DVD Reviews

Delightfully nostalgic for the unrushed days of 8-bit video innocence, yet finding inspiration in the full-throttle frenzy of today’s first-person shooters, Wreck-It Ralph is what happens when Disney meets Pixar – exactly the quality of film we had hoped for when Mickey ...

Rated: R for strong violence/gore and language.
Runtime: 99 mins.
Director: Neil Marshall
Writer: Neil Marshall
Cast: Shauna Macdonald; Natalie Mendoza; Alex Reid....complete cast
Tagline: Afraid of the dark? You will be.
Release Date: August 4, 2006
Genre: Horror
Memorable Quote: "How do you give a lemon an orgasm? You tickle its citrus!"
Studio: Lions Gate Films

The Oscar for Best Picture is going to be a tight one. If Ben Affleck’s Argo is any indication of the type of films we are going to see this awards season, the race is also going to be a tough one. Argo doesn’t bait audiences with obvious Oscar touches yet it produces powerful scenes ...

MPAA Rating: Not rated by the MPAA.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin; Paulette Goddard; Henry Bergman
Genre: Classic | Comedy
Tagline: Laugh... Cry and Thrill To his Genius... !
Memorable Movie Quote: "Buck up - never say die. We'll get along."
Release Date: February 25, 1936
Blu-ray Release Date: November 16, 2010.

Having run continuously on Broadway for the past 28 years (longer than any in history), Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schonberg's much-loved stage musical Les Misérables brings a well-seasoned audience frothing for an equally worthy screen adaptation. Enter ...

Famed director Clint Eastwood continues to pound out film after noteworthy film in a career that seems to stretch back into the very beginning of the motion picture industry itself and, while his workmanship is usually top-notch in the craft, his latest ...

Borrowing a riff from Harold Lloyd’s Grandma’s Boy, Buster Keaton perfects the lovable loser’s battle for the girl – a plot line that is still in play in most comedies today - in this 1923 classic from the silent era of filmmaking.  Our Hospitality might have been Keaton’s...

A fan of the pulp era, wonderfully lurid tales told briskly and cheaply from the Depression into the 1950s, this reviewer, like many, latched onto a certain reoccurring character written by an unassuming fellow, long since gone (and under sad circumstances). The character’s name: Conan ...

Marching forward with a madcap frenzy of make-up and special effects, director Tim Burton’s imagination gets more and more far-reaching and out there.  His take on Roald’s Dahl’s famous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was certainly...

It’s about a maladjusted robot.  He wears clunky footwear, a slick cape, and burns people alive with lasers.  And it’s damn near brilliant.  You see, the brain inside the robot used to belong to a Nobel Prize winning scientist and, well, I’m getting ahead of myself ...

Director: Kieran Mulroney; Michele Mulroney
Writer: Kieran Mulroney; Michele Mulroney
Cast: Jeff Daniels; Emma Stone; Ryan Reynolds

Our imaginations are funny things.  They can drive us forward to meet our destinations or exhaust us with supreme isolation.  Paper Man is about the type of imagination that absolutely crushes its beholder with limiting remoteness for two people, one inside a childless marriage, and the other, inside a local community.  Co-directed by the husband-and-wife team of Kieran and Michele Mulroney, Paper Man waxes poetic with some quasi-heavy themes – writer’s block, lineage, suicide, and death – inside a light-hearted story that doesn’t ask much from its audience.

Joe and Patrick’s summer vacation has just begun, and already their parents make them want to run away. But where can suburban teenage boys go to escape? Joe gets an idea: they’ll build their own house in the secluded woods. After making a crude birdhouse ...

MPAA Rating: This film has not been rated by the MPAA.
Runtime: 71 mins.
Director: Charles Reisner
Writer: Carl Harbough
Cast: Buster Keaton; McGuire; Ernest Torrance
Tagline: The Laugh Special of the Age. See It.
Genre: Comedy | Silents
Release Date: May 20, 1928
Blu-ray, DVD Release Date: July 6, 2010
Distributor: United Artists

MPAA Rating: R for drug content throughout, and pervasive language including some sexual references.
Runtime: 104 mins.
Director: Jonas Pate
Writer: Thomas Moffett
Cast: Kevin Spacey; Robin Williams; Gore Vidal ... complete cast
Tagline: The doctor is out.
Genre: Drama
Memorable Quote: "I'm just trying to sell smoke man. It's not that serious." ... more quotes
Release Date: July 31, 2009
DVD Release Date: May 10, 2010.
Distributor: Roadside Attractions

The election’s over, friends.  It’s time to chew bubblegum and kick ass again! Director John Carpenter had a nice run, didn’t he?  Between the late 1970’s and the early 1990’s, Carpenter was king of science fiction and horror.  Even if – as is the case with 1988’s They Live ...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for stylized violence, sexual content, language and drug references.
Director: Edgar Wright
Writer: Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright
Cast: Michael Cera; Alison Pill; Mark Webber
Genre: Comedy | Romance
Tagline: Get the hot girl. Defeat her evil exes. Hit love where it hurts.
Memorable Movie Quote: "You punched me in the boob! Prepare to die obviously!"
Release Date: August 13, 2010
DVD Release Date: November 9, 2010.

MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime:98  mins.
Director: Harold Ramis
Writer: Brian Doyle-Murray & Harold Ramis
Cast: Bill Murray; Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield
Tagline: At last, a comedy that bites!
Genre: Comedy
Memorable Quote: Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must've been something before electricity.

Announced with the loud and proclaiming carnival fanfare of “Casey Jones”, the opening of Walt Disney’s Dumbo, now celebrating its 70^th anniversary, defines the sweetness that is its very soul ...

There may be only one reason to see this film.  Maybe two if you are a fan of Charlie Chaplin, but – speaking from strictly the filmgoer’s point of view – the true value of this film lies with Robert Downey Jr’s inspired performance...

The 2013 Oscars are right around the corner. The months of September - December are battlegrounds for the heavyweights of film, with a few underdogs in there to keep it fresh. Every film that comes out during this time frame is either vying for some sort of ...

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Many critics and fans have dismissed it because, to them, it’s …ehem… boring.  Okay, sure, soap operatic Star Wars it isn’t but the film – to its credit – is a most successful leap ...

Released towards the tail end of The Cold War, 1984’s Red Dawn serves as writer/director John Milius’ follow-up to his compromised stab at epic fantasy Conan the Barbarian.  With MGM finally releasing the now two-year-old remake (which is probably not ...

His name is Bond. 007. Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to others.  Regardless of what you call him, Bond is THE ultimate icon. And everyone knows icons cannot be killed. For 50 years, James Bond has been a part of our culture and - with his 23^rd adventure, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, ...

Runtime:111  mins.
Director: Mike Hodges
Writer: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Cast: Sam J. Jones; Max von Sydow
Tagline: He'll save every one of us!
Genre: Action | Adventure
Memorable Quote: "Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!"
Release Date: December 5, 1980
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: June 15, 2010

There’s a harsh reality for public education presented in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and an even harsher lesson to be learned for its filmmaker.  Having directed Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and an...

Good science fiction is a rarity these days.  With mindless CGI spectacles and other Hollyweird distractions it’s hard to communicate a decent narrative that satisfies the brain while pleasing to the senses.  Most of Hollywood builds a career out of the razzle and ...

Widely regarded un-filmable with its arching themes that span three continents, two oceans, and many years, Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi gets the big screen treatment by fearless filmmaker Ang Lee. But where the Wachowski’s came up short with Cloud Atlas, and ...

Rated: Rated PG-13 (Spain)
Runtime: 105 mins.
Director: Álex de la Iglesia
Writer: Jorge Guerricaechevarría (writer); Álex de la Iglesia (screenplay)
Cast: Elijah Wood; John Hurt; Julie Cox ... complete cast
Tagline: Crimes à Oxford
Genre: Foreign/Crime/Thriller
Memorable Quote: "If we can find out the meaning of numbers, we can find out the meaning of life."
Distributor: THINKFilm

Roman Polanski’s American debut arrived with Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 and, to this day, the film remains a blistering masterpiece of mood, art, and mayhem. There’s a reason this tale is considered by many to be the benchmark of filmic horror entertainment ...

Director: Randall Wallace
Writer: Mike Rich
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich; James Cromwell

Whereas 2003’s Seabiscuit won gold for its story about an undersized horse that carried a troubled jockey’s emotional baggage and lifted the spirits of a nation paralyzed by the Great Depression, Secretariat is the story of a horse that wasn’t small, outmatched or expected to lose. And that’s where the film’s makers faced their biggest challenge: to craft a compelling sports story about a horse that wasn’t an underdog.