New on DVD and Blu-Ray

It would seem impossible that 2001’s disposable street racing flick “The Fast and the Furious” would have spawned a box office juggernaut franchise such as this, the most recent installment costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million, and finding its characters now in a dimension where being a gear head somehow qualifies you to […]

Here’s what’s great about A Most Violent Year: its simplicity in its filmmaking. It’s a very matter-of-fact, cut-and-dried, take-it-or-leave-it approach that writer/director J.C. Chandor takes with this tale of a man caught between doing the right thing and immoral acts to keep his oil business afloat. I liken it a lot to Francis Ford Coppola’s […]

‘Tis the season for biopics: thus far, they’ve ranged from unreasonably icy Oscar fodder (“Foxcatcher”) to deep, ruminative Oscar fodder (“Wild”) to BBC TV movie-of-the-week style Oscar fodder (though “Theory of Everything” does boast nod-worthy performances from Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones). While “The Imitation Game” might appear by-the-numbers both figuratively and literally, the story is one that […]

Director Jean-Marc Vallée’s last film, “Dallas Buyers Club”, was about a man trying to better himself in the wake of some life-changing news. The film was a compelling true story; humorous, charming and most of all, meaningful on a level other than the main character’s well-being, it seamlessly marbled a morally driven narrative with haunting glimpses into […]

If bit parts in this year’s “Robocop” and “Need for Speed” seemed to indicate that Michael Keaton’s incredible versatility had faded for good, then Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” surely proves the opposite. Keaton plays once A-list movie star Riggan Thomson, best known for a series of blockbuster superhero films in the late […]

Keanu Reeves plays a vengeful ex-hitman who shoots, pummels and skewers his way through NYC’s Russian mafia to get to the men responsible for stealing his car and killing his dog in “John Wick”, which takes place mostly in seedy underground nightclubs and a rustic hotel that provides safe haven for folks of his ilk — basically, […]