DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

MPAA Rating: This title not rated by the MPAA
Director: Albert Parker
Writer: Douglas Fairbanks
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks; Billie Dove; Anders Randolf
Genre: Classic | Silent | Adventure
Tagline: The Love Story of a Bold Buccaneer
Release Date: March 8, 1926
Blu-ray Release Date: December 14, 2010.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and shootings, and for language.
Director: Brett Ratner
Writer: Jim Kouf
Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker; Tom Wilkinson; Chris Penn
Genre: Comedy | Action
Official Site: www.warnerblu.com
Memorable Movie Quote: "This is the LAPD. We're the most hated cops in all the free world. My own mama's ashamed of me. She tells everybody I'm a drug dealer."
Tagline: Two cops. One is all talk. The other is all action.
Release Date: September 18, 1998
Own it on Blu-ray: December 7, 2010.
Rush Hour [Blu-ray]

MPAA Rating: PG for brief rude humor, mild language and action.
Director: Rob Letterman
Writer: Joe Stillman, Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Jack Black; Jason Segal; Emily Blunt
Genre: Comedy | Adventure
Tagline: Black in the new big.
Memorable Movie Quote: "There's a guy who claims to have the secret to the Bermuda Triangle."
Release Date: December 25, 2010
Blu-ray Release Date: Not yet on Blu-ray/DVD.

MPAA Rating: This title not rated by the MPAA
Director: Peter Shin
Writer: David A. Goodman, Seth MacFarlane
Cast: Seth McFarlane; Alex Borstein; Seth Green; Mila Kunis
Genre: TV | comedy | animation
Memorable Movie Quote: "A long time ago... when you could actually go to Mexico on vacation"
Blu-ray Release Date: December 21, 2010.

Alejandro González Iñárritu is on roll. In just a few short years, he’s gone from just a fresh young face on the burgeoning Mexican filmmaking scene, to an old guard captain who, along with his paisanos Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón ...

MPAA Rating: R for strong disturbing violence, language and some sexuality.
Director: Mikael Håfström
Writer: Stuart Beattie
Cast: Clive Owen; Jennifer Aniston; Vincent Cassell
Genre: Drama | Thriller
Tagline: Some lines should never be crossed.
Memorable Movie Quote: "If you brought that shank in here, it's *pre-meditated* murder. The law don't care who you kill."
Release Date: November 11, 2005
Blu-ray Release Date: December 28, 2010.

Director: Dominic Sena
Writer: Bragi F. Schut
Cast: Nicolas Cage; Ron Perlman; Claire Foy

Well, it’s January and sometimes that’s all you need to know about the quality of the releases being dumped onto the unsuspecting public.  Occasionally, like with the Underworld series, Hollyweird finds an eager audience hungry for their brooding darkness, but mostly the January releases just suck air and whatever money they can from an unsuspecting public.  Unfortunately, in spite of its fun-looking trailers, Season of the Witch, directed by Dominic Sena, is a total bust.  From beginning to end, this witchy monster-of-the-week movie is exactly the quality of its subject: an abominable beast.

There’s a memorable scene about halfway through Blue Valentine in which a young couple playfully performs an impromptu song and dance number – he, strumming the ukulele while warbling the lyrics to Doris Fischer and Alan Roberts’s...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.
Director: Phillip Noyce
Writer: Kurt Wimmer
Cast: Angelina Jolie; Liev Schreiber; Chiwetel Ejiofor
Genre: Action
Memorable Movie Quote: "My name is Vassily Orlov. Today, a Russian agent will travel to New York city to kill the President. This agent is KA-12."
Release Date: July 23, 2010
DVD Release Date: December 21, 2011

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi fantasy violence and brief sexuality
Director: Casey Affleck
Writer: Casey Affleck: Joaquin Phoenix
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix; Casey Affleck; Jack Nicholson; Billy Crystal
Genre: Comedy
Memorable Movie Quote: "Do the snow angel, dude. I can reach you, do the @#$%& snow angel. Dude, do the @#$% snow angel. Do the snow angel, man. Do the @#$%& snow angel, dude. Do the @#$%& snow angel!"
Release Date: September 10, 2010.
Blu-ray Release Date: November 23, 2010.

There was a time when a Ron Howard film meant something; a mark of quality, a stroke of genius. The man has an incredible amount of talent and an incredible amount of films under his belt, but – in the last ten years or so...

In what might go down as the most critically polarized film of January 2011, Seth Rogan, star of such crude charmers as Knocked Up, Funny People, and Observe & Report, busts out the superhero mask in his turn as The Green Hornet...

Director: Sergio Leone
Writer: Harry Grey
Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern; Joe Pesci; Tuesday Weld

The story behind the scenes goes like this: master director Sergio Leone actually turned down an offer to direct The Godfather in order to focus on his lengthy adaptation of The Hoods, written by Harry Grey.  It must have been a tough decision. Especially since The Godfather and its sequel came out before his envisioned version of The Hoods saw the light of the day and also because both were hailed by his contemporaries as masterpieces of the medium. The critics and the public were content with their Gangster drama.  They needed no more. Yet, Leone remained relentless in his pursuit of telling the story of “growing up gangster”; he had a vision and it had to be told – even if it took 13 years from the day he turned down Paramount’s generous Godfather offer...

20th Anniversary Extended Cut Edition

Director: Kevin Costner
Writer: Michael Blake
Cast: Kevin Costner; Mary McDonnell; Graham Greene

There is a glorious peace that kicks up around the edges of the frame in Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. It’s a pastoral sense of emotion that is accompanied by John Barry’s brilliant score; it beckons; it whispers; it brings out a feeling of compassion and understanding from its audience. While the film’s major themes might be heavy in thought, suggesting steely-eyed imperialism and national conquest, its little hand tickings are what makes the film run like clockwork. As a result, Dances with Wolves - twenty years later - might just be the most sincere film to ever come from out of the (mostly) deplorable depths of Hollywood.

Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Writer: Robert Glaudini
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman; John Ortiz; Robert Petrocelli; Amy Ryan

Bringing a stage play to the big screen poses some problems, but mostly it can open the story up in exciting ways – which is exactly what happens with this film adaptation of Bob Glaudini's 2007 stage play. No longer is this a play strictly about “pot heads” in love.  Suddenly, with an embracing of seldom seen New York locations and a story allowed to breathe and to expand, we have a genuine and nuanced film about people in love. Directed by its star, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Goes Boating is a charming and funny film that flows nicely without a single disturbance in its waters.