Kubo and the Two Strings 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Stop-motion Tribute to Samurai Cinema
By Kent Conrad |
Kubo and the Two Strings is the story of an estranged family coming together. It is the story of a ...
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The Boxtrolls 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Charming, Odd, Ugly Beautiful?
By Kent Conrad |
Stop motion animation is a pretty weird medium. It was an early special effects trick, long since superseded by technology. ...
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The Magnificent Seven (1960) 4K UHD Review: McQueen Rising
By Jack Cormack |
It’s an Old West spin on a brilliant film, director Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. And hey, did it need to ...
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Dazed and Confused Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: School’s Out
By Jack Cormack |
Dazed and Confused (1993; dir. Richard Linklater) circuits darkness: On the last day of school before the summer of 1976, ...
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Three Colors Trilogy Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Enigmatic Masterpieces About People Connecting
By Kent Conrad |
The Three Colors of this film trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, are so-chosen for the French tri-color flag (sorry, U.S.A.) ...
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Silent Running 4K UHD: Sci-Fi Hippy Dreams Dying
By Kent Conrad |
One of the things that made Star Wars such a huge hit was the state of '70s cinematic sci-fi. Because ...
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Pulp Fiction 4K UHD Review: Jukeboxer
By Jack Cormack |
Joy to the world: Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction—a gritty crime romp set in mid-1990s L.A.—is now out in 4K Ultra ...
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National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4K UHD Review: Calamitous Christmas Classic
By Kent Conrad |
Clark Griswold, the epitome of the American Middle-Class male, is on a slow burn. He has a vision of perfection. ...
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The Polar Express 4K UHD Review: Dead-eyed and Dreaming
By Jack Cormack |
The Polar Express (2004; dir. Robert Zemeckis; rated G) is a weird, dark flick that should be darker. A motion-capture ...
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A Christmas Story 4K UHD Review: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!
By Jack Cormack |
A Christmas Story (1983; dir. Bob Clark) is a charmer—a sweet and funny yuletide gem that’s never too cute for ...
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Planes, Trains and Automobiles 4K UHD Review: Thanksgiving’s Annual Lesson
By Kent Conrad |
Neal Page is not a bad guy. He's tightly wound, a little too serious, but the most important thing to ...
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Elf (2003) 4K UHD Review: Farrell and Favreau Hit
By Kent Conrad |
Elf is a strange premise, anchored on a strange performance. Will Ferrell plays the grown-up version of a baby from ...
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Blue Hawaii 4K UHD Limited Edition Review: Death by Half-baked Clambake
By Jack Cormack |
When did Elvis Presley’s decline start? From the cradle. I’m no Elvis scholar (I’ve listened to dozens of his albums ...
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The Company of Wolves 4K UHD Review: Little Red’s Wolf Fetish
By Kent Conrad |
The Company of Wolves (1984) is only kind of a werewolf movie, in that werewolves in the 20th century took ...
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Universal Classic Monsters: Icons of Horror Vol. 2 4K UHD Review: They Don’t Make ’em Like They Used To
By Jack Cormack |
Halloween is over, but we can celebrate it all year long—am I right? I’m always in a mood to watch ...
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Casablanca 4K UHD Review: Here’s Looking at UHD
By Kent Conrad |
There's an old joke about a woman who saw Hamlet for the first time and hated it. "It was all ...
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Dressed to Kill (1980) 4K UHD Review: Hitchcock Outdone
By Jack Cormack |
To ‘get’ Dressed to Kill, you probably have to bear a soft spot in your heart for slasher movies. And it ...
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Army of Darkness 4K UHD Limited Edition Steelbook Review: Long Live the Medieval Dead
By Kent Conrad |
Army of Darkness was my personal introduction to the Evil Dead. Because of Universal's awful marketing at the time, however, ...
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The War of the Worlds (1953)/When Worlds Collide 4K UHD Review: They Came From the ’50s
By Jack Cormack |
Producer George Pal’s thumbprint on science-fiction and fantasy films was big. A new limited edition, two-disc set from Paramount Pictures ...
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Scream 2 4K UHD Review: You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream… For Less Scream
By Jack Cormack |
I doubt the horror movie was ‘dead’ before Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) came out. Hadn’t The Silence of the Lambs ...
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Poltergeist (1982) 4K UHD Review: This Movie Is Clean
By Jack Cormack |
Director Tobe Hooper is most famous for Poltergeist (1982) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Chainsaw’s a sick, stone classic ...
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The Lost Boys 4K UHD Review: Flashy ’80s Vampire Flick
By Kent Conrad |
Half of the The Lost Boys is a moody gothic music-video styled horror movie. The other half is the '80s ...
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director’s Edition 4K UHD Review: The Starship Ponderosa
By Jack Cormack |
Upon its release in 1979, Trekkies greeted Star Trek: The Motion Picture as an Event. Green-lit by Paramount in a ...
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God Told Me To 4K UHD Review: Holy Mindscrew
By Jack Cormack |
Larry Cohen, the writer-director of such cult faves as It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, and The Stuff, was a ...
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Event Horizon 4K UHD Review: Atmospheric Space Chiller
By Kent Conrad |
At first glance, Event Horizon looks like a rip-off of Alien. A crew in space, far from any aid, investigating ...
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Flatliners (1990) 4K UHD Review: Visually Stimulating Psychological Thriller
By Kent Conrad |
Doctors lead very exciting lives in movies. Every doctor I've known in real life has been a little dull. Intelligent, ...
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Edge of Tomorrow 4K UHD Review: Groundhog D-Day
By Kent Conrad |
It is a strange time to look at a film that earned hundreds of millions at the box-office and wonder: ...
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True Romance 4K UHD Review: Sick Love, Slick Film
By Kent Conrad |
True Romance isn't a Quentin Tarantino movie. His name is on the screenplay. It has many scenes which no other ...
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Raiders of the Lost Ark Limited Edition Steelbook 4K UHD Review: Cinematic Adventure Perfection
By Kent Conrad |
Watching as a child, I knew that Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great adventure. It had everything you ...
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Candyman (1992) 4K UHD Review: Urban Legend, Urban Horror
By Kent Conrad |
Of the many great things about Bernard Rose's Candyman, one of the best is that it isn’t structured like a ...
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The Untouchables 4K UHD Review: De Palma Lite
By Jack Cormack |
Great artists sometimes create beneath their gifts, just for a lark. This describes the role Brian De Palma plays in ...
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12 Monkeys (1995) 4K UHD Review: Time-Travel Tragedy
By Kent Conrad |
Terry Gilliam lives to be idiosyncratic. In a British comedy troupe, Monty Python, he was the American. In Hollywood filmmaking, ...
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Wild Things 4K UHD Review: High Level Sleaze
By Kent Conrad |
Wild Things is trash. But it's a kind of exquisite trash. It's the best Cinemax-style soft porn ever made. It's ...
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 4K UHD Review: End of the Classic Western
By Kent Conrad |
The ubiquity of the popularity of the Western is a cultural phenomenon that is hard to fathom. It wasn't just ...
Read More Singin’ in the Rain 4K UHD Review: A Pure Joy
By Jack Cormack |
Chances are, you’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain. You already know how good it is. (If you’ve not seen it, ...
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RoboCop (1987) 4K UHD Review: FrankenCop
By Jack Cormack |
When it came out in 1987, RoboCop (dir. Paul Verhoeven) was one of my favorite movies. I was seven. I ...
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) 4K UHD Review: Loud, Blaring Classic Adaptation
By Kent Conrad |
There's so much to love about Kenneth Branagh's take on the story of Frankenstein and his monster, but there is ...
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The Godfather Trilogy 4K UHD Review: A Restoration You Can’t Refuse
By Kent Conrad |
The most written about American films in history have to be Citizen Kane, Psycho, and The Godfather. All are epochal ...
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An American Werewolf in London 4K UHD Limited Edition Review: He’s a Monster and He’s Not Alright
By Jack Cormack |
At 97 minutes, An American Werewolf in London (1981) is a good short horror film that should have been shorter. ...
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Shooter 4K UHD Review: American Sniper-ish
By Jack Cormack |
As a mindless piece of action, Shooter is an entertaining ride. Director Antoine Fuqua never seems less than committed to ...
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The Matrix Resurrections 4K UHD Review: Welcome to the Meta-Verse
By David Wangberg |
One of the things that The Matrix: Resurrections does is acknowledge that it feels pointless to make a sequel to ...
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Alligator (1980) 4K Ultra HD Review: Jaws in the Sewers
By Kent Conrad |
It's always nice when a movie tells you exactly what it's about in the title. This film is a monster ...
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Catwoman: Hunted 4K Ultra HD Review: DC Goes Anime
By Steve Geise |
DC’s latest animated film answers the question you probably never asked: what would a DC film look like as anime? ...
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The Lover 4K UHD Collector’s Edition Review: Fall in Love Again
By Steve Geise |
Famed director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of this steamy semi-autobiographical tale by author Marguerite Duras caused a sensation upon its 1992 theatrical ...
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The Toolbox Murders (1978) 4K Ultra HD Review: Gruesome Grindhouse Exploitation
By Kent Conrad |
The difference between exploitation and horror is attitude. In a horror movie, you sympathize with the victim. In exploitation, your ...
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Krampus: The Naughty Cut 4K Ultra HD Review: Anti-Santa Extended Edition
By Kent Conrad |
A fan of folklore often feels a pang of loss when one of the creatures or legends you cherish suddenly ...
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Mad Max Anthology 4K Ultra HD Box Set Review: Work in Progress
By Steve Geise |
You know how all major video games launch with issues that have to be fixed after release? Well, sometimes it ...
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The Hills Have Eyes (1977) 4K UHD Review: Hellbilly Pie
By Jack Cormack |
Sounding like a lame retread of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974; dir. Tobe Hooper), The Hills Have Eyes (1977; dir. ...
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Middle Earth Ultimate Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD Review: Beautiful Box but Incomplete
By Kent Conrad |
The Lord of the Rings is a landmark of modern cinema. New Line's audacity of committing to a trilogy before ...
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Batman: Year One Commemorative Edition 4K Ultra HD Review: Good Batman Story Unexceptionally Told
By Kent Conrad |
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns made a bigger splash, but of the two famous Frank Miller revisionist Batman stories of ...
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