Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

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Alien: Covenant
Chris Chiarella  |  Dec 08, 2017  | 
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Remember how excited we were when we heard that George Lucas—the man who started it all—was going back to directing Star Wars movies? And a lot of us went to see Episode I and said, “Oh.” And then, a few years older and wiser, we sat through Episode II and said, “Oh. Well.”

Ridley Scott is putting us through much the same ringer with the Alien franchise he began, famously returning for 2012’s technically accomplished but overly complicated Prometheus (also newly available on 4K). And now he’s back again with Alien: Covenant, which might just be the nadir for the series.

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Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Aliens, The Abyss & True Lies on 4K Blu-ray at Last
Chris Chiarella  |  Jun 14, 2024  | 
Aliens (1986)
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The Abyss (1989/1993)
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True Lies (1994)
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Across a career now spanning 40 years (if we use the version of his résumé that lists The Terminator as his debut), James Cameron has proven himself as one of our most popular filmmakers. His oeuvre totals fewer than 10 movies, yet they have been much-appreciated mdash; including two that were top box office champs — so newer, superior disc releases are seemingly forever at the top of fans’ wishlists. Fox/Disney recently sent us a trio of long-demanded Cameron films in so-called Ultimate Collector’s Editions, available for the first time on 4K disc: Aliens, The Abyss, and True Lies. Let’s explore them in the order of their theatrical release.

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Alita: Battle Angel
Roger Kanno  |  Sep 06, 2019  | 
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Expectations for the release of Alita: Battle Angel, the long-awaited film adaptation of the Japanese cyberpunk manga series, Battle Angel Alita, ran extremely high, no doubt due to the high-profile names involved in its production. Co-written and co-produced by James Cameron and directed by Robert Rodriguez, it stars Rosa Salazar as cyborg-warrior Alita, with supporting performances by past Academy Award recipients Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, and Christoph Waltz.
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All Quiet on the Western Front
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Jul 24, 2023  | 
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After several Hollywood adaptations for both the big and small screens, Edward Berger is now the first German director to adapt his countryman Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Here, Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) is a young German man who finds himself caught up in the patriotic fervor of World War I Germany and, along with his friends, enlists in the military to fight. Upon arriving at the Western Front against France, Paul and his friends are confronted with the reality of trench warfare, which is vastly different from the glory they imagined.

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Allied
Chris Chiarella  |  Aug 04, 2017  | 
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The year is 1942, and Max (Brad Pitt) is a Canadian working with British Intelligence deep undercover in French Morocco, teamed for the first time with Marianne (Marion Cotillard), a cunning operative for the French Resistance. Together they face incredible danger and the sad realities of the life they’ve chosen, only to fall in love. Back in England, they find themselves married with a child while the war still rages, but Marianne is suddenly the target of suspicion: Could this woman who has so dutifully risked her life in service to the Allies possibly be a spy for the Germans? With his entire family at stake, Max sets out to uncover the truth, a perilous journey with some unexpected, unwelcome twists.
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Almost Famous
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 15, 2021  | 
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As someone nicknamed "Almost Famous" by the road crew of a band I've been embedded with on scores of their North American tours over the past two decades, I can attest firsthand to the accuracy of every backstage moment seen on unadulterated display in director/screenwriter Cameron Crowe's film of the same name. Indeed, Almost Famous is Crowe's love-letter depiction of his early/ mid-1970s zeitgeist years spent as a geeky teenage scribe desperately trying to act cool while seeking to chronicle the true essence of rock & roll and life on the road.
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American Made
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Mar 16, 2018  | 
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The dramedy action film American Made from director Doug Liman (Swingers, Edge of Tomorrow) is based on the true story of airline pilot Barry Seal (played here by Tom Cruise), who in the late 1970s was recruited by the CIA to become a drug runner for the Medellin cartel in Central America. Seal eventually became a key figure in what would turn out to be one of the biggest political scandals in the following decade, the Iran-Contra “gate.” While this might sound like heavy material, American Made is far from a heavy film.
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American Psycho 4K
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Nov 16, 2018  | 
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The controversial 2000 film American Psycho from co-screenwriter/director Mary Harron (Alias Grace) was based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. Set in the fast-paced 1980s, it follows the privileged, handsome, and narcissistic Wall Street executive Patrick Bateman (Oscar winner Christian Bale) who is all about greed and self-aggrandizement. By day he builds on the fortune and material things he has already accumulated, but at night the eviler demons inside him slip out to experiment with a dizzying array of sex and violence.
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Amsterdam
Chris Chiarella  |  Mar 03, 2023  | 
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The problem with writer/director David O. Russell’s most recent outing, Amsterdam, might be summed up as “too many”: too many famous faces cast as too many characters possessing too many quirks to the point that it feels like a great big party for them but rather a chore for us, especially considering the two-hour-plus runtime. Much like his overwrought American Hustle, it combines a fictitious storyline intertwined with historical events, and this time at least it sheds light on some forgotten but worth-remembering chapters from our past.

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Ant-Man and The Wasp
Chris Chiarella  |  Nov 09, 2018  | 
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The most fun thread in the Earth-bound tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe owes much to the presence of star/co-writer Paul Rudd, whose comedic charms and dramatic sensibilities embiggen an otherwise diminutive hero. Two years after the fallout from Captain America: Civil War, when ex-con Scott Lang (Rudd) illegally fought as Ant-Man, he’s nearing the completion of his house arrest and ready to get his life back on track.
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Apocalypse Now Final Cut
Al Griffin  |  Oct 25, 2019  | 
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"The avant-garde art of the past becomes the wallpaper of the future." This statement, from a new introduction by Francis Ford Coppola contained on the Apocalypse Now Final Cut Ultra HD Blu-ray release, ultimately explains the acclaimed director's motivation to revisit his Vietnam War epic, ranked number 30 on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the 100 Greatest American Films, and create yet another cut after already having done so in 2001 for Apocalypse Now: Redux.
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Aquaman
Chris Chiarella  |  Apr 12, 2019  | 
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Set mostly after the events in 2017's Justice League, Aquaman takes us back to the origin of reluctant amphibian hero Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), and then to the present for a grand new adventure. We are introduced to men who would be king (including an angry challenger to the throne) and a hidden realm far beyond our own evolution. To keep things interesting, there's a high-tech pirate on our hero's tail, and a fellow Atlantean (Amber Heard) at his side who sports a shock of crimson hair worthy of The Little Mermaid.
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Arrival
Chris Chiarella  |  May 12, 2017  | 
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When a gaggle of gigantic, otherworldly objects parks itself at various points around the Earth, life as we know it is paused while collective humanity figures out our next move. Our finest minds—tempered by the military—seek to determine the mysterious visitors’ even more mysterious purpose, leaving us with the complicated business of learning how to communicate with them. The best hope is brilliant language professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who is tasked with deciphering a bizarre form of “speech,” impossible for humans to emulate. But if she doesn’t make meaningful contact, and soon, all hell might break loose, with no guarantee of how such a conflict would end.
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Assassin's Creed
Corey Gunnestad  |  Aug 18, 2017  | 
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For centuries, the Order of the Knights Templar has searched for the mythical Apple of Eden. They believe it contains not only the seeds of man’s first disobedience, but the key to free will itself. If they find the relic and decode its secrets, they will have the power to control freedom of thought. Only the brotherhood of the Assassins stands in their way…
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Atomic Blonde
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Mar 02, 2018  | 
David Leitch is known mostly as a stunt coordinator on big action films like Tron: Legacy, but for Atomic Blonde he steps behind the camera as the big man in charge to direct an adaptation of the graphic novel series The Coldest City by Antony Johnson and Sam Hart. The movie is fairly dripping in neon and ’80s nostalgia. Charlize Theron stars as sexy Cold War MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, tasked to go into East Berlin and work with embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy) in order to find a sensitive dossier.
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