Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

In 1987, Patrick Swayze scored a sleeper smash with "Dirty Dancing," catapulting the actor to bigger and better roles in Hollywood, offering a shot at starring vehicles after years of supporting work. In 1990, Swayze hit the jackpot with "Ghost," a bona fide blockbuster that made him a household name, using sensual pottery and a resolute commitment to emoting to turn his last name into legend. Yet, there was an odd year in between the hits, with 1989 providing an especially double-fisted year for Swayze, testing out his newfound bankability with two actioners of disparate temperaments, both met with cult approval and middling box office. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's a wonder how a film like "Bringing Down the House" made it through the trials of script development and studio inspection. A racially charged comedy released roughly 30 years after such an enterprise could still be considered daring, the feature is a uncomfortable blend of hate and slapstick, greased down with a sitcom lubricant to aid mass appeal and to keep the more easily offended from throwing a fit after sitting through such nonsense. It's broad but terribly outdated material; however, upon its release in 2003 (making Disney's "10th Anniversary Edition" label a little bewildering), the movie was greeted with massive box office success, finding audiences eagerly devouring the shenanigans without a single thought paid to the toxic nature of the writing and direction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While some movie trilogies shine like a diamond, most tend to peter out by the second sequel. Think "Spider-Man 3," "RoboCop 3," and "Beverly Hills Cop 3." "Blade: Trinity" is a classic example of a franchise running at top speed into a brick wall for its third installment, collecting a series of dismal ideas, poor characterizations, and iffy filmmaking ability into a glacial, joyless enterprise that essentially ignores what made the previous pictures connect with audiences. Although ripe with potential, "Blade: Trinity" is a trainwreck set to a booming soundtrack, turning vampire hunting into a screen chore while it almost intentionally torches the macabre groundwork laid down by the first two features. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1989, writer/director Oliver Stone was diligently working on building his filmmaking career after his 1986 effort, the semi-autobiographical "Platoon," was showered with awards and exceptional box office, making the struggling artist a hot commodity. His vision would carry on to movies such as 1987's "Wall Street" and 1988's "Talk Radio," but Stone's interests in the nuances of the Vietnam War was far from sated. Adapted from the autobiography by veteran-turned-activist Ron Kovic, "Born on the Fourth of July" allowed Stone a chance to expand his dissection of this tumultuous era, acquiring a story not necessarily about the horror of the front lines, but the conflict of the troubled soul. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the wild, camouflage is a key component of survival, permitting creatures a chance to protect themselves using their natural skin or fur as defense against predators. For lions, sheer force is employed to help establish dominance, but their natural golden coloring assists in the routine of personal security, allowing the beasts to blend in with their surroundings, giving them an advantage in a land of continuous hunting. For the white lion, their bright appearance is akin to painting a target on their back, standing out like a snowball in a dry land, making them a particular curiosity in South Africa's wild bush country. How does a lion with ivory fur survive in a brutal land where concealment is a way of life? How could anything so obvious to the naked eye make it past life as a cub? Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The work of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin is best described as polarizing, with audiences near and far torn between a profound appreciation for the helmer's stylistics and tributes to moviemaking processes of old, and his dedication to abstract thought, rarely embarking on a picture that isn't moderately impenetrable. He's not an artist to be embraced, but observed, especially when Maddin launches into his own orbit, recalling the early years of David Lynch, aiming to alienate a large portion of his audience with oppressive layers of interpretational cinema, meant to challenge the cineaste more than satisfy the average matinee warrior. Through efforts like "The Saddest Music in the World" and "My Winnipeg," Maddin has built a brand name with his dedication to surrealism and magical happenings, typically slathered with expressionistic images pulled straight from silent cinema. He's an acquired taste, though with "Keyhole," the impish prankster is beginning to repeat himself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“I Wish” is a sweet, gentle picture from Japan, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, who specializes in softly wistful features of visual beauty. Although it runs for longer than it should, “I Wish” finds a charming position of curiosity and longing that helps to extend its interests to the audience, creating interesting characters facing adversity, who look to a bit of magic to help ease the discomfort in their lives. It’s also a movie about children told from a child’s perspective, granting the film a specialized concentration of adolescent energy that provides a unique thumbprint to an otherwise leisurely exploration of hope and travel. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With the tradition of a wedding comes the honeymoon, a special time where a couple is provided a chance for intimacy after the ceremonial whirlwind. It's a period of closeness in the midst of an exotic location, demanding the twosome engage in all sorts of relaxation and mild adventuring, solidifying the union with an once-in-a-lifetime shot at glorious recreation. For wolf biologist Isaac Babcock and his new wife Bjornen, sealant for their matrimonial bliss wasn't cured under a Hawaiian sun, but in the harsh conditions of the wild, with the two embarking on a journey into the restless lands of Idaho to experience nature up close as a couple. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Bettany Hughes is a historian and a popular television documentary host with an interest in world culture and religion that she wants to share with her audience. "Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World" is a travelogue program devoted to her thirst for knowledge, moving beyond the classroom to consume religious locales and practices in person, bringing along cameras to share this wealth of experience, providing atmosphere to the education. Despite the ravages of humidity and arduous distances, Hughes finds her way to seven places of unimaginable beauty and spiritual depth, stepping foot on Buddhist history with a goal to provide the average viewer with a deeper understanding of Buddhism and all of its colorful and meaningful practices. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I'm not sure what type of women-in-prison film "Female Convict Scorpion" is aiming to be, but it's not a very successful one. With a subgenre that typically thrives on outlandish behavior, overheated performances, and exploitation elements up the wazoo, "Female Convict Scorpion" only hints at a larger scale of madness, remaining subdued for the majority of its run time for reasons not fully understood. Boasting only a few celebratory screen elements and a handful of committed but not necessarily inspired performances, the feature is a disappointment, unwilling to truly rear back and vomit forth a particularly sticky mess of breasts, beatings, and elaborate designs of revenge. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When discussing the top box office draws of 1977, a certain range of familiar movies comes to mind. "Star Wars." "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." "Saturday Night Fever." Placing fourth on that list is "Smokey and the Bandit," perhaps the most improbable blockbuster of the year, riding a drive-in cinema obsession to greater monetary glory, turning Burt Reynolds and the Pontiac Trans Am into legends along the way. Not bad for a modestly budgeted production with a bizarre premise that will have to be explained in full to future generations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Gabriele Albanesi is a major fan of horror. It's a cinematic obsession that oozes out of every pore of "Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show," a spooky psychological production that's obviously intended to pay tribute to the titans of the genre, with principal interest in the Italian boom of the 1970s. Unfortunately, fandom can only take the feature so far, and while the movie has all the goopy particulars gorehounds will appreciate, along with a pronounced literary creep to bring it a specialized sensuality, "Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show" ends up a malformed lump of intentions without the necessary directorial polish to bring the material to its full potential. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's perfectly understandable why "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" would remain such an enticing title for adaptation. After all, it's not every day one gets to complete the work of Charles Dickens, who died in the middle of writing the novel, leaving the narrative and the mystery itself hanging in the air. With such a storytelling gap to fill, screenwriters and playwrights have been offered a rare opportunity to finish what Dickens started, taking this tale of murder and jealousy into multiple directions while attempting to remain true to the general lean of the source material. This BBC take on the trials and tribulations facing the good residents of Cloisterham is a mixed bag of Dickensian distractions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's extremely easy to take the Sun for granted. As the growling yellow star at the center of our solar system, the Sun is a dependable source of energy and mystery, enthralling the residents of Earth for an eternity, with certain cultures of the past worshipping its powers. Recent centuries have seen the star transformed into the ultimate question mark of the galaxy by a host of inquisitive scientists, each hoping to acquire a greater understanding of the Sun's inner workings. "Secrets of the Sun" is a NOVA production that plunges into the heart of the matter, assembling satellite imagery, scientific study, and intensive research (feel the suspense of microfiche examination!) to gather a stronger appreciation for the blazing circle in the sky. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Birdsong" is a television production that prizes repetition. Unfortunately, its chief export is misery, making the viewing experience quite punishing for those not in the mood for endless bouts of suffering via physical and mental trials. There's a story of fleeting romance and wartime consciousness that's compelling, possibly profound, but its buried under a thick glaze of depression without insight, lost in a fog of sadness acceptable for a 90-minute-long movie, tolerable for two hours, but insufferable at nearly three hours of gloom. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's not every day that one comes into contact with a movie that opens with a philosophical quote before it showcases slashings, stabbings, demonic worship, breast fondling, spider and bat attacks, and a homage to the Michelangelo painting "Pieta." 1981's "Murder Obsession" (also known as "Murder Syndrome") is a film packed with oddity and horror ambition, and while it doesn't provide a sustained display of terror, this gory mystery has enough salacious details and viciousness to keep the average giallo fan invested in the proceedings. Of course, it could be stranger, more alert, and erotically charged, yet "Murder Obsession" carries itself confidently, weaving in and out of dreamscapes to provide the viewer with a few handfuls of evildoing and suspicion. Plus, the feature offers the rare opportunity to view a scene where a Herve Villechaize-sized spider fondles the legs of a screaming woman, which is almost worth the purchase price alone. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration "Grindhouse" wasn't a box office smash when it was first released in 2007. However, that elaborate valentine to the pleasures of scrap yard cinema triggered a wave of true believers, with the wilds of low budget cinema suddenly populated with imitators of an admitted homage, each attempting to return a bit of the old school exhibition flavor to the contemporary moviegoing experience. With push of a button and the twirl of a knob, a feature shot this afternoon could suddenly resemble forgotten product lost to the blur of distribution 40 years ago, displaying severe print damage and offering exploitative plots that investigate the limits of extreme violence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Crows Zero" requires the utmost in viewer concentration, though it never quite earns such devotion. An adaptation of Hiroshi Takahashi's best-selling manga, the feature is blizzard of names and motivations, creating an ideal sensation of screen immersion for fans of the original work, while outsiders are left to question the half-realized subplots and wild tonal changes. It's not a terribly interesting motion picture, though the effort has been dutifully colored by the insanely prolific director Takashi Miike (in the time I took the write this sentence, he just made another movie), who brings a loaded sense of style and intermittent blasts of ultraviolence to the idiosyncratic film. The helmer flexes his visual muscles on occasion, slapping the screen with chaotic fight choreography and exaggerated character designs, but he's oddly powerless when it comes to the glacial pace of "Crows Zero," unable to bring it up to the awe-inspiring speed a few superlative scenes hint at. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Yul Kwon is a legal expert, management consultant, and, of course, the winner of "Survivor: Cook Islands," making him a most unusual choice to host "America Revealed," a four-part investigation into the systems that drive the American experience. Taking to land, sea, and air on multiple occasions to cross the country for maximum cultural immersion, Kwon grabs the reins of this enlightening but cushy documentary, an effort that carries a distinct ADD atmosphere of information overload. Perhaps fearful of exhausting scope as it dissects national manufacturing and connectivity 53 minutes at a time, "America Revealed" piles on numerous topics without any intent to investigate the true ramifications of agriculture and industrial advancements. While technically sound, the program is messy and disappointingly non-confrontational, sure to irritate those on the prowl for deeper meaning with issues of corporate responsibility and consumer protection. Still, as a surface blast of information, "America Revealed" highlights an enormous amount of issues worth investigating further, backing up ideas with fascinating visuals of life on the go. There's also Kwon, an appealing man making a smooth transition to PBS stardom, able to connect the dots with a few bad jokes, some distinct fear when accepting daredevil tasks, and an earnest sense of discovery. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Published in 1861, "Great Expectations" is one of the most famous works to emerge from author Charles Dickens, sustaining for 150 years as a devastating portrait of emotional frigidity and wild swings of fate. The source material has also found itself the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, each challenged to capture the writing's grim tone while servicing the needs of short run times and star demands. Perhaps most famously, the story was transformed into a highly beloved 1946 David Lean feature (I'm also partial to an ambitious 1998 modernization starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow). Attempting to return to well-worn literary ground, the BBC brings "Great Expectations" back to the small screen, laboring to restore Dickens's narrative scope and bleak sensibilities to a visual medium. The picture is immensely successful on multiple levels of execution, conjuring a forbidding realm of shattered lives and titular promise, carefully detailing a period of decay in such a vivid manner, every Blu-ray copy should come with a tetanus shot. With an impeccable cinematographic effort and a fabulously talented cast filling out all roles great and small, the material shines once again, convincing with its passions and its madness, inching closer to a definitive version of a tale it seems every creative type would like to take a crack at. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com