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 | | 2. Twilight (2-Disc Special Edition) | | | Starring: Kristen Stewart Robert Pattinson Director: Catherine Hardwicke | | Format: DVD Release Date: 3/20/2009 | User Rating: 5 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 |  | Twilight - DVD Review By: Bill Gibron - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 3/13/2009 5:38 PM | |
Damn you Anne Rice! Even since you introduced that lovelorn supermodel turned bloodsucker Lestat, the vampire has been romanticized all out of proportion. Cold yet compassionate, sexy but spurned, the supposed supernatural monster has gone from corpse to Casanova in the twinkle of a dateless spinster's eye. Now comes Twilight, the latest entry in the continued compromising of the classic Stoker archetype. Aimed directly at the ADD-addled attention span of the average Facebooker, aside from being no fun at all, it stands as one of 2008's most crass commercial statements. read the full review | |
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 | | 5. Van Helsing (Full Screen) | | | Starring: Hugh Jackman Kate Beckinsale Director: Stephen Sommers | | Format: DVD Release Date: 9/18/2007 | | Van Helsing - DVD Review By: Sean O'Connell - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 9/4/2009 5:42 PM | |
Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker receive zero writing credit for Stephen Sommers’ lopsided Van Helsing, and you can hear the immortal authors breathing a sigh of relief from beyond the grave. The novelists’ legendary creatures may receive prominent placement in Universal Studio’s big-budget rollercoaster ride, but the half-baked ideas propping up the mediocre monster mash belong solely to writer/director Sommers – for better or for worse. Van Helsing ends up as a high-concept adrenaline rush that never stops generating lesser concepts over its elongated 145-minute run time. read the full review | |
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 | | 11. True Blood-Complete 1st Season | | | Starring: Stephen Moyer Anna Paquin | | Format: DVD Release Date: 5/19/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | True Blood: Season One - DVD Review By: Don Willmott - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/8/2009 5:39 PM | |
Richly populated with a wide variety of unique characters, not to mention a serial killer and lots of sexy vampires, Bon Temps, Louisiana is a decidedly interesting place in which to spend some time. Alan Ball's True Blood may not quite measure up to the triumph of his Six Feet Under, but it's as good a series as any HBO has put on the air since The Sopranos ended, and it's well worth a renewal or two. Based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood drops us into the weird world of Sookie Stackhouse (the energetic Anna Paquin), a young waitress who has ability to hear people's thoughts, a talent that annoys the hell out of her. read the full review | |
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 | | 16. Underworld:rise Of The Lycans | | | Starring: Michael Sheen Rhona Mitra Director: Patrick Tatopoulos | | Format: DVD Release Date: 10/27/2009 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Underworld: Rise of the Lycans - DVD Review By: Jesse Hassenger - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/1/2009 5:39 PM | |
Upon first description, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans appears completely unnecessary, even for one of the Underworld movies, which, like the Resident Evil pictures, are well-practiced in the art of spinning inessential straw into inessential off-season box-office gold. Rise of the Lycans is a prequel, seeking to explain in greater detail the mythology-heavy plot turns discussed so endlessly in the very first Underworld movie: How and why vampires and werewolves came to so loathe each other. The reasons, it turns out, are not dissimilar to what I faintly recall as the central conflict from the first film: a vampire named Sonja (Rhona Mitra) is in love with a lycan called Lucian (Michael Sheen). read the full review | |
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 | | 19. Thirst new! | | | Starring: Kang-ho Song Director: Chan Wook Park | | Format: DVD Release Date: 11/17/2009 | | Thirst (2009) - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 11/6/2009 9:42 PM | |
The thrill of sin and the thrill of salvation become one and the same in Park Chan-wook's audacious Thirst. Beholden to both Catholic and vampiric mythology, Chan-wook has retrofitted his baroque bloodsucker with concepts of drug addiction, middle-class malaise, sexual fetishes, and disease, to name just a few. Only a production of the highest ambitions, made by well-meaning practitioners, could ever have birthed the oozing, clamorous mess that has ended up onscreen. The setup has nothing but promise. In a rushed opening movement, Father Sang-hyeon (the exceptional Song Kang-ho) is introduced as a well-liked priest with a nonchalant yearn for martyrdom. read the full review | |
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 | | 31. Underworld-Evolution (Widescreen) | | | Starring: Kate Beckinsale Director: Len Wiseman | | Format: DVD Release Date: 8/28/2007 | | Video Reviews Available: 1 | | Underworld: Evolution - DVD Review By: Joel Meares - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 5/3/2009 5:39 AM | |
If current cinema is to be believed, everywhere we humans are not looking, vampires, werewolves, advanced machines, and other nightcrawlers are living in alternative societies. Underworld brought such a society to the fore, shining a torch (and some flattering designer light) on a leather-clad group of vampires embroiled in a feud with an ancient race of werewolves known as Lycans. In Russia just last year, Night Watch took us into the gloaming to witness similar shenanigans. Perhaps fearing that six months is too long between gothic, O-negative drinks, the makers of Underworld have offered us its unnecessary, unanticipated, and unexpectedly OK sequel, Underworld: Evolution. read the full review | |
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 | | 36. Van Helsing (Blu-ray) | | | Starring: Hugh Jackman Kate Beckinsale Director: Stephen Sommers | | Format: Blu-Ray DVD Release Date: 9/15/2009 | | Van Helsing - Blu-Ray DVD Review By: Luigi Bastardo - Blogcritics.org Reviews Published on: 9/17/2009 3:43 AM | | The titular character, one Gabriel Van Helsing, is a monster killer. He is employed by Vatican City, which doubles as an early form of MI6 and even has its own gadget department run by the monks, who invent many highly sophisticated items for the 19th Century. An automatic-firing crossbow with clips. Handheld spinning sawblade thingies (with their own secret power source). A solar bomb. The rest of the 19th Century is also pretty advanced and has such amazing articles as moving pictures. No, I don’t mean the cinema — I mean pictures that move. But, of course, the other kind of moving pictures must have been pretty popular then, too: how else does one explain Van Helsing’s constant John Woo-style of gunplay? read the full review | |
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 | | 39. Dracula | | | Starring: Winona Ryder Gary Oldman Director: Francis Ford Coppola | | Format: DVD Release Date: 3/25/2008 | | User Rating: 5 | | Dracula (1992) - DVD Review By: Jay Antani - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 9/25/2009 8:08 PM | |
The full title that Francis Ford Coppola gave his Dracula is Bram Stoker's Dracula, implying that his was a truly faithful transfiguring of Stoker's novel to the screen. But anyone familiar with the novel knows that Coppola's adaptation takes significant creative liberties. Not that re-imagining and re-shaping is ever a bad idea, but sometimes it ends up subtracting from rather than enhancing our experience of the material. Coppola's take doesn't play as fast and loose with Stoker's novel as other adaptations (Dracula 2000 anyone?), but it's misguided and ludicrous just the same. The worst bit of tampering with the Dracula narrative was Coppola and screenwriter James V. read the full review | |
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