DVD's and Blu-ray's are Our Passion

Archive for May, 2009

DVD Review: The Best of Star Trek – The Original Series

In the last few years, I have become an avid Star Trek fan. Star Trek originally ran for three seasons and eighty episodes, each of which I’ve seen at least twice. It is perhaps unfair to compare my personal Star Trek collection to that of an average consumer, because I have been given review copies [...]

DVD Review: El Dorado (Paramount Centennial Collection)

Last time you took the front door and I took the back, this time we’ll do’er the other way around. –John Wayne as Cole Thornton El Dorado was the second to last film of legendary director Howard Hawks. Released in 1967, El Dorado is the second film in a trilogy directed by Hawks varying the [...]

Blu-ray Review: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road opens with a young man and a young woman (perhaps in their early to mid-twenties), meeting at a party and charming each other with meaningless small talk. In the world of movies, this means there destined to fall in love. In the next scene, time has jumped forward several years; the same couple [...]

DVD Review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Paramount Centennial Collection)

Released in 1962, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was directed by the great John Ford and starred Hollywood legends James Stewart and John Wayne. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck, was adapted from a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson. The film was a big hit upon its release, and Edith [...]

DVD Review: Boston Legal: Season Five

Created by David E. Kelley, Boston Legal was a spin-off of the long-running series The Practice, Boston Legal followed the personal and professional exploits of a group of attorneys working at the law firm of Crane, Poole & Schmidt. A solid top twenty show in the Nielsen ratings, Boston Legal has the distinction of drawing [...]

Blu-ray Review: Major League

What I want is for us to finish dead last. The Cleveland Indians have been in the cellar for decades; when the owner dies suddenly, his scheming, ex-showgirl wife, Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton), takes over the day-to-day operations of the team. She wants to move the team to the warmer climate of Miami, Florida. To [...]

DVD Review: Falling Down (Deluxe Edition)

The son of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas has been an actor for over forty years. An Oscar winner both as a producer (1975′s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and an actor (1987′s Wall Street), he proven himself to be a versatile performer both in films and on television. Though he has worked [...]

Blu-ray Review: Dexter – The Complete Second Season

Dexter is back and he’s chillier than ever in Blu! Dexter is a drama series based on the 2004 Jeff Lindsay novel, Dexter Darkly Dreaming. The novel was adapted for television by Emmy Award-winning screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the pilot episode. Set in Miami, the series centers the series centers on Dexter Morgan [...]

Blu-ray Review: Taken (Extended Cut)

20th Century Fox | 2008 | 93 mins | Unrated How far would you go to save a loved one? What would you do? Who would you be willing to kill? Asking these questions, Taken opened in Europe before its American release; Parisian crowds were ecstatic about the brutal vision of director Pierre Morel and [...]

DVD Review: The Waltons – The Complete Ninth Season

When The Waltons hit the air in 1972, producers Earl Hamner Jr., Lee Rich and the series other executives constructed the show to emphasize both the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Depression in an effort to evoke a kind of nostalgia for the recent past. Hamner, Jr. understood that while it should be obvious [...]

DVD Review: October Road – The Complete Second Season

Created by André Nemec (Alias), Scott Rosenberg (wrote the film Beautiful Girls) and Josh Applebaum (LIFE ON MARS), who also serve as the series’ executive producers, asks the question, can you really go home again? Written by Scott Rosenberg, he freely admits that the show is semi-autobiographical and based on what happened after Beautiful Girls [...]

Blu-ray Review: Paul Blart – Mall Cop

I’ve been ripping on movies with the “Happy Madison Production” label a lot lately but with Paul Blart: Mall Cop, I actually found one I enjoyed. Think of Paul Blart: Mall Cop this way, it’s what Die Hard would have been had John Candy starred in it. More succinctly, it’s a blend of comedic styles [...]

Blu-ray Review: Big

For whatever reason, Hollywood studios inundated the movie going public with a series of body switching movies at the end of the ’80′s. Like Father Like Son got things going in October 1987, then March through June 1988, Vice Versa, 18 Again and Big were released in a cluster. Most of these films came and [...]

DVD Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

“I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like all of us, who is unable to stop time. Films are a truly fascinating art form; [...]

Blu-ray Review: The Uninvited

Just a couple of months ago, I was writing about American filmmaker’s propensity to remake Japanese horror films. With that well running dry, it seems some directors have decided to move on to Korea. Directed by brothers Thomas and Charles Guard, The Uninvited is not a remake of the American 1944 classic ghost story or [...]

DVD Review: Enchanted April

Based on the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, Enchanted April is a wonderful gem of a movie. Released in 1992, it is the story of two married women quietly living unhappy lives. One day, Lottie (Josie Lawrence and Rose (Miranda Richardson), impulsively decide to escape their depressing lives in post World War I London [...]

Blu-ray Review: Bride Wars

I like both Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson but Bride Wars is offensive, simplistic and mundane. Marketed as a romantic comedy, the film directed by Gary Winick (13 Going on 30, Tadpole) and written by Greg Depaul (Saving Silverman), Casey Wilson (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) and June Diane Raphael (I can’t believe it took [...]

DVD Review: Peyton Place – Part One

Though Peyton Place hit the air several years before I was born, it’s always been a great curiosity of mine. Through the years, I have read Grace Metalious’ 1956 novel and her 1959 follow-up, Return to Peyton Place and seen the 1957 film adapted from the novel. However, I had only seen an episode of [...]

DVD Review: Galaxy Quest (Deluxe Edition)

Though it was inspired by Star Trek, to call Galaxy Quest a simple spoof would mean belittling one of the greatest sci-fi comedies ever made. Written by David Howard and Robert Gordon and directed by Dean Parisot (Fun with Dick and Jane). While the film obviously has a lot of fun pointing out the silly [...]

Blu-ray Review: Three Days of the Condor

Rarely is the hero the reader, that user of mind not body. The routine of the reader is antithetical to that of the hero. The devourer of words is seen as passive, a spectator, an observer of others actions. All of which is unjust, for not only is knowledge power but words too have a [...]