas was looking for fresh creative frontiers, and he would embark upon new cinematic collabs with previous and first-time cohorts. One such experiment was his team-up with mastermind Jim Henson for the family-friendly fantasy, Labyrinth. With a playful script by Monty Python alum Terry Jones, the story follows an angry teenager Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) with a fondness for fairy tales.
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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Review
David Vaughn  |  Jul 01, 2018  |  0 comments
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A secret from her father’s past leads adventure-seeker Lara Croft on one of her greatest challenges. What she seeks to find is the Triangle of Light, a legendary artifact whose power to alter space and time happens only once every 5,000 years. Also in hot pursuit: the Illuminati, a secret society bent on world domination. Lara and her trusty tech-geek sidekick, Bryce, must do everything in their power to stop them.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Last Action Hero (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jan 12, 2010  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lastaction.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Movie lover Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) finds himself transported into the latest Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) action film when he's given a magic movie ticket by an elderly theater owner (Art Carney). Danny tried to convince Jack he's a fictional character but he doesn't buy it. His perspective changes when his arch nemesis, Benedict (Charles Dance), steals the ticket and enters the "real world" in order to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger, thus taking out Slater.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Last Holiday
David Vaughn  |  Dec 31, 2008  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lastholiday.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Shy New Orleans cookware salesclerk Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) finds out she has less than a month to live when diagnosed with terminal cancer. Determined not to live her last days in depression, she sets out on a dream vacation to a European resort spa without no worries of paying for the trip. You go girl!

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Last Night In Soho
Roger Kanno  |  Mar 11, 2022  |  0 comments
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Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho starts off a little slowly, but like many of the director's previous films (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver), it oozes style. The story centers around Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a talented fashion design student who is transported back to the 1960s in her dreams where she witnesses scenes from the life of an aspiring young singer, Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). Along with her dreams, Eloise has increasingly frightening visions where Sandie's life is beginning to spiral downward. Through her dreams and visions, Eloise ultimately learns the fate of Sandie and those around her in London's Soho District during the 1960s.
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