Kundun (Blu-ray) <small>by Oktay Ege Kozak</small><hr /> The Movie: Kundun is the second in an unofficial trilogy of Martin Scorsese films that deal with spiritual figures struggling to square the ultimate goal of purity and compassion that their religion teaches with the harsh and unforgiving realities of human nature. Most of Scorsese's work revolves around men who see the world as a nihilistic dog-eat-dog battleground; you eat your enemies before they eat you, take advantage of your neighbor before they screw you over and leave you to die in a ditch. Perhaps that's why this "trilogy", capped with 2016's Silence, represents a form of spiritual therapy and a move in the opposite tonal direction for Scorsese, instead focusing on protagonists who vow to treat every living thing with respect and love, and get punished for it by the outside world while coming to terms with their infallibility as people. What made his Christ s...Read the entire review »

Life with Lucy: The Complete Series <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> For Lucille Ball completists, the release of Life with Lucy (1986), her ill-fated final sitcom, is most welcome. I Love Lucy/The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1951-60), The Lucy Show (1962-68), and Here's Lucy (1968-74) kept her on the network airwaves nearly constantly for a quarter of a century, but her return to theatrical features with Mame (1974) flopped badly, with Ball singled out for atypically harsh reviews. After that she did annual television specials for a few years, and was a frequent presenter at award shows. In November 1985 she starred in The Stone Pillow, a TV-movie in which she played an elderly homeless woman, and while that program received mixed reviews it did well enough in the ratings to prompt Ball and her (second) husband, comedian-producer Gary Morton, to dip into the sitcom well that had served her so reliably well and for so long....Read the entire review »

Charlie's Angels (2000) <small>by Adam Tyner</small><hr /> <hr /> "I just found myself sort of naturally more drawn to the stuff that's more celebratory and just explosive, colorful, and exciting and funny. It's fantasy. It's theatre and film as fantasy and just sort of a bit of escape. "Charlie's Angels is never gonna be Othello, and it shouldn't be. It's a fun, just ode to joy, kind of pop-a-wheelie kinda movie. I mean, you got Drew, you got Cameron, you got Lucy, you got Bill Murray, you got action, you got color, you got California, you got bikinis and speed boats. "I like split-screens. I think about the Bond films. I think about Austin Powers. I think about <a href="https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/...Read the entire review »