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3:10 to Yuma

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  • Title: 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
  • IMDB: link

“Safe!  Who knows what’s safe?  I know a man dropped dead from looking at his wife.  My own grandmother fought the Indians for 60 years then choked to death on lemon pie.”

3:10 to YumaDirector Delmer Daves‘ 1957 western about a cattle rancher forced into the role of getting a dangerous killer out of town finds new life on home video as 3:10 to Yuma is the latest classic to get the Criterion treatment.

Dan Evans (Van Heflin) is a struggling rancher with a wife (Leora Dana), two sons (Barry Curtis, Jerry Hartleben), and cattle who are dying of thirst during one of the worst droughts in recent memory. When Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), the leader of an outlaw gang who has terrorized the territory for years, is caught, Dan accepts an offer of $200 to escort Wade to a nearby town and put him on the 3:10 train to Yuma for trial.

With only the town drunk (Henry Jones) at his side, Evans tries to keep Wade hidden and put him on the train before the rest of his gang can find them and release their leader.

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Superman: Unbound

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  • Title: Superman: Unbound
  • IMDB: link

Superman: UnboundBased on the 2008 Superman: Brainiac arc by Geoff Johns, DC’s latest animated feature introduces Superman (Matt Bomer) and Supergirl (Molly Quinn) to a redesigned version of Brainiac (John Noble) for the first time when the Collector of Worlds heads to Earth to add Metropolis to a collection that already includes the Kryptonian city of Kandor. The result is a solid entry into the DC Animated Universe whose main issues come more from the original source material rather than the adaptation.

Given her role in the film this could easily have been titled Superman/Supergirl: Unbound as much of the emotional weight of the straight-to-DVD animated feature falls on Superman’s younger cousin. Screenwriter Bob Goodman also increases the role of Lois Lane (Stana Katic) and makes some intriguing parallels over the course of the film between how both Brainiac and Superman try to control those of interest to them.

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Jack Reacher

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  • Title: Jack Reacher
  • IMDB: link

Jack ReacherBased on the character created byLee Child, Tom Cruise stars as former Military Police officer turned professional nomad Jack Reacher who shows up after an old enemy (Joseph Sikora) is arrested for killing five people. What follows is part dumb action movie and part conspiracy thriller as Reacher uncovers the troubling fact that, as much as he wants the man to be guilty, the Army sniper the police have in custody was framed for the crime (which itself has complicated reasons far beyond a random crime by a lone gunman).

Reacher is the typical old school 80’s action hero, smarter than everyone else and able to take down five men without even breaking a sweat. Rosamund Pike stars as the man’s attorney, who also happens to be the daughter of the city’s cutthroat District Attorney (Richard Jenkins). Pike’s main job in the film is to get Reacher engaged in the case and then constantly question his theories before finally being relegated to the damsel in distress.

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Rookie Blue – The Complete Third Season

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  • Title: Rookie Blue – Season Three
  • tv.com: link

Rookie Blue - The Complete Third SeasonThe Third Season of Rookie Blue continues to looks at the latest crop of police academy graduates now serving in uniform with the 15 Division. Three seasons in you can’t really call the group rookies any more, but the show’s continued focus is the growth and development of its five young officers (and their, at times soap operatic personal lives): Andy McNally (Missy Peregrym), Gail Peck (Charlotte Sullivan), Traci Nash (Enuka Okuma), Chris Diaz (Travis Milne), and Dov Epstein (Gregory Smith).

Season Three includes more romantic troubles for the rookies. Nick Collins (Peter Mooney) in introduced as a new rookie as well as the Gail’s old flame (and potential new love interest). We also get an annoying amount of Andy’s on-again/off-again relatinship with Sam Swarek (Ben Bass), Epstein getting romantically involved with the sister (Mouna Traoré) of a gangbanger he shot and killed, and the tragic end of Traci’s relationship with Jerry Barber (Noam Jenkins) when Barber is killed in the line of duty.

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Dirk Gently

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  • Title: Dirk Gently
  • tv.com: link

Dirk GentlyBased on the novels by Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) Dirk Gently was an all-too-short TV-series starring Stephen Mangan as the title character, a detective who relies on random chance and finding connections in the seemingly unconnected nature of things to solve the cases brought to him which includes a missing cat which leads him to solve a double-homicide, a man whose horoscopes are coming true, the theft of a valuable robot, and the murder of several of the detective’s former clients.

Managan is terrific in the leading role of a swindler whose methods, almost inextricably, get results. The show also starred Darren Boyd as Dirk’s old friend turned partner Richard MacDuff, Lisa Jackson as Gently’s secretary Janice, and Helen Baxendale as MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan.

Although the show only lasted four episodes (all included on this two-disc set), it managed to capture the quirky nature of Adams’ characters and is certainly worth a look for fans.

[Acorn Media, $39.99]

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