Mystery

Castle – The Complete Seventh Season

  • Title: Castle – Season Seven
  • wiki: link

Castle - The Complete Seventh Season

Although the weakest of the show’s seven seasons so far, opening with a convoluted storyline to explain Castle (Nathan Fillion) missing his own wedding (a storyline which would rear its ugly head later in the season as well), Season Seven is not without its share of memorable moments. There are that cases that involve an invisible man, a crash test dummy, murder at 30,000 feet, and a mission to Mars, Castle lives out his fantasy as an 80s action star, Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle head into the Old West to solve a murder, Jerry Tyson (Michael Mosley) returns and abducts Beckett, Castle begins life as a private eye, Linda Park guest-stars as a Hong Kong version of Beckett, and the season finale explains Richard Castle’s life-long obsession with death and murder.

The five-disc set includes audio commentary for two episodes by cast and crew, Castle’s “Raging Heat” webmercial, a Ryan (Seamus Dever), and Esposito (Jon Huertas) music video, bloopers, and deleted scenes.

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Scooby-Doo! Team-Up #11

Scooby-Doo! Team-Up #11When secret peace talks between two warring nations are put in jeopardy by a medieval ghost it becomes a job not only for Mystery, Inc. but also a chance for the group to team-up with Secret Squirrel and his sidekick Morocco Mole. What happens when a talking dog, a talking squirrel in trench coat, and a bunch of meddling kids get in on the action? Wacky fun, that’s what.

Of course it’s only a time before the investigators and their new super-secret spy friends are all captured and thrown into an elaborate death trap by the ghost (who actually turns out to be Secret Squirrel’s arch-nemesis Yellow Pinkie) in his secret volcano lair. Hey, it happens.

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1995 – The Usual Suspects

  • Title: The Usual Suspects
  • IMDb: link

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

The Usual SuspectsOn or around this date 20 years ago The Usual Suspects hit theaters for the first time. Written by Christopher McQuarrie (who recently gave us the best Mission: Impossible movie yet) and directed by Bryan Singer (who has struggled to make a film even half as good ever since), The Usual Suspects introduces us five criminals through a series of flashbacks which recount the events which brought them all together in a police line-up and what then led them to the docks a fateful night leaving only a single member of the group alive to tell the tale.

Despite the fact that the film hinges on reveal and twist ending, it works as well on the twelfth viewing as it does the first. Kevin Spacey stars as Verbal Kent (a role that would earn him an Academy Award and make him a star) who recounts the events of the crew’s movements to Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) while attempting to keep certain facts about the boat and the mythical Keyser Soze from coming to light. The definition of an unreliable narrator, Verbal’s accounts are all Kujan and the audience are given to deduce the truth for themselves.

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Sneakers

  • Title: Sneakers
  • IMDb: link

“Too many secrets.”

Sneakers

Some movies age more gracefully than others. Even 20 years later Sneakers continues to entertain despite how much of the plot revolves around technology of the time. Robert Redford leads an unusual team of experts blackmailed by who they believe to be the NSA into stealing a Russian mathematician’s little black box which is the key to decrypting all known codes.

Along with a former CIA agent (Sidney Poitier), a blind computer expert (David Strathairn), a conspiracy nut (Dan Aykroyd), a hotshot kid (River Phoenix), and his ex-girlfriend (Mary McDonnell), Martin Biship (Redford) will attempt to stay one-step ahead of both government agents and shadowy figures (Timothy Busfield, Eddie Jones) while trying to capture the box and trade it for their freedom.

With the stellar cast (which also includes supporting roles by Ben Kingsley and Stephen Tobolowsky), Sneakers provides a humor-packed thriller complete with conspiracies, blind-man stunt driving, and the best use of Scrabble ever seen on film.

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Grumpy Old Mr. Holmes

  • Title: Mr. Holmes
  • IMDb: link

Mr. HolmesAdapted from Mitch Cullen‘s novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, Mr. Holmes is an intriguing, if flawed, idea offering audiences a look at the retired detective fighting senility while struggling to remember the details of his final case decades before. I say flawed because despite a terrific performance from Ian McKellen removing the keen intellect from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes also removes the character’s most definable trait leaving only a hollow shell in its place.

Taking place three decades after his retirement into the country to spend his time with his bees, a senile and grumpy Sherlock Holmes struggles to remember the details of his final case which he is certain Watson wrongly chronicled. His secluded existence is witnessed only by his housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), her son Roger (Milo Parker), and the occasional visit from Sherlock’s doctor (Roger Allam). Returning from a trip to Japan at the opening of the film, which is chronicled in flashbacks inter-cut with those of his final case and his current retirement, Holmes strikes up an unexpected friendship with Roger who helps reignite the detective’s memory.

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