Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lego Batman Movie
Chris Chiarella  |  Aug 18, 2017
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Chief among Lego Batman’s extraordinary feats is its ability to remain true to the dark essence of its enduring hero while weaving a family-friendly and wildly funny animated adventure. The backgrounds are littered with inside jokes and subtle bits of Batmania culled from the past eight decades.
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The Lego Movie
Chris Chiarella  |  Sep 03, 2014
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After an onslaught of Real American Heroes and Robots in Disguise, we often meet a new toy-inspired movie with the lament, “It’s just a two-hour commercial!” And so it is with no small measure of shock and awe that I watched The Lego Movie. The immensely talented filmmaking duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller has managed to tell an engaging story with boundless wit, originality, and even audacity, while still embracing what we know and love about these little bricks and the many associated characters.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lighthouse
Josef Krebs  |  May 08, 2020
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Around 1890, two lighthouse keepers—isolated on a remote New England island with just gulls, each other, and a large supply of liquor for company—begin to gradually lose their sense of reality, civility, and eventually their sanity in an atmospheric concoction not conveyed this intensely since The Shining. It all makes for a great (if grueling) two-handed drama.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lincoln Lawyer
David Vaughn  |  Jul 11, 2011
As a defense attorney, your job isn't to decide who's guilty or innocent, it's to make sure your client gets a fair trial and to present the facts of the case in a way to provide the jury with reasonable doubt in order to gain an acquittal. Hotshot Los Angeles lawyer Mickey Hailer (Matthew McConaughey) is hired to defend a wealthy young man (Ryan Phillippe) who's accused of rape and suddenly finds himself embroiled in a game of deception that threatens not only his career, but his own life.

Based on the book by Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer is one of the best thrillers I've seen in a while. The pacing and acting are both topnotch and l loved the twists and turns in the story. Furthermore, the video encode is picture perfect with razor-sharp detail, striking contrast, and inviting shadows.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lion King 3D
David Vaughn  |  Oct 05, 2011
Forced into exile by his evil Uncle Scar after the death of his father, young Simba hooks up with a meerkat named Timon and his warthog chum Pumbaa. Adopting their carefree lifestyle, Simba ignores his real responsibilities until he realizes his destiny and returns to the Pride Lands to stake his claim to the throne.

When The Lion King hit theaters in 1994, Disney had its third animation success in a row and solidified the fact that the studio had regained its hit-creating mojo. The voice cast is outstanding, the story is inspiring, and the soundtrack is just as fun today as it was last century. Looking to capitalize on the 3D craze hitting Hollywood, Disney converted the hand-drawn animated film into the new format with surprisingly good results. While it doesn't look quite as good as Beauty and the Beast, it fares much better than some live-action conversions I've seen.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lion King's New Roar
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Nov 02, 2003
Photos by Michelle Hood Disney has always stood above every other studio when it comes to animation.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lone Ranger
Josef Krebs  |  Apr 11, 2014
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In a museum of the Old West, a boy experiences an ancient noble savage figure in an exhibit coming to life and telling him about his times with the Lone Ranger. As was the case in Little Big Man, the character is an unreliable witness due to a mixture of his bullshit artistry and mental problems—and the whole incident is probably going on in the imagination of the kid, anyway. So the filmmaker has a lot of leeway for unlikely and implausible events, and he takes this artistic license to the limit.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lorax
David Vaughn  |  Nov 12, 2012
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L ooking to impress the girl of his dreams by finding her a real-life Truffula tree, Ted Wiggins follows the advice of his grandmother and ventures outside the walls of Thneedville in search of the Once-ler. At first, the reclusive old man wants nothing to do with the teenage boy, but he eventually tells his story of how greed and ignorance led to the destruction of the Truffula forest and how he should have listened to the warnings of the mystical Lorax—the protector of the trees. Looking for a chance at redemption, the Once-ler put his faith in the teenager to correct the errors of his ways, although the ruthless Aloysius O’Hare will stop at nothing to deter the young lad from fulfilling his destiny to restore the trees and get the girl.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Chris Chiarella  |  Jan 22, 2021
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What a journey. Originally conceived as a simple sequel to his popular children's book, The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings grew to become the epitome of epic fantasy. Set in the far-off, long-ago realm of Middle-earth, it introduces the good-hearted, vertically-challenged Frodo Baggins (wide-eyed Elijah Wood), tasked with destroying a cursed ring in order to stop a great evil from conquering the world.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 05, 2010

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lotrbd.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In case you've been in a coma for the past 10 years, Peter Jackson adapted the popular J.R.R. Tolkien novel with amazing results. Arguably, it's one of the greatest movie accomplishments of all time with 15 Academy Awards, over $1 billion in US box-office receipts, and nearly $3 billion worldwide.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Editions (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jun 27, 2011
In case you've been in a coma for the past 10 years, Peter Jackson adapted the popular J.R.R. Tolkien novel with amazing results. Arguably, it's one of the greatest movie accomplishments of all time with 15 Academy Awards, over $1 billion in US box-office receipts, and nearly $3 billion worldwide.

Many fans are angry that Warner decided to release the theatrical versions last year instead of the these extended director cuts, but Peter Jackson has stated publicly that the theatrical releases are the definitive versions of the films, not the extended cuts, but the fans want to see every minute of filmed footage come hell or high water.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Losers
David Vaughn  |  Jul 21, 2010  |  First Published: Jul 22, 2010
Sent to the Bolivian jungle on a search-and-destroy mission, members of an elite Special Forces unit now find themselves the target of a deadly double-cross instigated by Max (Jason Patric), a ruthless man hell-bent on embroiling the world in a new high-tech global war for his own benefit. The team must work deep undercover to clear their name and even the score with the evil megalomaniac.

As long as you check your brain at the door, The Losers provides a lot of entertainment, laughter, and adventure. It's based on a DC comic series, and while the plot is hardly original, the cast members never take things too seriously and seem to be enjoying themselves. Furthermore, the movie depicts a lot of violent action, but it doesn't spatter brain matter all over the screen, and I applaud the director's choice to aim for the PG-13 rating. I wouldn't call this a family-friendly picture, but it's not nearly has graphic as it could have been.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Machinist (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  May 14, 2009

<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?

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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Magfinicent Seven (2016)
David Vaughn  |  May 05, 2017
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When industrialist Bartholomew Bogue starts to terrorize and take control of the town of Rose Creek, its concerned citizens pool their money in order to hire a group of mercenaries to drive the villain—and his private army—from the town. The widow of one of Bogue’s victims hits the road and meets Sam Chisholm, who accepts the job and goes about recruiting six other men to the task, all with varying skills that complement one another in order to bring justice to Rose Creek.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Maltese Falcon (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Oct 11, 2010
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.

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