It’s another busy week filled with a wide variety of releases arriving on DVD and Blu-ray. So if you can’t make it out to the movies this week, be sure to give one of these titles a try!

Big New Releases!

Ben-Hur - This lavish and expensive remake of the of the 1959 Charlton Heston classic tanked at the box office and with critics. It uses a great deal of CGI to update the tale of a prince falsely accused of treason who returns to his homeland to seek revenge. Critics suggested that while the spectacle was still grand, the movie was otherwise unremarkable and dramatically flat. Now viewers can make up their own minds. It stars Jack Huston, Tony Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro...

Rating: «« out of 4

Running Time: 104 min.

Around this season, reviewers are inundated with films up for big, end-of-the-year awards. They’re so prevalent that I was actually looking forward to decompressing with something silly and light. To be frank, I’m not sure if seeing so many effective and thoughtful films in a short span of time has just made me especially critical this week, but it certainly makes Office Christmas Party look wanting in several departments.

At a certain point, with so many flatly written lines, I literally just decided to note the gags that I thought really worked. This list ended up being very short, with a half dozen or so jokes that earned a chuckle...

Rating: ««« out of 4

Running Time: 134 min.

I have a pet peeve about dramas in which a character is attempting to overcome some sort of personal or psychological trauma. In all honesty, I’ve never been a fan of the way climaxes in these features are dealt with. You’ve seen them, scenes where a character will get a hug, be told how important they are and suddenly be cured of their ills as if a light switch has just been turned on inside their head. While many are still very enjoyable films, these finales have always played false to me.

Manchester By the Sea completely avoids this pitfall. Unlike other films of its kind, there’s an air of honesty and realism to the...

Welcome back to another incredibly busy week of Blu-ray and DVD releases. There’s a huge number of films coming out in a wide variety of genres and there should be something of interest for everyone. Remember to click on any links you see to read about them. So if you can’t make it out to the movies this week, be sure to give one of these titles a try!

Big New Releases!

Dead Rising: Endgame - Based on the horror video game series, this is actually a sequel to last year’s Dead Rising: Watchtower. Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it though, because they were both made for web-content provider Crackle. Set in a quarantined city during a zombie...