The soaring adventure of a 13-year-old girl and her estranged father, who learn what family is all about when they adopt an orphaned flock of geese and teach them to fly! Read the rest of this entry

Blue Ray disc featuring live versions of several of Josh Groban’s hits plus appearances by Angelique Kidjo and Lucia Micarelli. Filmed in 2007 in Salt Lake City, in honor of his first arena concert, which was held in the same city where he performed at the 2002 Winter Olympics closing ceremonies, Awake Live raises up ever higher the most popular young Adult Contemporary star of our era. Read the rest of this entry

The Christian invaders were regarded as infidels. The Arabs were scorned as lawless pagans. The Westerners saw their quest as literally a sanctified crusade, while the Muslims launched their own holy war, called a jihad, in retaliation. Sound familiar? It should, because although the events depicted in the History Channel’s The Crusades – Crescent & The Cross took place nearly a thousand years ago, they are but a distant mirror to what’s going on in the Middle East right now. This two-part, three-hour program impressively details all three Crusades, starting in the late 11th Century, when Pope Urban II dispatched a huge force to reclaim Jerusalem, which had been under Muslim control for some 400 years. For the knights and others who made the journey, it was a noble spiritual quest, not to mention an escape from Europe’s petty wars and famines; in the end, the fact that many of them were greedy butchers who murdered Muslims, Jews, and even other Christians indiscriminately (more…)

The third installment in the massively popular film series based on Capcom’s zombie horror/science fiction games, Resident Evil: Extinction brings the world to an end, not with a whimper but a bang, as Milla Jovovich’s Alice pits her bio-organic superskills against armies of the undead in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Also on hand is a more grown-up version of the games’ Claire Redfield (played by Heroes’ Ali Larter), who leads a convoy of humans (among them Resident Evil vets Oded Fehr and Mike Epps, who reprise their roles as Carlos and LJ, as well as newcomers Ashanti and Spencer Locke) in search of sanctuary; meanwhile, sinister Umbrella Corporation scientist Dr. Sam Isaacs (Iain Glen) seeks a cure for the zombie virus outbreak via Alice’s blood, which he taps via a lab full of clones. Subtlety has never been the Resident Evil series’ strong suit, but it’s hard to argue against Extinction’s breakneck pace and impressive CG special effects; director Russell Mulcahy (th (more…)

As paranoid cop Del Spooner, Will Smith (Independence Day, Men in Black) displays both his trademark quips and some impressive pectoral muscles in I, Robot. Only Spooner suspects that the robots that provide the near future with menial labor are going to turn on mankind–he’s just not sure how. When a leading roboticist dies suspiciously, Spooner pursues a trail that may prove his suspicions. Don’t expect much of a connection to Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction stories; I, Robot, the action movie, isn’t prepared for any ruminations on the significance of artificial intelligence. This likable, efficient movie won’t break any new ground, but it does have an idea or two to accompany its jolts and thrills, which puts it ahead of most recent action flicks. Also featuring Bridget Moynahan (The Sum of All Fears), Bruce Greenwood (The Sweet Hereafter), and James Cromwell (Babe, LA Confidential). –Bret Fetzer Read the rest of this entry

This year the BAT goes BLU…BATMAN – Batman (Michael Keaton) vs. The Joker (Jack Nicholson) in the amazing first extravaganza! With Kim Basinger. BATMAN RETURNS – The Bat (Michael Keaton), the Cat (Michelle Pfeiffer), the Penguin (Danny DeVito). And Christopher Walken, too! BATMAN FOREVER – Riddle me this: The Dark Knight (Val Kilmer) bat-battles Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey). With Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell. BATMAN & ROBIN – Will Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) put the world on ice? George Clooney wears the hero’s cape. Also with Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone. All four box office hits on Blu-Ray for the very first time! Read the rest of this entry

On the Blu-ray Disc
The Blu-ray “BD Live” bonus feature allows viewers with Blu-ray or Playstation 3 players connected to the Internet to go online with friends or family anywhere in the country who also have Blu-ray and Internet capability to set up specific movie chat times. Both parties must own the Blu-ray version of the same movie in order to sync the movie for simultaneous viewing and the person who initiates the chat session controls movie functions like pause, fast forward etc. Chat session participants can instant message one another right on screen as the movie plays for an interactive experience that’s just a step away from viewing the movie together in the same room. The only real delay is the time it takes to maneuver your remote through the onscreen keyboard, though the capability to link with your computer keyboard or handheld device makes messaging back and forth less cumbersome. The movie mail option allows users to upload video files they’ve created on th (more…)

Unpretentious and dramatically straightforward, Valkyrie is a suspenseful yet ennobling story about the last attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler prior to the end of World War II. Tom Cruise is effective if a little opaque as hero Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who channels his anger at Hitler’s atrocities and mismanagement of the war by joining a secret organization bent on killing the Führer. When the outspoken Stauffenberg hits on the idea of linking Hitler’s death with an official policy to safeguard Berlin during a government crisis–a contingency plan called “Valkyrie”–the group realizes a post-assassination coup could be covered by rapidly implementing the plan. History tells us the plot failed, of course, and Hitler killed himself months later. But that doesn’t stop Cruise or director Bryan Singer from approaching the film as a thinking person’s thriller, told from inside the conspirators’ camp, where the outcome of their deeds were uncertain for several tense h (more…)

When a seismic geologist (Brendan Fraser) discovers his lost brother’s notes in a copy of the titular Jules Verne novel, he and his nephew (Josh Hutcherson, Bridge to Terabithia, Zathura) head to Iceland. There, joined by a fetching mountain guide (played by Icelandic actress Anita Briem), they get trapped in a cavern and go down, down, down, finally arriving in a primeval underworld full of prehistoric beasts and carnivorous plants. It would be pointless to complain about the empty-headedness of it all; Journey to the Center of the Earth aspires to be a kinesthetic experience. It wants to engage your adrenal glands, not your brain or your heart (the dialogue and characters are so generic, the script may have been cut-and-pasted from previous versions of Verne’s book). Fraser, with his goofy handsomeness and accessible presence, provides a reasonably human axis around which all the frantic flying and swooping CGI effects revolve. The movie is as hollow as the world it dep (more…)

essential videoSaturday Night Fever is one of those movies that comes along and seems to change the cultural temperature in a flash. After the movie’s release in 1977, disco ruled the dance floors, and a blow-dried member of a TV-sitcom ensemble became the hottest star in the U.S. For all that, the story is conventional: a 19-year-old Italian American from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (John Travolta), works in a humble paint store and lives with his family. After dark, he becomes the polyester-clad stallion of the local nightclub; Tony’s brother, a priest, observes that when Tony hits the dance floor, the crowd parts like the Red Sea before Moses. Director John Badham captures the electric connection between music and dance, and also the desperation that lies beneath Tony’s ambitions to break out of his limited world. The soundtrack, which spawned a massively successful album, is dominated by the disco classics of the Bee Gees, including “Staying Alive” (Travolta’s theme during th (more…)