3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Young Merida may be a princess in the misty highlands of Scotland, but she isn’t happy with her lot. She wants only to practice her horsemanship, archery, and all other manner of un-princess-like behavior. Her father is delighted, but her mother is beside herself and arranges for the neighboring clans to vie for Merida’s hand in marriage. Our heroine, however, isn’t all that thrilled by the idea—and even less by the suitors. Fleeing into the woods, Merida stumbles upon a witch and has her cast a spell to make her mother change. Her mother does change, but unfortunately not exactly as Merida intended.

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. I wouldn't consider the movie a classic, but 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 and even with a second watching I found myself drawn into the story.

Flint 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.

Coraline Jones is a lonely little girl. She has just moved into a creepy old house, has no real friends, and her parents are so preoccupied with their work on a gardening catalog that they have no time for her. But she soon discovers a small, papered-over doorway in the living room. It leads to another universe—similar to her own but different in important ways. Her “other” parents in that universe are devoted to satisfying her every whim. Her only new friend there doesn’t talk much (actually, not at all), the neighbors who share the old, subdivided house are fascinating rather than merely eccentric, and everything is colorful and fun.

All is not what it seems. Coraline is, at its core, a bloodless horror story. Much like the recent computer-animated film 9 (the first post-apocalyptic sock-puppet movie, and another dynamite audio/video transfer), it gets under your skin in ways that animated fare rarely does and could seriously frighten young children. It also uses stop-motion animation as refined by stop-motion expert Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monkeybone, James and the Giant Peach).

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.

Marvel explores its mystical side is in this mind-bending, psychedelic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe directed by Scott Derrickson. Benedict Cumberbatch plays brilliant but egotistical neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange, who loses the use of his hands, and subsequently his career, when he crashes his supercar. Strange travels to Kathmandu seeking a supernatural cure for his injuries. There, an immortal sorceress, the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), accepts him as her pupil, trains him in the mystic arts, and turns him into a powerful sorcerer.