Read the rest about G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra.

Brad Pitt and Ed Norton return to the small screen in a 10th Anniversary Edition of the cult classic Fight Club, which is directed by David Fincher. This is the first time the infamous film has been released on Blu-Ray. While I’m not as huge of an advocate of the movie or its ending as many fans, Fight Club is still a movie that should be in a guy’s collection – and what better time to add it than the holidays?

However, if you already own the DVD version, there’s not much in the way of new bonus features to tempt you into buying another bar of soap. The only new feature of note is a Flogging Fight Club featurette, which has Fight Club being inducted into the “Guy Film Hall of Fame” by none other than Mel Gibson wielding a giant sword and kilt. The featurette watches as Norton, Pitt and Fincher prepare their acceptance speech and poke fun at the critics who called their movie “vile.” It’s mildly funny.

Unfortunately, the other two bonus features are both interactive ones, and I really have no interest in interactive Blu-Ray (or DVD) bonus features. A Hit in the Ear is a sound mixing tool where you get to add and remove sounds from scenes; the introduction by Ren Klyce is well worth it, as he explains how they came up with the punching sound effects (they tried punching chickens, but that wasn’t quite right), but the actual tool lost me after about 30 seconds. I just can’t imagine that many people sit at home playing with these little Blu-Ray widgets.

Another bonus feature called Insomniac Mode: I am Jack’s Search Index, which is a feature that overlays the movie. Thrilling.

Though the exclusive Blu-Ray features have more bark than bite, those who don’t already own the DVD version won’t be too disappointed. Also included on the disc are deleted and alternate scenes, trailers, a music video, behind-the-scenes vignettes and, rather impressively, four feature-length audio commentaries by various members of the cast and crew.

So, it’s only fitting that Buena Vista is looking to cash in on the scam that is Blu-Ray by releasing a Kevin Smith: 3-Movie Collection on November 17, 2009. The collection contains Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and one of my all-time favorites, Chasing Amy.

The collection includes some great bonus features, notably a couple of hour-long-plus documentaries that explore the creation of Smith’s films with amazing detail and honesty.

The Clerks disc provides a bunch of features that are primarily reused from past releases, save for an intro by Kevin Smith where he talks about how he wanted to provide something new for the Blu-Ray to make it worth it purchasing yet again. The disc includes a couple versions of the film, an animated “lost” scene which I’d seen before, a short film with the Clerks stars and a few behind-the-scenes documentaries.

Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary provides a lot of insights and interviews with various stars, but the documentary is about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, not Clerks. Why it’s on this disc is a little confusing, especially since the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Blu-Ray has absolutely no special features beyond an audio commentary.

The Chasing Amy Blu-Ray disc is where the real jewels reside, however. Smith’s magnum opus – his funniest, edgiest and most sincere, not to mention his most critically acclaimed, picture – has an audio commentary, deleted scenes and outtakes, but it’s the Tracing Amy: The Chasing Amy Doc that really inspires. Smith is always very honest when talking about his movies (and quite funny), and this hour-and-a-half documentary explores all aspects of the film. Smith talks about how he had nothing to lose (Mallrats, also a personal favorite, was a critical and financial failure and thus had been written off by most of Hollywood) and how he managed to scrap together a ridiculously cheap budget ($250,000, when they had previously determined they needed $3 million). The documentary includes interviews with every major player, including Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee and others. It is absolutely excellent.

Other bonus features include a one-on-one conversation between Smith and Adams, where they remark on their romantic relationship and how that influenced the film, and a cast Q&A session. Both featurettes are interesting and provide honest information about the film; there’s no promotional crap to be found.

If you don’t own these Kevin Smith movies, now may be the perfect chance to get your hands on three of his classics. The bonus features are just as entertaining as the movies in many cases, but you can’t go wrong with any collection that includes Chasing Amy.

Bruno is, by far, one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long while. My friend and I almost walked out of the theater multiple times while watching this disaster, but didn’t because we were just hoping – hoping – for something funny.

The latter half of the movie is better, but not a single scene in the entire movie matches even the worst scene in Borat, a movie I found incredibly funny at the time. Yes, I’m not a Sacha Baron Cohen hater or a Republican or some conservative fundamentalist who hates gays… I just hate Bruno.

So, naturally, I volunteered to review the Bruno Blu-Ray, coming to stores this Tuesday, November 17, 2009.

Thankfully, the Bruno Blu-Ray is pretty spartan. Sure, there is video commentary of Sacha Boren Cohen and director Larry Charles (Borat, Religulous) and some BD-Live features (why would I pay for temporary online special features again?), but the big chunk of special features are devoted to deleted and extended scenes. If you liked Bruno, then you’ll be happy to hear that there are over 40 minutes of deleted scenes; if you didn’t, you won’t get through a couple of minutes of them before realizing it’s just more of the same.

However, I’ll admit that seeing Pete Rose get pissed off about the naked Mexican serving “tray” – and Latoya Jackson giggling awkwardly as Bruno attempts to get Michael Jackson’s phone number from her, as she eats food off the naked Mexican serving “tray” – was pretty amusing, but that’s about it.

There is also a short interview with talent agent Lloyd Robinson, where he discusses how he was fooled into believing that Bruno was a real person. The guy seems like a character in his own right.

If you want more of Bruno, the loads of deleted scenes should satisfy, but overall, the offerings available on the Blu-Ray are pretty weak. Of course, if you’re smart, you’ll stay as far away from Bruno as humanly possible.

Read my Bruno movie review.

Say Anything marks the directorial debut of Cameron Crowe and stars John Cusack as a young man named Lloyd Dobler, who’s one mission in life is to date Diane Court (Ione Skye). The movie looks at the rise and fall of their relationship in a very sincere way, which sets it apart from a lot of the teen comedies that were to follow.

I didn’t grow up with Say Anything (I first saw it just a couple years ago), and so I’m not a Say Anything fan, but it’s still a solid and engaging film with great performances and direction. Thanks to Crowe’s ability to explore his characters with amazing depth, the movie, even after 20 years, doesn’t feel very dated – and that’s always a good thing when dealing with the 1980’s.

The Say Anything Blu-Ray comes with the following bonus features:

• Commentary by Cameron Crowe, John Cusack and Ione Skye
  I haven’t listened to it, but I wonder if Cusack and Crowe spend time pointing out how much more successful their careers have been than Skye’s.
• An Iconic Film Revisited: Say Anything … 20 Years Later
  This little featurette includes interviews with all the major players involved in the film as they look back on Say Anything and what made it so special. The featurette feels slightly promotional in nature, but a few good insights are provided, especially around the working style of Cusack and the creation of the infamous boombox scene. Still, it’s nothing amazing.
• A Conversation with Cameron Crowe
  This featurette simply has Crowe talking to the camera about his experiences on set. The conversation feels very sincere and honest, as he talks about the challenges of his directorial debut and various aspects of the movie. This is the best feature on the disc.
• I Love Say Anything…!
  This seven-minute featurette is one of those segments you see on E! Channel where a bunch of comedians or C-level celebrities talk about their memories of a movie or person. In this case, they’re talking about Say Anything – mainly good things with a few minor jokes. There’s nothing particularly funny, though.
• To Know Say Anything… Is to Love It! Trivia Track
  You can add a trivia track to run while watching the movie. I’d rather just watch the movie, but if this is your kind of thing…
• Alternate Scenes, Deleted Scenes, Extended Scenes
  There’s a surprisingly large amount of footage to be seen here, some of which is pretty good.
• Theatrical Trailers, TV Spots and Photo Galleries
  This is self-explanatory.

Most of the special features save for the “20 Years Later” featurette appear to have been released on DVD before, so there’s not much to the Say Anything: 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray. That being said, it’s fun to revisit the movie – especially if you don’t already own it.

Read the rest of our Spread movie review!

View the rest of the Observe and Report movie review!

One of the most financially and critically successful films of the year, Up is a surefire must-see if there ever was one. Sure, it’s animated, but it’s a Pixar film, which means that it’s good. It’s really good. In fact, after a couple of great movies that skewed toward slightly older audiences (Wall-E, Ratatouille), Disney-Pixar has returned with a movie that blends classic animated adventure and heartfelt sincerity. The movie is also one of their funniest to date. Surprised? No, I didn’t think so.

This review covers the four-disc Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack that Disney sells, and it has a lot of great features to feast your eyes on, though not so many that they’re overwhelming. Disc 1, aside from the feature film, does not start off on a good note, however, as I immediately gravitated to a made-for-this-release short called Dug’s Special Mission. The short is easily the lamest and worst animated short I’ve ever seen Pixar make. It’s terrible. Thankfully, the hilarious short that played with the movie in theaters – Partly Cloudy – wipes the foul taste away.

The other features on disc one include Cine-Explore, an informative making-of documentary that has some of the crew, including the directors, venturing into Venezuela, and The Many Endings of Muntz, which looks at other ways the filmmakers planned to end the villain’s story. Cine-Explore is pretty entertaining for two reasons: 1) we get to see the unique mountains that serve as a setting for the movie, and 2) we get to see the crew freak out about their interaction with nature, which apparently is foreign to them. I’m sure a 3,000-foot climb could be grueling, but the crew consistently acts like they’re at the edge of death and were being forced to climb Mt. Everest and live through horrific rainstorms. Clearly they’d never stepped foot outside of LA before, because what is shown on camera does not look that harrowing. Still, I’m jealous of the awesome places they went. As for the various endings of Muntz, it’s good they went with the ending that’s in the film, but it’s interesting to see the other, less tragic endings they considered.

The second disc includes a badge game that I didn’t play, a feature on Married Life, which shows an alternate/expanded view of Carl and Elle’s relationship (including a rather odd punching montage) and eight documentaries that focus on various aspects of the film. The documentaries are all pretty interesting as we get to see the voice behind Russell and how the directors evoked a strong, believable performance out of him, as well as inspirations for different parts of the story. The documentaries are great to watch as they aren’t at all promotional in nature; the only downside was I couldn’t figure out a way to play them all in sequence versus manually selecting each one.

There are a few other standard features included on the discs, including trailers, et cetera.

The Up four-disc Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack is an excellent choice this holiday season for two reasons: 1) the movie is one of the best of the year, and 2) the special features are interesting.

Read the rest of the I Love You Beth Cooper movie review!

Of all the Pixar movies aside from Cars, Monsters, Inc. has, for some reason, been one of my least favorites, but unlike Cars, which I hated, it is still pretty good; It just didn’t grab me like their other films have. I have yet to re-watch it, but I did peruse the tons of bonus features included in this four-disc pack (two Blu-Rays, the DVD and a digital copy) and am now looking forward to giving it a second chance.

The Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Combo pack begins the show with two new bonus features, one that looks at Monsters, Inc.: The Ride and another featuring a round table discussion with the movie’s creators. Disney has put a ton of money into making a massive “Monstropolis” ride in Tokyo Disneyland, and the featurette explores the creation of the environment and the experience. While there’s clearly some promotion going on here (the ride looks like a variant to the Roger Rabbit ride, albeit on a grander scale), the featurette does a good job of providing some interesting tidbits.

The round table is the best featurette on the disc, as we get to hear the four head creators of the movie discuss the film several years after its release. They recall some interesting stories, reflect on some particular decisions and bring up the chimp they brought in just to be funny for the original DVD bonus features (”Some applicants said they wanted to work at Pixar because they had a ‘monkey’”). Furthermore, they discuss the implications of 9/11 on the film (one scene had to be changed) and their concerns about whether anyone would want to go to the movies amidst war and anthrax scares. The entire discussion is very interesting.

The first disc also includes an audio commentary as well as some bonus features included on the original DVD, such as the two animated shorts For the Birds and Mike’s New Car.

The second Blu-Ray disc includes a 100-Door Challenge Game, which apparently is a “hundred” games according to the director’s intro, a Pixar Fun Factory Tour, which shows the office spaces of some of the employees at Pixar (Steve Job’s office looks very spartan and clean compared to everyone else’s, such as the guy who had a miniature door that led to a secret room called the “Love Room” or something like that, and a collection of banished concepts, which is basically a bunch of “deleted” storyboards. A lot of the other featurettes include a fair amount of storyboard action (you can watch parts of the film timed to the original storyboards), but it gets tiring watching the crude animation after a while. There are a bunch of other little featurettes scattered throughout, some better than others but generally unremarkable.

If you already own Monsters, Inc. on DVD, investing in this new collection doesn’t make sense, but the Blu-Ray version could certainly make for a good stocking stuffer for those who don’t. The bonus features are a mixed bag – the best by far is the round table discussion – so I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on the second disc.