BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS

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X-Men Trilogy (Blu-ray)
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  May 03, 2009  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/xmen.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><i>Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to grow from a single-cell organism into the dominating species on the planet. This process is slow, taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.</i> &#151;Prof. Charles Frances Xavier

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X-Men: Days of Future Past
3D BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS, BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Chris Chiarella  |  Jan 21, 2015  |  0 comments
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You’d think that the unique power to control metal, or the weather, or other people’s minds would be awesome, but no. In the world of the X-Men, mutated superhumans with such gifts are feared and hated and—in one possible future—will be hunted to the brink of extinction by an army of killer robots. Even worse, these deadly machines will also begin targeting us ordinary human beings, and the world we know now appears doomed.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past–The Rogue Cut
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 23, 2015  |  0 comments
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Remember reading that Oscar winner and True Blood star Anna Paquin was going to reprise her role as the mutant Rogue in the most recent X-Men movie, Days of Future Past? And then the movie came out and she was in exactly two shots with nary a word of dialogue, and even that moment came a scant four-and-a-half minutes before the end? Well, there was in fact more planned for her, and the new “Rogue Cut” reinstates her scenes as part of a rethought, expanded version of the movie. To be frank, it’s largely the same story you’re probably used to. Rogue’s return has minimal impact on the plot, but there are lots of other little changes along the way too, successfully enhancing the overall drama.
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XXX: Return of Xander Cage
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  Sep 22, 2017  |  1 comments
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It’s been several years since Xander Cage has been on the scene, but he’s brought back into the fold when a device called Pandora’s Box falls into the wrong hands. It has the ability to bring down any satellite and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction as it crashes down on the planet. One of his conditions for coming back to the CIA was that of recruiting his own team so he can ensure their absolute trust and his own personal safety.
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Y Tu Mamá También
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Fred Kaplan  |  Oct 29, 2014  |  0 comments
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Is Y Tu Mamá También (rough translation: So’s your mama) a wry and trenchant story about class, friendship, sexuality, and globalization in a rapidly changing Mexico—or is it a gussied-up piece of soft porn? Both, I think, but it’s all done so affably and naturally (the sociology, the politics, and the porn) that it comes off as a work of great charm and comedy and sadness. A gorgeous young married woman and two rambunctious teenage boys—best friends, one wealthy, one poor but aspiring—take off on a road trip to Mexico’s rural beaches.
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Yes Man (Blu-ray)
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  Apr 09, 2009  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/yesman.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Three years after his divorce, Carl Allen (Jim Carrey) still has the blues and dreads going to work at his dead-end job as a loan officer. In order to get a new outlook on life, he attends a self-help seminar led by Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp), who challenges people to say "yes" to everything. Miraculously, when Carl embraces this philosophy, events lead him to Allison (Zooey Deschanel), and his life takes a turn in the right direction.

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You Again (Blu-ray)
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  Feb 07, 2011  |  0 comments
High school can be the best of times or the worst of times, depending on your experience. For Marnie (Kristen Bell), it was the latter. Teased throughout her years because of her acne and not being part of the "in" crowd, her memories are anything but fond. Years after graduation, she heads home to see her brother tie the knot and discovers he's marrying her nemesis (Odette Yustman) from high school.

With a cast that includes Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, and Betty White, one would assume these stars wouldn't attach their names to anything but a surefire hit. Wrong! The laughs are hard to come by, the slapstick is anything but funny, and the ending is vomit educing.

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Young Frankenstein
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  Oct 24, 2008  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/youngfrankenstein.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Summoned to his late grandfather's castle in Transylvania, young Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) soon discovers the scientist's step-by-step manual explaining how to bring a corpse to life. Aided by his loyal assistants, beautiful Inga (Teri Garr) and ghastly Igor (Marty Feldman)&#151;who insists his name is pronounced "eye-gore"&#151;things don't work out so well when he reanimates a body using an abnormal brain.

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Z for Zachariah
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Feb 12, 2016  |  0 comments
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The post-apocalyptic dystopian film is a staple of science-fiction filmmaking, but most of the films inhabit a similar space. Director Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah is one of the rare ones that change the formula. Z for Zachariah, based upon Robert C. O’Brien’s novel, still relies on some unknown radioactive, presumably nuclear event as the catalyst that brings down society, but the story is not focused on this. Instead, it is a character study about three people in one idyllic valley in the Southeastern United States spared by the disaster.
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Z-Riffic: Liza with a "Z"
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
 |  Mar 27, 2006  |  0 comments

When Showtime airs a lovingly restored and digitally remastered version of Liza with a "Z" on Sunday, April 1 at 10 p.m. ET (the DVD will go on sale three days later), it will be the first time the show has been seen in more than 30 years.

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Zero Dark Thirty
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Corey Gunnestad  |  Jun 24, 2013  |  0 comments
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A tenacious woman is in the forefront of the greatest manhunt in history. Jessica Chastain is Maya, a lead member of a CIA think tank assigned with the task of tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal both won Academy Awards for their work on The Hurt Locker. Now they’ve taken another stab at the turmoil in the Middle East with Zero Dark Thirty. The title refers to the military designation of half an hour past midnight, when it’s dark enough that no one can see you coming.
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Zodiac
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
David Vaughn  |  Jan 23, 2009  |  0 comments

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/zodiac.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>The Zodiac killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s with a handful of murders and cryptic messages sent to local newspapers, including the <I>San Francisco Chronicle</I>. Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) covered the story for the <I>Chronicle</I>, and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) became so obsessed with the Zodiac story that it begins to affect his family life.

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Zootopia
BLU-RAY MOVIE REVIEWS
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 19, 2016  |  0 comments
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Judy Hopps is an ambitious little bunny. Stuck in a zillion-rabbit town, she longs to join the police force. Topping her class at the police academy, and despite the misgivings of her conventional, veggie-farmer parents, she heads off to Zootopia, the Big Carrot in the film’s all-animal universe, to forge a career in the ZPD.
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