Roman Holiday is a lovely and light-hearted romantic comedy-drama with two charismatic performances from both Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. This 4K Ultra HD release has good video and audio transfers to go along with an okay set of features.
Fast X might have some good stunts and a great over-the-top villain performance from Jason Momoa, but otherwise you really couldn’t care about any of these characters. Perhaps it’s worth a rental especially if you’ve made it this far in the franchise but it is running out of steam at this juncture.
John Wick: Chapter 4 isn’t the strongest entry in the series but still highly entertaining if not a bit on the lengthy side. Keanu Reeves is still in his element as are the stunts and action scenes under Chad Stahelski’s direction.
Evil Dead Rise is a decent entry into the franchise that features some great gore effects, during the finale especially. As someone who is only a moderate fan of the series, I found this was to be entertaining but nothing terribly memorable.
Vacation is a movie that I’ve seen numerous times and it still manages to make me laugh. In regards to this 4K UHD release, the video transfer is adequate but hardly amazing and the hour-long documentary is missing.
Ronin is a fantastically slow burning yet still suspense-filled crime drama, a call back to the 60s and 70s preferring realistic car chases, but beyond the cars and explosions, the acting is top notch coupled with David Mamet’s screenplay and dialogue.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods is a perfectly entertaining time-waster (frankly, not unlike Black Adam) but it does lack the charm of its predecessor, however Zachary Levi still is great in the lead.
The Transformers franchise is hardly great with maybe only the first two being passably entertaining, the rest just action-porn with non-sensical plot and CGI vs. CGI fights that were more tiresome rather than exciting.
The Superman: 5-Film Collection has four movies making their debuts on 4K, though really only two of them are worth a damn. I suppose if you’re a Superman fan, maybe it’s worth it, but probably only when it’s on sale.
The less said about Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the better. It was a misfire from the go and even the charms of Christopher Reeve could make this watchable.
Superman III was pretty much the beginning of the end of the Superman franchise. It’s not terrible but not very good either, moving to full-on goofy humor (versus a more wholesome variety of the first film), and an awful villain.
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut does a valiant job giving viewers Donner’s original concept for the sequel and utilizing not only some new visual effects but some rehearsal footage to give as complete of a vision as possible.
Superman II is hardly perfect and with Richard Lester replacing Richard Donner probably made for a whiplash of a movie in terms of tone, but this still managed to be an entertaining sequel though the goof levels were taken up a notch.
Heat is a movie that’s passably entertaining if only for Burt Reynolds’s charisma but otherwise the plot plods along and like the 2015 re-adaptation Wild Card, it’s nothing special and an altogether forgettable crime-thriller.
Backtrack had an interesting enough premise, a hitman falling for his target, but the execution was less than effective, though Dennis Hopper’s performance was something to behold.