Tom Keogh
Miracle on 34th Street on Blu-ray
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Anyone skeptical of updated retreads of Christmas movie classics may be genuinely surprised by this 1994 version of Miracle on 34th Street. Based on the 1947 holiday classic, this new Miracle sticks close to the original’s story, though it offers more contemporary, crisper pacing [...]
Gandhi (+ BD-Live) on Blu-ray
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Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1982 multiple-Oscar winner (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Ben Kingsley) is an engrossing, reverential look at the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who introduced the doctrine of nonviolent resistance to the colonized people of India and who ultimately gained [...]
So I Married an Axe Murderer (Special Edition + BD-Live) on Blu-ray
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Mike Myers’s first feature role without his Wayne’s World wig is a performance at odds with the best interests of the movie. Myers plays a single guy who always manages to find something seriously wrong with each of his girlfriends. His new love (Nancy Travis), a butcher, [...]
Superman – The Movie on Blu-ray
Richard Donner’s 1978 epic about the Man of Steel showed how a film about a superhero could be a moving and romantic experience even for people who long ago gave up comic books. Beginning on the icy planet Krypton, the story follows the baby Kal-El, whose rocket ship lands in Smallville, Kansas. He [...]
Live and Let Die (James Bond) on Blu-ray
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Roger Moore was introduced as James Bond in this 1973 action movie featuring secret agent 007. More self-consciously suave and formal than predecessor Sean Connery, he immediately reestablished Bond as an uncomplicated and wooden fellow for the feel-good ’70s. This film also marks a deviation from the [...]
Jurassic Park on Blu-ray
Steven Spielberg’s 1993 mega-hit rivals Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he’d ever made prior to Schindler’s List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton’s novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of [...]
The Hunt for Red October on Blu-ray
Before Harrison Ford assumed the mantle of playing Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan hero in Patriot Games, Alec Baldwin took a swing at the character in this John McTiernan film and hit one to the fence. If less instantly sympathetic than Ford, Baldwin is in some respects more interesting and nuanced as Ryan, and [...]
Pinocchio (Two-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition + Standard DVD+ BD-Live) on Blu-ray (1940)
Amazon.comThis Disney masterpiece from 1940 will hold up forever precisely because it doesn’t restrain or temper the most elementalemotions and themes germane to its story. Based on the Collodi tale about a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, Pinocchio is among the most magical, mythical, and [...]
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Limited Edition Collector’s Set) on Blu-ray (1937)
One of the brightest nuggets from Disney’s golden age, this 1937 film is almost dizzying in its meticulous construction of an enchanted world, with scores of major and minor characters (including fauna and fowl), each with a distinct identity. When you watch Snow White’s intricate, graceful movements of fingers, arms, and head all [...]
U2 – Rattle & Hum on Blu-ray
Amazon.comRattle and Hum is not a film for anyone looking for an introduction to Irish band U2’s career in the 1980s, but it is a vibrant portrait of an established group making its musical pilgrimage through the America it has always imagined through blues, gospel, and early rock ‘n’ [...]