It seems every time you look for a new movie in the theaters, one of them is a remake from a TV show. Just recently, we had the release of Get Smart. We have also had The Brady Bunch, Mission Impossible and numerous others. Some of them worked, while others just fell flat. One of the latest Blu-ray imports I watched just so happened to be a TV show previously, and that being Starsky and Hutch. This, thankfully, worked out very well and is an entertaining watch.

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There was a new Cowboy in Dallas, and he wasn’t throwing touchdown passes. But Walker was almost gone before he could really get started. After just four episodes the show’s production company suffered financial collapse, and the show was rescued at the last minute by CBS Productions, who would continue to run the show for its nearly decade-long run. For nine years Norris brought us the ultimate Texas Ranger in a formula cops and robbers show. The show often became a parody of itself, but maintained a solid viewer ship throughout. Hell, Norris even sings the theme song.

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I have seen plenty of Clint Eastwood films throughout my lifetime. I have always been a fan of his although I have yet to watch any of his Westerns, aside from The Unforgiven. Eastwood, for most of his career, has been the typical badass who you didn’t want to meet up with if you were doing something wrong. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s character was the trend setter of what movie cops were to become; the loaner who does things his own way regardless if anyone else likes it or not.

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It’s not that video game movies are bad because they are based on video games — things that are usually void of character development and plot in favor of cheap thrills — it’s just that they’ve mostly been handled by hacks, from the director down to the caterer. This usually makes the movie about as tedious as the filmed vignettes you’re forced to watch in between the video game’s levels.

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Come on, admit it, you want to say that Hayden Christensen was the worst part if the latest trilogy of Star Wars films, and yeah, the guy did bring the suck, to be sure, but he wasn’t really that bad, right? Well yeah, he was, but he’s not the only thing wrong when it comes to Jumper, the latest film from writers David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) and Jim Uhls (Fight Club), who adapted the Steven C. Gould novel. Directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), Jumper features Christensen as David Rice, a man who grows up with a genetic gift, the ability to ”jump” from place to place, Christensen’s performance was his first major role since transforming Darth Vader from an ominous, silently rueful and dominating presence, to a dude who thought his girl was cheating on him, so he started hanging out with a creepy old guy as a result.

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It doesn’t seem to matter if the movie is horrible or excellent; Will Smith is just box office money. Every movie he does just seems to generate mountains of cash. I, Robot is no exception. A summer blockbuster when released theatrically, I, Robot grabbed the attention of Sci-Fi fans around the world. The question remains though, even if the movie makes a ton of cash, is it worth you time? In the case of I, Robot, absolutely!

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You probably remember where you were when you saw the trailer for Twister. Hot off the heels of Forrest Gump, which was a nice story with some pretty cool computer effects at the time, Twister simply took the effects to a whole other level. Barns were torn apart, cars were tossed into the air, and that one shot, where the car is driving as a tractor is thrown and slammed into the ground, and the tire from the tractor hurdles through the car window. You wanted to go see that film, whatever the cost might be.

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My exposure to the Justice League (JLA) and to comics as a whole is pretty limited. Sure, I go see Iron Man, Batman and a lot of the other adaptations, and I remember seeing Superfriends growing up, but I was never really a comic book guy so to speak. I do understand and respect the following; it’s just something I never really got into. I also respect the concept of the JLA: you get all of your singular heroes together in one spot and perhaps introduce new villains or have the existing ones get into some epic throwdown? Hell yeah, I say!

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I give credit to Paul Anderson for being passionate about his material. It doesn’t hurt that, in his short-storied career, he’s directed some of the more memorable films over the last several years, including Daniel Day Lewis in the engrossing and excellent There Will Be Blood. Wait, this isn’t the dramatic director, it’s another guy? Well, OK.

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There was first the cloned sheep, Dolly. Now today, cloning is actually very popular in science. Just do a simple Google search and you’ll find many articles on cloning that are occurring or have occurred. Heck, there was even an active website at one time about gene banking a pet. How far is science willing to go? The cloning of humans is not so far out of reach but most likely will not happen in my lifetime. When it does, you can bet that government will try and step in and stop it.

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When Space Ace showed up on my doorstep, I kicked me heels in a fit of joy. OK, maybe I’m not athletic enough to actually do that anymore, but you get the point. I had seen the previous Dragon’s Lair Blu-ray/HD DVD release and was very curious about the quality, but never took the plunge myself. This was probably due to all of the mediocre PC and console releases I’ve seen and played over the years which had left *mostly* a bad taste in my gaming mouth. But I had high hopes for Space Ace and I am more than pleased with the results.

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A question to ponder before we head into this review. What do you get when you mix anime or japanese animation with a healthy dose of John Woo? Besides a ton of falling gun shell casing and cute characters performing acrobatics in the air while taking down a dozen bad guys? You get a movie that goes full speed for over a hundred minutes and makes you realize that this is truly the perfect avenue for John Woo and style of films. However, just don’t expect there to be a completely solid story behind it.

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Since we have already reviewed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD, some non-format specific sections of this review have been ported over to this Blu-ray review.

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.

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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.

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As we know by now, Dragon Dynasty is the Criterion of Kung Fu movies. They take any Kung Fu movie, clean up the audio and video where needed and provide a slew of extras for us to enjoy. From featurettes to commentaries with expert Bey Logan, it always provided the Hong Kong kung fu fans with a presentation second to none. However, as with Criterion classics, the movie isn’t always second to none.

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Will Smith finds himself in a bit of a career quandary if you ask me. Sure, one of the good sides to being as as he is is that he’s quite the popular guy that nobody wants to see get killed. But the popularity has seemed to stymie him a little bit. When he does dramatic work, it’s clear that the push is for him to win an Oscar, like in Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. So when people look past that intent, even when he might want to do dramatic work, he’s forced to take on slightly darker roles in action films, which I guess serves as his happy medium of branching out while still pleasing the people. I Am Legend is another one of those examples, very similar to another Smith sci-fi film named I, Robot.

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When I think back to my teenage years a few movies always come to mind: Terminator 2, Die Hard, Robocop, Con Air and The Rock. Why you might ask? Well these have always been the great action movies that defined what an action movie could/should be like. An action movie should ALWAYS leave the viewer with a sense of ‘WOW,’ meaning you should be elated with a barrage of guns, explosions, car chases, etc. For my review today I sat down with one of my fav’s, The Rock on Blu-ray.

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The Resident Evil series has always been one that makes you feel good to be a guy. Each movie has provided the substance to make for a great action movie: little back-story, a lot of guns and explosions and of course hot girls in modest slinky outfits…. oh and ZOMBIES! If this sounds like the popcorn flick stuff you’re made of, than Resident Evil: Extinction is the flick for you.

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Most people like a good heavy dose of action. Guns a blazing, explosions bursting and people’s dead bodies flying in each and every direction. But most people also want something a little more. Perhaps a little suspense or a little who dun it. Or perhaps they are looking for their favorite actor to make a dramatic on-screen performance that will leave them breathless at the door. This lonely review writer loves action but a good dose of story and a well done gotcha at the end means more than the next building that gets blown up. Chaos would prove to have everything I wanted from an action drama and make me believe that there is at least one semi-original story left in Hollywood today.

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What do we know about Dragon War that the layman might not be familiar with? Well, Hyung-rae Shim, who wrote and directed the film, was a popular Korean comedian who really, really wanted to make a film about this longtime native tale of dragons, so much so that he spent several years getting it made. And yet when it comes to filmmaking, it appears that Dragon War borrows heavily from a lot of other films in the process and winds up underwhelming a lot of people.

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Turok is a property that seems to come and go. In the 1950’s, it was introduced to lure kids away from the television sets because it had dinosaurs and intriguing stories. It was later updated when it got inserted in the Valiant comic world and rose to sell nearly 2 million copies with its first issue for the universe. In more recent times, Turok has become a series of video games by Acclaim. So it was only natural that an animated dvd would also hit the mix. However, would the character be more representative of its roots or perhaps take on a more futuristic feel akin to the current property portrayed in the video game?

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When MI-5 first hit American shores, Alias was in full swing, and the comparisons were inevitable. After all, both were sy shows set in a post September 11 world, and both were slick, fun thrillers. Fast forward to 2006, however, and the landscape has changed dramatically. Alias is now off the air, having crashed in spectacular fashion, yet MI-5 is still going strong. In fact, the show just seems to keep getting better and better.

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On the surface, The Kingdom appears to be a good way for Americans to relieve some stress by watching the demise of some middle-eastern terrorists. But The Kingdom is actually quite different from your standard action movie shoot ‘em up. Yes, there is a lot of action, most of it occurring in the film’s last half an hour, but the film asks some tough questions and is optimistic in its belief that Americans and Muslims can work towards one goal together.

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