Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

 

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the 2011 follow-up to the 2010 movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson. The rest of the cast includes Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Stephen Fry, Kelly Reilly, Eddie Marsan, and Geraldine James. This time, Moriarty is introduced in the flesh, as opposed to the shadowy figure from the first movie, and played wonderfully by Jared Harris. The movie incorporates elements of different Holmes stories, such as The Final Problem, and basically sets up a Holmes v. Moriarty showdown. I will not go into too much detail to avoid giving too much away, but if you have read the Holmes novels, you likely have an idea of the ending, although it does not follow the stories from the books word-for-word.

The A/V quality of the Blu-Ray is outstanding. The movie looks and sounds great in the HD format and the special effects look seamless with the practical effects. The extras are much like what was included in the Blu-Ray release of the first movie. The most extensive being the Maximum Movie Mode, which allows you to play the movie with behind the scenes material interjected. Then, there are some other behind the scenes features included as well. A lot to go through for people who like the bonus material.

Ultimately, if you liked the first movie, you will likely like this one, as it has a very similar tone and feel with an even better bad guy to be a foil for Holmes. You really cannot compare it with the BBC series Sherlock, as the movies and the series were really their own thing. It just so happens that, unfortunately, were released very close in time, and the series went on to be a very big hit. This, I think, is at least a part of why future movies have not materialized (not to mention Downey Jr. and Cumberbatch's commitments to the Marvel movies). It is definitely worth a couple of hours if you are looking for a good action movie.

DVD/TV Series Review: The Sinner Season 3

 

The eight-episode third season of The Sinner aired during the spring of 2020. It again has a completely new storyline and a mostly new cast. The only character carried over from seasons 1 and 2 is Harry Ambrose (played by Bill Pullman). The rest of the season 3 cast members include Matt Bomer, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Eddie Martinez, and Chris Messina. This season diverges from the format of the prior seasons in that we know a lot more about the person under investigation relatively early in the season. Matt Bomer plays Jamie Burns, a high school teacher and new father who has been arrested for murder. Since the writers did not hide the ball as much this season, there is no single "big" reveal at the very end of the season as there was in seasons 1 and 2. That said, the storyline is good, and I think it was wise not to have this season be a carbon copy of the format of the other two. The acting was great, and the writing/storyline was good, but not as good as the first season or even the second season.

The DVD set is a two-disc MOD DVD set. That means there are no extra or bonus features. And, unlike seasons 1 and 2, it was not released individually on Blu-Ray (but it is included in the complete series Blu-Ray set that was released after the series ended with season 4). As physical media slowly goes extinct, TV series are taking the brunt of that, with fewer of them being released even on DVD, and only a very select few being released on Blu-Ray. This is a very bare-bones MOD DVD with no captions and no extras. You just get the eight episodes spread over two discs. So, I think most people who will get this will be those who are just wanting to keep their collection complete. But, if you only get physical discs if there are a lot of extras, then you will just want to stick to streaming this one.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: The Sinner Season 2

 

The eight-episode second season of The Sinner aired during the summer of 2018. It tells a completely new story with mostly new characters. This time, the story is set near Harry Ambrose's (played by Bill Pullman) hometown (which is the hook that gets him into the story), in which a child named Julian (played by Elisha Nenig) poisons his parents at a roadside motel. Of course, like the first season, there are a lot of twists and turns with the backstory slowly revealed over the course of the eight episodes. The supporting cast includes Carrie Coon as the "leader" of the cult that Julian was raised in, Natalie Paul, who is a local police officer/junior detective, and a family friend of Harry and Hannah Gross.

The Blu-Ray set is a two-disc set. The show looks good in HD, but it is a standard MOD set. There are no captions and no extras, just the episodes spread over the two discs. The acting and writing are very good. There are some sexual situations and swearing during the season, but I do not think there was as much as there was in the first season. That said, it is still not what I would call a family-friendly show. But if you are looking for a good adult drama, it is worth checking out.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: The Sinner Season 1

 

The Sinner is a crime drama that aired for four seasons. Each season, the storylines change and include a mostly new cast. Bill Pullman, who played a police detective named Harry Ambrose, is the only character who appears in every season. The 8-episode first season aired during the summer and fall of 2017. The first season starred Jessica Biel, Christopher Abbott, Jacob Pitts, Nadia Alexander, Enid Graham, and C.J. Wilson. Writing an in-depth review of the show without giving away too much is nearly impossible. The basic story in the first season is that a wife and mother named Cora (played by Jessica Biel) kills a seemingly random stranger while on a family outing at the beach, but she has no idea who the person is or why she did what she did. Harry Ambrose suspects there is more to the story and begins investigating Cora's past to try and figure out what drove her to kill a stranger. Needless to say, there is more to the story, which is revealed in parts throughout the eight episodes (via flashbacks), with many twists and reveals.

The Blu-Ray set is a four-disc set. The set is basically a MOD set, although there are a few minutes of deleted scenes on the second disc and no captions. The show does have a lot of swearing, drug use, and sexual content in it. While there is no overt nudity, it still pushes the bounds of what can be shown on basic cable. So, it is not very family-friendly. The story is well-written and well-acted, with Biel and Pullman doing great jobs in the leading roles. The supporting cast, especially Jacob Pitts, is excellent is well. The story is told well throughout the limited number of episodes and never feels too slow or too rushed. It is not a show that will appeal to everyone, but it is definitely worth checking out if you are looking for a good adult drama.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Knives Out

 

Knives Out is a murder mystery from 2019. It was written and directed by Rian Johnson (his first movie post-Star Wars) and stars Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martelland, Toni Collette. It is what you would get if you cross an Agatha Christie novel with the game Clue and a little bit of Sherlock Holmes mixed in. The main plot is that the patriarch of a wealthy New England family, named Harlan Thormby (played by Christopher Plummer), who is a famous mystery writer, dies on the night of his birthday party, in what, all appearances, looks to be an open and shut suicide. The local police, as well as a renowned private investigator named Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig), who is hired under mysterious circumstances, are investigating the death, looking into everyone who was in contact with Harlan, including his eccentric (to put it mildly) family. All the characters seem to have a reason/motive for killing Harlan. 

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is wonderful. The cinematographic shots of New England look great in UHD. The UHD disc also includes bonus features, including an eight-part making-of-documentary, a question-and-answer session with cast members and Rian Johnson, fake promotional ads, and trailers. The film is a unique "whodunit" in that the audience knows most of what happened throughout most of the movie, but there are twists that make it clear not all is what it seems, all building up to a classic third-act reveal. While the entire cast does a great job, Craig and De Armas really shine in their roles and definitely deserved their Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and Best Actress. Overall, it is a wonderful, well-written, and well-acted movie. It is really not something that you can easily just have on in the background, give your partial attention to, and still follow what is going on. But if you are looking for a way to kill a couple of hours with a great, fairly unique story, this is definitely worth checking out.

Book Review: You Like it Darker: Stories

 

You Like It Darker is a collection of short stories written by Stephen King and published in 2024. The book includes 12 stories, which vary in length. A couple of the longer stories, including one that is a sequel to the movie Cujo, could definitely be adapted into a feature-length movie. The best story in the book (which is another one that could be adapted into a movie) is the final story entitled The Answer Man, which is one of the more metaphysical stories in the book. As is the case in much of King's work, he blends real-world elements (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) with his fictional world. Some of the stories are set in Maine (as many of King's stories are), but not all are. Rattlesnakes, for example, is set mostly in Florida. 

The hardcover version of the book is just over 500 pages long.  The stories are easy to get through and if you are a fast reader, you will likely be able to finish it in a few days (or less). Overall, the book is good. Some of the stories are better than others, but generally, if you are a fan of King's work, especially his more recent work, you will probably like the book. While I would not classify this as one of King's must-read books, it is worth reading.

DVD/Movie Review: Secret Window

 

Secret Window is a 2004 mystery/thriller starring Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Charles S. Dutton, and Timothy Hutton. The movie is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King called Secret Window, Secret Garden. It is about a novelist named Mort Rainey, played by Depp, who is accused by a man named Shooter, played by John Turturro, of stealing one of his stories. It turns into a fairly twisted (for a PG-13 movie) thriller as Mort's life spirals more and more out of control at the hands of Shooter.  Bello plays Mort's estranged wife, Timothy Hutton plays her new boyfriend, and Charles S. Dutton plays the private investigator Mort hires to help him with the shooter situation.

The DVD extras include a commentary track on the movie by the director, David Koepp, deleted and extended scenes, and a short making-of featurette. The story, as you would expect for a movie adapted from a King novel, is very strong with some twists and turns. The acting was very good from top to bottom. Given this movie was made (2004) while Depp was in the mists of filming the various Pirates movies, it is a good break from his Captain Jack Sparrow character and lets him flex more of his dramatic acting muscles with a little bit of humor mixed in. It is definitely a good way to spend an hour and a half watching a movie that is entertaining but you do not have to think about too much when it is over.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Memento 10th Anniversary Edition

 

Memento is a 2000 suspense-thriller/mystery that was written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The movie starred Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss,  and Joe Pantoliano. It came out before Christopher Nolan was a household name (this was his second movie). It was a relatively low-budget film that was part revenge story, part drama, part dark comedy, and part love story. The basic plot is that a man named Leonard Shelby (played by Pearce) is looking for his wife's killer, but because of a head injury, he cannot make new short-term memories. He remembers everything up to his accident but becomes a blank slate every few minutes. As a result, he takes Polaroids of the people he interacts with, writes notes to himself, and tattoos clues onto his body. The twist is that the movie is shown in reverse. You get a scene, then it will roll back about 5 min or so, and show the events leading up to what you just watched. And keeps doing that throughout the entire movie, so you do not find out everything until the very end.

The A/V quality of the blu-ray is good. While there is not much in the way of special effects (if any) or really any sprawling cinematographic shots, the movie does look and sound good in the HD format. As far as extras go, there on the Blu-ray, there is about 25 min' worth of behind-the-scenes material. Commentary on the film from Nolan, a copy of the script, a gallery showing the various clues tattooed on Leonard and his diary. It's not a ton of material, but it's good for what is there.

While the writing and directing are great, the key to the movie being as good as it is was the acting. Guy Pearce, as the main character, Lenny/Leonard, does a great job both when he is narrating the rules for his life and when he is onscreen. Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss, both having come off making the original Matrix film when this came out, are great at playing characters that are much more than they seem. What you find out by the end/beginning of the movie is that all the characters are pretty morally gray. It is much more like Inception (with a little bit of The Fugitive mixed in) than the Dark Knight movies, but to the extent you can say Nolan has a style, it definitely follows it. It is not a movie you can have on in the background and get what is going on. You really do have to pay attention all the way through, or you will miss too much. That said, it is a unique drama/mystery that is worth multiple viewings.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Blindspot Season 1

 

Blindspot was a combination serial and procedural drama from 2015 starring Jamie Alexander (best known for her role as Lady Sif in the MCU) and Sullivan Stapleton (best known for the series Strike Back). The show opens with a mysterious bag in the middle of Times Square that suddenly stops moving. A naked, heavily tattooed woman (Alexander) emerges from the bag with no memory of who she is but has the name of FBI agent Kurt Weller (Stapleton) tattooed on her back. She is dubbed "Jane Doe" and brought to the NY FBI field office where it is discovered that the tattoos contain a clue leading them to a terrorist, and subsequently discover that other tattoos contain clues to active plots, old cases, etc. The series then launches into a blend of a case-of-the-week procedural in which the team tries to solve a new tattoo and several serial arcs. One of the serial arcs involves Jane's memories slowly coming back through flashbacks and the other involves a childhood friend of Weller's who went missing as a kid.

The show has a very strong supporting cast including Rob Brown as Edgar Reade, an FBI special agent and member of Weller's team, Audrey Esparza as Natasha "Tasha" Zapata, an FBI special agent and member of Weller's team, who used to be an NYPD officer, Ashley Johnson as Patterson, an FBI special agent and head of the FBI Forensic Science Unit, Ukweli Roach as Robert Borden, an FBI psychiatrist who helps Jane to retrieve and understand her memories, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Bethany Mayfair, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York Field Office.

For those who get the blu-ray set, the A/V quality is very good, and what special effects there are, look great in HD. The extras include featurettes on the tattoo clues, several deleted scenes, a portion of the Comic-Con panel, a gag reel, a commentary track on the pilot episode with the series creator Martin Gero and the director Mark Pellingham, and then there are several making-of featurettes that range in length from a few minutes to just under ten. So, if you like watching the bonus material, there is a good amount there for you.

Overall, the season is very good. It has a good blend of action, suspense, and drama, with some humor mixed in. The humor is mostly dry humor from the overly stuffy (with the exception of Patterson) FBI agents, and the non-dry humor comes in large part from the character of Rich Dotcom, played by Ennis Esmer, who is in just one episode in season one but would become more involved in subsequent seasons. It is definitely a show that you have to watch from the beginning to know what is going on because, even though some of the main storylines of particular episodes are self-contained one-off storylines, there is always a secondary storyline about one of the larger serial arcs that will make little sense if you just jump into it. But, if you are a fan of crime dramas that have a lot of action, then this is definitely a good one to check out.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Lost: Season 6

 

+++Warning, this contains minor spoilers from the prior season, but no major season six giveaways+++

The 18-episode sixth and final season of Lost aired during the winter and spring of 2010. The first episode of the season starts back on the (seemingly) doomed flight that started the entire series. But, we find out that as a result of the hydrogen bomb that was detonated at the end of the fifth season, there are now two realities, one in which the plane never crashed and one in which it did. So, after doing flashbacks and flashforwards, this season does a "flash sideways" going between the alternate realities and seeing how the characters come out in each one. The season pays off the reveal of the smoke monster and basically reveals all about the supernatural aspect of the island. The end of the series works out to be a bit of a thought experiment (or at least a good discussion point) when it reveals what we are seeing in the flash sideways, and the last shot of the series is a nice bookend to the opening shot in the first season.

The Blu-Ray set is a five-disc set. The A/V quality is again stellar, with the show looking and sounding as good as pretty much any movie. For extras, there are commentary tracks on four episodes, a 40-minute making-of documentary for the final season, an 8-minute recap of the series up to season six, and a few short (under 10 minutes in length) behind-the-scenes featurettes. There is also a series epilogue which ties up a couple of things that the series finale did not. So, all in all, a good amount of bonus material if you like watching the extras.

Overall, the final season was very good. The show ran hot and cold for a lot of people, with many fans disappointed (or downright mad) at how slowly everything played out. I do think being able to binge-watch the series (whether on disc or via streaming) does help with that and makes things easier to follow and, as a result, the series makes more sense. While the ending surely did not and will not appeal to everyone, I do think it was well done, even if not every character got a happily ever after ending. It goes without saying that you definitely cannot jump right into the final season and hope to understand what is going on. The show definitely has a serial storyline that has to be watched from beginning to end. It is, in my opinion, one of the best sci-fi/supernatural thrillers to be on TV in recent memory, and is definitely worth the time to watch.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Lost: Season 5

 

+++Warning, this contains minor season four spoilers, but no major giveaways about season five+++

The 17-episode fifth season of Lost aired in winter and spring of 2009. It was the show's second to last season, and, as such, it finally begins to unravel some of the mysteries that have been set up throughout the first four seasons. This season also sees the survivors split not only in location but in time, since moving the island at the end of season four to protect it from the "freighter folk" resulted in time rips so that some characters are back in the 1950s, some are in the 1970s, while others remain in the present day. The show does finally start to explore the island's history, explain what the Dharma Initiative really is, reveals the 'incident' that led to requiring someone to press a button inside a hatch every 108 minutes, explains the time travel, explains why the castaways crashed on the island in the first place, and reveals more about Jacob. Some of the reveals are ham-handed and/or eye-roll-inducing, but some of them really pay off well for the die-hard fans of the show. This season, while again a bit shorter (17 overall episodes) does contain the milestone 100th episode of the series and does again end on a cliffhanger setting up the final season.

The Blu-Ray set is a five-disc set. As with the prior season releases, you get a good amount of bonus material, including commentary tracks on a few episodes, about seven making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes, including one on the 100th episode, a series recap of seasons 1-4, and a gag reel. So, there's a lot there if you like watching the bonus features. Overall, the season is very good. It continues to be well acted and mostly (with some exceptions) well written. The writing does get a bit too clever for itself sometimes, but it does seem like the writers had almost everything planned out and were not just making stuff up on the fly. A big complaint by many fans really from the end of season two onward is that the show was not resolving the mysteries and introducing four or five new questions for every question it answered. I would not say that was the case this season. Major plot elements were explained this season, and while not everything gets wrapped up, you can definitely tell the series is winding down. You definitely need to watch the prior seasons for this one to make any sense as this show is truly a serial story that builds on itself, so if you just jump in randomly, you may enjoy it, but you will not have any idea what is really going on.

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Lost Season 4

 

+++Warning, this contains spoilers from the prior season, but no major season four giveaways+++

The 14-episode fourth season of Lost aired during the winter and spring of 2009. The season was shortened because of the writer's strike that occurred in the middle. Therefore, the season ends up being 14 episodes as opposed to the 24 from prior seasons. It ended up being a bit more streamlined with tighter storylines because of the reduced number of episodes. Instead of using the flashback as a plot crutch, this season utilizes what was teased in the season finale of season three, the flashforward, showing that, indeed, some of the survivors made it off the island and that leaving the island was not necessarily the good thing they thought it would be. The flashforwards were one main storyline and the other was the presence of the "freighter folk", those being the people on the freighter that appeared at the end of season three, and whether they are trustworthy rescuers. The season ends on a bit of a cliffhanger this season (yet again), but it is not as big a cliffhanger as we have seen in the prior seasons.

The Blu-Ray set is a six-disc set with, yet again, a lot of extras. There are commentary tracks on four episodes, an eight-minute series recap, a handful of making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes, a featurette that has all of the flashforward scenes in chronological order, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and some easter eggs accessible off the menus. Even excluding the commentaries, well over two hours of bonus material. And, of course, the A/V quality continues to be great. Overall, the season is very good. It ties up some of the threads from the prior seasons while exposing new mysteries. Again, I think it is good to be able to watch the series without interruption because you get to see how it all plays out without month-long breaks, which makes everything easier to follow. The acting and writing this season continue to be very strong, and the show does a good job balancing the very large ensemble cast. Michael Emmerson was really the standout this season with his portrayal of Ben, leader of The Others. While I still think that season one was the best season of the show, this one was very good and definitely worth watching.