In the early days of Blu-ray, the releases were skewed to what I would describe as the PS3 crowd, with far too many releases consisting of bad sci-fi and slasher/horror films for my taste. Even today, I am often a bit confused as to why some really mediocre films are rushed to release on Blu-ray while other much better films have yet to see the (Blu?) light of day. One such film is The Last King of Scotland which hit theaters in 2006. One would have thought that with Forrest Whitaker winning the Oscar for his role as Idi Amin in that film, that it would have made its way to Blu-ray much sooner than early 2010. Thankfully it finally has. Was it worth the wait? Read the full story

In light of my name, I thought a review of a film entitled Whip It would be a natural. I had never heard of the film before and only knew that it starred Ellen Page and involved Roller Derby, a “sport” that I thought had disappeared from view long ago. You never know about these things as every now and then a film comes up that takes you totally by surprise with how entertaining it is. Whip It is just such a film. Read the full story

Pride & Prejudice is one of my wife’s favorite books and one of the best looking films ever released on the ill-fated HD DVD format. I loved the cinematography in the film and the VC-1 encode was simply fantastic. This is one of the Universal films that I eagerly waited for release on Blu-ray. Well, without much in the way of fanfare, Pride & Prejudice has finally found its way to Blu-ray and I, for one, am glad it has Read the full story

Making a very popular book into a film is more often times than not, a very tricky business. An author may devote several pages to rather minute detail that is important to the story that just can’t be translated to the screen very easily. The same is true for some plot twists which have to be dropped due to time constraints that just don’t exist with the printed page. However, when the subtle details and minor plot lines are dropped, the flow of the story and our understanding of the characters is often changed, more often than not, to the detriment to our enjoyment of the film. Read the full story

Wow, has it really been 20 years since The Simpsons has been on the air? I can still remember when the Simpsons appeared as a regular short feature on the old Tracy Ullman show before the folks at Fox decided to make it into a 30 minute show. Now into their 21st season (and still going strong), The Simpsons 20th season has now made its way to Blu-ray and is the subject of today’s review. Read the full story

Needless to say, the death of Michael Jackson created a media maelstrom. It didn’t take long before the rumors and rampant speculation began over the cause of his death. Had he been ill? Were drugs the cause? If so, what kind? One couldn’t turn on the TV without finding coverage of his death. The only way to escape it was the keep the TV off, or so it seemed. Read the full story

I seem to be seeing more and more films both in the theater and on Blu-ray that have one thing very much in common, good premises and poor execution from the printed page to screen. One has to wonder whether there is a shortage of talented screenwriters in Hollywood or just too many lazy ones or studios who are more interested in churning out films for the sake of profit rather then spending the money to do things right. I was reminded of this with all of the snafus around the forthcoming Spiderman 4 feature. I guess the bean counters at Sony learned nothing from Spiderman 3. Unfortunately, the subject of today’s review, while long on promise as well as premise, comes up a bit short in the execution department as well. Read the full story

I will have to admit that I hadn’t really heard of this film before it arrived on my doorstep. It has been my general experience since I began to do these reviews that when I normally haven’t heard of a film, there is a very good reason for that, namely, it is a bad film. While not completely awful, The Invention of Lying is another film that proves the general rule. And that is too bad as the premise for the film was actually rather promising. Read the full story

With all the snow and very cold weather gripping us here on the East Coast, it seemed perfectly natural to watch a film that is set in Antarctica in blistering cold conditions, right? After all, why watch a film set in the tropics with all that lush green foliage and warm temperatures. Well, that is the choice I made when I decided to check out Whiteout. Was it a good one? Well….. Read the full story

For the most part, it seems that sequels to popular films are nothing but money grabs, attempts to cash in yet again on the popularity of the first film. It this regard, they show little in the way of originality and feature the same cast and essentially the same story line as the prior film, albeit often times taking place a few years later. Same cast, same story and essentially the same film. I am not saying that sequels are bad…  far from it, as they have been several tremendous sequels, especially recent ones, with The Bourne films and The Dark Knight coming to mind. It is just that I look at sequels with a bit of a jaded eye, especially comedies. Which brings us to the subject of this review, Cheaper By The Dozen 2. Read the full story

After seeing some rather heavy faire at our local cineplex recently, we decided to take in a light romantic comedy at home the other night. At least that was what we thought we were getting with All About Steve, teaming America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, up with Bradley Cooper and Thomas Haden Church and the producers of one of Sandra Bullock’s prior hits, Miss Congeniality. Well, we were wrong, as there is nothing remotely romantic or funny for that matter about All About Steve. Read the full story

District 9 was not a film I had the chance to see in the theater. However, it had a really interesting premise, that of an alien spaceship hovering motionless over Johannesburg, South Africa of all places, for months and the inhabitants of the ship finally removed and placed into what can only be described as a ghetto, away from the human population and forced to submit to humiliating treatment and scientific experimentation. Knowing that it was produced by Peter Jackson, I was expecting a good film with excellent video and audio presentations. Were my expectations met? Read on! Read the full story

No one’s perfect. Even the greatest of athletes fail to come through in the clutch occasionally. The big slugger who knocks one out of the park will occasionally pop one up or whiff with the game on the line. The same is true for directors, who, even with the greatest of resumes come out with a clunker every now and then. Which brings us to Mike Judge, the man behind the film that is the subject of today’s review, Extract. Mike Judge has quite a resume of his own with Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and the film Office Space. Will Mike come through in the clutch again or will he whiff? Unfortunately, he whiffs this time around. Again, no one’s perfect. Read the full story

The Montreux Jazz Festival is arguably the finest music festival in the world. It has always been a dream of mine to attend the festival and hopefully, one day, I will be able to do so. However, with Blu-ray, with its high definition picture and lossless multichannel audio capabilities, we now have the technology that can transport us to a concert venue without us ever having to leave the couch. How successful this experience is in our home depends, in part, on the quality of the video and audio on a given disc, which can vary widely from release to release. The question to be answered today is how successful Eagle Vision’s Carlos Santana Presents Blues at Montreux 2004 is in being able to transport us to Montreux. The short answer, pretty darn good. Read the full story

Every now and then, a movie comes out of nowhere to become a big hit, catching the critics and studios by surprise. This summer it was the subject of this review, The Hangover. Perhaps audiences were looking for some lighthearted comedy in today’s tough economic times. Whatever the reason, this film was a huge commercial success, grossing well over 10 times its cost of $35 million. I guess I was one of the few who didn’t see The Hangover in theaters as I can’t say that the subject matter appealed to me very much. However, when the Blu-ray arrived for review, I didn’t hesitate to pop the disc into the player to see what the fuss was all about. Much to my surprise, I found the film to be enjoyable although far from a comedy classic. Read the full story

I guess you could say that I am a relative newcomer to the world of Harry Potter at least in regards as the books are concerned. My wife loved the books and had read them before the movies started to arrive but I did not. I went into each of the early films without any knowledge of the plots other than that Harry was a wizard. That was about it. The films were well done and were easy to get into even without any prior knowledge from the books. Perhaps that was even better as I had no clue what was coming next. Read the full story

Adding your typical Jerry Bruckheimer action fare and his team’s excellent CGI capability with a kids story about guinea pigs who are trained by the FBI to be secret agents sounded like an iffy proposition. The trailer did look promising so I was hoping to get my hands on a review copy of the film G-Force once it debuted on Blu-ray. Well, the review copy arrived yesterday and I popped it in to the player for a look last night. I was glad I did. Read the full story