Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Citizenfour
Corey Gunnestad  |  Dec 04, 2015  | 
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After 9-11, the National Security Agency developed a top-secret surveillance program called Stellar Wind, in which the NSA could arbitrarily and without restriction, monitor and record all citizens’ communications. In early 2013, a curious correspondence of encrypted e-mails began between a documentary filmmaker and an anonymous source known only as Citizenfour. Documentarian Laura Poitras was already under government scrutiny after making films about the U.S. war in Iraq and Guantanamo. Her mysterious correspondent turned out to be none other than Edward Snowden, the senior government employee in the intelligence community and future alleged traitor to the United States.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Clash of the Titans (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Mar 09, 2010  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/clash.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Adapted from the Greek myth of Perseus (Harry Hamlin) and his struggles to save the Princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker) from death at the hands of the Kraken. Aided by his father Zeus (Laurence Olivier), the Gods bestow on him a series of gifts; a sword, a shield, a helmet that renders him invisible, and a golden owl to guide him on his quest.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Clash of the Titans (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Aug 25, 2010  | 
As a war rages between men and kings and kings and god, the battle amongst the gods is the one that could ultimately destroy the world. Hope rests with Perseus (Sam Worthington), son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), who was raised as a man and sets off on a hazardous journey deep into forbidden worlds to avenge the death of his family and defeat Hades before he can seize power from Zeus and unleash hell on earth.

With only a 29% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had extremely low expectations. While I wouldn't consider the movie a classic, it's a hell of a lot of fun and features adequate acting, a compelling story (revenge is a dish best served cold), and tons of action, especially compared to the slow-paced original from 1981. There's an occasional line of cringe-inducing dialog, but the positives far outweigh any negatives.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Clash of the Titans - 2010 (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Aug 03, 2010  | 

As a war rages between men and kings and kings and god, the battle amongst the gods is the one that could ultimately destroy the world. Hope rests with Perseus (Sam Worthington), son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), who was raised as a man and sets off on a hazardous journey deep into forbidden worlds to avenge the death of his family and defeat Hades before he can seize power from Zeus and unleash hell on earth.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Clerks II 2-Disc Edition (HD DVD)
Shane Buettner  |  Feb 03, 2007  | 

In an effort to outperform the original, sequels invariably spend more money, have more explosions, more action, more stunts and more special effects. In this spirit I suppose it's inevitable that Kevin Smith's <I>Clerks II</I> would turn to bestiality (er, "interspecies erotica") in an effort to go where even the original <I>Clerks</I> hadn't gone before. The original did feature necrophilia as a set piece after all. And there's also a hilariously wrong homage to <I>Silence of the Lambs</I> here that anyone who sees this film will never forgive Kevin Smith or Jason Mewes for.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Cliffhanger (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Jan 10, 2010  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/cliffhanger.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When an equipment malfunction takes the life of an inexperienced climber, Gabe (Sylvester Stallone) places the blame upon himself and loses not only his best friend (Michael Rooker), but his girl (Janine Turner) too. Almost a year later, he is asked to go back to the same mountain range and rescue a group of stranded people, but when they turn out to be a band of criminals led by an international terrorist (John Lithgow) a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Clint + Angelina = Clintgelina?
Ken Korman  |  Mar 11, 2009  | 
Universal
Movie ••• Picture •••• Sound •••½ Extras ••½
All movies directed by Clint Eastwood ar
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Ken Korman  |  Aug 05, 2001  | 

It's hardly the kind of story that drives a classic Steven Spielberg adventure: boy meets spaceship, boy struggles to make a second date, boy lives happily ever after in space. No sharks, no dinosaurs, no Nazis to subdue. But Close Encounters of the Third Kind has endured thanks to its irresistible portrayal of human-alien contact and the sheer spectacle of its special effects.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Addition (Blu-ray)
Tom Norton  |  Nov 14, 2007  | 

I don't count myself a big fan of this widely praised film. It was directed by Steven Spielberg during his "good aliens" period&mdash;a period that included the far superior <I>ET: The Extraterrestrial.</I>

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Cloud Atlas
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 31, 2013  | 
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Cloud Atlas is something of a cinematic curiosity. It is incredibly ambitious and deftly executed, weaving together six disparate tales with similar themes of oppression and rebellion, each told with the same handful of actors playing the key roles in each scenario. Set in different locations and in eras ranging from 1849 up through 2321, the movie serves up everything from a single slave earning his freedom on a sailing ship to a genetically engineered hostess inspiring a full-on societal revolt. But even when the all-star filmmaking team of the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer has three hours to play with, not one of the half-dozen narratives can be particularly deep or overwhelmingly original. They have, however, fashioned an enormous event movie that pushes technique—dramatic as well as purely technical—into bold new territory.
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3D Blu-ray Movie ReviewsBlu-ray Movie Reviews
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 23, 2014  | 
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In 2009’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, ace boy inventor Flint Lockwood had clearly bitten off more than he could chew with his latest invention, a device that produced food from water vapor. Dubbed the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (or FLDSMDFR—pronounced “fldsmdefer”), it inundated his island home of Swallow Falls with a tsunami of edibles. Now the town has been evacuated, and Flint, his dad, his pals, and the rest of his fellow townsfolk have been moved to San Franjose, California, where Flint takes a job as a fledgling inventor at Live Corp.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 3D
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 26, 2010  | 
1010sdsoft.cloudymeat.jpgFlint Lockwood has been obsessed with science and inventing since grade school. He lives on an isolated island that has long since lost its vitality when the sardine trade, its major industry, went under. But Flint has a plan that could change all that, with the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator, or, as Flint puts it, FLD SM DFR (flid sim difur) for short. It turns water into food.

The invention accidentally rockets into the stratosphere, where it remains fixed over the island, soaking up the plentiful water from passing clouds. Soon hamburgers begin to fall from the sky, complete with all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame-seed bun. And that’s just the beginning. At first it’s manna—or at least Big Macs—from heaven, but things quickly spiral out of hand. The town’s ambitious mayor starts living large in more ways than one and turns the town into an all-you-can-eat cruise ship buffet.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Coach Carter
David Vaughn  |  Dec 15, 2008  |  First Published: Dec 16, 2008  | 

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/coachcarter.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Nearly 10 years ago, I remember hearing about a crazy high-school basketball coach who locked his undefeated team out of the gym for poor academic performance in Richmond, California—about 40 miles west of my home town. As a suburb of Oakland, it shares many of the same neighborhood issues, such as street gangs, drug problems, and violence. In this dramatization, as in real life, Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) takes the tough-love approach in order to teach the young men there's more to life than basketball.

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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Coco
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 24, 2018  | 
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Miguel, a feisty youngster in small town Mexico, loves music, particularly the work of his hero, the long dead guitar and singing star, Ernesto de la Cruz. But because his great-great grandfather abandoned his wife and daughter for a career in music, his family remains virulently opposed to music and forbids Miguel’s having anything to do with it.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Coco Before Chanel
David Vaughn  |  Feb 17, 2010  | 
This is an entertaining portrait of the early life of Gabriel Bonheur Chanel (Audrey Tautou), an orphan who would build a fashion empire. Known to her friends as Coco, she emerges from an orphanage to a mundane job as a seamstress and eventually ends up as a concubine for an eccentric French aristocrat.

I enjoyed the film, but I was particularly taken with the cinematography featuring lush settings, Oscar-nominated costumes, and the beauty of Audrey Tautou. The color saturation is slightly washed out in most scenes (intentionally), but the fine detail is mesmerizing in the 1080p encode.

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