Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Third Season DVD Review

• Actors: Nicole Beharie, Tom Mison
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed: Spanish
• Region: Region 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 5
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: January 3, 2017

        I was already weary of the “Sleepy Hollow” after the first season, but the second season lost me completely. What began as a creative fish-out-of-water narrative quickly turned into a show more interested in witchcraft and magic than historical or literary connections. Gone are the mysterious four horsemen of the apocalypse by season three, in favor of endless demonic resurrections and familial connections. In essence, this show went from being a modern adaptation of Washington Irving’s short story to yet another mindless supernatural freak-of-the-week soap opera, much like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Supernatural,” and “The Vampire Diaries.” Each week is yet another creature, this time arriving through the silly integration of the Greek myth of Pandora’s box, which is used as a vessel for each new evil.

Jerry Maguire: 20th Anniversary Blu-ray Review

• Actors: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renée Zellweger
• Director: Cameron Crowe
• Format: Blu-ray
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Hebrew, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Swedish
• Dubbed: French, German
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Rated:
  R
• Studio: SONY PICTURES HOME ENT.

        I still remember the marketing campaign for Jerry Maguire. Or perhaps more accurately, I remember several different approaches to sell the film. Some trailers/commercials focused on the sports elements in the film, others in the buddy comedy storyline, and of course many zeroed in on the romance. This may have just appeared to be a marketing ploy to get as many seats filled as possible, but the truth is that all elements promoted actually do have equal importance in the narrative. That’s what made Cameron Crowe’s film so great, beyond the charming performances and a killer soundtrack; watching Jerry Maguire is like getting three movies for the price of one.

Jackie Chan Presents: Amnesia DVD Review

• Actors: Ken Lo, Xingtong Yao, Rongguang Yu, Lanxin Zhang
• Director: Yinxi Song
• Disc Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1
• Rated:
  PG-13
• Studio: Lionsgate
• DVD Release Date: January 3, 2017
• Run Time: 102 minutes

        Jackie Chan Presents: Amnesia is a film for anyone who ever wondered what would happen if you combined the narratives of Premium Rush with Memento and set it in the comedic martial arts world of a Jackie Chan film. If this sounds convoluted and strange (as well as being a comparison that only someone who watches too many movies would make), my description was fitting. Despite the originality of this blended premise, there is a familiarity in the tone and many of the action sequences in the narrative that manage to make this feel like just another mediocre martial arts movie. Part of the problem is that this Jackie Chan-produced movie has a lead actor without even a fraction of the producer’s charisma. It doesn’t exactly help that we (meaning myself and others that watch too many movies) have also already seen Chan in a similar memory-loss action film, Who Am I? (1998).