Posts Tagged: Bluray


16
Jun 10

Raging Bull [Blu-ray] (1980)

Raging Bull [Blu-ray]

essential video

Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull has been identified in recent years as one of America’s greatest films, and understandably so. Robert De Niro won a richly deserved Academy Award for portraying fighter Jake La Motta, an extremely difficult New York boxer who has to contend with his own temper and jealousy, as well as the Mob and the boxing establishment. Joe Pesci is very good as La Motta’s long-suffering brother, and Cathy Moriarty made a strong screen debut as the brawler’s glamorous wife. The highly contrasted black-and- white film has a richness, texture, and even sensuality about it that, together with Scorsese’s amazing editing (with his Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker) and De Niro’s focused, (more…)


14
Jun 10

Gone with the Wind [Blu-ray] (1939)

Gone with the Wind [Blu-ray]

David O. Selznick wanted Gone with the Wind to besomehow more than a movie, a film that would broaden the very idea of what a film could be and do and look like. In many respects he got what he worked so hard to achieve in this 1939 epic (and all-time box-office champ in terms of tickets sold), and in some respects he fell far short of the goal. While the first half of this Civil War drama is taut and suspenseful and nostalgic, the second is ramshackle and arbitrary. But there’s no question that the film is an enormous achievement in terms of its every resource–art direction, color, sound, cinematography–being pushed to new limits for the greater glory of telling an American story as fully as possible. Vivien Leigh is sti (more…)


12
Jun 10

The Ultimate Matrix Collection [Blu-ray] (2008)

The Ultimate Matrix Collection [Blu-ray]

Item Name: The Ultimate Matrix Collection [Blu-ray]; Studio: Warner Home Video

The definitive 7-disc Blu-ray set, The Ultimate Matrix Collection features all three films in the trilogy together for the first time ever with a newly remastered picture and sound for The Matrix. Also included is the companion piece The Matrix Revisited and the best-selling The Animatrix, plus five entirely new Blu-ray discs packed solid with brand-new supplemental materials that encompass every aspect of the Matrix universe, including two new audio commentaries on each film, Enter the Matrix video game footage, 106 deep-delving featurettes/ documentaries and much more!

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10
Jun 10

Yojimbo & Sanjuro (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] (1962)

Yojimbo & Sanjuro (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

essential video

This semi-comic 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ran) was inspired by the American Western genre. Kurosawa mainstay Toshirô Mifune (The Seven Samurai) plays a drifting samurai for hire who plays both ends against the middle with two warring factions, surviving on his wits and his ability to outrun his own bad luck. Eventually the samurai seeks to eliminate both sides for his own gain and to define his own sense of honor. Yojimbo is striking for its unorthodox treatment of violence and morality, reserving judgment on the actions of its main character and instead presenting an entertaining tale with humor and much visual excitement. One of the inspirations for the “spaghetti Westerns” (more…)


6
Jun 10

Up in the Air [Blu-ray] (2009)

Up in the Air [Blu-ray]

Up in the Air transforms some painful subjects into smart, sly comedy–with just enough of the pain underneath to give it some weight. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) spends most of his days traveling around the country and firing people; he’s hired by bosses who don’t have the nerve to do their layoffs themselves. His life of constant flight suits him–he wants no attachments. But two things suddenly threaten his vacuum-sealed world: his company decides to do layoffs via video conference so they don’t have to pay for travel, and Bingham meets a woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga, The Departed), who seems to be the female version of him… and of course, he starts to fall in love. Writer-director Jason Reitman is building a caree (more…)


4
Jun 10

Léon: The Professional (Theatrical and Extended Edition) [Blu-ray] (1994)

Léon: The Professional (Theatrical and Extended Edition) [Blu-ray]

Luc Besson (TheFifth Element) made his American directorial debut with this stylized thriller about an Italian hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being pursued by a corrupt killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely irresistible about the story line and the relationship between Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets and explosions are awfully familiar. –Tom Keogh

Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, (more…)


2
Jun 10

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride [Blu-ray] (2005)

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride [Blu-ray]

Who else but Tim Burton could make Corpse Bride, a necrophiliac’s delight that’s fun for the whole family? Returning to the richly imaginative realm of stop-motion animation (after previous successes with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach), Burton, with codirector Mike Johnson, invites us to visit the dour, ashen, and drearily Victorian mansions of the living, where young Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) is bequeathed to wed the lovely Victoria (Emily Watson). But the wedding rehearsal goes sour and, in the kind of Goth-eerie forest that only exists in Burton-land, Victor suddenly finds himself accidentally married to the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), a blue-tinted, half-skeletal bea (more…)


31
May 10

Band of Brothers [Blu-ray] (2008)

Band of Brothers [Blu-ray]

An impressively rigorous, unsentimental, and harrowing look at combat during World War II, Band of Brothers follows a company of airborne infantry–Easy Company–from boot camp through the end of the war. The brutality of training takes the audience by increments to the even greater brutality of the war; Easy Company took part in some of the most difficult battles, including the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the failed invasion of Holland, and the Battle of the Bulge, as well as the liberation of a concentration camp and the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. But what makes these episodes work is not their historical sweep but their emphasis on riveting details (such as the rattle of a plane as the paratroopers wait to leap, o (more…)


29
May 10

Presumed Innocent/Frantic (Thriller Double Feature) [Blu-ray]

Presumed Innocent/Frantic (Thriller Double Feature) [Blu-ray]No description for this product could be found, but have a look over at Amazon for reviews and other information.


25
May 10

The Last Samurai [Blu-ray] (2003)

The Last Samurai [Blu-ray]

While Japan undergoes tumultuous transition to a more Westernized society in 1876-77, The Last Samurai gives epic sweep to an intimate story of cultures at a crossroads. In America, tormented Civil War veteran Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is coerced by a mercenary officer (Tony Goldwyn) to train the Japanese Emperor’s troops in the use of modern weaponry. Opposing this “progress” is a rebellion of samurai warriors, holding fast to their traditions of honor despite strategic disadvantage. As a captive of the samurai leader (Ken Watanabe), Algren learns, appreciates, and adopts the samurai code, switching sides for a climactic battle that will put everyone’s honor to the ultimate test. All of which makes director Edward Z (more…)