DTS HD 5.1 MA (English)

Live At Knebworth (SD Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 19th, 2015

Anyone who has ever played an instrument or sung understands the therapeutic powers of music. In England they have been using that idea to help physically disadvantaged children with music at the Nordoff-RobbinsMusicCenter in London’s KentishTown. The institute was founded by American composer Paul Nordoff and British teacher Clive Robbins. They have thousands of success stories. We’re talking children who had closed themselves off from the world around them, many who had stopped speaking or communicating at all.
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Vice (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 18th, 2015

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What if there was a place where you can act out your wildest fantasy, whether it be murder, theft, or sex, and at the end of the day you could go home as though nothing happened? That is the tease Vice offers its audience in a sci-fi action film that blends bits of Blade Runner, Stange Days and Westworld into one tight little package. For fans of the sci-fi genre, the movies I reference are staples in the genre, but let me be clear; at no time does Vice measure up to these films. When we meet Kelly (newcomer Ambyr Childers), she is an android leading a life behind the walls of VICE where she is programmed to live the same day over day after day.
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Wolfcop (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 16th, 2015

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For your safety you should keep him away from the booze and doughnuts.”

Wolf Cop wasn’t a film haphazardly thrown together; instead its path to being made was epic in its own right as the filmmakers entered their concept into a Canadian online competition where people voted week after week on what potential film would be lucky enough to get made. Wolf Cop slayed the competition, and as they say, the rest is history.
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Captive (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 10th, 2015

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I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films. It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time. When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back.
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Sons of Anarchy: Season 7 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 3rd, 2015

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“Remember when our biggest problem was which Mayan to kill?”

All good things come to an end, and all rides eventually reach their destination. It’s all come home for the gang at Sons of Anarchy, and you can believe that if anyone is left standing when it’s over, there will be scars. Kurt Sutter has taken the culture of the motorcycle club, don’t call them a gang, and made it accessible to a regular audience. He did that not by attempting to overwhelm us with the iconography of the genre.
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Beyond the Lights (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on March 3rd, 2015

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“The cop here thinks he’s The Bodyguard.”

At first glance, Beyond the Lights could easily be dismissed as an updated, less starry version of the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston romantic blockbuster. Both feature a glamorous pop star falling in love with her strait-laced protector. But while The Bodyguard became a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, Beyond the Lights had a much less dazzling run in theaters, grossing just over $14 million. It’s a shame because the flawed newer film has some interesting ideas about celebrity, artistic integrity, and…black women’s hair.
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Horrible Bosses 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 26th, 2015

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Despite being a fan of just about everyone involved with Horrible Bosses, I was more than a little disappointed by the first film. It wasn’t awful or unwatchable by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt with a cast like Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis, it just should have been better. But the movie gods have spoken and decided that the first film performed well enough that it deserved a sequel. What worked for the first film was the idea behind finally having enough of your bosses and being pushed to the point where murder seems like a viable option.
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The Homesman (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2015

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“There’s been some trouble with the women hereabouts…it’s bad.”

What exactly is a Western? That’s the question that the cast and crew of The Homesman struggle with here. They appear to be divided on the subject, and the same sentiment will likely make this one a little harder to pigeonhole. That’s not necessarily important except when it comes to marketing a film. An audience wants some kind of an idea what they’re getting when they see it on the shelf of their local video store. Tommy Lee Jones wrote, directed and stared in this period piece, and he’d rather you not call it a Western. Others connected with the film are on board with the genre label.
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Game of Thrones: The Complete Fourth Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on February 19th, 2015

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“All men must die.”

The official tagline for Season 4 of HBO’s Game of Thrones also doubles as a helpful reminder of author George R.R. Martin’s no-character-is-safe philosophy. But even plastering that quote all over posters, promos, and the cover of this exemplary-in-every-way Blu-ray set isn’t likely to prepare you for the most devastating and thrilling season of a show that specializes in “devastating and thrilling.”
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Olive Kitteridge (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on February 16th, 2015

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“Why are you so hateful, Olive?”

Olive Kitteridge — Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel —has been adapted into a four-hour HBO miniseries. It’s probably the best possible outcome for Strout’s story, which deals with the legacy of depression, along with several other box office-unfriendly themes that would almost certainly prevent any proper Kitteridge adaptation from sniffing a multiplex. The miniseries is well-made, and the acting is top-notch. The problem for me was that, even with that four-hour running time, we don’t get a ton of insight into why the title character is so hateful.
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Poker Night (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on February 12th, 2015

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As far as I’m concerned, a filmmaker has to work pretty hard to screw up a poker game. (And for the record, I feel the same way about cinematic sniper fights and train heists.) It’s an inherently high-stakes situation that is both familiar and unpredictable, and in the hands of the right director a poker game can be either thrilling or funny. At various points, Poker Night manages to be both. But even though I certainly wouldn’t say writer/director Greg Francis screwed up this stylish horror-crime thriller, the movie is flush with flashbacks and subplots that distract from the really good stuff.
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The Best of Me: Tears of Joy Edition (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on February 5th, 2015

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“You want me to fall back in love with you? How do I do that if I never stopped?”

Or, in my case, how do I do that if I never started? Nicholas Sparks’ fans love the author as passionately and unabashedly as the lead characters in his best-selling books fawn over each other. But even though I think The Notebook is the ideal sappy romantic drama, I’ve never been part of that club. In fact, his stories — and the movie adaptations they spawn — seem to be getting worse. And yet I was somewhat intrigued by The Best of Me…at least until the movie’s monumentally dopey conclusion, which likely inspired the release of this “Tears of Joy” mea culpa Edition.
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Open Windows (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 3rd, 2015

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“You like that stuff, but it’s kind of a tease.”

Give Elijah credit for taking some interesting chances with his acting choices since his long and successful run with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and his subsequent cameos in the Hobbit films as well. No one can accuse the actor of resting on his laurels. His roles have been outside the mainstream.
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May in the Summer (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on January 29th, 2015

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“Love is an endless act of forgiveness.”

May Brennan is the best-selling author of a successful book centered around Arabic proverbs. She is played by Cherien Dabis, who is also the writer/director/producer of May in the Summer. Both Dabis and her fictional counterpart use short, pithy phrases like the one above as the basis for exploring familial and romantic relationships. But while May encounters rousing success with her (fictitious, unseen) book, Dabis’ picturesque, breezy, ultimately disposable film is a little bit more of a mixed bag.
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The Judge (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 28th, 2015

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“Did that just happen?”

I have to confess that I entered The Judge expecting a different kind of film than I actually saw. After seeing the trailer, I was reminded of some of the classic courtroom dramas I’d seen over the years, from 12 Angry Men through …And Justice For All. On the ride to the screening I found my mind was swimming with the “closing arguments” Al Pacino delivered in …And Justice For All and was trying to image how Robert Downey, Jr. was going to try to top that.
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Boardwalk Empire: Season 5 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 22nd, 2015

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“If we’re good today, we’ll be better tomorrow.”

The final season of Boardwalk Empire breaks the mold of what the show has been for the first four years. The action jumps ahead several years to 1931. It’s a necessary plot point if we’re going to be ending the popular series in the fifth season. I understand the jump and why it works. I guess my only real question is: why are we jumping ahead to end what is one of the best shows on television?
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Boyhood (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 20th, 2015

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Boyhood is all the rage right now. With all the hoopla surrounding the film, it should be noted that it is ordinary. It is just about people living their lives. One could even call it boring. One can say that because life is boring. It is not as exciting as it is in the movies. Life is about small moments that add up to memories and then it is over. Boyhood doesn’t make grand statements about boyhood, or about motherhood or fatherhood for that matter. It is just about a few people and what happens to them.
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The Identical (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on January 19th, 2015

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What if Elvis Presley had an identical twin brother no one ever knew about? (It would certainly help explain all those Elvis sightings years after the King’s death.) That’s the kooky conceit at the center of The Identical. Unfortunately, rather than embracing the absurdity of its premise, the movie is an amateurish, uninspiring combination of “by-the-numbers musical biopic” and “painfully-earnest family drama.”
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Jessabelle (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 15th, 2015

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When I think about the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, with the exception of hungry gators lurking beneath the murky depths, I can’t help but think about the connection it has to the supernatural. I blame seeing Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond for this. It’s a film that haunted me when I was a kid, and the imagery has stuck with me over the years. There have been numerous films over the years that have explored the supernatural of the bayou; most successfully we saw this in the Kate Hudson thriller The Skeleton Key.
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Banshee: Season 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2015

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“There will be casualties”

Alan Ball got my attention in 2001 with HBO’s black comedy Six Feet Under. It was one of the most original shows I had ever seen, and to this day I find it hard to characterize the series when asked to do so. It was there that he also introduced me to Michael C. Hall, who continues to amaze me in the role of Dexter over at Showtime. When Six Feet Under left the airwaves, Ball didn’t waste very much time in bringing his quirky style back, this time to the horror genre
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Annabelle (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2015

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“Since the beginning of civilization, dolls have been beloved by children, cherished by collectors and used in religious rites as conduits for good and evil.”

The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn’t totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film’s hero couple.
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Men, Women & Children (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 13th, 2015

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The internet is destroying everything. It seems crazy, but it’s true, and most people know it. I mean that so many businesses have been destroyed by the tremendous growth of the internet and its insidious and unchecked influence. The newspaper business, music business, broadcast business and probably the movie business have been fundamentally and permanently altered. Men, Women and Children addresses how it affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. We’re all aware of this. It’s our lives now, and it wasn’t 10 years ago.
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Girls: The Complete Third Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on January 12th, 2015

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“Writers are a ridiculous class of people who make everything about themselves.”

For many, the current face — and oft-naked body — of “writers who make everything about themselves” is Lena Dunham, the creator/star/writer/director of HBO’s Girls. The equal-parts brilliant and maddening quarter-life crisis comedy became one of the most polarizing shows on TV over its first two seasons, as self-involved heroine Hannah Horvath sought love and a career as a writer in NYC. At the start of season 3, Hannah has both of those things…which is why I’m astounded — and, frankly, pretty impressed — that she remains as egotistical as ever.
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Looking: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on January 6th, 2015

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The most remarkable thing about Looking might be how thoroughly unremarkable it is. This is a double-edged sword for HBO’s dramedy, which follows the love lives of three gay friends living in modern-day San Francisco. The series sidesteps the headline-grabbing sensationalism that accompanies many other shows that prominently feature gay characters. (Looking at you, Ryan Murphy.) On the other hand, Looking is often low-key to the point that it bypasses being funny or particularly entertaining. What the series does have on its side is a naturalistic tone that makes the show more engrossing and immersive as the first season progresses.
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Tusk (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 1st, 2015

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What if two radio guys sat around and made up a movie on the air? In this case it actually wasn’t radio guys, because they weren’t broadcasters, but podcasters. I guess the fine distinction between broad and pod is that pod goes out to the world through the internet. It’s kind of like Indie radio. Kevin Smith is a very indie guy and even calls his podcast a smodcast. Smith and his buddy, producer Scott Mosier, were doing their smodcast and talking about a post on GumTree.uk about roommate advertisements. It evolved into crazy talk about what might happen.
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