The Beauty Inside Blu-ray Review

     Actors: Park Seo-Jun, Han Hyo-joo

Director: Jong-Yeol Baek

Format: Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, THX, Widescreen

Language: Korean

Subtitles: English

Number of discs: 1

Rated: Unrated

Studio: Well Go USA

Release Date: February 2, 2016

Run Time: 127 minutes

 

 

        At some point, everyone who has been in love (and more importantly, loved) asks the question, “Why me?” What is it in me that deserves to be loved, or is it all surface attraction we use to convince ourselves of a deeper connection? These are the questions asked by The Beauty Inside, a fantasy romance in the tradition of Meet Joe Black, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the final sequence of the Korean My Sassy Girl. Even though the narrative comes closest to the Brad Pitt vehicles, it is the blending of comedy, melodrama, and fantasy which make the tone align most with the Korean film. Other than revenge thrillers, romantic comedy with a tinge of the surreal is what South Korean cinema seems to do best, both in television and film. While The Beauty Inside doesn’t break any genre molds (adapted from a largely unseen American online series), it is a testament to the filmmaking that its unique ideas come off so unassuming.   

 

From Dusk till Dawn: Season Two Blu-ray Review

     Actors: D.J. Cotrona, Zane Holtz, Eiza Gonzalez

Format: Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen

Language: English

Number of discs: 3

Rated: NR (Not Rated)

Studio: Entertainment One

Release Date: February 2, 2016

Run Time: 448 minutes

 

 

        Season one of “From Dusk till Dawn” had the benefit of a pre-established narrative structure lifted from the screenplay Quentin Tarantino wrote for Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film. Season two doesn’t have this luxury, and it sacrifices much of the simplicity in the first season by creating a new direction for the characters and the plot. Unfortunately, a lot of the fun is also lost along the process, even more than was shed in the transformation from two-hour film to 10-episode seasons. Gone are the clever quips from Tarantino’s dialogue and parallelisms between vampirism and the criminal underworld now have as much subtlety as the fanged characters in direct sunlight.

 

Comin’ At Ya Blu-ray Review

     Actors: Tony Anthony, Gene Quintano, Victoria Abril, Ricardo Palacios, Lewis Gordon

Format: NTSC, 3D

Language: English

Number of discs: 1

Rated: R (Restricted)

Studio: Mvd Visual

Release Date: January 26, 2016

Run Time: 91 minutes

 

 

        Nearly every blockbuster spectacle is now theatrically distributed with the option of 3D, to the point that it has just become another tool in storytelling. When 3D films first arrived in theaters, they served a less fluid function within the narrative, mostly because it was more gimmick than artistic tool in the 1950s. They were a novelty, utilized as a unique experience to get audiences back into theaters in the aftermath of television’s arrival. Comin’ at Ya! embraced this philosophy and revived the 3D trend for a second wave in the 1980s, though it took a recent advance in home entertainment technology for this unique historical experience to become available for audiences today.