Category: Home Video

Frozen was by far the best American animated film to come out in theaters last year, and it was one of the most successful movies period, so far earning north of a billion dollars worldwide.  I reviewed the movie when I saw it theaters last year, and I loved it.  My thoughts on the film haven’t changed much, so this mostly going to be a review of the disk itself, and anything else I think needs to be said.

Like pretty much all computer animated films, this movie looks wonderful on an HD TV.  All the colors just pop, and even if you do not have a 3D set, the images seem to come out of the screen.  You feel like you can run and jump in the snow with Anna, Elsa, and the rest of the gang.

One thing I did notice on my second viewing, is that while the movie is better then anything Pixar has done in a couple of years story wise, Disney Studios still has a ways to catch up with their digital film counterparts as far the animation goes.  The characters can still look a bit stiff, and separated from their environment.  It is almost not fair for them to have to be compared to Pixar all the time, but the bar has been set, and Disney Animation falls just a tad short.

There are not a ton of extras on this disk.  Their are couple of deleted scenes, but they are roughly drawn, and not fully animated.  They do give a glimpse of what Elsa would be like if she was evil, and a little more info on the sisters’ relationship.  There is a “making of” featurette, and some music videos as well.

This is a great movie, and it looks fantastic on an HD TV.  You should have no worries about bringing this movie home.  If you have kids this is probably a must buy.  I hope Disney Animation Studios continues to make great movies like Frozen.

I have already done a Catching Fire review, and my opinion of the film hasn’t changed, so you can find the film portion of the review here, but I thought I would give my impressions of the Blu-Ray release.

The movie holds up to repeat viewings, so there is no reason to worry about having this movie in your collection, and its transfer is excellent.  They shot it with real film, so there is a little grain in movie, but that just adds to the feel, and gives it a more gritty look.  Though you may want to pick a different movie if you really want to show off what your TV can do (I can suggest a couple of flicks for that purpose if you like).

The film is a little light on features.  There is a preview for Lionsgate’s new YA movie Divergent, an interesting hour long “making of”, a couple of deleted scenes, and an audio commentary.  The “making of” is the best one, but it doesn’t go supper in depth, so it is something you may watch once, and the deleted scenes don’t add anything, so it is easy to see why they were cut.

Despite the slightly disappointing features, the movie is still great, one of the best movies from last year in fact, and it is well worth adding to any collection.  Though I would understand if you wanted to hold off a couple of years for the eventual “The Hunger Games: Complete Box Set”, but I am impatient, so I am happy that it is in my collection now.

Now You See Me was a surprise hit for Summit Entertainment in 2013, but I think people got too caught up in the cool premise and excellent cast to care that movie itself was lacking in substance.  Though it could be that due to its success I went in with high expectations, while other people were just happy it was watchable.

It is about four talented street magicians, J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), that are brought together by a mysterious man to complete a series of increasingly difficult heists.  The FBI lead by Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is powerless to stop them.

With this setup it seems like it should be a magical Ocean’s 11, but it is never as clever as any of the Oceans’ movies.  Instead of filling you with awe and wonder, they flash a bunch of pretty stuff in front of you and then end up with a ton of cash, and instead of letting you try and figure out how they did it, they have Morgan Freeman’s character tell you like two minutes later.  They clearly think you are too dumb to understand what is going on without them holding your hand.

Since Freeman is always giving away how the magic is done it never feels like the magicians are doing any magic.  It just makes them all seem like hustlers trying to pull a very large fast one on everybody.  It is hard to root for a bunch of smarmy jerks, but that is kind of what they are asking you to do.

They do have a great cast in this film, but they all play their standard characters.  Jesse Eisenberg is smart but neurotic, Harrelson is odd, Fisher is sassy and self confident, and Franco is a cool hustler.  All these actors can do more then play their usual type, but the writers were too lazy for that.  Well maybe not Franco, but if he keeps playing in movies like this we will never know.  It is such as shame.

I wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn’t.  It is pretty and has a fun cast, but it feels like they had a cool idea but didn’t think the audience was smart enough for it, so they dumbed it way down.  It might have been a good movie at some point, but it is not worth watching in its current state.

Oblivion was one of the several Sci-Fi movies that came out in 2013.  It was directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) and released by Universal Studios.  It is a solid effort that just lacks that little something extra that would have made it a good film, but as it is, it is just beautiful but forgettable.

The story is about a drone maintenance worker Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) that is one of the last humans on Earth since it was all but destroyed in a battle against aliens.  He is constantly under threat from the remaining aliens on earth, and he is questioning the wisdom in leaving the Earth behind for Titan.

The trailer gives away one of the major plot points for this film, but I will refrain myself doing the same.  That being said this movie is mostly about the beautiful vistas of a destroyed Earth, and shattered Moon.  This film feels a lot like Kosinski’s previous film Tron: Legacy in that it is all style and light on the substance, but Tron has a lot more style.

Since this movie is mostly about Tom Cruise’s character, he thankfully turns in a good performance as the small time worker questioning the plans of his leadership.  The other actors in this movie are mostly just in it to provide little plot points for him on his journey.  They are all good, but mostly inconsequential.

This film is beautiful to look at, but there are only a few locations, so once I had seen them, I just wanted them to hurry up with this movie.  It could have easily been thirty minutes shorter and been a much better movie, or if they wanted to keep the length then they would have needed to rework the script.

This movie needed a new editor, or a more lively script to make it in to a good movie.  A trailer that didn’t give away major spoilers would have been nice too.  That being said it is still kind of a cool film, and a decent diversion for a couple of hours.  Since Joseph Kosinski is proving that he has such a good eye for Sci-Fi imagry, I am interested in seeing what he does next.