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![Star Trek (Three-Disc +Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RfGsmoLVL._SL160_.jpg)
J.J. Abrams' 2009 feature film was billed as "not your father's Star Trek," but your father will probably love it anyway. And what's not to love? It has enough action, emotional impact, humor, and sheer fun for any moviegoer, and Trekkers will enjoy plenty of insider references and a cast that seems ideally suited to portray the characters we know they'll become later. Both a prequel and a reboot, Star Trek introduces us to James T. Kirk (Chris Pine of The Princess Diaries 2), a sharp but aimless young man who's prodded by a Starfleet captain, Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), to enlist and make a difference. At the Academy, Kirk runs afoul of a Vulcan commander named Spock (Zachary Quinto of Heroes), but their conflict has to take a back seat when Starfleet, including its new ship, the Enterprise, has to answer an emergency call from Vulcan. What follows is a stirring tale of genocide and revenge launched by a Romulan (Eric Bana) with a particular interest in Spock, and we get to see the familiar crew come together, including McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekhov (Anton Yelchin), and Scottie (Simon Pegg).The action and visuals make for a spectacular Big-Screen Movie, though the plot by Abrams and his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who worked together on Transformers and with Abrams on Alias and Mission Impossible III), and his producers (fellow Losties Damon Lindeloff and Bryan Burk) can be a bit of a mind-bender (no surprise there for Lost fans). Hardcore fans with a bone to pick may find faults, but resistance is futile when you can watch Kirk take on the Kobayashi Maru scenario or hear McCoy bark, "Damnit, man, I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" An appearance by Leonard Nimoy and hearing the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry as the voice of the computer simply sweeten the pot. Now comes the hard part: waiting for some sequels to this terrific prequel. --David Horiuchi Stills from Star Trek (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto
- Director(s):
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V%2Beipy8-L._SL160_.jpg)
At a time when too many animated films consist of anthropomorphized animals cracking sitcom one-liners and flatulence jokes, the warmth , originality, humor, and unflagging imagination of Up feel as welcome as rain in a desert. Carl Fredericksen (voice by Ed Asner) ranks among the most unlikely heroes in recent animation history. A 78- year-old curmudgeon, he enjoyed his modest life as a balloon seller because he shared it with his adventurous wife Ellie (Ellie Docter). But she died, leaving him with memories and the awareness that they never made their dream journey to Paradise Falls in South America. When well-meaning officials consign Carl to Shady Oaks Retirement Home, he rigs thousands of helium balloons to his house and floats to South America. The journey's scarcely begun when he discovers a stowaway: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a chubby, maladroit Wilderness Explorer Scout who's out to earn his Elderly Assistance Badge. In the tropical jungle, Carl and Russell find more than they bargained for: Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), a crazed explorer whose newsreels once inspired Carl and Ellie; Kevin, an exotic bird with a weakness for chocolate; and Dug (Bob Peterson), an endearingly dim golden retriever fitted with a voice box. More importantly, the travelers discover they need each other: Russell needs a (grand)father figure; Carl needs someone to enliven his life without Ellie. Together, they learn that sharing ice-cream cones and counting the passing cars can be more meaningful than feats of daring-do and distant horizons. Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc. ) and Bob Peterson direct the film with consummate skill and taste, allowing the poignant moments to unfold without dialogue to Michael Giacchnio's vibrant score. Building on their work in The Incredibles and Ratatouille, the Pixar crew offers nuanced animation of the stylized characters. Even by Pixar's elevated standards, Up is an exceptional film that will appeal of audiences of all ages. Rated PG for some peril and action. --Charles SolomonStills from Up (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai, John Ratzenberger, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson
- Director(s): Bob Peterson
- MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Angels & Demons [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xDmlHwQBL._SL160_.jpg)
If the devil is in the details, there's a lot of wicked fun in Angels & Demons, the sequel (originally a prequel) to The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard delivers edge-of-your-pew thrills all over the Vatican, the City of Rome, and the deepest, dankest catacombs. Tom Hanks is dependably watchable in his reprised role as Professor Robert Langdon, summoned urgently to Rome on a matter of utmost urgency--which happens to coincide with the death of the Pope, meaning the Vatican is teeming with cardinals and Rome is teeming with the faithful. A religious offshoot group, calling themselves the Illuminati, which protested the Catholic Church's prosecution of scientists 400 years ago, has resurfaced and is making extreme, and gruesome, terrorist demands. The film zooms around the city, as Langdon follows clues embedded in art, architecture, and the very bone structure of the Vatican. The cast is terrific, including Ewan McGregor, who is memorable as a young protégé of the late pontiff, and who seems to challenge the common wisdom of the Conclave just by being 40 years younger than his fellows when he lectures for church reform. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent as a gruff commander of the Swiss Guard, who may or may not have thrown in with the Illuminati. But the real star of the film is Rome, and its High Church gorgeousness, with lush cinematography by Salvatore Totino, who renders the real sky above the Vatican, in a cataclysmic event, with the detail and majesty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. --A.T. Hurley Stills from Angels & Demons (click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino
- Director(s): Ron Howard
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Funny People [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZsNiDlZbL._SL160_.jpg)
Funny People pulls off quite a feat: it examines the sources of comedy and manages to be knockout funny. Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a successful comedian of Adam Sandler proportions who is diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. Faced with impending death, he recognizes that he has no friends and decides to make a best friend out of an aspiring young comedian named Ira (Seth Rogen, Knocked Up). This lopsided relationship gradually takes on aspects of true friendship as Ira forces George to try to reconnect with the people in his life, including his ex-girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann, 17 Again). But forging real relationships conflicts with all the impulses that feed George’s comedy: can he truly re-create his life? Funny People has enough raw, no-inhibitions comedy to satisfy Sandler fans, but the core of the movie is far more complex and compelling--and significantly, Sandler rises to it. He, Rogen, and Mann all deliver superb performances, as does the supporting cast (including Jonah Hill, Superbad; Jason Schwartzman, Rushmore; and Eric Bana, Munich). Funny People fits into the ranks of such classics as Hannah and Her Sisters andTerms of Endearment: movies that blend sadness and joy into a vibrant picture of life. --Bret Fetzer...Read More
- Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jason Schwartzman
- Director(s): Judd Apatow
- MPAA Rating: Unrated
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![Brüno [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VwAoltfsL._SL160_.jpg)
The brilliant British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen dips into his stable of pre-existing characters and comes up with a big-screen vehicle for Brüno, a gay Austrian fashionista. Brüno is blond, fame-hungry, and prone to wearing unexpected combinations of lederhosen and hot pants. But it's his runway disaster with an all-Velcro suit that gets him barred from the Milan fashion scene and leads to the cancellation of his TV show. ("For the second time in a century, Austria had turned on its most famous man," he complains.) Clearly, he needs to go to America and share his philosophy--or at least become a celebrity in whatever way possible. Brüno rolls out in a fashion similar to Borat, a combination of a scripted through-line interspersed with scenes of Baron Cohen improvising with people who don't realize they're being set up, Candid Camera-style. About half the time, this reaps some healthy laughs: a sequence with Brüno sitting down for a conversation with a "de-programmer" who claims to cure people of their homosexuality is on-topic, and there's a wild series of interviews with parents so desperate to get their kiddies into showbiz they'll agree to all manner of dangerous and irresponsible childcare. A lot of the humor isn't about Brüno's gayness at all; Baron Cohen is at his best when displaying freakish comic bravery (sitting across from a terrorist, he advises that "Your King Osama looks like a dirty wizard"). But the other half of Brüno simply misses the movie's best targets--homophobia and celebrity culture--by miscalculating the nature of ambush comedy. When Baron Cohen gets former Presidential candidate Ron Paul in a hotel room and begins to undress, Paul isn't showing bigotry by storming out (except in his language); he's understandably reacting to obnoxious behavior in a supposedly professional situation. Too many set-ups fall short of the mother-lode pay dirt that Borat so frequently hit, leaving this a distinctly lesser item in the Baron Cohen portfolio. --Robert HortonStills from Bruno (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, LaToya Jackson, Elton John, Paula Abdul, Sting
- Director(s): Larry Charles
- MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
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![G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Two-Disc Edition + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JW709SQlL._SL160_.jpg)
The Rise of Cobra is not your grandfather's G.I. Joe. It's more like C.G.I. Joe with explosive special-effects action sequences that provide the film with a surplus of "Boom Boom Pow" (to quote the Black Eyed Peas song that drives the end credits). This blast from the summer past is very much like the metal-munching nano-mite missiles a (literally) mad Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt cashing in some of his indie cred) and McCullen, a Scottish weapons dealer (Christopher Eccleston), threaten to unleash upon the world. It never stops. Ever. The original G.I. Joe action figure was an all-American hero. These Joes are--all together now--"the best of the best," an elite multi-national squad. Two soldiers, Duke (a buff Channing Tatum), an "on the ground, in the fight" kind of guy, and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), his wisecracking best friend, are rescued by the Joes after they are ambushed while transporting the missiles. These are no ordinary Joes. Snake-Eyes (Ray Park) is a silent ninja, Stella (Rachel Nichols) a bodacious brainiac, Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) the imposing weapons specialist, and Breaker (Said Taghamaoui) the techie. They are led by gruff Gen. Hawk (Dennis Quaid), who barks out lines like, "When all else fails, we don't," with polish. Duke and Ripcord are recruited to join the classified unit after Duke discovers that Ana (Sienna Miller), his former fiancée, is in cahoots with McCullen and now sports the sinister moniker the Baroness, not to mention killer cleavage-enhancing latex outfits. This being the first in a budding franchise, there is much backstory to cover. Flashbacks date back to 1641! But the order of the day is underground military command centers, underwater evil lairs, gleaming high-tech weaponry, breakneck chases, and cool gadgets, such as a speed-accelerating hydraulic suit. It's enough to make you want to dust off your original Hasbro action figures or, the studio no doubt hopes, buy the new ones. --Donald Liebenson Stills from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Channing Tatum, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Byung Hun Lee
- Director(s): Stephen Sommers
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51pgG2qpP7L._SL160_.jpg)
John Godey's 1973 novel The Taking of Pelham One Two Three boasts a suspense situation so surefire that even the directorial bad habits of Tony Scott can't ruin this latest movie version. Four armed men seize a New York City subway train, isolate one car, and threaten to start killing passengers if a ransom isn't paid within the hour. The ransom was a million dollars in the book and also in Joseph Sargent's solid 1974 movie, in which Robert Shaw played the mercenary leading the hostage takers and Walter Matthau was the growling transit cop trying to outsmart him. In 2009, the title has gone digital--The Taking of Pelham 123--and inflation has jumped the asking price to $10 million. Where Shaw's menace was steely, John Travolta opts for manic, and shamelessly has a blast in the master villain role. His adversary, cagily underplayed by Denzel Washington, has been upgraded in civil-service rank but also demoted on suspicion of taking a bribe. This colors the dynamics of the dialogue between Washington at his control-center console and Travolta on the motorman's microphone aboard the stalled train. So far, so reasonably good. But the director's trademark tactics keep getting between, well, everything. From the get-go, the visuals are subjected to pointless and irritating stutter effects, speeding-up/slowing-down, gratuitous camera movement, and the interposition of dirt- or light-smeared panes of glass between the camera and people we'd appreciate a clear look at. The 1974 movie settled for one police car being wrecked as the ransom is rushed uptown; Scott requires multiple collisions, each the occasion for police cruisers taking Lethal Weapon-style flight. The hostages in the earlier film were wittily individuated, a multicultural group portrait of the city at that mid-'70s moment; the ones on Scott's train--and also Travolta's fellow perpetrators, including that wonderful character actor Luis Guzmán--barely register. On the upside, John Turturro and James Gandolfini shine as two guys who (like the actors themselves) are very good at their jobsârespectively playing a hostage negotiator and His Honor, the mayor. The screenplay by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) strives intelligently, if formulaically, to add new dimensions to the main characters and to offer its own gloss on the current economic meltdown. --Richard T. Jameson Stills from The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Luis Guzmán, Victor Gojcaj, John Turturro
- Director(s): Tony Scott
- MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
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- Cast: Alan Ruck, Cynthia Stevenson, Hayden Panettiere, Devin Drewitz, Samm Levine
- Director(s): Chris Columbus
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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Stills from Aliens in the Attic (Click for larger image)
- Cast: Kevin Nealon, Doris Roberts, Henry Young, Tim Meadows, Thomas Haden Church
- Director(s): John Schultz
- MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (DVD + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HGK2eGTLL._SL160_.jpg)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs opens with the stitched-together prehistoric family about to become a biological one: Manny (voiced by Ray Romano) and his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) are expecting a baby mammoth. Unfortunately, this makes Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo) and Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) feel left out. Diego, who worries he’s losing his edge, decides to head out on his own, while Sid adopts three suspiciously large eggs that he’s found through a crack in the ice. Up to this point, the movie is perilously sappy--does anyone, particularly a kid, want to watch a kid’s movie about parenthood and impending middle age? Fortunately, the eggs turn out to be dinosaur eggs from a pre-mammalian underworld, and when the mama T-Rex comes to rescue her rambunctious little ones, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs transforms into a delightful comic adventure. The emotional side of the Ice Age movies has always been a tad mawkish, so it’s smart that Dawn of the Dinosaurs emphasizes physical comedy. Clearly, the animators have been inspired by a wild fusion of Road Runner cartoons and Buster Keaton. The character of Scratte, with his non-verbal, monomaniacal efforts to get that last acorn (doubled in this movie with the addition of a female counterpart), is only the most obvious reflection of this sensibility. The animators have great fun with the differences in scale between the mammals and the dinosaurs, and the introduction of a deranged Australian weasel named Buck (Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead) pushes everything into Loony-Tune territory. Let Pixar tug at our heartstrings; Ice Age aims to tickle the funny bone and does a fine job of it. --Bret Fetzer Stills from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo
- Director(s): Carlos Saldanha
- MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OqGA79cNL._SL160_.jpg)
Pure. Popcorn. Entertainment. That's an exact classification of director Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Think of Transformers 1 on crack. In other words, this sequel took all of the extreme elements that made fans love the first movie and increased them exponentially. The action is nonstop, with battles and explosions from start to finish. The camera (without any subtlety) exploits Megan Fox's hotness to the max. As if she weren't enough, a new sex kitten (Isabel Lucas) is thrown into the equation. Shia LaBeouf is as charismatic as ever, and fills the starring role with ease. And then there's the humor. Sam's parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White)provided some semi-raunchy laugh-out-loud moments in the first movie, but now they take it to the next level. Sometimes it seems like they are trying a little too hard, but it is still hilarious. As far as the “plot” goes, the writers didn't waste much time--it's really just a context for the giant-robot death matches and dramatic slow-mo sequences. The movie kicks off two years later where the Autobots have formed an alliance with the U.S. government, creating an elite team led by Major Lennox (Josh Duhamel), in an effort to snuff out any remaining Decepticons that show up. The bad guys keep coming, and it turns out that a much more menacing force than Megatron is out there--and it is looking for something on Earth that is tied to the very origin of the Transformers race. Fans of the franchise will be delighted by the addition of many new robot characters (there are well over 40 in the sequel, versus only 13 in the first). The second Transformers has shaped up to be one of the worst reviewed and most successful movies of all time. This strange pairing is really just an indication that this movie has one purpose: to entertain. The creators didn't want to waste time bogging down the action and drama with substance--which was arguably a good decision. --Jordan Thompson Stills from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro
- Director(s): Michael Bay
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Drag Me to Hell (Unrated Director's Cut) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AjiahLIML._SL160_.jpg)
Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. You got your gypsy gargoyles with rotted dentures, your upchucking corpses, your flexible two-way orifices--yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamiliar types. Along with the giddy horror-comedy that bursts out of the movie every 10 minutes or so, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. (Lohman's own little-girl-lost quality adds to this feeling.) But don't let that get in the way of the fun-ride aspects of this goofy enterprise: Drag Me to Hell is a bunch of Z-movie gags wrapped in top-drawer production values. --Robert HortonStills from Drag Me to Hell (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: David Paymer, Molly Cheek, Justin Long, Reggie Lee, Alison Lohman
- Director(s): Sam Raimi
- MPAA Rating: Unrated
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TouchStone The Proposal (Blu-ray)THE PROPOSAL could have been a strictly script-by-numbers affair, but hilarious performances by Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds improve this romantic comedy. Publishing powerhouse Margaret Tate (Bullock, TWO WEEKS NOTICE) is used to getting her way. She bullies her ambitious assistant, Andrew Paxton (Reynolds, DEFINITELY,MAYBE), earning the ire of all the underlings at Colden Books in New York City. But Margaret, a native Canadian, finds her career in jeopardy when she is denied a visa and learns she will be sent northward. She forces Andrew to become her fiancé, but she?ll have to take a trip home to Alaska with him to prove to U.S. Immigration that their impending union is genuine....Read More
- Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Betty White, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson
- Director(s): Anne Fletcher
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Land of the Lost [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611zbj2BeOL._SL160_.jpg)
How to make a big-screen version of Sid and Marty Krofft's Seventies TV show? In this case, place the thing in the meaty hands of Will Ferrell and give the special effects a big upgrade. If you grew up with the show, you will recall that Marshall, Will, and Holly fall through a time warp into a land where dinosaurs roam and all kind of weird things grow. In this version, Ferrell plays a disgraced scientist, Anna Friel a brainy postgraduate, and Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) the sleazy owner of a desert tourist trap that happens to be home to the time portal. This begins to suggest how this movie wants to have it both ways: keep some of the original's kid appeal, but raunch it up just enough for fans of Judd Apatow's movies. The result is that nothing really works very well. There's no momentum to the plot, the locations are monotonous, and Ferrell and McBride are desperate in their attempts to generate something out of nothing. Granted, they succeed a few times--these guys are too funny to whiff completely--but the strain is visible. And although the effects, are competent, the movie can't even get its fantasy rules straight (why is the T. Rex sometimes ferocious and sometimes indifferent?). Fans of the show will enjoy hearing the cheesy theme song worked in (Ferrell performs a zonked version) and seeing how the movie updates the menacing Sleestaks. But on a basic level Land of the Lost has no idea what it's doing, or what it means to do. --Robert Horton...Read More
- Cast: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone, John Boylan
- Director(s): Brad Silberling
- MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
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![Year One (Theatrical & Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WFM7Jg0aL._SL160_.jpg)
Director Harold Ramis leans away from the Groundhog Day side of his personality and toward the Caddyshack side with Year One, a broad comedy set in more-or-less ancient times. The film's cockeyed timeline puts two wandering cavemen (Jack Black and Michael Cera) through a rapid-fire series of biblical events: Cain (David Cross) slaying Abel (Paul Rudd), Abraham (Hank Azaria) preparing to smite his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and everybody converging on Sodom, the Genesis equivalent of Las Vegas. The jokes range from droll religious references to Apatow-ready testicular gags, but almost all of the real humor comes from the efforts of the performers to put things across. Black and Cera couldn't be more different in their styles, but each manages to conjure up some laughs just by working in his particular vein: one can appreciate Black's exuberant extrovert pouncing all over the material like a needy Golden Retriever and also savor Cera's muttering wallflower as he flicks in his sidelong observations. Azaria and Oliver Platt are given very long leashes--they know what to do with that kind of room--and Ramis himself plays a mighty-bearded Adam, but it's all not quite enough to prevent Year One from falling into that hard-luck zone with Caveman and Wholly Moses: one more comedy that suggests the ancient world wasn't really all that funny. --Robert Horton Stills from Year One (Click for larger image) ...Read More
- Cast: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Hank Azaria
- Director(s): Harold Ramis
- MPAA Rating: Unrated
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- Cast: Adriana Caselotti, Harry Stockwell, Lucille La Verne, Roy Atwell, Stuart Buchanan
- Director(s): David Hand
- MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Come back next week for more new Blu-ray releases.