Blu-ray Movie Reviews

| Apr 30, 2007 |

A seemingly random death initially appears to be unrelated to a devastating New Orleans ferry bombing that kills over 500 people. While the body is discovered in the same area as the explosion, and the cause of death is consistent with the tragedy, it turns up hours before the disaster. As Federal agent Doug Carlin investigates both the random death and the bombing, however, he suspects a connection. He soon has the opportunity to use a state-of-the art surveillance system that can seemingly look in on the most private and inaccessible activities, hoping that it will help him prove a link between the two events.

Despicable Me (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Dec 12, 2010 | First Published: Dec 13, 2010 |

Looking to gain the title of "World's Greatest Villain," Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) adopts three orphans in order to steal a shrinking machine from his nemesis, Vector (Jason Segel). What he didn't count on was the three girls changing his outlook on the world and he'll stop at nothing to protect them.

The marketing campaign for this film stunk and I had no desire to see it in the theaters (and neither did my kids) but was willing to give it a try on Blu-ray. Surprisingly there's a touching story behind the fantastic animation as the villain becomes the hero and discovers he does have a heart buried beneath his evil exterior.

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Despicable Me 2

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 12, 2014 |

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When we last saw Gru, our slightly dorky but lovable and (in his own mind) super-villain, he had softened up thanks to the trio of meet-cute orphans. Gru is now happily domesticated, has renounced his bad-guy role, and has converted his villain’s lair into a production facility for a range of delicious jams and jellies.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Devil (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Dec 15, 2010 |

A group of five strangers are stranded in an elevator high above Philadelphia. When the lights go out, something bad is bound to happen and in one particular case, someone dies. The building's security guards call the police and Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) comes to investigate the murder but is the Devil the culprit?

This is the first in a series of thrillers dubbed "The Night Chronicles" produced by M. Night Shyamalen based upon his stories. Overall, this is a middling affair that feels more like a TV episode than a feature film and I didn't find the story scary or very thrilling. Then again, I've said the same thing about most of Shyamalen's films since The Sixth Sense.

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Dial M For Murder

Corey Gunnestad | Mar 20, 2013 |

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Alfred Hitchcock was a supremely gifted and innovative filmmaker and master of suspense…and a bit of a psycho in his own right, according to recent biographies on him. His films are the benchmark standard that nearly every suspense thriller since has taken its cues from. And in 1954, Hitchcock shot Dial M for Murder in the 3D format at a time when the novelty of 3D films was waning.

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Die Hard: 30th Anniversary Edition

Chris Chiarella | Aug 03, 2018 |

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In the 30 years since its debut, Die Hard has been riffed on and ripped off beyond count, and been sequelized no less than four times. This crown jewel of the Fox catalog, unleashed upon audiences with a ferocity, personality, and originality that we never saw coming, will likely never be topped. A very 1980s interpretation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it finds grouchy New York City police detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) stuck in an under-construction Los Angeles skyscraper on December 24th.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dinner for Schmucks (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | Dec 27, 2010 |

Tim (Paul Rudd) is a rising executive who can fast-track his career by participating in his boss's exclusive dinner party, at which the winning executive brings the biggest buffoon. Enter Barry (Steve Carell), an IRS agent with a unique hobby of creating dioramas with dead mice.

What passes for a successful comedy these days make me question my sense of humor, but I actually enjoyed this one. Rudd and Carell have great chemistry, and thankfully the elaborate dinner party is a very small part of the story with the screenplay concentrating on the budding relationship between the two leads.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dirty Dancing – Limited Keepsake Edition (Blu-ray)

David Vaughn | May 03, 2010 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/dirty.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>While vacationing in the summer of 1963 with her family, 17-year-old Baby (Jennifer Grey) is drawn to the staff quarters by stirring music and meets rebellious Jonny (Patrick Swayze), the hotel dance instructor, who is as experienced as Baby is naïve. Oh the possibilities.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Dirty Harry: Ultimate Collector's Edition

Marc Horowitz | Jun 05, 2008 |

Warner

Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool

(See review for ratings)

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Disc Roundup – Mission Irreversible: A Summer Vacation Trek with My Looney Bros.

Chris Chiarella | Aug 01, 2023 |

As students on their warm weather break wend their way through their summer reading lists, we tender to SoundandVision.com’s visitors our first-ever Summer Watching List, a menagerie of 4K discs, HD Blu-rays and DVDs selected to entertain us and perhaps even distract from the worldwide heat records that have been broken thus far.

From debut seasons of hot TV shows to complete

It's a story that's been told countless

Continue

series, from kid-friendly to adults-only animation, from magnificent restorations of genre classics to reissues of popular film franchises that are returning to the multiplex this season, you’ll find plenty of reasons to hole up in the home theater with the air conditioner blasting and your ice cubes clinking.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Disney's A Christmas Carol (Blu-ray) David Vaughn | Nov 15, 2010 |

A high-tech retelling of Charles Dickens' beloved tale about a penny-pinching Scrooge (Jim Carey) and his encounter with three ghosts who take him on an eye-opening journey to discover the true meaning of Christmas. times throughout cinematic history but Robert Zemeckis puts his own spin it and delivers a technological marvel that bored the hell out of my family. The story can easily be told in under an hour but the 95 minutes felt like nine hours, especially when Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I'm surprised the film received a PG rating due to some scary images of the ghost's visits. Regardless, the beautiful animation couldn't make up for the shortcomings of the screenplay.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Disneynature: Earth (Blu-ray) David Vaughn | Sep 14, 2009 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/earth.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>This is the story of three animal families on a journey across our planetpolar bears, elephants, and humpback whales. Follow a mother bear and her two cubs as they search for food, a herd of elephants as they trek to water-rich lands, and a whale and her calf as they journey to the Antarctic.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

District 9

David Vaughn | Dec 23, 2009 |

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/d9.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In the early 1980s, an alien spaceship hovers over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, and shows no signs of life. After waiting six months for contact, the government decides to cut into the vessel to see what's inside, and it finds the alien crew starving and malnourished. The local authorities set up a refugee camp for the aliens, and over the span of nearly 30 years, their numbers grow to over 1.8 million. Now what?

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District 9

Chris Chiarella | Dec 11, 2020 |

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District 9 rises above its disparate components—there are multiple strong influences, everything from Alien Nation to the faux-documentary feel of The Office—to deliver a socially resonant story that's even more relevant a decade after its release. Like all good science fiction, its impact derives from how it weaves in the trappings of everyday life, perhaps illuminating our own foibles.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Divergent

David Vaughn | Nov 12, 2014 |

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Set sometime in the future in a world devastated by war, a group of human survivors has fortified the city of Chicago as their home base, and in order to keep the peace, they have separated the populace into five distinct groups based upon their personality traits. Candor is for those who seek the truth, Erudite is the intellectuals, Amity is for peace, Abnegation is for the selfless, and Dauntless is filled with thrill seekers who also serve as the security for the community. When Tris comes of age and must choose her “career,” her aptitude test shows her not fitting into one group. She is a Divergent (think square peg going into the round hole), and in the supposed utopian society, this causes problems—and all hell is going to break loose.

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