Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Chris Chiarella  |  Mar 29, 2018
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Following his introduction to Marvel’s well-established “Cinematic Universe” in Captain America: Civil War, the beloved Spider-Man has been fully rebooted (again) in the wildly enjoyable Homecoming. Decked out in a new high-tech costume, he’s eager for big adventures, but until then, he occupies himself as a local do-gooder in his Queens neighborhood—when not attending high school. Young star Tom Holland is a perfect fit for Peter Parker and his alter ego, an agile dancer/athlete with an irresistible wide-eyed enthusiasm.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Chris Chiarella  |  Apr 19, 2019
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An animated Spider-Man movie? In the midst of the character's latest live-action reboot? Using six different iterations of the character, all but one of which are only known to die-hard comic book fans? A direct-to-video tie-in, right? Wrong: Not only was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse a big-screen box-office success, it also snagged an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of 2018.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Chris Chiarella  |  May 06, 2022
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Nostalgia--that "twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone" as Don Draper famously explained it--can be a potent ally to the modern filmmaker. With its risky and highly publicized meta-twist (which I won't spoil here, just in case), Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to complete director Jon Watts' arachno-trilogy on an epic scale, capping not only this story arc but one far grander, much as Avengers: Endgame did for the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spider-Man: The High Definition Trilogy
Tom Norton  |  Oct 28, 2007

When does a trilogy become a quadrilogy? (Is there such a word? There is now.) When they release the third sequel, of course. And the Spider-Man films have been such a rousing success that you can be sure another one is in the pipeline.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Splice (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 13, 2010
Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) specialize in splicing DNA from different animals to create new hybrids. In an attempt to revolutionize science and medicine, they're looking for a bigger challenge and want to use human DNA, but when their funding gets pulled, they secretly take the experiment underground.

Other than the unwelcome horror elements, Splice kept me mildly entertained with its thought provoking premise. One thing's for sure, don't screw around with Mother Nature unless you're willing to deal with the consequences of raising a most unusual being as your own.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spotlight
Anthony Chiarella  |  Jul 15, 2016
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A team of four Boston Globe journalists headed by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) is searching for their next exposé when their editor-in-chief (Liev Schreiber) suggests they investigate pedophile priest John Geoghan: a controversial assignment for a newspaper with a 53 percent Catholic subscriber base. Six-hundred articles later, Boston’s Cardinal Law had resigned, and the church was forced to confront an international pedophilia crisis.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Spring Breakers
Corey Gunnestad  |  Apr 29, 2014
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The American tradition of the spring break was invented to give hard-working college students a much-needed reprieve from their rigorous course studies and a means to blow off some steam in a reasonably safe environment. At what point then did it become a callow justification to take complete leave of your senses and shamelessly plunge headlong into a sexually hedonistic, drug-induced crime spree? Oh, well. You’re only young once, I guess.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Stand By Me (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 01, 2011
During the Labor Day weekend in 1959, a group of friends go in search of a young boy's dead body on the outskirts of a woodsy Oregon town. The two day trek turns into an adventure of self-discovery as Gordy (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) must overcome some town bullies and find an inner strength they never knew they possessed.

Based on the Steven King novella "The Body," Stand by Me is one of my favorite films from my high school years. Director Rob Reiner takes you on a wonderful journey and reminds me of some of my own adventures (although I never went looking for a dead body). The performances from the young cast showed each had the talent to become Hollywood stars, but Phoenix threw it all away with a drug overdose in 1993.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Stand Up Guys
Corey Gunnestad  |  Jul 16, 2014
Old wiseguys never die. They just look that way.

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For the first time ever, two of Hollywood’s most respected and iconic tough guys are finally sharing the screen together. Putting Christopher Walken and Al Pacino together in a mobster movie seems like a no brainer and you have to wonder why it took so damn long. You’d think that a pedigree like that alone would be worth the price of admission but the tragic irony is that hardly anyone saw Stand Up Guys when it came out.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek
David Vaughn  |  Nov 23, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/newtreck.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Even the most diehard Trekker felt that Roddenberry's universe had lost its mojo, so when J.J. Abrams was picked to reimagine the franchise, I was stoked. With a new young cast, which Tom Norton refers to as <i>Star Trek 90210</i>, he took <i>Trek</i> where no one had gone before&#151;over $257 million at the box office. With a reported budget of $150 million, no corners were cut in the production&#151;the script is a blast, the special effects are top-notch, and the soundtrack is loaded with demo material. As expected, the Blu-ray rocks, and here are three great scenes to show off your home theater.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Nov 12, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/newtrek.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When a massive Romulan ship, Narada, emerges from a spatial anomaly in the year 2233, the USS Kelvin is destroyed as George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) manually flies the ship on a suicide mission so that his wife and newborn son, James, can escape. This event alters the space-time continuum, and as a result, James T. Kirk grows up without his father's influence, becoming quite the rabble-rouser. Fortunately, he meets Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who persuades the young man to join Starfleet. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek - Season One (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 28, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/TOS1.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT> Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Scotty (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Sulu (George Takei) are on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations&#151;to boldly go where no man has gone before.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek - Season Three (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Dec 16, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/tos3.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>The third and final season of <i>Star Trek</i> is very hit or miss in its entertainment value. The show was nearly canceled after the second season due to low ratings, but NBC begrudgingly brought it back and placed it in the worst possible timeslot&#151;Friday night at 10pm. With the target demographic being young men, most had better things to do than to sit around the house and watch a science fiction show.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek - Season Two (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Sep 19, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/TOS2.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and crew are back for the second season of <i>Star Trek</i>, and unlike season one, this is the first we've seen these episodes in glorious 1080p. Season two has several strong episodes that tackle heavy social issues and offer up planet-eating monsters, a murder mystery, and those wonderful tribbles.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Trek Beyond
David Vaughn  |  Feb 24, 2017
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Three years into their five-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise is in dire need of shore leave. Fortunately, they’re in a sector of space with an advanced star base, and they drop in for a visit. Shortly after their arrival, a distress call comes from a remote nebula, and their leave is cut short since the Enterprise is the only ship in the sector that can navigate through it. Once inside, they meet a deadly alien race in search of a rare artifact that just happens to be located on the Federation ship and will kill anything in their path to obtain it—even the Enterprise crew.
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