Blu-ray Movie Reviews

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/machinist.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Trevor Reznick (Christian Bale) hasn't slept in a year, and when we first meet him, he's in a darkened bathroom staring into a mirror looking like a man who's been to hell and back&#151;because he has. Why is he so tormented and why can't he get any sleep?

Sam Spade's (Humphrey Bogart) partner meets an untimely end while tailing a man for a new client (Mary Astor). Before he knows it, the sly detective finds himself in the middle of a mystery involving multiple parties in search of a jewel encrusted statue known as the Maltese Falcon.

Based on the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett, screenwriter/director John Huston launched his directorial career and turned Bogart into a leading man. Although the film is nearly 70 years old, the story and characters are timeless and Bogart's depiction as the private detective is the benchmark for other such characters in Hollywood.

John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King is one of those great films the likes of which “they don’t make anymore” (and, in fact, they rarely did), a grand tale of adventure and greed set against the great outdoors and the judgment of Nature. It’s based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel, but in many ways, it’s a throwback to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which Huston also directed, nearly 30 years earlier. This movie’s prospectors are former soldiers in Britain’s colonial army, seeking power and fortune by conquering tribal warlords in the mountains of Afghanistan, rather than American ne’er-do-wells panning for gold in the foothills of Mexico. But the outcome is the same: Our (anti-) heroes win everything then lose it all through avarice and arrogance. In Treasure, they dig up more gold than they can carry (or their capacity for mutual trust can endure); in King, they stumble into a cavern of riches, but one of them starts believing he really is a god (as they’ve tricked the natives into thinking), until the act is exposed.

Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian was justly lauded for its clever use of hard science facts to tell a thrilling yet believable tale of science fiction. Of course, the characters needed to be compelling as well if this bold survival epic was to work, and on screen as well as on the page, the futuristic drama is a smashing success. We begin a couple of decades from now as a manned Mars expedition is cut short due to a violent storm on the surface of the Red Planet.

<I>The Matador</I> is an off kilter comedy that works by expertly playing on the audience's expectations without being overly manipulative. Erstwhile 007 Pierce Brosnan plays the the low down and dirty version of JB, a hit man for hire with very bad people skills. He's coming to the end of his run at the top, and has enough money to retire, but nothing or no one to retire to, not a single friend or any other human connection. While on a job in Mexico he runs into Danny, played by Greg Kinnear, who's also in town on a business trip, albeit ina different line of work! The two strike up as mcuh of a friendship as Brosnan's Julian allows, and inevitably when Julian's bosses decide he's more of a lliability than an asset Kinnear's Danny is the only friend he can turn to for help.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/matrixdigi.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><i>"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"</i>