High-Def Digest: The Bonus ViewMatthew McConaughey Archives - High-Def Digest: The Bonus View

Serenity (2019) Review: One Smelly Fish Tale

Deirdre Crimmins — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 20:00:16 +0000

Serenity may be an admirable film on some level, but it’s certainly not a good one. While writer/director Steven Knight (Locke) should be given credit for taking risks and attempting a stylized approach to character and storytelling, we should never lose sight of the fact that he’s made a terrible movie. Serenity is initially set...

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White Boy Rick Review: Little Man, Big F-Ups

Philip Brown — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 12:00:16 +0000

White Boy Rick is a big, zany true crime story that plays like gangbusters moment to moment without ever quite settling into a consistent tone or message. It’s easy to see why the movie was made and it’s easy to sell when reduced down to a sensationalistic trailer. However, string the story along to feature...

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‘The Dark Tower’ Review: Epic Mediocrity

Philip Brown — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:00:37 +0000

Another summer, another batch of popular pre-existing fantasy franchises turned into blockbuster hopefuls. It’s so common now that it’s rarely exciting. There was a time when transforming Stephen King’s cultish epic ‘The Dark Tower’ into a film franchise would have felt like a film nerd’s wet dream. Now, its just business as usual. As developed...

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‘Gold’ Review: Not Quite “As Good As” But Close

Philip Brown — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 17:00:03 +0000

‘Gold’ is a tricky movie to discuss since it’s essential a feature-length misdirect. If you knew precisely why it’s is a far better picture than it initially appears to be, the fun would be spoiled. The film revels in bad behavior and greed like a great con being pulled over the viewers’ eyes by director...

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‘Sing’ Review: Contagiously Cute

Philip Brown — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 16:00:10 +0000

‘Sing’ is about as good as a movie about a bunch of cute CGI animals hosting a singing competition could possibly be. This is base level animated family comedy stuff, filled with celebrity voice acting and more pop culture references than the movie’s IMDb page could possibly handle. The emotional arcs are all pretty obvious....

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‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ Review: Psychedelic Family Entertainment

Philip Brown — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 19:00:15 +0000

Ever since launching with the masterful ‘Coraline’, Laika has been one of the most consistent animation factories on the planet. Though essentially trafficking in kiddie entertainment, the stop-motion studio always executes its visions with remarkable artistry and offers stories just outside of the mainstream to please youngsters who aren’t easily seduced by simple Disney magic....

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‘Free State of Jones’ Review: Historically Accurate, Dramatically Inert

Philip Brown — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:00:48 +0000

‘Free State of Jones’ is a well-meaning movie that everyone involved clearly treated with reverence and took very seriously… perhaps a little too seriously. Though filled with some extraordinary moments, director Gary Ross’ determination to cram as many history lessons as humanly possible into his grand Civil War epic often makes it dramatically inert and...

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Weekend Roundtables: Career Turnarounds

Josh Zyber — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 19:00:56 +0000

Sometimes, an actor just needs to find the right role to suit his or her talents. In this week’s Roundtable, we discuss the actors that we used to dislike, even hate, until one project finally turned their fortunes around. There are two possible ways to look at this topic: You generally don’t like the actor,...

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‘Interstellar’ Contest Results

Josh Zyber — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 13:00:29 +0000

I guess we chose a good prize to give away last week. Turnout for our ‘Interstellar’ Blu-ray Collectible Gift Set contest was very strong, and our readers provided tons of hilarious entries. Sadly, only one can win. Let’s find out who that will be! As explained in the original post, we challenged you to provide...

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Contest: Win the ‘Interstellar’ Blu-ray Collectible Gift Set

Josh Zyber — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 12:00:12 +0000

Over the weekend, I popped into Walmart to pick up that retailer’s exclusive Collectible Gift Set Blu-ray edition of ‘Interstellar’. The store had an extra copy on the shelf, and I thought that would make a great contest prize for our readers. Don’t you agree? Let’s give this thing away! In Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi blockbuster...

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SteelBook Alert: Take Your Protein Pills and Put Your Helmet On

Josh Zyber — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 20:00:11 +0000

As befitting its blockbuster status, Christopher Nolan’s space travel opus ‘Interstellar’ will hit Blu-ray next month in several deluxe packaging options, including at least two different SteelBook cases. Although I’m a big SteelBook collector, in this instance I may choose a different route. While the American and Canadian SteelBooks technically use different images, they’re both...

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‘Interstellar’ Review: Flawed Awe

Philip Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:00:24 +0000

In many ways, ‘Interstellar’ is the movie that Christopher Nolan’s most ardent supporters always hoped he would make: a massive, sweeping, thoughtful epic that hits grand themes as hard as it does awe-inspiring imagery and tear-loosening emotion. It’s also the movie his detractors feared he would make: too ambitions, visibly flawed and overly serious to...

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