Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Behind every legend lies and impossible dream. Witness the spectacular journey of an incredible horse named Secretariat and the moving story of his unlikely owner (Diane Lane), a housewife who risked everything to make him a champion.

Disney is never one to shy away from an inspirational sports story and while this doesn't live up to the magic of Miracle, it has a lot of heart and explains the struggles Penny Chenery had to endure to be a woman in a male dominate world. I'm sure there were some liberties taken with some of the facts to liven-up the story, but that's not uncommon in Hollywood. Regardless, the performances are very good, especially by Lane and John Malkovich, who plays the eccentric Canadian horse trainer.

Damian Hale, an extremely wealthy and self-centered businessman (is there any other kind in the movies?), is in his late sixties and dying of cancer. But he’s found an escape in a secretive company that has developed a way to transfer the contents of someone’s brain into a younger, healthy human body. They call the process shedding. It succeeds on Damian, but with complications he didn’t anticipate.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/sevenpounds.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Ben Thomas (Will Smith) is an unremarkable IRS agent who has the power to change seven strangers' lives. But when he meets Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson), everything changes as he realizes he's in love with the beautiful woman. Should he alter his plan and seek personal happiness or continue the quest for his own redemption?

What happens after you say "I do"? With three of the quartet married, how do they get out on the town and have a good time? They don't. Instead, the girls get together for a trip to Abu Dhabi when a wealthy sheik asks Samantha (Kim Cattrall) to visit his luxury hotel, hoping she will promote it in America. With her three best pals in tow, they jet off on a first-class trip to paradise away from the stresses of marriage, kids, and careers.

As a fan of the TV show and the first movie I thought I would enjoy spending more time with the characters I'd gotten to know over the years. Boy was I wrong. The script is pathetically weak and bloated and characters have lost their appeal as they've aged. Not their sex appeal, which is perfectly fine—it's their vomit-inducing narcissistic behavior that wears you out over the 146 minutes and the far-fetched storytelling doesn't help matters.

Jay (Jason Segel) and Annie (Cameron Diaz) have lost the spark. The couple’s college sexcapades are a distant memory, as marriage and children have snuffed their sex drive… until, fueled by tequila shots, they decide to make a three-hour porno wherein they attempt every position in the classic handbook, The Joy of Sex. When Jay saves their video to his iPad, however, he mistakenly sends it to friends and family, then spends the remainder of the film trying to reverse his mistake. Jake Kasdan, who directed Diaz and Segel in Bad Teacher, completes the Power Trio here.

Along with Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, Shaft helped launch the Seventies era of so-called "blaxploitation" films that would dominate the world of Black entertainment for nearly a decade. Directed by prominent Black photographer Gordon Parks with Richard Roundtree in the title role and featuring a sizzling soundtrack by Isaac Hayes, Shaft didn't quite fit the mold of its subsequent ilk.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/shaun.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a lovable loser spending his days working as a clerk in an electronics store and looking forward to a few after-hours pints at the local pub with his best friend and roommate Ed (Nick Frost). Life takes a turn for the worse when his girlfriend (Kate Ashfield) dumps him, his stepfather (Bill Nighy) berates him for ignoring his mother (Penelope Wilton), and&#151;oh yeah&#151;the dead return to stake their claim to the Earth. Instead of running scared, Shaun uses the opportunity to prove his manhood, and not even the undead can stand in his way.