Showing posts with label Blu-ray released. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blu-ray released. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Blu-ray Released - This Week on Blu-ray: April 14-21

For the week of April 14th, Shout Factory is bringing the Australian horror feature The Babadook to Blu-ray. With this feature, director Jennifer Kent makes one of the most impressive feature-length film debuts in recent memory (she got her start as an actress and has appeared in such films as Babe: Pig in the City); The Babadook is an emotionally resonant, viscerally terrifying chiller that deserves comparison with Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - it's that good. 

   
Like those films, The Babadook transcends its horror trappings through a strict commitment to nuance and character, in this case Amelia Vannick (Essie Davis), a hospice-care nurse suffering from a brutal case of depression, and with good cause: still reeling from her husband's sudden death (The Babadook is light on gore, but it earns its stripes with some brief, horrifying flashes of how he died), Amelia finds herself more and more distanced from her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), whose obsession with fighting monsters makes him a social pariah at school and a source of alien, uncomfortable tension for Amelia. She can barely look at him without wanting to scream, and as her anxiety rises with the intensity of Samuel's troubles, Kent's got us, so persuasive is her aesthetic realization of postpartum stresses.

It helps, too, that Davis and Wiseman are so phenomenal as the fraught mother-son pair - if the Academy Awards didn't treat horror films like second-class citizens, both performers could have had legitimate shots at Oscar nominations. In fact, we'd be willing to watch a straight drama about their psychological battle of wills, so it's all the more impressive that when Kent shifts into full-scale terror, she's able to enrich the human drama already on display. 

See, Amelia and Samuel find a children's picture-book called Mr. Babadook (and the illustrations alone have an expressionistic menace that would give Tim Burton nightmares), and after reading it, they invoke a vicious, relentless spirit determined to claim their souls. 

The monster itself - a looming, top-hatted monstrosity that wouldn't be out of place in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - is scary (though Kent enhances its creep factor through the quick, fleeting glimpses we get of it - we never see it long enough to make rational sense of the damn thing), yet what lingers is the suspicion that it's only feeding off the psychic torment that Amelia and Samuel were already giving off. This is a brave, fearless work of art, and while some have criticized it for a third-act that bears some similarities with the end of the first Nightmare on Elm Street, Kent and her team are wise enough to adhere to their own chilling rule about the title character: "You can't get rid of the Babadook." 






Source: http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=16473

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Latest Blu-ray/DVD movies review on End of days of March, 2015

Click the titles below for the most comprehensive reviews of Blu-ray and DVD discs online, and watch for new reviews as more Blu-ray/DVD discs are released. 

Halt and Catch Fire (TV Series 2014-)



 
Overview: 
 
Halt and Catch Fire main action takes place in the Silicon Prairie area of Texas. Like its sister Silicon Valley in California, Silicon Prairie is known as one of the hottest beehives of technology in the country. But there are more to these bespectacled computer geeks than meet the eye. Representatives of the big computer giants and personal computer titans wage battle daily to be the first to come out with the latest tech gadgets and software innovations. Before long, old lies begin to surface that make former comrades start to question their inventions and their loyalties. 

Selma (2014)




Overview: 
 After seeking the help of President Lyndon B. Johnson and being refused, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders led marches from Selma to the Capitol building in Montgomery in March 1965. The first march, now known as "Bloody Sunday", took marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and into brutal treatment at the hands of the police and others, hospitalizing seventeen. Despite the hatred, the marchers returned to the bridge two days later in peaceful response. In the weeks that followed, the marchers, now protected by armed forces, reached Montgomery where Dr. King gave his famous "How Long, Not Long" speech. 

Spare Parts (2015):
Blu-ray / DVD release date May 5, 2015



  
Overview: 
 Real life meets the big screen in the true story of four undocumented, struggling Mexican-American students living in Arizona who find themselves unlikely competitors in a NASA-sponsored robotics challenge. Faced with adversities such as a modest budget and a lack of experience, the teacher-led quartet formed a robotics club in an inspired attempt to defy the odds by competing against mighty MIT for the top prize at the annual underwater robotics competition. 

  
White Collar (TV Series 2009)



 
Overview: 
 
White Collar is a procedural drama in which a team of FBI agents solves crimes in the upscale world of art and finance. Neal Caffrey, played by Matt Bomer, is a con artist and art forger who has agreed to work with the FBI in exchange for his release from prison. He has a good heart, but he is constantly battling his instinctive urge to betray others act in his own self interest. Every episode features a new crime that somehow draws Neal closer to solving the season's core mystery. The season-long arcs usually concern Neal's past and the people who caused his good nature to evolve into something untrustworthy. Neal wants to be the sort of person who can do right by others, but he is afraid that he will never be satisfied by staying in one place for too long.

Monday, March 23, 2015

DVD & Blu-ray reviews: From Paddington to James Gandolfini's final film The Drop

Paddington (PG) Paul King DVD/Blu-ray (95mins) 

“They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers,” maintains Aunt Lily to Paddington, bound for London with his marmalade sandwiches. Will the natives, Londoners, have forgotten their manners? Most of them, sadly, but not Sally Hawkins’s kind-hearted illustrator, who takes pity on the bear (sweetly voiced by Ben Whishaw), to the annoyance of her uptight husband (Hugh Bonneville) and his easily embarrassed daughter. Her housekeeper (Julie Walters) and son, however, want the furry fellow to stay. A subplot involving Nicole Kidman as a psychotic taxidermist is not as absorbing as the main plot, which is: can a middle-aged bore find a place in his heart for a displaced Peruvian bear? A beautifully scripted children’s film with jarfuls of heart. 
**** 


The Drop (15) Michael R Roskam DVD/Blu-ray (106mins) 

Barman Bob (Tom Hardy) is the kind of “softie” who allows an old soak to not pay her bar tab and who rescues injured pitbull puppies from garbage cans. His conniving cousin (James Gandolfini) is a bit harsher in this Dennis Lehane-scripted crime drama. When Bob’s bar, owned by menacing Chechens, is robbed, Bob is charged with tracking down the readies. Martin Scorsese is an obvious influence on this tense, Brooklyn-based movie, with a nuanced performance from the late, great Gandolfini, while Hardy channels Marlon Brando as the mysterious Bob. “Nobody ever sees you coming, do they Bob?” 
**** 

Network (15) Sidney Lumet Blu-ray (121mins) 

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” wails Peter Finch’s depressed newscaster during a live broadcast in Sidney Lumet’s prescient, incensed exploration of TV news and corporate America in 1976. Paddy Chayefsky’s script sizzles with indignation but it’s the acting that compels, particularly from an Oscar-winning Faye Dunaway as cut-throat producer Diana and Ned Beatty’s devilish CEO (“The world is a business”). Network isn’t subtle but it is mad as hell. 
**** 


Rollerball (15) Norman Jewison Blu-ray (125mins) 

“Corporate society takes care of everything,” maintains John Houseman’s sinister CEO in Norman Jewison’s satirical exploration of a dystopian future. James Caan convinces as Jonathan E, a gladiator-like star in the brutal world of Rollerball who rebels against an iniquitous system. “They’re afraid of you, Jonathan, all the way to the top, they are...” 
*** 


Two Night Stand (15) Max Nichols DVD/Blu-ray (86mins) 

Miles Teller, a less interesting John Cusack lookalike, has a one-night stand with fellow slovenly New Yorker Megan (Analeigh Tipton). She tries to leave his Brooklyn pad in a huff but finds herself snowed in. So we’re stuck with this tedious pair for an uncomfortable, gag-free period of time. It’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, but it fails on both counts. Watch an episode of Girls instead. 



Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/dvd--bluray-reviews-from-paddington-to-james-gandolfinis-final-film-the-drop-10121426.html 

Monday, March 9, 2015

Blu-ray /DVD Released - Coming Soon on March 10, 2015

Summary: New DVD and Blu-ray Releases for March 10, 2015

Fox’s Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb headlines this slow release week. The second and apparently final sequel to 2006’s family-friendly hit shifts the story to London’s British Museum. The film was a modest success with audiences and, like previous entries in the series, had mixed reviews from critics. I personally found it to be more enjoyable than the first two films, but most of that had to do with being able to see Robin Williams on screen again. Ultimately it’s a film that will predominantly resonate with younger viewers.

Those looking for a little more sophisticated should consider The Liberator, a Venezuelan historical drama about Simón Bolívar and his role in the Latin American Wars of Independence in the late 18th century. The film was Venezuela’s official entry for the Academy Awards and stars édgar Ramírez (Zero Dark Thirty, The Bourne Ultimatum). Or perhaps, The Red Ten, Lifetime’s mini-series based on the Bible inspired novel by Anita Diamant starring Minnie Driver, Morena Baccarin and Rebecca Ferguson.

Horror fans have Late Phases: Night of the Lone Wolf, a grisly drama about a blind Vietnam vet (Nick Damici) who moves into a retirement community plagued by mysterious deaths.  

As a huge fan of Ronny Yu’s 1993 The Bride with White Hair (not so much David Wu’s sequel) I was interested in seeing White Haired Witch. The film stars Fan Bingbing, which probably explains why the film was fairly successful because the movie itself, while beautiful to look at, is a narrative mess. Apparently the script does more closely follow the original source material, Liang Yusheng’s novel Baifa Monü Zhuan, than Yu’s version did, but that only makes the story more confusing that it should be. A Blu-ray release of Yu’s film would be more appreciated. 

Older films getting new releases include the 30th Anniversary Edition of John Hughes’ coming-of-age The Breakfast Club, as well asThe Sound of Music: 50th Anniversary Edition that was teased at this year’s Academy Awards with a performance by Lady Gaga and the Criterion Collection’s release of Fran?ois Truffaut’s underappreciated 1964 romantic drama The Soft Skin

Top 1. Devil May Call (2013)

Blu-ray / DVD release date March 10, 2015


Overview: 

Samantha was once on the other end of the crisis hot-line phone. She lost her vision and wasn't sure how she'd cope with her new darkness. The person on the other end of the phone saved her life, so she's spent her time since giving her time to those in need too. After spending the last year listening to people's pain and offering them a sympathetic ear, Sam is leaving the hot-line. One of her regulars doesn't want her to leave. For the past year, she's been keeping this man alive, and he doesn't want to see her leave. He shows up at the hot-line offices because he feels betrayed by her leaving him. What she doesn't know is that he's a serial killer bent on having her for himself. 

Top 2. The Legend of Korra (TV Series 2012-)

DVD Release Date  March 10, 2015


 
Overview: 

A teenage girl named Korra has three of the four elements (Earth, Water, and Fire), and now seeks to find the final element, Air. In her journey, she travels to Republic City- a metropolis that is fueled by steampunk technology. At first, it seems like a place where benders and non-benders thrive, but Korra soon finds out that Republic City is crawling with crime and the city is in danger of being torn apart. Korra focuses on her air bending training while also fighting off the dangers of the city. 

Top3. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

Blu-ray / DVD release date March 10, 2015

 
Overview: 

The museum comes alive at night. Old statues, monkey exhibits and figurines all come alive with the help of magic. The power comes from The Tablet of Ahkmenrah. Larry Daley, the night watchman at the museum, has saved the tablet and the museum before. He must save the museum's magic yet again. This time, the tablet's magic is dying, and Larry must leave on a quest that will take him around the world. It's the only way he can find a way to save the tablet's magic. He must join some of the most famous museum exhibits and favorites to keep the magic from dying completely. 

Source: http://www.kutv.com/entertainment/features/movie-reviews/stories/New-DVD-and-Blu-ray-Releases-for-March-10-2015-100218.shtml