Blu-ray Review: Dr. No – Ultimate Edition w/ Movie Ticket
The longtime New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote of James Bond in his review of Dr No on May 30, 1963: “Nonsense, you say. Of course, it’s nonsense — pure, escapist bunk, with Bond, an elegant fellow, played by Sean Connery, doing everything (and everybody) that an idle day-dreamer might like to do. […]
Blu-Ray Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is based on the Tony Award-winning musical with a book by Hugh Wheeler and words and music by Stephen Sondheim. The Broadway show originally opened on March 1, 1979. Len Cariou won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd. […]
DVD Review: The Happening
M. Night Shyamalan burst on the international film scene with 1999’s The Sixth Sense, which was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He followed that success by writing and directing Unbreakable, released in 2000. The film received mixed reviews and a lukewarm box office reception. Signs, released in 2002, […]
DVD Review: Watership Down – Deluxe Edition
I was very young when Richard Adams’ Watership Down hit American movie theaters in 1978, but I do remember it seemed like every adult or teenager I knew had read or was reading the book, in preparation for the film. The plot is rather simple: Watership Down tells the tale of a group of rabbits […]
Blu-ray Review: The Godfather Collection – The Coppola Restoration
The Godfather Collection – The Coppola Restoration has to be one of the best Blu-ray releases of 2008. Parts I and II are arguably two of the greatest films ever made, and now the entire trilogy is available remastered, with a high-definition Blu-ray picture and TrueHD 5.1 sound. This is just about as good as […]
Blu-ray Review: Shrek the Third
Debuting in 2001, Shrek was a CG animated feature loosely based off the children’s book of the same name by William Steig. Telling the story of a hermitic swamp-dwelling ogre whose territory is overrun by displaced faerie tale creatures, the film was a wild and biting parody of the many cultural clichés stemming from classic […]
DVD Review: Pathology
Directed by Marc Schoelermann and written by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, creators of Crank (a 2006 film that has developed a bit of a cult following), Pathology received mixed reviews and a tepid box office response upon its release in April of 2008. Milo Ventmiglia stars as Dr. Ted Grey, a brilliant graduate of […]
DVD Review: Grease – Rockin’ Rydell Edition
Ordinarily, I hate double dipping. In this case, double dipping means releasing the same DVD twice with exactly the same bonus material. Paramount released Grease: Rockin’ Rydell Edition back in September of 2006. Now, just two years later, the same edition has been released again, ostensibly to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the films theatrical […]
DVD Review: Deception
Deception has been used as a film title several times, so perhaps the name of this 2008 offering should have tipped me off to its unoriginal story. However with the star power of Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, I figured any film that described itself as an “erotic thriller” couldn’t be all bad. I envisioned […]
DVD Review: Sleeping Beauty – 2 Disc Platinum Edition
Production began on Sleeping Beauty in 1951, voices were recorded in 1952, animation production took from 1953 until 1958, and the stereophonic musical score, partially based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet of the same name, was recorded in 1957. The film holds a notable position in Disney animation as the last Disney feature to use hand-inked cels. […]