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2.40:1 Widescreen (16:9)

Running With Scissors (2006)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 29th, 2007

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Based on Augusten Burroughsï¿½ popular biographical memoir of the same name, Running With Scissors is a dark, comedic tale of surviving a bizarre and painful childhood.

The film covers Augustenï¿½s life mostly from about age 12 to 16. Part of what makes this film intriguing is that itï¿½s so outlandish that viewers can hardly anticipate events before they happen, so I will attempt to avoid spoiling it all in this review. With that in mind, hereï¿½s my very high-level plot summary: Augustenï¿½s parentsï¿½ relatio…
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Gridiron Gang (2006)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 25th, 2007

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The Rock ï¿½ sorry, Dwayne Johnson ï¿½ sure has come a long way from his melodramatic days as a WWE superstar. His first major film role, as the Scorpion King in 2001ï¿½s The Mummy Returns was more about his physical presence than any acting ability. Two years later, he proved he could handle action comedy with The Rundown. Now, with Gridiron Giants, Johnson has added the drama notch to his genre belt.

The film, based on a true story and following a 1993 TV documentary of the same name, tells…
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Pulse (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 13th, 2007

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Pulse is a remake of the 2001 Japanese film Kairo which was based on a novel of the same name. The movie opens with Josh entering a dark university library looking for someone named Zieglar, where he is instead met by some creepy old man and an entity that sucks life out of him. At this point everything seemed to be promising, although a bit out there. We soon find out that Josh was the boyfriend of Mattie (Kristen Bell) who is now worried as to where their relationship stands because Josh isnï¿½t speaking with her anymore.
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Jet Li’s Fearless (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 29th, 2006

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Based on a true story, Jet Liï¿½s Fearless takes place just after the turn of the 20th century. Huoï¿½s father is challenged and beaten by the leader of the Zhao Clan leading to sheer embarrassment for everyone involved. Soon Huo Yuanija, his son, suffers a similar fate. Only Huo swears to never let a beating like this occur again. Huo wants nothing more in the world than for his father to teach him the way of the wushu, which is the way of fighting. The problem is that Huo doesnï¿½t tend to put his heart in the right places. He hates studying his medicine and doing his calligraphy leaving his mother to tell him that wushu is not all about winning, but rather about patience and self-discipline.
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Region 2) (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 16th, 2006

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Synopsis

Not to fawn too heavily on one side in the next-generation format wars, but how cool is HD-DVD? Well, if for nothing else, the HD-A1 and HD-XA1 players from Toshiba are all region-free. And while Warner Brothers has been slipping over themselves and teasing American consumers with a release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, British customers have gotten full penetration, and can pick up the fourth Potter film now. So I went onto Amazon UK and picked up my own copy, and Iï¿½m going to presume that the disc will be the same when it comes out here, whenever that will be.
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Miami Vice (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 15th, 2006

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Michael Mann, for myself, has always been an entertaining director. His commercial successes like Last of the Mohicans, Heat and Collateral are some of my favorite guilty-pleasure films that I can always enjoy. When Mann decided to make a feature film on the classic TV series Miami Vice, I immediately piqued interest in the film. I figured with Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx acting and Michael Mann directing that Miami Vice would be a home run. In the end, Vice is more of a double that has a few faults which keep it from hitting a home run.
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My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 13th, 2006

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My Super Ex-Girlfriend certainly has a fun premise, but after 10 minutes or so, you’ll quickly realize that the originality is at most skin-deep. What we have here is a formulaic romantic comedy with the usual character types and plot points.

Luke Wilson plays Matt Saunders, a nice guy who’s kind of unlucky with love. He meets Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman), falls for her, realizes she’s a needy psycho, and dumps her because he’s really in love with his co-worker, Anna (Hannah Lewis).
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V for Vendetta (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 26th, 2006

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Natalie Portman stars in V for Vendetta, cast in a role unlike what I typically expect from her, a dialogue driven action movie with a serious tone to it. This movie even got me thinking a little bit about mankind’s intolerance of other man and how far society has to go to protect itself. I enjoy movies of this nature, you know the kind taking place in a not to distance future and not so distant problems, but a drastically different way of life. Something these movies always have in common is the civil rights …
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Thank You for Smoking

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 15th, 2006

Synopsis

Based on the book by Christopher Buckley, the cellular version of Thank You for Smoking may be misconceived by some as a movie about a guy who’s defending smoking, but I think it is a movie about a couple of different things. The first, more obvious things is that it’s a movie about spin. Either in the early ‘90s (when the book came out) or in the last year or so (when the film came out), even if the setting has changed, the method of dispelling one’s argument, even without possessing any co…
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16 Blocks (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 5th, 2006

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16 Blocks is what separates petty criminal Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) and broken down cop Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) from exposing several corrupt NYPD detectives. Jack Moseley an aging alcoholic NYPD detective is faced with a crucial decision whether or not he will sell out his long time friends/colleagues or trust a criminal he had just met. The movie takes us through the crowded streets and narrow ally ways of New York City as they scramble to understand themselves and each other. We come to learn of their se…
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Mission: Impossible III (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 28th, 2006

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With all that’s been going on with Tom Cruise as of late, I found myself doubting the integrity of this picture. I was fearful that the happenings of Cruise’s personal life would somehow bring down this movie; the previous two films did set the bar pretty high. So how did the third installment add up, did it fall short of expectations, or did it deliver beyond what I expected?

MI:III doesn’t hesitate a minute to bring us suspense, the picture begins with Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) having Et…
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Feast

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006

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There’s a bunch of people stuck in a bar in the middle of nowhere. Monsters want to eat them. What will they do? That about sums up Feast, a film that’s part comedy, part horror, and all around over the top. This is the winning project from season three of Project Greenlight, a contest and documentary series founded by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck back in 2000. What does that mean? Feast is a low-budget film helmed by a rookie director, based on an amateur script.

Rookie and amateur are often words associated with low quality, but this gore-fest is actually pretty good.
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Troy (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 12th, 2006

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Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy tells the famous story based on the poem ‘The Iliad’ by poet Homer. The film recounts the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. The Trojan War has quickly begun after young and beautiful Helen (Diane Kruger) is seduced by Paris (Orlando Bloom) while he is on a peace mission to Sparta. Obviously Helen’s husband, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) is annoyed by this as is Paris’ older, wiser brother Hector (Eric Bana). Paris eventually wins Helen’s heart and sneaks her away from her husba…
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Sentinel, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 5th, 2006

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Something must be drawing Michael Douglas to the upper-crust “man in peril” role. He’s been stalked by a woman who likes to boil rabbits, sexually harassed by his sexy boss, and is currently being framed for the assassination of the President in The Sentinel. Douglas plays Peter Garrison, a Secret Service veteran who is also having an affair with the wife of the man he is sworn to protect, First Lady Ballentine (Kim Basinger, still looking good at 53). When Garrison is framed by the assassins (one of who…
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Mountain Patrol (Kekexili)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 23rd, 2006

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Synopsis

In the mid 90’s, poachers are decimating the antelope population in the pristine lands of Kekexili. The locals have organized themselves to fight back, and now one of their patrolmen has been murdered by the poachers. Ga Yu, a journalist from Beijing, arrives to cover the story. Initially rejected by the leader of the mountain patrol, Ga Yu is taken in by the group when he suggests his coverage might help turn the area into a wilderness preserve. A long, grueling, dangerous manhunt ensues.>

V For Vendetta

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 29th, 2006

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While V For Vendetta certainly met with some backlash when it was released in theaters earlier this year, having now seen the film myself, I am shocked that it didn’t meet with even more opposition; especially from the White House. Of course, if the White House had come out against the film, it would not only have spurred greater ticket sales, but it also would have placed the government in the position of the film’s villain. To speak out against this film would be to be to speak out against basic American values.

Black Hawk Down

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 27th, 2006

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Not being a big fan of Black Hawk Down, I can’t really tell you how many releases of the feature this makes from Sony. I know it’s a title, which has seen at least two prior offerings. There is nothing new here to recommend the extended cut over the previous three-disc monster edition; however, it may be the way to go if you’ve yet to add this Ridley Scott war film to your collection. I’ll be the first to admit that Scott does some of his finest work as director in this gritty combat picture; but his style is …
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Constantine (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 23rd, 2006

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Keanu Reeves really really wants to break out of his pigeonholed role as the charismatic good guy in an action film, but sometimes he just can’t help himself, and takes the easy paycheck (Chain Reaction may be a good indication of that). But in the action roles he’s noted for, both as Neo in The Matrix trilogy and as John Constantine in Constantine, he’s got the “protagonist with an internal conflict” down pat, that’s for sure.
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Enter the Dragon (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2006

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The thing that makes the death of Bruce Lee an even larger tragedy is that he virtually set back the kung-fu/karate genre from gaining mainstream recognition by a couple of decades. Set back may not even be the proper word for it, as he would have become a larger than life action star whose dreams were bigger than most anyone had anticipated.
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Unforgiven (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 4th, 2006

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The career transformation that Clint Eastwood has endured over the last several generations can be called nothing short of extraordinary. After all, we are talking about a guy who made a steady name for himself in action films of the late ’60s and ’70s, first appearing in the spaghetti western films of Sergio Leone, then moving onto the Dirty Harry films of director Don Siegel, before moving on again to more of a directing role. Some of his works were hits and others were plain misses.
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The Producers (2005)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 17th, 2006

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The Producers has taken an almost cinematic storyline of its own. In 1967 Mel Brooks filmed this tale with one of his mainstays, Gene Wilder. The film was a modest success. It was as a Broadway production that this material reached a wide audience. The play has been a hit for decades now. It only seems inevitable that a new film would surface. This 2005 version of the story is closer to the stage production than the original film. There are quite a few more musical numbers, and that’s essentially where this film goes wrong.
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Freedomland

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 15th, 2006

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Synopsis

Her hands covered in blood, a distraught-beyond-coherence Julianne Moore wanders into a hospital with a story of being carjacked in a predominantly black housing project area. Detective Samuel L. Jackson, assigned to the case, learns from her that her young son is apparently still in the car. Given that her brother is a cop in the adjoining white area, all hell breaks loose and racial tensions threaten to send an explosive situation into terminal meltdown. But the question is whether there i…
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Firewall

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 9th, 2006

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Harrison Ford stars as Jack Stanfield, an online security chief for a mid-sized baking chain. One day, he is introduced to a new possible candidate in Bill Cox (Paul Bettany). We learn this turns out to be a setup. Cox and his men are holding Stanfield’s wife (Virginia Madsen) and their two children hostage. In return, Cox demands that Stanfield hack into his bank’s computers to transfer a fortune into Cox’s offshore accounts.

Firewall, in whole, contains a smart plot, one that makes you think. The …
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When a Stranger Calls (2006)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 8th, 2006

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First off, let me say what a great idea it was to remake this film. The original has enjoyed elevated status far too long based only on an intense 23-minute opening sequence. And as good as that opening piece of suspense is, the same exact premise punctuates Bob Clark’s earlier 1974 masterpiece Black Christmas – so even what When a Stranger Calls does well owes a debt of gratitude to an overall better film. Still, I’ll give the Devil his due – knock-off or not, that sequence stands as an effective, inte…
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Windtalkers

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 21st, 2006

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Hollywood can sometimes be so enthused to cash in on a certain type of film many decent projects looking to explore a worthwhile subject topple under the weight of the cash-grabbing, money-hungry throng. Such is the case with Director John Woo’s Windtalkers, coming to DVD a third time on April 25 in this director’s cut. Though it’s sometimes overly melodramatic, this Nicolas Cage vehicle makes good use of its characters to forge an intriguing story about Navajo code talkers, and the presumed military practice …
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