ScreenScribe

The movie that won Sandra Bullock her first Academy Award, The Blind Side, also boasts an Oscar-worthy Blu-ray transfer. Hi-Def Digest said the football drama was “distinguished by excellent clarity and contrast, but the image maintains a film-like feel, thanks to a delicate, unobtrusive grain structure that supplies marvellous texture”; Blu-ray.com called it “an able-bodied [...]

Whoa, this is heavy — next month the Back to the Future trilogy will bow on Blu-ray. The three-disc set with a lenticular cover goes on sale on October 27 for under $60. Also being dusted off for HD that month are the first two Shrek movies, Beauty & the Beast, Elvis on Tour, Dead Man and [...]

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach. Director: Sergio Leone. Screenplay: Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone. Score: Ennio Morricone. Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli. The spaghetti western that completed Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy with epic panache has Clint Eastwood’s enigmatic gunslinger on the trail of buried Civil War booty. All three movies have just been released on Blu-ray [...]

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, Anna Chlumsky, David Rasche, Steve Coogan. Director: Armando Iannucci. Screenplay: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche. Score: Adem Ilhan. Cinematography: Jamie Cairney. What Yes, Minister might have been to the Falklands War, In the Loop is to the Iraq War. Spun off TV’s The [...]

The only new movie due on Blu-ray this week is one that bypassed cinemas, Repo Men. High-Def Digest praised the quality of the HD video and audio but, in line with other critics, said the Jude Law-Forest Whitaker vehicle devolves “from a thinking man’s action thriller to your basic futuristic sci-fi trash romp, so overloaded [...]

The 2009 relaunch of Star Trek has gone where none in the sci-fi franchise has gone before on Blu-ray: to win three major prizes in Home Media Magazine’s Third Annual High-Def Awards. It won Best Theatrical Blu-ray, Best Single Extra for its “Starfleet Vessel Simulator,” and the Consumers’ Choice Award for best overall Blu-ray Disc [...]

Cast: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage. Director: Matthew Vaughn. Screenplay: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn. Score: Marius De Vries, Ilan Eshkeri, Henry Jackman, John Murphy. Cinematography: Ben Davis, Mac Kenny. Rarely has a title summed up a movie’s exuberance as perfectly as Kick-Ass, a wildly kinetic superhero spoof with a dark and bloody sensibility [...]

Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker. Director: Breck Eisner. Screenplay: Scott Kosar, Ray Wright. Score: Mark Isham. Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre. This is a riveting re-make of George A Romero’s 1973 horror movie of the same name, about the citizens of a small town in Iowa who are quarantined by the military after [...]

Universal Pictures NZ is soon to release on Blu-ray 50th anniversary editions of two of the studio’s genre greats: Psycho and Spartacus. Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking serial killer classic initially will be sold through only JB Hi-Fi stores, from September 1, but will widen to other retailers from December 1. The Gladiator of its era, Stanley [...]

Cast: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Alan Rickman, Barbara Windsor. Director: Tim Burton. Screenplay: Linda Woolverton. Score: Danny Elfman. Cinematography: Dariusz Wolski. You’d have to be mad as a hatter not to think Alice in Wonderland looks sensational on Blu-ray. This may not be the [...]