Hal – The Movie (Blu-ray Review)
Kurumi’s heart was broken by the sudden death of her boyfriend in a tragic airplane accident. Forced to carry on without her beloved Hal, she fell into a reclusive and joyless existence. Kurumi had given up on the world, but a brilliant scientist devised a plan to win her back. By melding futuristic technology with the binary equivalent of human emotion, they created an ultra-lifelike robotic surrogate to take Hal s place and lure Kurumi from her shroud of solitude. Resistant at first, this shattered beauty slowly yielded to her feelings of longing and took comfort in the company of a robot. Though their unique bond grew stronger with each passing day, Kurumi and Hal would soon discover that nothing about their artificial love story was quite as it seemed. Continue reading ‘Hal – The Movie (Blu-ray Review)’
It’s a rare occurrence when a movie drops a trailer that looks incredible, has expectations set very high and then delivers. Captain America: The Winter Soldier did just that. The film also opted to be a Spring movie and in turn wound up being the highest grossing film domestically until just a week ago. Pretty impressive. Its also big enough to scare off Batman and Superman from competing head to head with the follow up. Personally, I was a big fan of the first Captain America film (It so happens to be my favorite pre-Avengers Phase I film) and was looking very forward to another Steve Rogers “solo” adventure. The film also featured one of my favorite Avengers coming back too, Black Widow. And then they were using The Winter Soldier storyline…just sounded too awesome to be true. 
The Katie Couric-produced and narrated documentary, Fed Up premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Later, it found release in theaters back in May during summer movie season. No, it didn’t finish in the Top 10 of summer films. It was widely praised by critics, with one even calling it the “Inconvenient Truth of the health movement”. The Weinstein Company bought the rights to it and are now bringing it to Blu-ray where hopefully more people will be able to become informed of what it has to offer. If you are interested in learning more about this hidden cause to obesity in America and some of what you can do to improve your health to prevent it, you can use the Amazon link to pre-order the film. 
Anchor Bay is releasing the “new”est Donnie Yen film, 14 Blades. I use the term “new” loosely as its been out since 2010. The film is just now coming over to the United States after playing and being awarded elsewhere for four years. While it premiered in Hong Kong, the film truly became a hit when it opened in Singapore. It then ended up being nominated for two awards at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards. The awards it was up for were for Best Sound Design and Best Action Choreography. Of those nomination, however, it went home empty handed winning neither of them. This isn’t the first Blu-ray release of the film either, but it is the first release of the film in the United States territory.
When it comes to the films of Adam Sandler, critics either have their negative review written before they see the film or just avoid the movie all-together. Personally, I can’t say I’m a big fan, but I’m sort of indifferent. Back in the 90s and early 2000s he made a good handful of movies I did enjoy. In fact, his first pairing with Drew Barrymore 
I remember it like it was only yesterday. The year was 2006. It was a cold, blistery night in the month of December in Cleveland, OH. I had just taken lunch at my third shift job and ventured out into the tundra to hit up Wal-Mart. I was literally one patron away from scoring a Sony PlayStation 3 on its debut night. I was livid and pissed, but what could I do? I have to work for a living and so the weeks went on when just before the Christmas holiday after almost giving up I called a far away Wal-Mart during the witching hour of 3 AM and low and behold they had one in stock. I begged them to hold it for me. They said I had one hour to come and get it. As soon as my co-worker got back from lunch I rushed out and drove like a maniac 45-minutes away to claim my prize. It was finally mine! The cheapest (at the time) and still best Blu-ray player (IMO) on the market was finally mine! 
After three years in a row now (
Where do I begin here? Something like this is gonna go one of two ways. There’s a 98% chance something like Jersey Shore Massacre is going to be a complete piece of dung. In fact, that’s almost the obvious judgement to come from just hearing the title. Then you have that 2% off-chance that it could be a pleasurable piece of garbage or at least be exploitative enough to not be a complete waste of time going through it. It’s with this two-sided coin that I decided to roll the dice with this film. Which, so happens to be the follow up to a film (not yet on Blu-ray…don’t worry…coming soon though!) called Girls Gone Dead. 
One of last year’s biggest surprises and best boxed sets was Scream Factory’s Vincent Price Collection. Not only did it pack together 6 of his classics, including 4 from the Corman era and 2 horror staples, it also had excellent bonus material that really gave you a feel for how some of us saw Vincent growing up. I’m talking about those intros to the movies that were included. Well, Scream Factory knows how much we loved that set and they’re doing an encore, this time with 7 movies. And for those non-horror people, the titles on this one might be more of the household name variety. Today, Scream Factory has unleashed the specs for this exciting followup to last year’s set. Also, they are offering to send it to you a month early if you pre-order from their website! Cool deal, eh? Scroll down to get all the wicked, ghoulish details of the Vincent Price Collection II! 
I’m a big big fan of up and coming indie horror director Ti West. He reached me in an incredible way with his breakout film House Of The Devil and I’ve been following his career with great excitement ever since. His follow up, The Innkeepers was a great little follow up with a more modern approach. After it was announced he was doing a sci fi movie with Liv Tyler, but that hasn’t taken off yet. Ti then partnered up with Eli Roth to do The Sacrament. I’ll be honest, when it was first announced they’d be using the found footage aesthetic I was a little disappointed. But, Ti West did make an interesting little piece in the first V/H/S movie AND he’s a rather smart and creative director, so there had to be some logical reasoning behind it or a plan. 
Hammer Horror’s followup to The Woman In Black came a few months ago with The Quiet Ones. Its another spook show, but this time based on real events. That real event was “The Philip Experiment”. In short, in 1972 some Canadian parapsychologists tried to create a ghost as they believed the power to do so may have been in the human mind. While they could never get “Philip” to physically appear before them, they were successful in making contact and some communication with this ghost. The film based off the events was less successful, taking in under $10 million in US box office and $17 million worldwide. Could it be that people are over ghosts/possession movies or was it that Occulus that came out just before this one gave audiences their fill? I don’t know the answer to that, but we can go ahead and take the journey for ourselves in this review. 
The year 1989 is seminal year in my life in film. It had the summer that saw my love of film grow exponentially with such franchise films at Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and License To Kill. One conversation concerning 1989 seems to have sort of been forgotten over the years. That year had five films involving deep sea science fiction adventures. Most notably remembered is James Cameron’s The Abyss, but there was also DeepStar Six, The Evil Below, Lords Of The Deep and today’s film we’re here to discuss; Leviathan. Leviathan is surprisingly the first one of these films to make the jump to Blu-ray (DeepStar Six will make its debut on the format in Japan on November 5 of this year). While not under the Collector’s Edition banner, Scream Factory has still given this underappreciated film some great extras. 
