“Aeon Flux: Blu-ray”: From the inventive, MTV “Liquid Television” shorts, this high-definition movie version of “Aeon Flux” looks good, but it fails to translate that series’ ingenious animation to a full-length, live-action film. Charlize Theron is Flux, the hard-bodied hottie fighting crime in a future bearing clones because… Read More
“Cars”: Flat tire. Pixar’s beautiful-looking yet boring computer-animated movie is the weakest in its collaboration with Disney. You can’t win them all, and this time, the studios don’t even come close. Sandbagged by a joyless mid-section that goes nowhere, this dull movie fails to offer much in the… Read More
“Batman Beyond: Season Two”: The Dark Knight, but without Bruce Wayne behind the mask. Instead, in this well-done animated series, it’s teen Terry McGinnis moving within Gotham’s shadows in an effort to save the day. He has a lot to learn. The show gives him and his enemies… Read More
“Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two”: The week’s best new release features the 39 episodes that appeared during the 1956-57 CBS television season, with Hitchcock delivering the introductions and closing moments with his inimitable style. The shows are just as twisted as you expect, with four particular highlights of… Read More
“The Break-Up”: It’s too cute and commercial to really get down and dirty when it comes to how ugly relationships can get when the ax is thrown down, but this light, derivative take does generate more heat than some might expect. This comedy about falling out of love… Read More
“Broken Trail”: Based on Alan Geoffrion’s novel, a Western miniseries that takes the genre seriously, with Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church as two estranged ranchers driving horses from Oregon to Wyoming when, along the way, they come upon five Chinese girls sold into prostitution. What ignites from… Read More
“8th & Ocean: The Complete First Season”: Somehow, this wasn’t the complete last season. From MTV, this insipid show about 10 models living and bickering together in Miami’s South Beach carries with it the requisite melodrama, sex and trite story lines you expect, but it fails to match… Read More
“Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection”: Some collection. This boxed set from Warner includes eight films – “A Caribbean Mystery,” “Murder is Easy,” “Murder with Mirrors,” “Dead Man’s Folly,” “Murder in Three Acts,” “Thirteen at Dinner,” “The Man in the Brown Suit” and “Sparkling Cyanide” – all based on… Read More
“The Bill Cosby Show: Season One”: After “I Spy,” before the Huxtables – and with Cosby nearing his prime. Here, in “The Bill Cosby Show,” which lasted only two seasons on NBC before the network pulled it, Cosby was Chet Kincaid, a Los Angeles-based high school teacher and… Read More
“Beautiful People: The Complete Series”: Situational, predictable, hormones rising to a boiling point. A teen-oriented drama in which a mother and her two daughters leave New Mexico for a shot at something bigger and better in New York City. There, mother Lynn (Daphne Zuniga) can focus on her… Read More
“Arrested Development: Season Three”: Well-developed lunacy backed by some of the best writing on television. So, naturally, the show was canceled in this third and final season. Still, what a season. It’s the dysfunction, the eccentricity and the general cluelessness of the Bluth family that allowed this series… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will review the latest DVD releases “Akeelah and the Bee”: For all its manipulations, “Bee” is a fine movie, one nicely suited for families, with a terrific central performance by Keke Palmer as 11-year-old Akeelah, a South Central,… Read More
“James Stewart Signature Collection”: If you’re going to call your collection of films a signature collection, it’s probably best to give consumers a signature collection. Otherwise, just call it what it is – a collection – which is what Warner really has on their hands with their “James… Read More
“ATL: HD DVD/DVD Combo”: As in “Atlanta.” This coming-of-age movie from Chris Robinson isn’t as imaginative as its characters’ names – Ant, Esquire, Brooklyn, New-New – but its plunge into the energetic subculture boiling between Atlanta’s north and south sides is reasonably entertaining and somewhat tense, particularly when… Read More
Each week BDN film critic Christopher Smith reviews the latest DVD releases “Aeon Flux: HD DVD”: From the inventive, MTV “Liquid Television” shorts, this high-definition movie version of “Aeon Flux” looks good, but it fails to translate that series’ ingenious animation to a full-length, live-action… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith reviews the latest DVD releases “The Benchwarmers: DVD and Blu-ray”: The tagline for the movie notes that “It’s Never too Late to Take a Stand.” It’s also never too late to choose a better movie at the video… Read More
“Enter the Dragon: HD DVD”: Bruce Lee, on a high-definition tear. Shot in Hong Kong, this classic, 1973 smash was Lee’s final film. It presents a powerful, kinetic ballet by a martial arts master at the peak of his form. Just try looking away from him. Drugs and… Read More
“Basic Instinct 2: Blu-ray”: Talk about a stiff upper lip. Fourteen years after the original film startled the screen, Sharon Stone finally gets her sequel. This time she’s in London, where her character, smut novelist-cum-potential-serial-killer Catherine Tramell, opens the movie rather salaciously with what may or may not… Read More
“The Last Samurai: Blu-ray”: With Sony at last entering into the new high-definition DVD market with the release of the Samsung Blu-ray BD-P1000 ($999), the competition is on between the two new formats – Sony’s Blu-ray technology, which boasts greater storage capacity and true 1080p resolution, and the… Read More
“The Adventures of Superman: Third and Fourth Season”: With “Superman Returns” flying high in theaters next week, an onslaught of Superman DVDs naturally ride its cape. First up is “The Adventures of Superman: Third and Fourth Seasons,” in which our man of steel really is somewhat soft. The… Read More
“Dukes of Hazzard: Complete Sixth Season”: As imaginative a lug nut. This sixth season of “The Dukes of Hazzard” gives viewers more of the same wrapped in more of the same, with good ol’ boys Bo and Luke Duke (John Schneider, Tom Wopat) back for a full year… Read More
“Black Hawk Down: Extended Cut”: Ridley Scott’s unflinching war movie, now padded with an unnecessary eight additional minutes, features one of the best re-enactments of man-to-man land combat captured in a movie. The film is about the real-life Battle of the Black Sea, the Oct. 3, 1993 U.S. Read More
“Constantine: HD DVD”: Hell in high definition. On HD DVD, “Constantine” looks good, particularly in its robust images of hell, which boil anew. The disc also touts the new In-Movie Experience feature specific to HD DVDs, which in this case allows the viewer to hear director Francis Lawrence’s… Read More
“Date Movie”: Blind date. Here is a satire that doesn’t understand satire. Director Aaron Seltzer thinks that because you reference a film, that’s the same as pinning it to a wall with scenes that skewer it. It isn’t. It’s just reference, with a series of ‘a-ha’ moments that… Read More
“Cheaper by the Dozen 2”: Truth in advertising. Steve Martin, slumming after “Shopgirl.” Carmen Electra, happy to show off the twins. Predictably, this harmless sequel to the 2003 remake is only ever more of the same, though it can be grotesquely earnest, as if making us laugh isn’t… Read More
“American Dad!: Volume One”: The CIA, under attack, though covertly and with a nudge and a wink. This punchy, politically minded series from Fox follows CIA agent Stan Smith, whose bizarre life revolves around his dysfunctional family, which includes a cigarette-smoking alien who saved his life and the… Read More
“Big Momma’s House 2”: More Momma, fewer laughs. FBI agent Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) goes back into his undercover drag as Big Momma and falls hard for the kids under his watch. The plot is mere window dressing for the real matter at hand – Lawrence once again… Read More
“Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory”: Five films, all digitally remastered, all marking their debut on DVD. Included in this boxed set from Warner are 1955’s “It’s Always Fair Weather” with Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Cyd Charisse proving the weather is anything but fair; 1946’s “Till the… Read More
“Aeon Flux”: Acid Reflux. The last time we saw Charlize Theron on DVD, she was a coal miner’s daughter – and a coal miner – in the hard-scrabble “North Country,” which won her an Academy Award nomination. Earlier in 2005, however, she also was Aeon Flux, the hard-bodied… Read More
“The A-Team: Complete Fourth Season”: More like the C-Team. This go-for-broke, pop-culture oddity from the ’80s features four Vietnam vets outrunning the law for a crime they were ordered to commit. Meanwhile, in their downtime, they fight crime in their tricked-out van. Mr. T is the man beneath… Read More
“Crash: 2-Disc Special Director’s Cut Edition”: Pure marketing, its appearance on the scene as obvious as the movie itself. Fueled by its Best Picture win at the recent Academy Awards, here is yet another DVD version of the Paul Haggis melodrama “Crash,” a misguided, heavy-handed message movie about… Read More
“Brokeback Mountain”: Ang Lee’s celebrated drama begins in a picturesque nowhere of tall mountains and big skies, where cowboys and cattle roam, the air is clean, and the only stone wall here is the real thing, with nothing political muddying the mortar. It’s 1963, it’s Wyoming, and what’s… Read More
“Capote”: Truman Capote – a hive of contradictions and complications. Before booze got the best of him, he had enough talent and drive to put himself on top, where he belonged, but also enough self-hatred, selfishness, pain and heartbreak to generate the sort of mystery that tends to… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith contributes reviews to DVD Corner. “All-American Girl – Complete Series”: Margaret Cho, trademark sneer in place, in a series too neutered to allow the notorious Cho to come through. This 1994 sitcom, all 19 episodes of which are… Read More
“The Dick Cavett Show – Comic Legends”: From the Shout! Factory, a terrific collection, with Dick Cavett interviewing a who’s who of popular throwbacks – Lucille Ball, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Truman Capote, a host of others. The interviews can be heated one moment,… Read More
“Bambi II”: No classic, but hardly the disappointment some might expect given the animated classic it must follow. This direct-to-DVD feature is about Bambi’s relationship with his father, Great Prince (Patrick Stewart), who raises him in the wake of the shooting death that killed his mother, Prince’s mate. Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will review the latest DVD releases. “Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection”: Five classics from Hitchcock, all rereleased by Universal, all sold individually. While none represents Hitchcock’s best work, some come close, particularly the early films, such as 1942’s “Shadow… Read More
“Dallas: The Complete Fourth Season”: Who shot J.R.? This is the season that answers, though only the initial episodes maintain the energy of the third season. As Miss Ellie, Barbara Bel Geddes, who lived for years in Northeast Harbor before she died there last August, is the glue… Read More
“The A-Team: Season Three”: Beyond kitsch. Hell, beyond belief. This go-for-broke, pop-culture oddity from the ’80s features four Vietnam vets outrunning the law for a crime they were ordered to commit. Meanwhile, in their downtime, they fight crime in their tricked-out van. Mr. T steals the show as… Read More
“Doogie Howser: M.D.: Season Three”: Hormones brewing. Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris), the young doc whose mind can grasp medical science with ease but who nevertheless remains a very young man at heart, at least when it comes to relationships, finds himself faced in this third season with… Read More
“The Adventures of Superman: Complete Second Season”: Forget the ripped abs, the chiseled jaw, the flattering tights – this Superman was soft. The series, on the other hand, was not. With such episodes as “The Big Squeeze,” “The Machine that Could Plot Crimes” and “Semi-Private Eye,” the show,… Read More
“Black Dawn”: Steven Seagal – still chopping (it’s a struggle), still kicking (it’s exhausting), still in a career slump (it’s over, cookie). In his direct-to-DVD movie “Black Dawn,” Seagal is Jonathan Cold, a former CIA operative trying to prevent the selling of a nuclear bomb to Eastern European… Read More
“The Cave”: Spelunked. In the dark reaches of the cave in question, director Bruce Hunt finds something unexpected – no, not Osama, but the vault in which Twentieth Century Fox apparently has stored its “Alien” franchise, which Hunt has ripped off. Rock-jawed Cole Hauser is Jack, the humorless… Read More
“Chicago – The Razzle-Dazzle Edition”: Overlook the cheesy title. Newly released in a special edition two-disc set filled with extras (Rehearsals, anyone? New camera angles?), Rob Marshall’s Academy Award-winning “Chicago” remains a show-stopping smash. -uch of its element of surprise comes from the selection of its cast. Who… Read More
“Batman: Animated Series Vol. 4”: The Dark Knight continues his 2005 resurgence, which began in June with the release of Christopher Nolan’s excellent “Batman Begins,” extended into the fall with the release of the “Batman Anthology,” and now culminates at year’s end with “Batman: Animated Series Vol. 4”… Read More
“Disney Holiday Video Collection”: From Disney, a collection of three lazily conceived holiday DVDs, a good deal of which belongs caught in the business end of a trap. The first is “Disney Channel Holiday,” a cloying clump of dimpled good cheer that features a compilation of older holiday… Read More
“Blue Collar TV”: Here is a show in which working-class men talk about how big their deck is. Ho, ho. It’s a pun that’s supposed to be funny, but like so many of the jokes in “Blue Collar TV,” it lacks imagination. In spite of what its title… Read More
“Happy Endings”: From Don Roose, whose “The Opposite of Sex” was one of the freshest, funniest comedies of 1998, comes “Happy Endings,” a busy little drama with comedic undertones. The cast is a who’s who, a who’s not and a who might one day be; they’re the best… Read More
“Millions”: From director Danny Boyle, whose “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later” and “Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” weren’t exactly fodder for tots, comes “Millions,” a fable for children in which the director successfully branches into new directions. In the film, two motherless brothers – 7-year-old Damian (Alex Etel), 9-year-old… Read More
“Big Fish: Special Edition”: From Tim Burton, tall tales about life and love in a special edition DVD. Albert Finney is Edward Bloom, a dying salesman whose charmed life, recounted from his deathbed, proves a colorful confection of bigger-than-life stories, some legitimately lived, others overtly embellished. A contemporary… Read More
Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of BDN film critic Christopher Smith’s movie reviews, which appear each week in the DVD Corner. “Alias: The Complete Fourth Season”: So, here is where Jennifer Garner rules. After disappointing forays onto the big screen in “Elektra” and “Daredevil” – and… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will contribute reviews to DVD Corner. “American Gothic: The Complete Series”: Four years before Haley Joel Osment saw dead people in “The Sixth Sense,” 10-year-old Caleb Temple (Lucas Black) was busy seeing them in the 1995 television show… Read More
Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the new archive of Christopher Smith’s movie reviews, which appear each week in the DVD Corner. “Arrested Development: The Complete Second Season”: Well-developed lunacy backed by some of the best writing on television. It’s the dysfunction, the eccentricity and the general cluelessness of… Read More
Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the new archive of Christopher Smith’s movie reviews, which appear each week in the DVD Corner. “Batman Anthology”: A bevy of Batmen, with 18 hours of new features, a good deal of which go beyond padding for profit and actually are worth a… Read More
“The Devil’s Rejects”: If you dig this sort of gross-out throwback to the horror movies of the ’70s, by all means, accept “The Devil’s Rejects.” The film, from director Rob Zombie, whose “House of 1,000 Corpses” delivered what it promised, “The Devil’s Rejects” also follows suit, coming through… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will contribute reviews to DVD Corner. “The Amityville Horror”: Ironically, not even flies are attracted to it. This new version of the Amityville tale is exactly what you expect from a modern-day horror film – an assorted bag… Read More
“Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season”: Desperate? You could say that. But if it were just desperation that drove the women of Wisteria Lane, “Desperate Housewives” would have been just another soap opera and not the hit ABC television show it became. What made this Emmy Award-winning show… Read More
Visit WeekinRewind.com, the new archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which are featured each week in the DVD Corner. “Empire Falls”: It collapses. From director Fred Schepisi, this underwhelming adaptation of Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, filmed in Maine, will leave… Read More
“Crash”: White guilt run amok. A misguided, heavy-handed message movie about the current state of race relations in Los Angeles. That’s an important subject to explore – and let’s hope someone with the proper approach tries again soon – but not like this. This is schlock. Without a… Read More
Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith will contribute reviews to DVD Corner. “DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN”: Adapted from Tyler Perry’s stage play, this bizarre movie is many things: a celebration of Christian values, a drag act, a drug plunge, an urban slapstick… Read More
Each week, NEWS film critic Christopher Smith will contribute reviews to DVD Corner. “COACH CARTER”: Samuel L. Jackson as a high school basketball coach who could find work at a pulpit. What do you suppose the odds are that he’s here to turnaround a team… Read More