I bought a blu-ray player a few months ago and since then I’ve mainly been watching regular DVD’s.  But this month I finally upgraded my Netflix account to blu-ray and many of the movies I received were on blu-ray.  The first thing I noticed was the sound….the DTS-HD Master Audio is freakin’ amazing.  Yes, the picture was good and certainly better than DVD, but the sound was leaps and bounds above what DVD offered.  So no turning back, blu-ray is the deal.

But blu-ray and better sound does not a great movie make…as seen in my reviews of this months movies which include:

• Sherlock Holmes
• Liberty! – The American Revolution
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
• Brothers
• Avatar
• Daybreakers

As always, click through to see the ratings and reviews.
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The month of May saw the end of LOST, the TV show.  I for one thought they did a great job with the series, including the ending.  I was satisfied that not everything was answered, but that the human side of the story was what mattered.

As for films this month, there were 6…3 of which were nearly great and a couple of which were stinkers.  Here they are in no specific order.

• Capitalism:  A Love Story
• The Blind Side
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• On the Road With Judas
• The Amateurs
• The Road

As always, click through to read my short reviews and see the ratings.

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This month saw the return to my more normal movie viewing habits.  No more long sessions cramming in multiple episodes of LOST.  I’ve caught up to the TV episodes and now have to wait the requisite week between viewings.  And with only 4 episodes left in the series, I’m hoping all those hours have been worth it.

So normal for me is 1 to 2 movies a week, or to be more exact, 7 films this month ranging from 2 to 4 star ratings.  And, this month heralds the return of the "Best Line" for each movie.  That is, I pick my favorite line from each film…it might not be the most memorable or a signature line or catch phrase, but is the one that got a reaction out of me at the moment.  Yes, I do watch movies with a pen and paper next to me, just so I can record this information.

Also, I left off one movie last month that my daughter and I saw in the theater, so I’ll be adding it this month as well.

Here are the films in no particular order

• The Invention of Lying
• The Thief
• Inkheart
• The Informant!
• Up In The Air
• Cache (Hidden)
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Alice in Wonderland

As always, click through for the brief reviews and ratings.
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This last month was another LOST month.  My vow to limit my viewing to one season per month fell by the wayside quickly.  Instead, I decided to catch up to the Season 6 episodes currently airing on ABC.  That meant I had another 50 or so episodes to get through in March.  No problem.

Along with that, I watched 5 movies and a short "documentary" on Pink Floyd’s making of The Dark Side of the Moon.  Here is the list is no particular order.

• Cold Souls
• The Hangover
• Zombieland
• The Man From Earth
• Antichrist
• Pink Floyd:  Dark Side of the Moon
• Lost Season 3 (23 episodes)
• Lost Season 4 (14 episodes)
• Lost Season 5 (17 episodes)

As usual, click through to see the ratings and short reviews.
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I’m going to have to call February my LOST month.  A friend suggested I check out the TV series LOST and since the first 5 seasons are streamable via Netflix, it was a simple matter to add Season 1 to my Instant queue.  Well, to make a long story short, I spent 35 hours of my life this past month watching all 50 episodes of season 1 and 2 of this TV show.

Given all that time devoted to a TV show, you would think I didn’t have much time for regular movie viewing.  You would be wrong, I still found the time to watch 6 movies this month including a couple that are nominated for this years Best Picture Oscar.  Here is the list in no specific order.

• The Hurt Locker
• A Serious Man
• Anvil:  The Story of Anvil
• 500 Days of Summer
• Across the Hall
• Naked States
• Lost Season 1 (26 episodes)
• Lost Season 2 (24 episodes)

As always, click through for the detail and rating on each.
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I thought I would try something different this year.  Instead of writing long reviews of a few movies, I decided I should list the movies I watch each month and provide a short commentary.  It should help me better remember each of them when it comes time at the end of the year to pick my favorites.  So, here is the first installment for 2010 (two thousand ten), or twenty-ten, depending on how you want to pronounce it.

This month includes 7 movies I hadn’t seen before, one episodic TV series and two movies I had previously watched.  Yeah, I know…I need more of a life, but when you stop paying attention to politics or reading much of the news, it’s amazing how much time you can find to watch movies.

• The Gamers:  Dorkness Rising
• Moon
• 9
• District 9
• Sunshine Cleaning
• Extract
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
• Six Feet Under – Season 1 (first 3 episodes)
• Lord of the Rings:  Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition)
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

For some detail on each and the ratings, I’m gonna make you click the link…

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It’s that time of year again.  Time for my list of the best movies of 2009.  If you recall from last year, my list is not limited to movies that came out in 2009, but to the movies I watched in 2009 regardless of their original release date.  And it was a banner year for watching movies, with no less than 86 movies watched during the last 12 months.  But if you’ve followed along on the blog, you may have noticed that I only reviewed 8 movies this year.  The reason? Very few made an impression that compelled me to write about them.

Here’s the breakdown of the ratings

• 5 Star Movies:  1
• 4 Star Movies:  24
• 3 Star Movies:  42
• 2 Star Movies:  19
• 1 Star Movies:  0

Again this year it’s a relatively even distribution with the majority landed right in the middle.  But a couple things do stand out this year compared to last.  First, I didn’t rate any movies 1 star and second, I actually rated a movie 5 stars.  If you recall, my criteria for a 5 star movie is one that I would want to go out and buy immediately and wouldn’t
mind watching again and again.  That’s a pretty high bar to jump over so it’s no wonder there has been only 1 movie in the last 2 years that achieved this lofty position.

As usual, I’ve broken down the movies I watched into categories and selected my favorite in each.

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In the world of sci-fi there is usually a clear distinction between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans.  Rarely is one a fan of both to the same degree.  For me, I enjoyed Star Trek much more than Star Wars.  When I was in college, we would come back to our dorm room after dinner, huddle around my 13" color TV and turn on the nightly re-run of the original Star Trek TV show.  It was a tradition.  We played the standard Star Trek game of trying to call out the name of the episode before anyone else.  Yeah, we were geeks.

Although I enjoyed the TV shows, I never really got into the Star Trek movies.  The only one I ever wanted to watch more than once was Wrath of Khan.  But with this recent release, that has changed.  I would put J J Abrams new Trek film at the top of the heap in terms of quality and replayability.  It was that good.  In fact, I watched it twice before I sent it back to Netflix, something I rarely ever do.  And it was just as good the second time if not better.

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I’ve had this movie on my Netflix list for a really long time, but it kept itself in the middle of the queue as other seemingly more interesting movies leapfrogged over it to the top of my attention.  Finally, it’s turn came and I must say, watching this film from the 1930′s is an experience.  It’s unlike any movie you’ve seen and I can’t imagine anything like it ever being made again.

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Ponyo is the latest animated film from the Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.  He’s been making animated films for many decades, but I first became aware of his films a few years back when I was looking for movies with strong girl characters for my daughter to watch.  You see, most movies might have a female character, but they are usually being saved by the strong male lead.  That’s not the role model I wanted my daughter to emulate.  I wanted to find films that showed the girl in control of her fate.  Miyazaki’s movies provided that.

The first film of his I found was Kiki’s Delivery Service.  My daughter, probably around 7 at the time, enjoyed the film immensely.  I then moved on to some of his other more well known films such as Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky.  Both of which quickly became favorites of my daughter.

So when we saw that Ponyo was playing at our local theater, we were excited to go check it out.  And with a recent free weekend, we spent an afternoon in the theater.  But unfortunately, we were both disappointed.

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