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Customer Reviews:
Great Blu Ray Quality!
The moive itself is your standard low-budget, over the top action film. It has the usual plot and the usual action. I am not here to talk about the film, but the BD quality.

The BD quality is very good and pristine - for a single layer BD with DTS-HD MA! I see the specs on Amazon do not mention that! DTS-HD Master Audio is THE reason to get this disc! It is also the reason the price is so high.

The film is not bad, but if you were looking for a true martial arts film or a believable action film, this is not it. Jet Li had great promise, but most of his movies do not compare to his scenes in Lethal Weapon 4. It is something to watch, but not something to keep.

Good action with okay stuff in between
The crew that has something to do with Luc Besson seem to rotate jobs as films are made. From Besson there comes a line-up of action films created by Cory Yuen, Louis Leterrier, Pierre Morel, and more, all taking turns at direction, cinematography, or choreography.

These movies have always been fun and easy to watch, with charming moments of clever action and a smart twist on the normal plate. “The Transporter,” “Unleashed,” “District B13,” “Wasabi,” the upcoming “War,” and, of course, “Kiss of the Dragon” are among this collection.

I give my review of “Kiss of the Dragon” by pointing to the contributions of Cory Yuen, the director and fight choreographer, and actors Jet Li, who co-wrote, and Cyril Raffaelli.

Of the actors, this latter one is the silent blonde martial artist Jet Li fights in the climax of the film. Though examples of him are not prolific, he is swift become my favorite martial artist of the day, due partially to his enthusiasm for le parkour.

“Kiss of the Dragon” features very fine action from Jet Li at the hands of Cory Yuen, highlighted with Jet Li’s defeat of a room full of karate students, a brutal fight in a noodel shop with a much larger gentleman, and the seminal moment, the fight against Cyril Raffaelli. The acrobatics and speed on display in especially this final conflict are a pleasure to watch.

Of course, it is the action which shines, more than making up for decent connections. One staple of the films produced by this crew is an unusually intelligent script or, instead of plot, a unique and refreshing take on the action scenes themselves. The action was great, but the plot seemed to rely too heavily on crutch of the female protagonist’s status as a prostitute. Dealing with her destructive personal life in a serious way was an admirable attempt for an action film, but not enough to justify calling the script intelligent, making this an anomaly among the collection of films I’ve mentioned.

It’s a fun movie, especially in a nostalgic way- it’s one of the earliest movies put out by this group of filmmakers, and for an early attempt it does well for itself. They’ve certainly polished themselves up with time, sort of leaving “Kiss of the Dragon” behind. But it’s still fun to watch, and fun to see the early stages of some of my favorite industry names.

Kiss of the Dragon (Blu-Ray)
This is has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen . It ranks up there with Godzilla 2000 …

Customer Reviews:
Plain vanilla thriller
The most interesting thing shown in this thriller is the current technology used to lift fingerprints from an object–and that actually IS interesting. But to begin with, the whole Secret Service thing was done before in Clint Eastwood’s tremendously superior movie In the Line of Fire. Among other things, the featurettes provided in this DVD essentially echo what’s included in the Eastwood movie DVD (in fact, In the Line of Fire’s featurettes are superior also).

The plot of The Sentinel is really standard and you can basically spot the bad guy almost right from the get-go. Stock characters and plotting do not make for a gripping time at the movies. This is kind of fun to watch, hence the three stars, but certainly not top-drawer entertainment.

We have the tried and true experienced agent (Michael Douglas); we have his friend who’s no longer his real friend because of a personal matter (Kiefer Sutherland); we have the hotshot rookie agent (Eva Longoria); we have the anonymous bad guys (actors whose names we haven’t heard before); we have the surprisingly sexy first lady (Kim Basinger)…well, you get the idea.

Somebody’s out to kill the president (whoa. now THERE’S a plot device I haven’t come across until now), and all kinds of foreign nasty people are potentially involved–drug dealers, terrorists, you name it.

Yawn. But at least the action parts are pretty good, so you don’t completely fall asleep while watching. It’s OK.

It’s just that it ain’t any better than OK.

Good action/adventure flick…
I thought this was a good action/adventure flick. It had a little too much soap opera side story to it, but over all it was exciting, well-paced with some twists. I would recommend it for action/adventure fans.

An Entertaining Political Thriller…..Period!
I enjoyed this film. I thought it was an excellent political thriller about something that’s never happened before - a Secret Service agent going bad and involved in an assassination plot.

This is simply a slick action flick that entertains start-to-finish. Are there holes in it? Of course; probably a number of them, and a reason you see so many critical comments. However, it is unfairly bashed here. My advice: chill, just go along for the ride and enjoy all the action and intrigue. Yes, it gets a little Rambo-ish at the end but otherwise it gets high marks for entertainment…..which is what movies are all about.

Customer Reviews:
jc
A must for your Friends collection. I got this for my 14 year old son but my 17 & 10 year old love watching it as well.

Gift - it was highly recommended
This was given as a gift, and my sister really liked watching all of the Ninth season without commercials! She really wanted this!

Friends DVD - Christmas gift
We were very pleased with the product (Friends Ninth Season DVD) & the promptness of delivery in time for Christmas giving! Item was just as advertised! Thanks!

Customer Reviews:
I’m pleased…it came on time, in good condition

Twister is a movie my mom watches a couple times a week. It’s one of her favorite movies. She’s 88 years old. A great movie. It came on time, in good condition.

Twister
Probably the best disaster movie made about tornadoes/twisters. The special effects were really exciting if you can overlook the inaccurate scenes enhanced for dramatic effect. It was a good balance between the story and the action. Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton were really good - actually the whole cast was wonderful.

Excellent Flick
I love disaster flicks and this one did not disappoint. It had all the qualities I love about such movies: the person/people who puts money/ego ahead of people’s safety dies, the hero gets the girl, and the hero goes back into the disaster area when everyone else is leaving.

Customer Reviews:
Cruel Intentions
Returned the product unopened. Did not care about seeing the blu ray version. I heard from other viewers that the blu ray version has no picture quality improvement.

RR

Horrible movie
I’m baffled why anyone, save the most mentally impaired, would choose to watch this movie when the far superior (in every conceivable way) “Dangerous Liaisons” is available. The actors are pretty to look at but their acting is so poor (especially from the unforgivable Ryan Phillpe), one is forced to ask the eternal question, “Why?!”

Quality of AV is there. Story is only ok.
This movie was ok and the blue ray was good but I don’t think I would recommend you buy it. You may want to see it but I would not go to the expense of buying a movie that I think I will only want to watch the one time.

Customer Reviews:
Malcolm McDowell certainly does have acting chops.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

I am probably the last person on Earth who should be watching A Clockwork Orange; I have the combination of having never been a great Stanley Kubrick fan (save Lolita and The Killing) while being a very, very big fan of Anthony Burgess, especially the novel upon which this film is based. That said, it was a much better film that I had ever hoped it would be, though I still think it’s quite overrated, in the general scheme of things.

The movie turns almost entirely on the performance of Malcolm McDowell. McDowell is, of course, an absolutely brilliant actor when he’s in the right role (fantastic in If…, not so much in Cat People, for example), and there are a number of times during this movie that it seems, absurd as the idea may be, that Anthony Burgess originally wrote the character of Alex with McDowell in mind, he’s such a perfect fit. McDowell takes what would otherwise be a rather mundane (and hard to understand; the nadsat flows much more easily in the book, and is more understandable) film and lifts it into the realm of the sublime. It’s possible to attach the “virtuoso” adjective with a straight face, even. McDowell, here anyway, is the brightest of lights.

That said, the rest of the film is, in fact, rather mundane. Some of this can be attributed to cuts Kubrick had to make to get the film the R rating it finally ended up with (tales told out of school convey that one particular scene in the film– you’ll recognize it because it’s so sped up– was originally twenty-eight minutes long and reminiscent of the infamous ten-minute shot in Haneke’s Funny Games), but– and I can’t believe I’m saying this– I’m wondering if part of it doesn’t have to do with the film’s obsessive faithfulness to the book. And, yes, me saying something like this seems the height of folly, but it’s the only thing I can come up with to explain why else it might have left me cold.

It’s impossible to turn a novel, even a slim one, into a two-hour film without making some sacrifices. (Don’t believe me? Try it sometime. Adapt your favorite novel into a screenplay, then recruit some friends and give it a read.) Kubrick’s screenplay of Burgess’ novel is about the most triumphant attempt at sacrificing nothing I’ve seen, and the movie does play very close to the book’s vest. Where the difference lies, as it does in every case where an adaptation is not both written and directed by the author of the original novel (a situation I’m not sure has ever actually occurred), is in the variations, however slight they may be, in the visions of the author, the screenwriter, and the director. There’s a level of complexity removed here given that Kubrick both adapted and directed, leaving a consistency of vision in that part of the equation. But it often seemed to me while I was watching the movie that Burgess’ subtlety was often undermined by Kubrick’s vision. Which is saying something given that sometimes Burgess has all the subtlety of a pile of mouse droppings in the middle of your kitchen table. But he does squash a lot of his social commentary into places where you might not otherwise look for it (and then does something like invent nadsat to give it a nice polish); Kubrick seems to’ve hunted it all down and brought it to the forefront. Why is Alex’s “Singin’ in the Rain” so memorable? Because it doesn’t fit. Why doesn’t it fit? Because Kubrick had nothing to do with it, save approve it. McDowell improvised the whole scene. There’s no social commentary to be found in Alex’s choice of song; it would, in fact, be hard to find a song that can be imbued with less social commentary. And it’s that dichotomy that makes the scene so brilliant. When Kubrick is left to his own devices, however, social commentary tends to ooze from the celluloid. Or drop as if from the hind end of a mouse, as it were.

None of this, I hasten to add, is to say I don’t like the movie. I ended up liking it quite a bit, in spite of myself. It just seems that, as good as it ended up being, it could have been a great deal more, given a director with a somewhat lighter touch at the helm. As it is, however, it’s a visual feast with a manic McDowell as your tourguide, and that will do nicely. ***

Real horror show
What can be said about this movie that hasn’t been said already? This has to be one of the most controversial films ever made. I like to see the reactions that people get from watching this movie for the first time. This movie is STILL far ahead of its time. There will never be another movie like this, ever.

Better than 2001.
This is Stanley Kubrick’s greatest work; it is one of the most technically inventive and impressive films ever shot, while at the same time exposing the repulsive hypocrisies of the world which has changed very little (if not gotten worse) since 1971.

Customer Reviews:
Not a showcase for HD
This movie is a very entertaining rendering of the classic Arthurian tale with spirited acting and lots of familar faces. I own this movie on DVD and bought it on HD DVD hoping to get a brighter and more pristine looking copy. Sadly, the visual clarity of the HD version is not much better than the standard DVD version. There are scenes in the movie that look like they were cleaned up for HD but not enough so that I can recommend the HD version of Excalibur to fans hoping to get an exceptionally beautiful copy of one of their favorite movies.

Best Camelot movie ever - bar none!
On a degree of difficulty scale this is one of the toughest movies to attempt to make. Robin Hood is another. Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn pulled it off nicely in their adaptation back in the 70’s. Excalibur is about a 9 and Robin Hood about an 8, with a 10 being the toughest. Green tights and shiny armor isn’t always easy. The late Heath Ledger did a remarkable job in A Knight’s Tale of capturing this ideal.

Anyway, enough background and context. Excalibur is a spectacle, yet personal and intimate. If you like a good sword fight there are many staggered neatly throughout for your enjoyment. From the Lady in the Lake to King Arthur it’s all good. Lancelot is perfect. Merlin - perhaps one of the toughest roles within one of the toughest films - is integral to the movie’s success. Merlin in many ways is the glue of this film. As a sidenote: Nicol Williamson who plays Merlin also played Little John in “Robin and Marion” the Robin Hood movie I spoke of earlier. Nigel Terry as Arthur is sublime. When he pulls the sword from the rock and the music bridge hits if the hair on your neck doesn’t stand up … hit eject. This movie isn’t for you. Helen Mirren is downright HOT and CREEPY as Morgana. It’s one of those roles where in one part of the movie you’re rooting for her and by the end your cheering her demise. My favorite performance is actually one that doesn’t last very long. There are many fine performances and considering Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson are minor supporting actors emphasizes that this movie provides a rare and powerful cast not seen in today’s movies. My personal favorite performance is that of Uther, Arthur’s father. Played by a young and rough Gabe Byrne this is a raw and syrupy interpretation. I give Boorman credit for keeping this in the film. This sets the table for how lust, sex, and power will be woven throughout the story. Byrne singlehandedly gets the audience primed for an incredible ride.

And hey - a happy ending? Who knew. The end almost has a Godfather Part III feel to it. This is one of the most underrated movies of all time. I highly recommend it.

A Tempest in Teapot Armor
Hamy, melodramatic, gratuitously violent, plotless, self-indulgent, historically ridiculous, and over long. I’ve tried to watch this teapot boiler once every decade and it still remains a crushing bore. If there had been advanced video games in the early 80’s it should have been one. Cannot fathom what fans see in this thing other than middle earth fever for anything, and I mean anything, that smacks of sword and sorcery. A real clunker.

Customer Reviews:
Malcolm McDowell certainly does have acting chops.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

I am probably the last person on Earth who should be watching A Clockwork Orange; I have the combination of having never been a great Stanley Kubrick fan (save Lolita and The Killing) while being a very, very big fan of Anthony Burgess, especially the novel upon which this film is based. That said, it was a much better film that I had ever hoped it would be, though I still think it’s quite overrated, in the general scheme of things.

The movie turns almost entirely on the performance of Malcolm McDowell. McDowell is, of course, an absolutely brilliant actor when he’s in the right role (fantastic in If…, not so much in Cat People, for example), and there are a number of times during this movie that it seems, absurd as the idea may be, that Anthony Burgess originally wrote the character of Alex with McDowell in mind, he’s such a perfect fit. McDowell takes what would otherwise be a rather mundane (and hard to understand; the nadsat flows much more easily in the book, and is more understandable) film and lifts it into the realm of the sublime. It’s possible to attach the “virtuoso” adjective with a straight face, even. McDowell, here anyway, is the brightest of lights.

That said, the rest of the film is, in fact, rather mundane. Some of this can be attributed to cuts Kubrick had to make to get the film the R rating it finally ended up with (tales told out of school convey that one particular scene in the film– you’ll recognize it because it’s so sped up– was originally twenty-eight minutes long and reminiscent of the infamous ten-minute shot in Haneke’s Funny Games), but– and I can’t believe I’m saying this– I’m wondering if part of it doesn’t have to do with the film’s obsessive faithfulness to the book. And, yes, me saying something like this seems the height of folly, but it’s the only thing I can come up with to explain why else it might have left me cold.

It’s impossible to turn a novel, even a slim one, into a two-hour film without making some sacrifices. (Don’t believe me? Try it sometime. Adapt your favorite novel into a screenplay, then recruit some friends and give it a read.) Kubrick’s screenplay of Burgess’ novel is about the most triumphant attempt at sacrificing nothing I’ve seen, and the movie does play very close to the book’s vest. Where the difference lies, as it does in every case where an adaptation is not both written and directed by the author of the original novel (a situation I’m not sure has ever actually occurred), is in the variations, however slight they may be, in the visions of the author, the screenwriter, and the director. There’s a level of complexity removed here given that Kubrick both adapted and directed, leaving a consistency of vision in that part of the equation. But it often seemed to me while I was watching the movie that Burgess’ subtlety was often undermined by Kubrick’s vision. Which is saying something given that sometimes Burgess has all the subtlety of a pile of mouse droppings in the middle of your kitchen table. But he does squash a lot of his social commentary into places where you might not otherwise look for it (and then does something like invent nadsat to give it a nice polish); Kubrick seems to’ve hunted it all down and brought it to the forefront. Why is Alex’s “Singin’ in the Rain” so memorable? Because it doesn’t fit. Why doesn’t it fit? Because Kubrick had nothing to do with it, save approve it. McDowell improvised the whole scene. There’s no social commentary to be found in Alex’s choice of song; it would, in fact, be hard to find a song that can be imbued with less social commentary. And it’s that dichotomy that makes the scene so brilliant. When Kubrick is left to his own devices, however, social commentary tends to ooze from the celluloid. Or drop as if from the hind end of a mouse, as it were.

None of this, I hasten to add, is to say I don’t like the movie. I ended up liking it quite a bit, in spite of myself. It just seems that, as good as it ended up being, it could have been a great deal more, given a director with a somewhat lighter touch at the helm. As it is, however, it’s a visual feast with a manic McDowell as your tourguide, and that will do nicely. ***

Real horror show
What can be said about this movie that hasn’t been said already? This has to be one of the most controversial films ever made. I like to see the reactions that people get from watching this movie for the first time. This movie is STILL far ahead of its time. There will never be another movie like this, ever.

Better than 2001.
This is Stanley Kubrick’s greatest work; it is one of the most technically inventive and impressive films ever shot, while at the same time exposing the repulsive hypocrisies of the world which has changed very little (if not gotten worse) since 1971.

Customer Reviews:
Great Season ! What’s up with the packaging ?
This is one of the best seasons of Wings. What a great show this was !

My only complaint, and this happens with different series of TV shows on DVD and movies. Seasons 1 through 5 all came in the same packaging and now season 6 is different. Doesn’t make this a bad product .. it just isn’t the same. It’s all plastic.

Oh well … this is a great set none the less !

The last really good season!
I LOVED this series so much that it is one of only two I have bought on DVD. Season six, though, is the last really good season of the series. The planning and lead up to the season ending wedding, was all perfect Wings! It went downhill pretty soon into the 7th season and the 8th should never have been allowed to happen.

Wings: Season Six
I love season six of wings because it’s the start of Joe and Helen’s life together as a couple.