Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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David Vaughn  |  Apr 15, 2010

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/cocoonbd.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Art (Don Ameche), Ben (Wilford Brimley), and Joe (Hume Cronyn) live a perfectly respectable life in a Florida retirement community. In order to feel younger, the three break into an indoor pool at a nearby property for the thrill of the experience and some private pool time. When a group of aliens from another world rent the property some strange physiological changes begin to occur making the men wonder if they've discovered the Fountain of Youth.

Josef Krebs  |  Nov 10, 2017
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This being the third film in a row I’ve reviewed on Blu-ray in which a man’s life is destroyed by the death of a child and the loss of a wife (alongside Manchester by the Sea and Nocturnal Animals) leads me to suspect that a strong sense of loss is vibrating through our national zeitgeist despite the blessings of unsocial media. Collateral Beauty, a feel-good downer (a romtrage, if you will), is a parable filled with It’s a Wonderful Life–like whimsy concerning a grieving advertising executive, Howard (Will Smith), who, two years on from the loss of his daughter, is writing letters to Time, Death, and Love to voice his complaints and express his trauma.
Chris Chiarella  |  Jun 12, 2020
It's around this time of year that a few disparate "guy" movies new to the format or re-released usually pop up on Blu-ray or Ultra HD Blu-ray. That's because, as I've said since the early DVD days, discs make fantastic gifts, and not just for Father's Day. But Sony chose a different path for 2020, opening the door of its vast and prestigious Columbia Pictures vault to debut six titles on 4K Blu-ray as the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 1.
David Vaughn  |  Jun 13, 2011
Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is one of the best salesmen for an East coast-based multinational corporation who's climbing the corporate ladder. When tough times rock the company, he finds himself one of the casualties of the layoffs and must make adjustments to his lifestyle in order to make ends meet.

Writer/Director John Wells wanted to make this film after the dot-com bust earlier this century but couldn't get the project underway. After the recent downturn in the economy he was able to adjust the script and delivers a fantastic drama about how a layoff can ruin your life. The all-star cast includes Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner, although my favorite character in the film is Tommy Lee Jones who plays the executive with a conscience.

Tom Norton  |  May 20, 2007  |  First Published: May 21, 2007

Stop the presses. There's a new set of reference high definition discs in town, discs that in technical quality alone very nearly blow anything you've seen so far out of the water. It's the <I>Complete Matrix Trilogy</I>, available this Tuesday (May 22) only in a boxed set of three HD DVDs.

David Vaughn  |  Jul 29, 2016
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Football Hall of Famer Mike Webster of the Pittsburg Steelers won four Super Bowl rings throughout his 17-year NFL career. He retired in 1990 and was enshrined seven years later, but his life would go downhill from there: Five years later, he was dead from a heart attack. The sad story would have stopped there if it weren’t for a junior pathologist in the Allegheny coroner’s office whose relentless search to know why led to the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. As more cases came to his attention, this Nigerian-born doctor took on one of the most powerful institutions in the world—the NFL.
David Vaughn  |  Jun 23, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/shopaholic.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) loses her job, her maxed-out credit cards begin to cramp her style. Her dream job is to work for <I>Alette</I>, one of New York's elite fashion magazines, but when the position's filled internally, her only job opportunity is with <I>Successful Saving</I>, a struggling financial magazine owned by the same publishing company. With a debt collector (Robert Stanton) hot on her heels, Rebecca becomes the unlikely author of a column on saving money.

David Vaughn  |  Nov 04, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/contact.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>When Carl Sagan wrote <i>Contact</i>, he framed it in the context of a feature film, and it shows. Where most sci-fi flicks rely on wiz-bang special effects and evil alien invaders, this one is story-driven and has a firm grasp on real science. The video encode is solid, but it's the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack that steals the show with an immersive surround experience, first-rate frequency response, and superlative dynamic range.

David Vaughn  |  Oct 25, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/contact.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) has fixed her gaze on the sky her whole life. When her SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project is canceled by the US Government, she goes in search of private funding and receives it from a secretive multimillionaire, S.A. Hadden (John Hurt). One night, she and her scientific team receive a signal from space that includes the blueprints of a mysterious machine. What does it do?

David Vaughn  |  Apr 25, 2012

The trailer for this movie showed a lot of promise and the star power of Mark Wahlberg had me eagerly awaiting its release on Blu-ray. Sadly, the screenplay is a predictable mess, the acting inconsistent, and the twists and turns have been done countless times in Hollywood that the ending couldn't come soon enough. At least the AVC video encode is loaded with detail and other than some occasional black crush, there isn't much to complain about, but the best aspect of the entire production is the fantastic DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack the features plenty of frequency response and some pinpoint imaging.
David Vaughn  |  Sep 15, 2008

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/coolhandluke.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Paul Newman stars as "Cool Hand" Lucas Jackson, a man sentenced to a Southern prison camp for destroying public property&#151;well, who wouldn't want to cut off the top of a parking meter on a drunken bliss? Anyhow, soon after entering prison, Luke can't seem to bend to the arbitrary rules, and it's time to break out of the joint.

David Vaughn  |  Jul 19, 2010
Suspended NYPD detectives Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) search for Monroe's stolen 1952 collectable baseball card which he was planning to sell in order to pay for his daughter's wedding. Along the way, the two stumble into an ongoing investigation of a deadly drug cartel and are given an opportunity to resurrect their careers and reputations by taking the bad guys down.

The 1980s saw its share of some great buddy-cop films with 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop, but sadly this doesn't come close to delivering the laughs or a fraction of the entertainment value. Morgan's act is tiresome and the script from Mark and Rob Cullen is far from original.

Brian C. Fenton  |  Apr 09, 2003
I finally began to trust my 8-year-old son with my electronic equipment and software-he understands my warnings about disc care now that one of his favorite PlayStation titles got scratched so that it crashes at the same point every time. But now a DVD from my three-disc set of The Simpsons' first season has disappeared.
David Vaughn  |  Jul 24, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/coraline.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>From the director of <i>The Nightmare Before Christmas</i> comes another visually stunning, stop-motion animated feature&#151;the first to be shot using stereoscopic 3D. Although the 3D experience doesn't translate well to Blu-ray, the 2D feature is amazingly clear with inky blacks and phenomenal contrast. The detail on the miniature sets looks surprisingly lifelike, from the fabric used for curtains to the textures of the characters' clothing and even their expressions. The audio track doesn't take a back seat to the video, either, featuring demo-worthy surround imaging.

David Vaughn  |  Jul 24, 2009

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/coraline.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) has just moved with her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) to a new home in Oregon. With her parents distracted by work and no one to play with except an annoying boy, Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), she spends her time visiting her older neighbors. When she convinces herself that her new home is the most boring place on earth, she uncovers a secret door that leads to a parallel world much like her own&#151;but much better. Is the grass greener on the other side or is it all an illusion?

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