HollywoodChicago.com Blu-Ray Reviews

CHICAGO – The most TV-centric column yet advising What to Watch on DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, Amazon, On Demand, and more is another nearly random collection of offerings that you can use to guide your way through the new releases shelf at Best Buy, the On Demand section on Vudu, the store on iTunes, and maybe even Netflix and Hulu. Pick your favorites. This is the way we’d rank these new releases if you have a free night this weekend or money to burn next week.

CHICAGO – There’s something even more bittersweet and poignant about the beautiful, mesmerizing “Blancanieves,” new to Blu-ray and DVD, when one thinks that it was one of the last movies that Roger Ebert fell in love with. The legendary critic adored this film so much that he programmed it for the Overlooked Film Festival, which unspooled shortly after his death. Seeing the film now and the way it deals with loss while also paying homage to the history of cinema, it seems almost like a tribute to the man who engendered a love of film for so many people. Although the connection to Ebert is only the final beautiful twist to a major piece of work, one of the more engaging and well-made films of 2013. This film is a special one. Don’t miss it.

CHICAGO – Brutal. That’s the word for the third season of “The Walking Dead.” It’s just brutal. Like the second season of the mega-hit show, the third sagged a bit in the middle (although not as deeply as the neverending Shane-Dale debates of chapter 2) and the finale was a bit disappointing, but the unpredictability of the season kept viewers on their toes and ratings high.

CHICAGO – It’s unlikely that you’ll see a more visually striking American animated film in 2013 than Fox and Blue Sky Studios’ “Epic,” a film that was written off by many critics and audience members in its May release but that has more going for it than your average family fare. Now available on Blu-ray and DVD, “Epic” frustrates in the way that it too often falls back on storytelling crutches that we’ve seen before but the movie looks great at every turn. It’s the kind of animated flick that’s designed to show off your new Blu-ray player and accompanying HD TV. The special features are disappointingly thin but the movie deserved a bigger audience that it is likely to find on Blu-ray.