Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Both a prequel and a sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again tells two stories: the first set in the present day as Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) prepares for the grand reopening of her mother Donna’s (Meryl Streep) hotel, and the second when the young Donna (Lily James) first arrives on the island in 1979. Sophie learns about her mother’s fun-filled adventures with the young Dynamos, Tanya and Rosie, and how she first met her three possible dads, Harry, Bill, and Sam, all those years ago.

When an IMF agent gets killed in the line of duty, critical files containing Russian nuclear launch codes that he was carrying fall into the wrong hands. With the help of two IMF colleagues, agent Ethan Hunt penetrates the Kremlin to find out the identity of “Cobalt,” a terrorist who wants the codes to start a nuclear war. Things go awry when Cobalt plants explosives in the fortress-like complex, and Hunt and his team get blamed for the resulting carnage. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Russia, the President is forced to disavow the IMF, leaving it up to Hunt and his team to solve the crisis.

With the FBI hunting them after their last “show,” the Horsemen have been in hiding, honing their skills in preparation for their next Robin Hood–inspired adventure. Their target this time around is an unethical tech mogul, whose new product isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Unfortunately for our heroes, their plan backfires when the FBI crashes the show and they must make a fast getaway. They end up on the other side of the world where they’re blackmailed into performing their most impossible heist yet.

Onboard the starship Avalon, thousands of passengers and crew are bound for a new colony on a distant planet. They’re in suspended animation for the 120-year journey. But passengers Jim Preston and, later, Aurora Lane are awakened 90 years too soon—and the pods can’t be reconfigured to put them back to sleep.

The long-running Japanese franchise Power Rangers is rebooted in this 2017 film from director Dean Israelite and writer John Gatins. The somewhat camp story follows a group of teen misfits who uncover a collection of ancient artifacts and a buried alien ship; endowed with superpowers, the teens must muster their new powers and learn to work together to save the world. Power Rangers is hardly high art, and it never has been. The American version of the series was culled from stock Japanese footage edited together with new English-speaking scenes.

How many more movies and TV shows will simulate virtual reality to tell a “thought-provoking” story about the fate of society? I gave up on Netflix’s Black Mirror because I could not bear another tale of VR gone awry, but Ready Player One brings the pedigree of Steven Spielberg, plus Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel. How could it miss?