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.

One has to think that 20th Century Fox had this absurd idea when greenlighting the film that it would do well enough to fund several sequels titled Street Fighter: The Legend of Another Forgettable Character. Ah, Hollywood executives. You’re so cute sometimes.

Read the rest of the Street Fighter movie review.

Dark Streets stars Gabriel Mann as Chaz, a playboy and nightclub owner who finds his life spinning out of control amidst too many love affairs, debt and the mystery surrounding his father’s death. Though there is a plot, Dark Streets is essentially one-long music video, featuring original songs with performances by Natalie Cole, Etta James, Richie Sambora and more.

Read the rest of the Dark Streets movie review.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

As for the movie itself, read on to see not one, but two movie reviews for the romantic comedy.

This awful franchise only gets worse as it goes along, as The Final Chapter and A New Beginning are some of the worst slasher films ever made. Thankfully, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is halfway decent, as far as Jason movies go. These movies return to DVD on June 16, 2009.

Read my full movie reviews here:

• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
• Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
• Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

For a list of bonus features for each movie, continue on…

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

• Commentary by director Joe Zito, screenwriter Barney Cohen and editor Joel Goodman
• Fan commentary by Adam Green and Joe Lynch
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part IV
• Slashed Scenes
• Jason’s Unlucky Day: 25 Years After Friday the 13th The Final Chapter
  
• The Lost Ending
• The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited Part I
• Jimmy’s Dead Dance Moves

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

• Commentary by director/co-screenwriter Danny Steinmann and cast members
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part V
• The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited Part II
• New Beginnings: The Making of Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

• Commentary by director Tom McLoughlin and cast members
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood – Part VI
• The Crystal Lake Massacres Revisited Part III
• Jason Lives: The Making of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
• Meeting Mr. Voorhees
• Slashed Scenes

The Wrath of Khan, as many people would agree, is the best Star Trek movie made (and yes, that includes 2009’s film). In it, an exiled Khan uses his strength and intellect to overwhelm a Star Fleet ship, but his one weakness – the need for vengeance – is what Kirk and a crippled Enterprise takes advantage of. I’ve never been a fan of The Search for Spock, as it all seems like an endeavor just to bring the title character back from the dead with uninteresting villains, led by Christopher Lloyd of all people. Lastly, The Voyage Home, though featuring a story I would generally find cheesy, is a funny and entertaining way to round things out.

If this truly were a trilogy, The Voyage Home would have a bit more bang and a little less time travel, but if Paramount wants to call it a trilogy, then so be it. Released a little under a month ago to coincide with J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek (I was supposed to write and publish this article way back then), the DVD set – valued at Amazon.com at $19.99 – contains a few new special features, including:

• Audio commentaries for all three movies
• James Horner: Composing Genesis – I had never thought about the music all that much, but after watching this featurette, I have new-found respect for Horner, who really did enhance Khan with some spectacular scoring.
• Collecting Star Trek’s Movie Relics – a featurette for the fan boys, this one looks at some costumes and props that a guy has collected over the years. Mildly entertaining.
• A Tribute to Ricardo Montalban – who just died in the last year
• Three “Starfleet Academy” training sessions – which are all stupid and a complete waste of time.
• Industrial Light & Magic: The Visual Effects – given how Star Trek has evolved over the years and usually functioned on a small budget, this featurette is pretty interesting.
• Spock: The Early Years – if you want to see a child actor all grown up and reminiscing about his one brush with fame, this is unintentionally quite funny.
• Star Trek/Sci-Fi Hall of Fame Museum – given that I live in Seattle just five minutes from the EMP, where the Sci-Fi Museum is housed, I found this one pretty interesting. The featurette really isn’t about the museum at all but actually is an interview with the writer of The Wrath of Khan, who goes on to say he doesn’t like sci-fi, thought the first movie was boring and so forth. Definitely worth watching.
• Pavel Chekov’s Screen Moments – title says it all
• The Three-Picture Saga – as I write this, I’m thinking I missed this featurette. Might be worth going back and checking it out.
• Star Trek for a Cause – looks at the environmental messages the filmmakers were trying to get across.

All in all, there are some surprisingly decent special features to be found here, but for the ordinary Trek fan, who probably owns all these movies anyway, the value-add is minimal. The DVD set does boast digitally remastered picture and sound, but I don’t know how much of a difference that really makes.

Defiance

Apparently, Paramount originally considered Defiance to be an awards contendor giving its late 2008 release, but the movie isn’t that good. Still, it is an entertaining, exciting and action-packed war drama with plenty of Nazi killings and melodrama – it should have been a decent-sized hit.

For those of you who didn’t see Defiance in theaters – and that’s most of you – Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell arrive on DVD this coming Tuesday, June 2. I’d recommend rental, as it isn’t one you’d generally watch over and over again despite the amount of action and violence scattered throughout. The bonus features included are pretty meager, which is a trend this weekend – thankfully (the fewer bonus features, the fewer hours wasted).

Other than a commentary by director Ed Zwick, the only special features are an absolutely boring making-of featurette, a mildly interesting set of interviews with the children and relatives of the main characters and a pointless montage of the real survivors. There’s nothing to see here, people, so you can skip the special features menu altogether.

Defiance is worth seeing, but the lack of quality special features make it more of a rental than a purchasing option.

Kate Winslet won an Oscar for her performance in the so-so drama The Reader, despite her much stronger and emotional portrayal as a woman trapped in a loveless marriage here. Leonardo DiCaprio failed to even garner a nomination, once again suggesting that the Academy has something against the actor, who, to no great surprise, turned in one of the best performances of his career. At least Michael Shannon received a much-deserved nomination for his supporting role.

Despite its lack of acclaim, Revolutionary Road is as close to a masterpiece as 2008 offered. The film is more subdued than most of Mendes’ pictures and the story unfolds at a slow and methodical clip, which presumably turned off some audience members and critics. But the movie sizzles with emotional tension and anger to the point where I find it shocking that others didn’t share the same experience.

Needless to say, the movie is well worth watching, as it offers great direction, strong writing and incredible acting. The DVD, as one might imagine, lacks much in the way of special features, however. Mendes and writer Justin Haythe offer up an audio commentary, and the two also share their thoughts on several deleted scenes that didn’t make the cut for a variety of reasons (a bunch of flashbacks to the characters’ childhoods, for instance, were dropped). Beyond those, however, there’s simply a making-of documentary, and it’s one of those fluffy ones that talk about the emotions of the characters and how the actors came to be involved, pretty standard fare that has been seen time and time again. A little is shown regarding the costume design and sets, but the featurette feels less an examination of how the movie was actually made and more like a vehicle for DreamWorks to advertise another special feature on the back of the box.

The DVD features are pretty pitiful, but Revolutionary Road is a drama so one can’t expect much. The movie is great and deserving of more acclaim than it received. Recommended.

Instead, Taken got the royal treatment with a kick-ass marketing campaign, and the rest is history. Now out on DVD, the few people who didn’t go and see this get a chance to, and I highly recommend it. Taken is a simple film with a simple plot, but its fast paced, action packed and well acted. Neeson is surprisingly good in a role that one would think is outside his comfort role, and in fact embodies the character perfectly. This will go down as one of the best action movies of 2009.

The DVD comes with a few mandatory bonus features. For those who like audio commentaries, there are two: one by director Pierre Morel, cinematographer Michel Abramowicz and Michel Julienne and the other by writer Robert Mark Kamen. Both are only available when watching the unrated version (you get a choice). Beyond those, there is “Le Making Of,” which in English means “The Making Of.” The documentary is short and promotional, filled with clips from the movie and interviews with the actors and director congratulating each other and how awesome each of them is.

There’s another short featurette called “Avant Premiere,” which just shows informal interviews with attendees at the world premiere in what I assume is Paris and a shot of Liam Neeson attempting to speak French. This one is five minutes you’ll never get back, so just avoid it.

The only slightly valuable special feature on the disc is “Inside Action: Side by Side Comparisons,” which shows some of the main action sequences in the film and then reveals the “behind-the-scenes” version of it. There’s not much substance here, but it’s interesting to see the action without the flash and gloss.

Funny enough, if you select the “Trailers” special feature, it takes you to a menu that only offers the trailer for Notorious. Apparently, the trailers for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and some others that played when the disc was first launched were too good for this menu.

The bonus features included on the disc are pretty basic, indicating that the studio itself was surprised by the success of the film. That’s fine, because all we really need is the movie itself. Taken is good enough to watch a few times, so I recommend: buy, buy buy!

And while Valkyrie isn’t an amazing film by any means, it is a good one. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men 2) has created an entertaining and exciting thriller about a group of German soldiers who attempt to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich. Despite the fact that you know how it’s going to end (at least I sure as hell hope you do), it actually gathers strength as it approaches the climax.

Now out on DVD, Valkyrie doesn’t offer much in the way of bonus features, much to my reviewing pleasure. Two audio commentaries are included, one featuring Tom Cruise, Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, the other Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander. Of course, to watch the movie and listen to both commentaries, that’d mean you spend six waking hours on one film. Yikes.

For those who don’t have such patience or stamina, the only other bonus features are a rather bland making-of featurette called The Journey to Valkyrie, which offers your pretty standard fare of cast and crew interviews talking about how amazing their film is going to be., and a 45-minute documentary called The Valkyrie Legacy.

While Journey is relatively promotional in nature and offers little real value, The Valkyrie Legacy is an authentic documentary that explores the life and situations of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. I’m hardly a WWII buff, but I do find the time period quite fascinating; the movie provides enough in-depth material to make it well worth a viewing.

The Valkyrie special features aren’t anything to scream home about, though the documentary is pretty interesting. Thankfully, the movie itself, “despite” starring Tom Cruise, is a worthy entry in your collection.