Into the Blu

You’ve got to expect some pretty big things from a film that uses the massacre at Wounded Knee as a mere starting point. Add Viggo Mortensen fresh from his stint as Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s excellent Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and how can you not expect big things? And if that’s not enough, we’ll throw in some genuine Arabian sheiks and breathtaking cinematography… oh, and there’s horses. With a combination like that you simply can’t go wrong, or can you? Hidalgo isn’t by any definition a bad film, but it had far too much going for it to be a hair above average. Continue Reading

After the transformation of the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings books into hugely successful films, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to tackle C.S. Lewis’s famous novels The Chronicles of Narnia. Continue Reading

Let’s say we take one of the greatest (if not the greatest) female novelists of all time, and reduce her life into a romantic fluff piece aimed squarely at fans of modern chick-lit? We’d get something close to Becoming Jane. That may be a bit harsh for this light-hearted tale of a young Jane Austin. I wasn’t completely underwhelmed by the film, more like just *whelmed*.? Fortunately, this Blu-ray Disc is a nice surprise otherwise with superior video transfer and a nice audio track to boot. So, all is not lost, you husbands of women who force such films upon you.
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Pretend just for a few seconds that you are an aspiring song writer. You realize that the only way to possibly succeed in doing that would mean having to pick up and move elsewhere to do it. Mind you, you don?t have much money or a job waiting for you at this destination but you know you are good enough and will stop at nothing to get what you want. Do you forgo your dreams and wonder what could have been or do you pick up and go?

That brings us to Coyote Ugly. Continue Reading

I think that by revisiting Unbreakable, and looking at it outside of M. Night Shyamalan’s other films like The Sixth Sense and Signs, there’s actually a pretty good movie going on there. I mean, a movie that grossed $95 million domestically can’t be considered a failure, right? It did, however, do amazing overall numbers, the international totals brought the film up to a near $250 million gross. However, I guess when you put them up against Signs ($227 million domestic, $408 million worldwide) and The Sixth Sense ($293 million domestic, $672 million worldwide), maybe it can be considered disappointing, but the film itself is pretty good.

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I am sure at one point or another in everyone?s life; they wished they could be successful, smarter or healthier than they already are. It is only natural. Now what if I told you that when you have children of your own you could make that decision for them? Would you do it?

Vincent?s (Ethan Hawke) dream is to one day go into space. Since a very young age, he had read every book he could get his hands on to find out what it would take be an astronaut. Vincent fought off his parents urges to give up that dream because they knew he could never do it. Why? It was because he wasn’t created the “natural way.” Continue Reading

Let’s be clear about one thing up front. Any movie that stars and is written by Artie Lange is most likely not going to be everyone’s cup of coffee. Anyone who has listened to The Howard Stern Show knows who Artie Lange is and will most likely be the ones interested in watching Beer League. When I sat down to watch the Beer League Blu-ray for the first time, I went into it with an open mind. I expected nothing. I had heard and read people’s opinion of the movie, but wanted to be the judge for myself. Truly, it is not as bad as some would think. Continue Reading

It was back in 1999 when I first saw Run Lola Run. I remember exactly where I rented it, what city I was in and who I watched it with. I read about the film online and when the opportunity came about to rent it, I jumped at the chance. One of my main reasons for wanting to rent it was because my companion was in fact German and from Germany and I knew she would enjoy watching a movie in her native language. Little did I know before watching Lola, it would become one of my all time favorite movies. Continue Reading

The last time I saw both Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in a movie together, it was in 2000, in The Yards. It just so happens that the director of We Own the Night, James Gray, also directed that film. Having not worked for 7 years should have been a tell-tale sign of things to come. However, I was hopeful that this time around, with We Own the Night, Gray would be able to hit pay dirt. Sadly, We Own the Night comes up broke. Continue Reading

Don’t you just miss the old days of the Cold War? Let’s be honest. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there just haven’t been any interesting bad guys around anymore. Sure, there’s plenty of bad guys out there, more now than likely ever before. But these bad guys are just nasty and about as colorful as a 1 crayon box of crayolas. If you miss those old days, then Crimson Tide is the film for you. It’s one of those last looks back before an era disappears under the horizon never to be seen again. Continue Reading

By now you must already know the formula. You’ve seen it so many times before, I’m amazed that we haven’t all gotten a little tired of it. There are comedic versions like The Bad News Bears, and there are plenty of “true to life” versions out , so there’s never going to be a scarcity of stories. Whether it’s a “home town hero makes good” or the “come from nowhere victory” that inspires the Rocky films, the story is old. In this story, so is the hero; in fact, that’s the problem. Continue Reading

I love vampire movies. I remember watching Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee with my father on late night Saturdays when I was a kid. Since those days vampires have evolved. Ann Rice certainly deserves a lot of credit for breathing new life into the undead. Her gothic depictions of the creatures in her Vampire Chronicles stories added a wealth of new mythology and atmosphere to the age old monsters. Underworld would bring us even more vampire lore and, of course, the most attractive vampire to date in Selene. Continue Reading