Ok, as I mentioned, first thing is the fact that it’s a disc.  Yes, it sucks, but there is nothing that NetFlix can do about that due to the agreement with Microsoft to have NetFlix exclusively built into the Xbox 360 Dashboard.  Supposedly next year it will become a part of the XMB so the disc is what we have to deal with for at least a year.  You have to put a disc in to watch a DVD or Blu-Ray so it’s not horrible.  Not ideal, but not horrible.  What’s nice is that it does show up in the Video section and not the game section so that at least makes sense.  Once you click on it it does take a little bit to load up, again because it’s on a disc vs. your hard drive, so in that respect it’s not as good as the Roku, Sony Bravia, Xbox 360, or Windows Media Center, but we’re talking maybe 20 seconds.   Once it loads up you will see your Instant Queue just as with all those other players but you’ll be subject to just the names of the movies with an “artwork not available” for each cover until after a few more seconds of loading.  Instead of saying “not available” it should say “loading” but that’s just a minor thing.  It sounds like a lot of loading, and it is, but at least you can still browse around while the artwork is loading.

The Xbox 360 version of player has the different genres to browse through as well as your instant queue in a vertical fashion, scroll up and down to get to where you want, but in the PS3 version it’s all horizontal setup in “tabs” like your web browser or IM client.  You now have to press up to go to the tabs and then cycle through it that way so after an extra button press you have access to all the same things the Xbox 360 has, albeit with load times for the artwork again for each category.  You have Recently Watched, New Arrivals: Movies, New Arrivals: TV, and then different genres based on your viewing history and queue.  After watching a movie it will even say “Updating Your Choices.”  You will even get specific genres based on your viewing history such as the “Goofy Underdog Comedies” section I had show up.  I used to have these things on my Xbox player as well, but the last few weeks they have not been showing up.  I’m not sure if this was a change to the Xbox setup or if it’s just me.

Once you click on what you want to watch you will get the option to play, rate, and add to your instant queue if it’s not something already in there.  If it is something you have already started watching it will have “resume playing” as well as “play from beginning.”  Again, this is all pretty standard and much like all the other players but has the rest of the information like the description, rating, runtime, and genre all on screen there without anymore flipping.  If you want to stay in that view you can scroll through the other movies as well from there.  If you choose a TV series it will remember which episode was the last one you left off on and say “play episode 8” or whatever the case may be or you can “choose a different episode.”  When looking through the episode listings it will show all the episodes horizontally (instead of vertically like Xbox) and episodes you have watched will be grey with unwatched being black.  There is no progress meter like with Xbox, just if you have watched it or not.  I did have some issues with it recognizing which I have watched or not based on if I had watched on Xbox instead of PS3, but most likely if you are using this player you will be sticking to this player and don’t have an Xbox 360 (or don’t have Gold).

so overall the interface is very nice and definitely gets the job done.  I’d say it’s not as good as the Xbox Interface but definitely better than the Windows Media Center version.  I have not used Sony Bravia or the Roku player to compare.

Now onto the most important part, actually playing the content.  After choosing whatever it is that you want to watch you will have a black screen with a red progress bar saying “retrieving” and then text will appear with the title of the movie or TV show you are watching as it loads.  Load time was noticeably slower than on Xbox or Windows Media Center but I would guess this is also due to it being on a disc.  An odd thing I noticed and therefore decided to see if I was alone was the fact that HD movies/TV actually seemed to load faster than SD which is normally not the case on the Xbox (HD isn’t supported in Windows Media Center yet) and it seems I am not alone.  I can’t explain why it is, but it just is, so if you’re going to be watching a lot of stuff in HD this is a good thing.  When you pause it there is a slight delay for it to actually do so and another delay for it to start up again, but maybe only 1 or 2 seconds, but something I still felt I should point out since on Xbox and PC it is instant.  The meter that shows when paused though fits the NetFlix motif with it being red and it shows how far you are into it and how much is left which is a nice feature.  Unfortunately there is no meter at any point in time to let you know how good your connection is to know how good your picture quality is.  On Xbox 360 you will get 1-4 bars to let you know the connection speed and therefore picture quality as well as the fact if it is in HD or not, none of which you will get here on the PS3 so you will just have to hope you get the best possible.  With that said I did not notice any major differences in actual picture quality between watching on my PS3 or my Xbox 360.

On another side note, seeing as the party feature was just added to the Xbox 360 version and the PS3 doesn’t even support parties to begin with, this option doesn’t exist on the PS3 player to no one’s surprise.

Bottom Line: This is better than using your PC, even if you have Windows Media Center on a PC hooked up to your TV and gets the job done well.  If you have an Xbox you have no real need for this disc unless you don’t have Xbox Live Gold, but maybe if you have multiple TVs in the house it’s nice to have as a backup.  A great start that will hopefully improve once it is integrated into the XMB, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any updates until then since there is nothing to install and it always requires the disc.

Right after the success of the Wayne’s World movie studios were looking for the next big Mike Myers hit and in comes So I Married an Axe Murderer.  Unfortunately that was not the case as it has grossed less than $12 million, but sometimes things just slip by the people for whatever reason.  The story follows Charlie Mackenzie (Myers) as a paranoid boyfriend always breaking up with girlfriends for odd reasons (similar to Seinfeld, hmmmm) and his best friend Tony (played by Anthony LaPaglia) always having to deal with the excuses while they hang out in their favorite San Francisco coffee house.  Charlie finally meets someone (Nancy Travis)after being determined not to be paranoid only to think she is a serial killer thanks to his mother reading an article in the Weekly World News (It has the 8th highest circulation of all newspapers you know).  His buddy Tony is a cop and helps investigate and all the clues are there, but Charlie decides to get married anyway.I know that it may not sound appealing, and that could be why so many people didn’t like it (or didn’t even see it) when it was released, but give it a chance and I think you will enjoy it.

I could go into more detail of the plot but the whole point of a comedy is how things play out and what else happens, and to say too much more will ruin the comedy.  While uneven at times, most jokes are funny and Myers also steals the show whenever there is a scene where he is playing Charlie’s Scottish father.    It’s definitely dated (released in 1993, the soundtrack is full of songs from the likes of Soul Asylum and The Spin Doctors… plus the hair cuts), but you will find yourself quoting it after seeing it.  On top the comedy stemming from family interaction, awkward situations, his cop friend wanting more action, you will also see some cameos by other comedians that give it that extra bump to make it even funnier since those cameos are all great.  This may be my least descriptive review written, but the bottom line is just forget any expectations other than watch it and enjoy.

If you have NetFlix, click here to watch it on NetFlix Instant, which is how I watched it.  The video quality was DVD quality but the audio always seemed to be a bit off whenever I tried watching it (had full quality and anything else I watched was fine).  Kind of annoying, but you can always rent the DVD or Blu-Ray as well.  I have yet to see the Blu-Ray so I can’t comment on it’s quality just yet, but if ever I do I will update this review.

4/5 Stars – You may think it’s a high rating for something I didn’t go into much detail about, but I want people to go in with an open mind and just enjoy the movie for what it is.  You can watch the trailer above, but it does a horrible job representing the movie.

Let’s be honest here, if you’re still reading, you agree with that last statement.  If a cast like that says to you “yes, I need to see that” then you do.  If you groan when seeing that list, nothing I say in this review can change your mind because you are not the audience this movie is for.  It is pure late 80s/early 90s martial arts action, sometimes referred to as “chopsocky.”  You have bad acting, bad writing, bad music, martial arts, shooting, and explosions.  Oh yeah, and boobs.  It’s the kind of movie that Spike TV would be proud to show on a Sunday afternoon when they aren’t showing UFC or 007 movies.  Here is a clip from the movie for a good example:

Ready for the plot?  Like it matters, but here is the genius of it all.  A badass cop played by Lundgren is trying to bring down some Yakuza in Little Tokyo.  He is given a new partner who he doesn’t realize is his partner at first, so they fight each other! I know, never been done before or since, right?   So they realize they are on the same side, they are partners that hate each other, and then grow to like each other!  Ok, I’m done with the sarcasm.  So just by chance the guy that killed Dolph’s parents right in front of him is the new head of the Yakuza in the area and buys a brewery so that he can distribute “ice” and make more money.  That is not a typo, it was Dolph’s parents that were killed.  You see, the writers felt it would be a twist by making it so that he played someone raised in Japan while Brandon Lee was someone who was 100% American raised in Malibu.

Like I said, story doesn’t matter, it’s about the action, and this movie is full of it.  It is nothing extraordinary, it is exactly what you would expect it to be, and if that is something you normally enjoy you will be entertained by this movie.  It will not blow you away, it will not change your life, but you won’t be bored (and you’ll get some laughs along the way too).  There’s a scene where Dolph Lundgren grabs a dude by the balls after punching through a door and then pulls him out the doorway.  Yeah, that’s what you can expect from this.

NetFlix Instant has the same full frame presentation that the DVD has, but I never saw any panning and scanning with the picture.  They knew this was something that was more for the home video and cable TV market when they shot it so I’m sure they either kept all the action in the center of the frame or shot it open matte.  Either way you don’t miss anything and as far as picture quality it’s on par with other movies from that time frame with that kind of budget.  Again, not something to show off what your new HDTV can do, but it gets the job done.  I did notice some slight choppiness to the picture when panning despite having a full speed connection so I figure that’s just how it looked as well.  It was mostly in the beginning and a bit distracting at first but after a while I didn’t notice it and/or it went away.  Click here to watch it if you have a NetFlix account.

3/5 stars – Typical late 80s/early 90s martial arts action movie.  Guns, swords, punching and kicking, drugs, boobs, and Yakuza.  Throw in some bad dialogue and you have a movie that is entertaining if you are into that sort of thing.   This is probably the most that has been written about this movie in a long time.

The plot sounds ridiculous at first.  An 18 year old girl is still a virgin and she wants to lose her virginity before graduation, but it just doesn’t seem to happen (and she’s not ugly).  It turns out that there are all kinds of situations and reasons that are preventing it from happening, and it’s all in one night at a party, so it’s not as ridiculous as it originally sounds (but still pretty damn unrealistic).  What you get, as I mentioned before, is a straight to DVD quality raunchy teen comedy that provides some laughs and throws in some boobs too.  If jokes about trimming overgrown bush, going down on grandfathers in a coma, or various other uncomfortable and ridiculous situations sound like something you won’t laugh at, you will not laugh at this movie.  If you chuckled while reading that sentence, I’m sure you can enjoy it a bit.

It is very low budget and it shows.  You will not recognize anyone in this movie and you will probably never see them in anything ever again.  The movie was obviously shot on digital video to keep it low-budget and then put through some filters to make it look more like film, but you can still tell.  You will laugh throughout the movie, but no scene stands out as something that has to be seen.  It’s entertaining, you laugh while watching, especially with a group of friends, and you move on with your life.  It is as simple as that, and for that reason I won’t say anything more on it.  If you have NetFlix Instant, it’s on there, you hit play when you’ve got some time to kill.

As I mentioned, I watched it on NetFlix Instant.  The picture quality is as good as you can expect from a low budget shot on digital video movie.  The video quality on the stream is the same as the DVD so it’s as good as it gets.  The sound is the typical stereo mix found on NetFlix Instant.  Click here to watch it if you have a NetFlix account.

3/5 stars – Standard straight to DVD teen comedy.  Perfect reason why NetFlix Instant exists:  Something to get some laughs at when bored, but not something you’d go out of your way to see.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about the chief editor of the magazine Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby.  The movie starts with him waking up after being in a coma and he can hear himself but no one else can.  It turns out that he had a stroke and now suffers from “Locked In Syndrome.”  He is completely paralyzed with the exception of his left eye.  He can only move his left eye and blink.  They end up having to sow his right eye shut to avoid any damage to the eye and show him in a mirror and he feels he looks hideous.

At first Jean-Do (as he is referred to) wants nothing more than to die since he feels that this is no way to live and what would be the point of going on.  Luckily there were wonderful people around him that had patience and did not give up on his and taught him ways to communicate with blinking.  This allowed him to move on in life and he eventually wrote a book which was published and that is what the movie is based on.

What is great about the movie is that the first 45 minutes or so of it are almost exclusively from the point of view of Jean-Do.  The camera will focus on what he is focusing on, will blink when he blinks, and even go out of focus.  The audio is same way with it focusing on the soccer game in the background or him having trouble hearing after first coming out of the coma.  After that initial 45 minutes of the move it cut to shots of him in his wheel chair and became more or less like a “regular” movie.

The movie was extremely well made and it came at a perfect time for me since I had just had a class in school on Locked In Syndrome.  It was very interesting to see people around him reacting to his situation, which was both funny and aggravating.  To see what he went through and how he got through it and made the best of it was very enlightening and will make people appreciate how lucky they have it.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was nominated for 4 Oscars and had another 40 wins and 33 nominations for various other awards.  The Oscars were for Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Achievement in Editing, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.

I watched the movie on NetFlix Instant which was, unfortunately, the dubbed version.  The movie was shot all in French and therefore I would have preferred to watch it with subtitles, but unfortunately NetFlix Instant seems to always carry the dubbed versions of any foreign movies.  It was a Starz Play movie, so again, it had the usual washed out faded look.  It still looked good, but could have been so much better.  If you do want to watch it on NetFlix Instant though it is only available until Oct. 23rd.  Click here to watch it if you have a NetFlix membership.  There is talk of it coming to blu-ray in the near future and I will gladly update the review once I can see the quality on that.

4/5 stars- A great biopic that is also wonderfully made (both acting as well as a cinematography).  While not for everyone, and maybe not for repeat viewings, it is something that is an enjoyment to watch.

UPDATE 2: The movie has been added to NetFlix Instant.  Click here to watch it for yourself.

Watch this trailer and see what you think.

If you watch it and you think it is cheesy and you won’t like it…. It’s CHEESIER and you will hate it. Do you like movie that are just ridiculous, well, read on.

Never heard of this movie? I’m sure there are some people that would like to keep it that way. This was a Bruce Willis creation, and, well, it didn’t do so well for them. The movie bombed horribly in theaters and I think they all just want to move on and forget about it. This movie is just purely ridiculous and over the top, but in a way you can tell they were just having fun making it.

The story revolves around "the world’s greatest cat burglar" played by Bruce Willis. He is released from prison and is immediately asked to do another job (by his parole officer for some odd reason). His old partner talks him into it and they go for it. As you can expect, things don’t go as planned, and the job isn’t quite what it seems at first. All I will say is that it involves Leonardo DiVinci before The Divinci Code was even thought of.

As I mentioned, it is just over the top. It’s full of cheesy one liners and totally unrealistic situations, but if you go in with the right mindset, or just love "so bad it’s good" kind of movies you will love to just shut your brain off and enjoy it. To see Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello singing while they do their thing (they don’t use watches, they have specific songs for each time frame they have to work with) or David Caruso having a role where he doesn’t speak (another genius idea!) as a mute that carries around a card for each thing he wants to say, and the stereotypical dumbass muscle head that says stupid things and reads Green Eggs and Ham is quite the amazing sight. How this got made, I don’t know, but I’m sure glad it did.

I saw it on Showtime as a kid and loved it, I had taped it and watched it so many times I wore the tape out. I made sure to make everyone I knew watch it too. I got older, took a break and kinda sorta forgot about it. Then college comes around and it’s around the time I started dating my fiancée. She mentions her love for the movie and brings it with her one time when she came to visit and I fell in love with it all over again. Of course, any woman that feels that this is one of the greatest movies ever, of course I had to marry her.

The movie was an early release on DVD but there were constant rumors circulating of a Special Edition coming out.  The movie obviously had enough of a cult following that Columbia Tri-Star was willing to re-release it.  After many MANY delays, it finally came out and you better believe that we bought it right away.  After years of watching it on VHS we now had our own copy that would not wear out, was in widescreen, and had BONUS FEATURES.  You would think that after all the years we waited that we would have rushed to watch said bonus features, but instead we have owned it for a couple years now and have never watched them.  I know, I know, what a poor review, can’t even comment on bonus features.  Well, I recently had friends over that I made them watch the movie and they all loved it so it made me realize I needed to get a review up ASAP.  I will watch them and update the review accordingly   What I can say though is that the DVD picture quality is great and one couldn’t really expect it to look any better without making the jump to Blu-Ray (oh, I can’t wait for that day).

4/5 stars – As I said, that trailer is a good barometer for if you will enjoy this movie. It is not a "good" movie, it is "so bad it’s good." If you enjoy over the top situations with cheesy one liners and Frank Stallone getting killed, this is for you. If it’s not for you, then this will easily be 1 (or 0!) stars. I can’t say anything more without giving away what makes this movie so good.  Little side note, they made an NES game for it too.

It was available on NetFlix Instant streaming (click here to watch) and it was something I was interested in seeing, and she had not heard of it. I say no one saw it because I believe it didn’t even make $4 million in its box office run. On the plus side (for the studio) it cost only $8 million to make, and I can see why. This is not a slam on the movie, just the fact that the plot of the movie is made to be a small budget movie. You see, a woman named Angela is a workaholic late for a party on Christmas Eve and she is the last to leave the building. When she gets to the namesake level P2 where her car is parked, the car does not start and her cell phone does not get service (the horror cliché for the new millennium to replace a phone going dead). Thomas the security guard comes seemingly to the rescue, but when Angela turns down his offer for dinner he forces her to do so by using some ether straight out of the 40s. This leads to her escaping and the rest of the movie is her trying to get free and out of the garage.

It’s mostly just the two, in a parking garage in Canada (filming location wise, the movie takes place in New York City). He’s chasing her throughout the garage with his knowledge of the layout and having keys to all doors and gates. No one else is around except for a few brief scenes of co workers, and later with cops around. Angela is played by Rachel Nichols who played Scarlet in the recent G.I. Joe movie and Thomas is Wes Bently most known for his role in American Beauty as the kid with the video camera. The majority of the movie, as I mentioned, is just the two of them so they have to play off of each other for the movie to work. Luckily they both did well in their roles and for the kind of movie it is, it is not the usual bad acting that one would expect.

Despite being a “chase movie” there are a few scenes with some decent gore which I found surprising. If you’re going into the movie just expecting a gore-fest (don’t know why you would) you will be disappointed. Instead you will get a movie that is about tension and suspense, and it does a good job and is enjoyable. Some of it is a bit over-the-top, but I’ve come to expect that with movies like this, and I enjoyed it despite that fact. Luckily it did not have a BS ending though with the 3 of us constantly waiting for the cliché “jump” or “twist” to happen at the end, and it didn’t. It ended, and it ended well.

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that I watched the movie through NetFlix’s Instant Watch service and it is another movie that, just like Hatchet, started off as an HD stream but is now part of Starz Play and is therefore the lower than DVD quality. For those that are interested in aspect ratio of a movie too, it is a movie that was shot at 2.35:1 but the NetFlix stream is only 1.85:1 which is another aspect of Starz Play I see happen far too often and bothers me. I did not seem to notice too much “panning and scanning” but still annoying to know you aren’t getting it how it would be if it were on DVD or Blu-Ray. Still watchable as always, and I felt it was better quality than the Hatchet stream as well.

4/5 stars – A movie about a girl getting chased, and she eventually escapes. Been done a million times before, but done well and just entertaining if that’s your kind of movie. Good action, pacing, and suspense.

This week’s movie is beyond forgotten for me, I never even knew it existed until it showed up on NetFlix Instant as a recommendation for me to watch. It is Dreamscape starring Dennis Quaid and was released in 1984. Now it is available on NetFlix Instant in HD and on DVD, but was it forgotten (or unknown) for a reason?

Dreamscape comes from the director of The Stepfather and Sleeping with the Enemy and stars Dennis Quaid, Christopher Plummer, Eddie Albert (Green Acres), Kate Capshaw (SpaceCamp, Temple of Doom), David Patrick Kelly (Warriors, The Crow), and Max Von Sydow. Now I know all of these actors and have seen many movies with them, yet again, I never heard of this movie. I have watched some random and obscure movies in my day so I don’t know how something like this could slip by me all these years.

The basic story is that psychics truly do exist and some scientists have found a way to let psychics link up into other people’s dreams and fully interact with the dream as if it were real. The purpose of all this research is to be able to find out what is happening in someone’s subconscious that may be causing them issues to try to work them out. Or is it…? I do not want to give too much away, but instead of being a cool sci-fi/fantasy movie or horror movie, it is instead a cold war thriller. They have "someone the CIA and FBI don’t want to even touch" running a group that is using the research to carry out assassinations since the old urban legend of "if you die in your sleep, you die for real" is true. Not knowing what to expect I had an open mind and the movie started off really cool, but once it became obvious what the true plot was the movie lost me and I stopped caring. Having grown up in the 80s I have seen my fair share of movies that try to have a message or play on people’s fears of the Communists, but for some reason this one just didn’t seem to hold up as well as others.

The dream sequences themselves did look cool though with the use of wide angle lenses and time lapse photography to give it that dream-like look and feel to it. Unfortunately, there were not too many of them in the movie, and what was there lasted very briefly. There were a couple, especially the one that was a dream of the little boy, that lead me to see glimpses of a possibility of it being a cool horror movie, but as I said, that is not what the screen writers had in mind when writing this movie.

As I mentioned in the opening of this review, the movie was in fact in HD on NetFlix Instant. It is also available on DVD (no Blu-Ray release) but for this review I watched the NetFlix stream. Click here to see NetFlix instant listing for it.  Although in HD the print is dirty and had lots of flecks and scratches. While not a horrible print, it could have been better, but luckily a lot of scenes still looked very good. I am sure that due to the status of this movie that this is probably the best it will ever look as there is financially no reason to go back and digitally clean it up. As with DVD version it is edited to remove a couple shots of nudity inexplicable, yet has both F bombs. This was the 2^nd movie to ever be released with a PG-13 rating (the first being Red Dawn which was released only a few weeks prior to this) and had that content in its theatrical run, so I have no idea why it is missing from the DVD other than maybe a TV print source was the best they could find for this release.

3/5 stars - In all, a movie with some cool ideas lost as a victim of the time it was released. Some enjoyment was had by watching it, but there is a reason this movie is not as well known as others from that era.

This is the perfect example of a “Rainy Sunday Movie.” By that I mean the type of movie that most people only see because it’s being played by their local TV station on a Sunday afternoon since it’s cheap programing. You are only partially paying attention to it, but there isn’t much better on TV at the time.

So, what are the specifics of the by-the-numbers BioPic? Well, he was a famous rodeo cowboy that became world champion and inducted into the hall of fame younger than anyone else before. He is played by Luke Perry so you can see the time that this came out, but it did nothing to help his career. The events I explained in the first paragraph happen and then a few more things I won’t spoil in case you really do decide to watch. I was just glad I had a blog to work on while it was on, because it really did not keep my interest at all, but maybe there are people out there that would be interested, but it just wasn’t for me.

It is available on NetFlix Instant only until Monday August 24th, click here to check out the page for it. It is in HD and the picture quality was very good, but I found the dialogue hard to hear at times. If you really must watch this movie, Instant is the way to go, because going out of your way to wait for this to show up in the mail would be a waste of time.

2/5 stars, have it in the background while doing something else.

Cat’s Eye was released in 1985 and is a collection of 3 different short stories written by Stephen King. All three stories are connected by a cat traveling to save a little girl (played by Drew Barrymore). We are not really told his motivation for doing so, or how he knows to do so, but he does and these are 3 events that happen on his way there. According to IMDb there was a prologue that was shot to explain these things, but the studio cut it because they felt it was “too silly.” It would have been nice to see this after all these years, but who knows what happened to it.

The first story stars James Woods and is a decent story with a definite Stephen King feel to it. Woods wants to quit smoking and signs up for a service called Quitters Inc that has some rather questionable means to getting results. It is so out there and ridiculous that it is hard to take seriously, but I have come to expect that from King and I enjoyed it for what it was somewhat. The 2nd story was the weakest of the 3 in my opinion, but I guess if you have a weak link the middle is the best place to put it. That story stars Robert Hays who most will remember as Ted Striker from the Airplane movies despite having 76 credited roles on IMDb. Atlantic City is the backdrop where there are some odd wagers going on outside the casinos. Hays finds himself in a situation where he had to walk all around a hotel along the ledge on the outside. The cat still somehow finds his way there. Finally, the 3rd story is the best and the most well known of them all. That is when the cat finally finds his way to Drew Barrymore and he is there to protect her from a troll creature coming to steal her breath away in her sleep. It is so over-the-top and ridiculous with some laughable special effects, but there’s something about it that just made me smile as I watched. It was something that was very noticably “80s” and not something that everyone may enjoy as much as I did, but I know I’m weird.

Some fun little Stephen King references are placed throughout the movie as well. Right away the movie starts with the cat being chased by Cujo and there is a car with a bumper sticker referencing Christine. Another scene has James Woods watching The Dead Zone on TV. IMDb lists others, but those 3 were ones I noticed on my own. These are fun scenes for fans, and kind of let you know what kind of movie you were in for, i.e., it’s not totally taking itself serious.

I watched the movie on NetFlix Instant, you can check out the page for it here. The picture quality was very good, but I was disappointed to see that it was only a “full frame” presentation and not the full 2.35:1 aspect ration that the movie was shot in. There were lots of scenes that I noticed things getting cut off at the sides. Having not seen the DVD I do not know if that is presented the same way or not, although the Amazon listing does say “2.35:1.”

3/5 stars, worth a rental