Zombieland (Blu-ray) (2009)
Zombieland (Blu-ray) (2009) - If there’s been a zombie apocalypse and you’re road-tripping alone though the wasteland, you could do worse than run into Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a bourbon-swilling bad-boy butt-kicker with a really cool car. This is where the careful hero of Zombieland, a kid nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), finds himself...
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The Hurt Locker (Blu-ray) (2008)
The Hurt Locker (Blu-ray) (2008) – The making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow’s magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That’s fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating...
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District 9
District 9 (Blu-ray) (2009) – A provocative science fiction drama, District 9 boasts an original story that gets a little lost in blow-’em-up mayhem. Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, District 9 begins as a mock documentary about the imminent eviction of extraterrestrials from a pathetic shantytown (called District 9). The creatures, it turns...
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Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds (2-Disc Special Edition)(Blu-ray)(2009) - Although Quentin Tarantino has cherished Enzo G. Castellari’s 1978 “macaroni” war flick The Inglorious Bastards for most of his film-geek life, his own Inglourious Basterds is no remake. Instead, as hinted by the Tarantino-esque misspelling, this is a lunatic fantasia of WWII, a brazen re-imagining of both...
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The Hangover
The Hangover (Unrated Edition)(Blu-ray)(2009) – If you like your humor broadside up, hold the subtlety, you’ll want to nurse this Hangover with your best buds. The ensemble cast meshes perfectly–it’s like a super-R-rated episode of Friends: silly, slapstick, and completely in the viewer’s face. When four pals go to Vegas to celebrate...
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Terminator Salvation (Director’s Cut) (Blu-ray) (2009)
Terminator Salvation (Director’s Cut) (Blu-ray) (2009) – Terminator Salvation restores some of the balance of huge freakin’ explosions and emotionally compelling plot to the Terminator series. Set entirely after the nuclear assault that left the computer system Skynet in control of the world, Terminator Salvation follows John Connor (Christian...
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Braveheart
Braveheart (Sapphire Series) (Blu-ray) (1995) – Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winning 1995 Braveheart is an impassioned epic about William Wallace, the 13th-century Scottish leader of a popular revolt against England’s tyrannical Edward I (Patrick McGoohan). Gibson cannily plays Wallace as a man trying to stay out of history’s way until events force his hand, an attribute...
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Gladiator
Gladiator (Sapphire Series) (Blu-ray) (2000) – A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for,...
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Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc. (4-Disc Edition) (Blu-ray) (2001) – The folks at Pixar can do no wrong with Monsters, Inc., the studio’s fourth feature film, which stretches the computer animation format in terms of both technical complexity and emotional impact. The giant, blue-furred James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (wonderfully voiced by John Goodman) is a scare-monster...
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Two-Disc Edition + Digital Copy) (Blu-ray) (2009) – The Rise of Cobra is not your grandfather’s G.I. Joe. It’s more like C.G.I. Joe with explosive special-effects action sequences that provide the film with a surplus of “Boom Boom Pow” (to quote the Black...
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