Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Roger Kanno  |  Dec 24, 2020
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Mamoro Oshii's beautiful and unsettling anime film, Ghost in the Shell, has been released on Ultra HD Blu-ray to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Based on Masamune Shirow's cyberpunk manga, the film explores themes of existence, and humanity in a technologically advanced world where people are cybernetically enhanced or have their bodies entirely replaced by cybernetics. One such cyborg is the film's protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, who questions her own reality as she battles with the mysterious Puppet Master who hacks not only computers, but also humans.
David Vaughn  |  Dec 15, 2017
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In a world where people are enhanced with technology, Major (Johansson) is rescued from near death, or so she believes. Her cybernetic implants make her the first of her kind as she fights criminals with an upper hand, but things are not always what they seem to be. She begins to have visions of her past and starts to believe that the corporation that “saved” her is actually trying to control her. She makes it her personal mission to unravel her mysterious past and find out what truly happened.
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Sep 27, 2019
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Glory is the 1989 Oscar-winning film (Best Supporting Actor, Denzel Washington) from director Edward Zwick that follows the true story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment—the Union Army's second African-American regiment in the American Civil War—led by white Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick).
Al Griffin  |  Jun 18, 2021
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As the first film to launch the MonsterVerse, a "cinematic universe" featuring enduring monster movie icons, this 2014 reboot of the Godzilla franchise set the template for several movies to come, including Kong: Skull Island and the late-pandemic sensation, Godzilla vs. Kong. Here's the deal: After escaping a nuclear weapons assault (cloaked by authorities as a "nuclear test") in the 1950s, Godzilla went deep underground.
Ralph Potts  |  Aug 30, 2024
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Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire is the latest entry in the Monsterverse film franchise, pitting Kong and Godzilla, against an undiscovered threat while delving further into the histories of these Titans and the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond.

Chris Chiarella  |  May 17, 2019
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If your crystal ball predicted that someday the writer/director of There's Something About Mary would take home an Academy Award for Best Picture, let's hope you bet big and didn't smash the thing. Peter Farrelly's Green Book is an emotional smorgasbord, one that would no doubt be appreciated by its ever-famished "hero," Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). He's a gleefully ignorant yet strangely lovable tough guy (what my people would call a cavone), albeit one who needs to learn a thing or two about race relations. Tony gets his chance when, on a hiatus from his job as a bouncer at The Copacabana, he's hired to chauffeur piano virtuoso Dr. Don Shirley (two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali)—a black man—on a concert tour of the Deep South in 1962.
David Vaughn  |  Apr 20, 2018
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Phil Connors, a TV weatherman from Pittsburgh, is dispatched to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities where he’s teamed up with a young and annoyingly cheerful producer and a smart-aleck cameraman. With impending offers from other stations, Connors has short-timer’s disease and isn’t what you’d call a pleasant guy to be around. In fact, he’s a first-rate pain in the rear whom his coworkers want to spend as little time with as possible.
Chris Chiarella  |  Nov 17, 2017
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In a world of seemingly infinite crappy sequels, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is worthy of special praise for getting so much right. While delivering another dose of the irreverent humor and hybrid-fantasy action that made the first film so popular, it also cultivates the themes and plot lines so that the two volumes fit seamlessly, telling an epic story.
Ralph Potts  |  Nov 02, 2023  |  First Published: Nov 03, 2023
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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, the final installment in the trilogy, finds our beloved band of misfits set on repairing the extreme damage done by Thanos during his run-in with The Avengers. But it isn’t long before the Guardians’ attempt to return to normal is upended by a brutal attack from a new enemy who has a direct connection to Rocket’s turbulent past and will use any means to fulfill his quest.

David Vaughn  |  Jul 07, 2017
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One of the bloodiest battles in World War II happened on Okinawa in 1945, and it definitely wasn’t the place you wanted to be if you didn’t carry a weapon. But for conscientious objector Desmond Doss, this wasn’t an option. While he believed the war was justified—which is why he volunteered—his personal belief was that killing was wrong and he wasn’t going to be a party to it. He was in the war as a medic, and he was there to save lives, not take them. And save lives he did—75 of them over the course of one night when he was stuck behind enemy lines.
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 23, 2024
Not exactly a profound epiphany, I’ll admit, but I believe that the reason so many of us look forward to Halloween each year is that it’s simply a fun holiday. It’s fun to dress up, it’s a fun excuse to eat more Snickers Almonds than usual, and it’s even fun to be scared, particularly in the controlled environment of the home theater.
Roger Kanno  |  Apr 08, 2022
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Halloween Kills, the twelfth film in the Halloween franchise, picks up immediately following the events in the 2018 reboot of the original film of the same name. These latest entries were directed by David Gordon Green with a third installment, Halloween Ends, also to be directed by Green, planned for release later in 2022.
Chris Chiarella  |  Jan 14, 2023
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Michael Mann's preeminent crime thriller somehow eluded wide audiences in 1995 but has since become an absolute classic of the genre. As he did with Thief several years prior, the writer/director goes deep into the world of career crooks, imparting specific tricks of the trade while revealing the perpetrators as utterly no-nonsense individuals. We can't dismiss them as heartless—their attempts to establish or maintain relationships yield much of the film's fascinating character drama—yet they are incredibly dangerous, willing to kill without hesitation as needed.

Chris Chiarella  |  May 20, 2022
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Adult-skewing animation wasn't a new genre by 1981 (thank you, Ralph Bakshi), but was the world at that time ready for Heavy Metal? Inspired by the illustrated fantasy publication of the same name, this R-rated feature film served up a disparate series of sex-and-violence-filled short stories, loosely held together by the presence of a deadly mystical sphere called the Loc-Nar. Since each issue was an anthology, with assorted tales from a variety of creators, the range of dramatic tones and visual styles here perfectly captures the spirit of the magazine.
Al Griffin  |  Oct 26, 2018
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Like its sci-fi counterpart, the horror film genre is packed with “cult classics.” But there are only a few horror titles that can lay claim to “classic” film status. Universal Monsters films from the 1920s through the 1950s notwithstanding (see Boxes of Joy on page 28), my list is limited to The Shining, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween, and Carrie.

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