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 | | 5. X Men Origins: Wolverine | | | Starring: Danny Huston Hugh Jackman Director: Gavin Hood | | Format: DVD Release Date: 9/15/2009 |  | X-Men Origins: Wolverine - DVD Review By: Bill Gibron - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 9/4/2009 5:42 PM | |
You have to feel sorry for the X-Men franchise. It was once the standard bearer for comic book movies, a monopoly it managed to hold onto until Christopher Nolan and a certain Dark Knight raised and reset the bar substantially higher. Now, the mutant movie series is little more than a fading memory, a reminder of when Hollywood hoped to find a way to translate favorite graphic novels into massive motion picture successes. Oddly enough, Fox may have discovered the secret to staying relevant in a post-Batman reboot era -- and the answer is Hugh Jackman. Capable of carrying even the most mediocre effort, he single-handedly makes X-Men Origins: Wolverine an excellent start to the summer 2009 season. read the full review | |
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 | | 8. Watchmen (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Billy Crudup Jackie Earle Haley Director: Zack Snyder | | Format: DVD Release Date: 9/18/2009 | | Watchmen - DVD Review By: Sean O'Connell - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 7/10/2009 4:48 PM | |
The year is 1985. The Cold War rages on. While serving his fifth consecutive term in the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon contemplates nuclear assault against an aggressive Soviet Union. Elsewhere, an egomaniacal villain unleashes a mysterious threat that promises to decimate several of the world's major cities. Help, meanwhile, is not on the way. The masked superheroes who used to protect our crumbling society are in exile, banned by Congress from practicing what's now believed to be vigilante justice. And our nation's top weapon -- a sky-blue, radioactive superbeing nicknamed Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) -- has fled to Mars following a fight with his longtime girlfriend. read the full review | |
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 | | 10. Batman and Robin (2-Disc Special Edition-Dts) | | | Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger Chris O'Donnell Director: Joel Schumacher | | Format: DVD Release Date: 2/10/2009 | | Batman and Robin - DVD Review By: Jeremiah Kipp - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 2/27/2009 5:25 PM | |
This fourth episode in the Batman series isn’t a movie so much as a theme park. It wasn’t scripted so much as run through the Hollywood script mill, where every line of dialogue is reduced to a catchphrase. “Allow me to break the ice,” says Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), “My name is Freeze. Learn it well. For it’s the chilling sound of your doom.” That groaner is representative of pretty much every line of Batman’s arch-nemesis. He later posits such zingers as, “Tonight, hell freezes over!” and “You’re not sending me to the cooler!” This is not character development so much as paint-by-numbers screenwriting, where you can imagine the gang sitting around wondering what incorrigible pun they’ll come up with next. read the full review | |
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 | | 23. Watchmen (Blu-Ray + Digital Copy) | | | Starring: Billy Crudup Jackie Earle Haley Director: Zack Snyder | | Format: Blu-Ray DVD Release Date: 7/21/2009 | | Watchmen - Blu-Ray DVD Review By: Robert M. Barga - Blogcritics.org Reviews Published on: 7/20/2009 5:10 PM | | It is 1985, America won that war in Vietnam, and Nixon has been elected to his third term. The city of New York is repugnant, with crime, prostitution, and drugs everywhere. In a high-rise in the city of lights, an old man is tossed out of his penthouse. He plummets to the ground, accepts his fate, and dies. Somebody, somewhere, is killing off superheroes. Watchmen weaves an intricate tale of woe, love, war, passion, and humanity. The movie opens with the death of Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who in a previous life was the masked man known as The Comedian. After his former colleague and one of the few still-active heroes, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), hears of the death, he heads over to investigate. Looking around Blake’s room, Rorschach is forced to conclude that somebody came after Blake because he was a hero, not for some other reason. read the full review | |
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 | | 24. Spiderman 3 (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Tobey Maguire James Franco Director: Sam Raimi | | Format: DVD Release Date: 6/3/2008 | | Spider-Man 3: Special Edition - DVD Review By: Ed Perkis - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 11/1/2007 10:09 PM | | A lot of the story has a "been there, done that" kind of quality. Peter's guilt over Uncle Ben's murder' Check. Harry and Peter in competition for Mary Jane' Check. A basically good person becoming a villain but redeeming himself in the end' Double check. We've seen a lot of this before, and rather than streamlining one good story, Raimi and his co-writers, Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent, shoehorn everything into the plot. They never fully form any new characters or take old ones to new areas. read the full review | |
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 | | 29. Batman Returns (2-Disc Widescreen Special Edition-Dts) | | | Starring: Michael Keaton Michelle Pfeiffer Director: Tim Burton | | Format: DVD Release Date: 2/10/2009 | | Batman Returns - DVD Review By: James Brundage - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 2/27/2009 5:25 PM | |
It was the end of an era. The year was 1992 and the movie was Batman Returns. It marked the end of the Batman franchise as a series of good movies. It was, friends, the last great Batman. Gotham was dark and so was the script. Darkly comic, darkly romantic, and darkly dramatic. This tale told of Michael Keaton as Batman in a love/hate relationship with Catwoman, of a freak raised by penguins, of a power hungry industry giant who sought to leave the legacy of a polluting power plant. The Penguin: a man raised by what became his namesake, seeks to discover the identity of his parents, and then exact vengeance upon the world. read the full review | |
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 | | 35. Batman (2-Disc Special Edition-Dts) | | | Starring: Jack Nicholson Michael Keaton Director: Tim Burton | | Format: DVD Release Date: 2/10/2009 | | Batman (1989) - DVD Review By: James Brundage - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 2/27/2009 5:25 PM | |
Batman has changed over the years. He’s gone from Holy Rusted Metal to hallucinogens, from campy to comedy and then back to campy. He’s been through more first ladies than half of its leading men, and has seen more directors than an ingnue. First up to bat in the Batman movies was Tim Burton, fresh off of Beetlejuice and right before Edward Scisscorhands. Burton’s Gotham is a noirish nightmare that grabs you from the opening scene. Batman is still a spook story to criminals, but he’s a rumor spreading like wildfire. Bumbling on the trail is jackass journalist Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl), and the girl drawn to the mystery of the bat is Vicky Vale (Kim Basinger). read the full review | |
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 | | 41. Howard the Duck | | | Starring: Lea Thompson Director: Willard Huyck | | Format: DVD Release Date: 3/10/2009 | | Howard the Duck - DVD Review By: Bill Gibron - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 3/10/2009 8:38 PM | |
While fans and naysayers constantly complain about what he's done to a certain galaxy far, far away, few remember another beloved franchise that George Lucas adopted and then left for dead. In 1986, the writer/director/producer was riding high on the success of his Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Looking for new material to milk, he came across the beloved Marvel Comic character Howard the Duck. Hiring his buddies from American Graffiti, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, Lucas hoped that he could jumpstart a new series starring the angry, angst-ridden anthropomorphized mallard. What he got instead was one of the worst big screen bungles ever -- and it's still quite bad some 22 years later. read the full review | |
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 | | 44. Superman II-Richard Donner Cut (HD) | | | Starring: Margot Kidder Christopher Reeve Director: Richard Lester | | Format: High Definition DVD Release Date: 11/28/2006 | User Rating: 5 | | Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 11/30/2006 8:37 PM | | The original version of Superman II is not a perfect film by any stretch and since there was all this additional footage by a different director, many fans got the idea that there was a better version out there, just waiting to be compiled - something that didn't have the weaknesses of the Lester cut. The Donner cut does improve on the released version in some ways, but it's hardly the substantial upgrade many fans were hoping for. Rather than moving from a Honda to a Mercedes, it's more like moving from a Honda to a slightly nicer Honda with leather seats. read the full review | |
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