Blu-ray Movie Reviews

<I>Smokin' Aces</I> is a thriller-action film full of suspense and quite satisfying. I liked it, and I had not seen it before the HD DVD arrived. The studio calls it an action "comedy." But don't look to this movie for laughs.

Stop the presses. There's a new set of reference high definition discs in town, discs that in technical quality alone very nearly blow anything you've seen so far out of the water. It's the <I>Complete Matrix Trilogy</I>, available this Tuesday (May 22) only in a boxed set of three HD DVDs.

A seemingly random death initially appears to be unrelated to a devastating New Orleans ferry bombing that kills over 500 people. While the body is discovered in the same area as the explosion, and the cause of death is consistent with the tragedy, it turns up hours before the disaster. As Federal agent Doug Carlin investigates both the random death and the bombing, however, he suspects a connection. He soon has the opportunity to use a state-of-the art surveillance system that can seemingly look in on the most private and inaccessible activities, hoping that it will help him prove a link between the two events.

They say there's nothing new under the sun, and nothing drives home that old adage like the birth of a new format or two. The first movies that come out on a new format invariably aren't the <I>Citizen Kanes</I>, or even the <I>Titanics</I> of film history. No, it's the star-studded action warhorses that are considered at least somewhat tried and true that are trotted out by the studios.