Blu-ray Movie Reviews

I was a senior in high school when Top Gun came out in 1986. After that, every guy in my class, including myself, wanted to be Tom Cruise. He just epitomized coolness in a way that transcended even his iconic turn in Risky Business. Our Navy recruitment officer was extremely happy that year because enlistment was at an all-time high. No, they didn’t ensnare me, thankfully. My admiration for Mr. Cruise and this film went only as far as the box office and not swabbing decks on some aircraft carrier. But I remember we drove an extra 20 miles out of our way to see Top Gun at a brand-new theater that was the first in the state equipped for THX sound. And it made all the difference.

Total Recall is a near-perfect mix of sci-fi action, plot twists, and the kind of warped tongue-in-cheek humor we expect from director Paul Verhoeven, delivered here with gusto by Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Douglas Quaid, a construction worker. More correctly, Schwarzenegger is Carl Hauser, a secret operative for the "Agency" who believes he is Quaid due to a memory implant. After being attacked by agents from the "Agency," Quaid escapes to Mars to aid the rebel independence movement and discover his true identity.

As Andy prepares to leave for college, his mother asks what he wants to do with his old toys. When they end up at a day-care center, Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Buzz (Tim Allen) must help the old gang escape from the toddlers' torture chamber and find their way back to Andy's room before he departs.

How do you top one of the greatest sequels ever made? Screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) somehow captures lightning in a bottle for the third time by taking our heroes and mixing them up with a new cast of characters that include Ken (Michael Keaton), a thespian hedgehog named Mr. Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton), and the evil pink teddy bear Lotso (Ned Beaty), who sentences the new toys to the toddlers' room.

Every Pixar release has been a demo showpiece, and this one is no exception. The 1080p video encode is perfect, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack features reference-quality dynamics, frequency response, and surround envelopment.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/ts1.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>The wizards at Pixar discovered that when left alone toys will come to life. In Andy's room his favorite toy is Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), an old-fashioned cowboy doll whose status is usurped when Andy is given the latest and greatest space toy, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). With the social dynamics thrown into chaos, Woody and Buzz end up in the clutches of any toys worst nightmare&#151;Sid, the toy-torturing boy next door.

Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning go-to cinematographer Wally Pfister makes his directorial debut with this fantastical tale of a 21st-century ghost in the machine. Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) believes that mankind is on the verge of a new order of artificial intelligence. It involves “transcendence,” whereby the electrical impulses of the brain—the emotions, memories, and ideas that make up our consciousness—are uploaded into a supercomputer. And after Will is shot by a member of a radical neo-luddite group (no, seriously), that’s exactly what he does to himself, losing his physical form and becoming a being of pure software.

In 1959, a UFO crash-landed on the moon and it was the true catalyst for space race between the US and Russia as they hurried to investigate the incident. In present day, the Autobots become aware of the crash and race to the moon to do their own investigation. Onboard the spacecraft they discover a deactivated Sentinel Prime who can only be reactivated by Optimus Prime, who is curious what happened so many years ago.

I wasn't a big fan of the original Transformers movie and skipped the critically panned sequel, but had heard good things about this one and was willing to give it a chance. The premise actually had some promise, but everything I disliked about the first movie is repeated here—shallow plot, poor acting, senseless characters, and a never-ending third act that repeats many of the action scenes witnessed in the first two acts. Granted, Michael Bay doesn't make these films to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, but he'll certainly never win a Best Editor award because the bloated run time clocks in at 154 fatiguing minutes.