Girls Trip Blu-ray Review

• Actors: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh
• Director: Malcolm D. Lee
• Writers: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
• Producers: Malcolm D. Lee, Will Packer
• Disc Format: NTSC, Subtitled
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (DTS 5.1)
• Subtitles: French, Spanish, English
• Region: Region A/1
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: R
• Studio: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
• Release Date: October 17, 2017
• Digital Copy Expiration Date: May 2, 2018

        Had Girls Trip been Guys Trip instead, the comedy would have been quickly dismissed as generic and derivative, with the laughs made up almost entirely from bathroom humor and tasteless objectification of male sex organs. The single relevant element of the production is the choice to have female characters the focus in a sex comedy, following in the footsteps of Bridesmaids, Trainwreck and Rough Night, but with a black cast. Girls Trip is an equal opportunity piece of trash, but just because the vulgarity is carried out by women doesn’t make this anything close to a feminist narrative, and the casting of black actresses doesn’t mean the film has anything relevant to say about diversity. Men are both the problems that the women spend much of their time discussing, as well as the solution, even to the point of pairing off a married woman with another man mere minutes after she condemns him for his infidelity. While it is a good sign that movies about female minorities can make money at the box office, they deserve far better than what Girls Trip has to offer.

The Beguiled Blu-ray Review

• Actors: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning
• Director: Sofia Coppola
• Writers: Sofia Coppola, Albert Maltz, Grimes Grice
• Producers: Sofia Coppola, Youree Henley, Roman Coppola
• Disc Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (DTS 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (DTS 5.1)
• Subtitles: French, Spanish, English
• Region: Region A/1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Rated: Re
• Studio: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
• Release Date: October 10, 2017
• Digital Copy Expiration Date: May 2, 2018
• Run Time: 187 minutes

        By removing key characters of color from the adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s Civil War-era novel, Sophia Coppola has lost a key element of the original narrative, which was more faithfully adapted in 1971. By deciding to shoot the film in purposefully low light that is meant to look realistic in scenes of candlelight, Coppola has made an ugly movie full of indecipherably dark scenes. Endlessly pretentious and effortlessly dull for a majority of the run-time, The Beguiled still manages to be one of the best films that Coppola has made in years, though this is not saying much after enduring vapid qualities of both The Bling Ring and Somewhere. 

Wish Upon Blu-ray Review

• Actors: Ryan Phillippe, Joey King
• Director: John Leonetti
• Disc Format: NTSC, Widescreen
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Broad Green Pictures
• Release Date: October 10, 2017
• Run Time: 95 minutes

        Sometimes horror movies rely upon the stupidity of the characters, especially if there would be no deaths without their mistakes. This can work, especially in the slaughtering of sinful co-eds in slasher films, but even the protagonist displays some restraint in those films. Wish Upon forces a completely preventable premise upon its audience, made worse by the fact that the main character has to act completely out of character just to keep the plot moving.

Sniper: Ultimate Kill Blu-ray Review

• Actors: Tom Berenger, Billy Zane, Danay Garcia, Joe Lando, Chad Collins
• Director: Claudio Fäh
• Format: AC-3, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Czech, Russian, Slovak, French, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Polish, Arabic, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Norwegian, Hungarian, Mandarin Chinese, Romanian, Thai, Danish, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, English, Ukrainian, Lithuanian
• Dubbed: French, Italian, Thai
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Rated: R
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• Release Date: October 3, 2017
• Run Time: 93 minutes

        I don’t think anyone imagined that this franchise would still be alive and kicking in 2017 when the original Sniper film was released in 1993, but somehow the sequels keep getting churned out. It was only last year that Sniper: Ghost Shooter was released, and yet we already have another direct-to-video sequel.  Even more impressive is how often the original stars have even returned to the series, with Sniper: Ultimate Kill including both Billy Zane and Tom Berenger in supporting roles, despite the focus remaining on the next generation of sniper.