Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion premiered in London back in 1913. Loosely based on an ancient Greek myth, its plot involves a linguistics professor, Henry Higgins, teaching a bedraggled flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to speak proper English—not only well enough to pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball, but to "get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English!"

When on-the-run drifter Stanton Carlisle stumbles into a seedy, travelling carnival in the late 1930s, he begins an adventure that might not end well. Ingratiating himself with the show's resident fortune-telling act, he manages to develop a flair for reading people, a talent that naive audiences see as mind-reading. Eventually he sets off in search of fame and richer pickings along with Molly, the carny's electric-girl act (and the film's rare sympathetic character). He hits the top, performing for upscale audiences, but when he meets Dr. Lilith Ritter, a big-city psychiatrist with wealthy clients and her own way with a grift, he more than meets his match.

Universal Studios needn't have advertised on Nobody's disc cover that it sprang from the mind of Derek Kolstad, writer of John Wick, since it's at its core the same movie. And that's not such a bad thing, since the erstwhile-enforcer-makes-a-violent-comeback formula is a winning one. This time the story lives or dies on the substantial charm of star Bob Odenkirk, who for the most part keeps his renowned comedic chops under wraps, instead allowing the humor to grow from the incongruity of suburban schlemiel Hutch's explosive and deadly skills.

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.

Oppenheimer is the epic story of an extraordinary genius, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), tasked by the U.S. government to lead the team that would deliver the world’s first atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project assembled many of the world’s brightest minds in a makeshift town in the far reaches of the New Mexico desert, inevitably igniting clashes of styles and personalities. In a race against time to devise a weapon like none ever created, they had to overcome all manner of obstacles and faced unknown risks to complete their assignment and contribute to a decisive end of World War II.

I typically tend to bash films that rely on hackneyed plot devices and laughably implausible action sequences, and Disney’s latest escapade in their beleaguered Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is guilty on all charges. The entire series has anchored its plot lines to a host of supernatural elements like cursed pirates, leviathan sea monsters, and homicidal mermaids.