Phoenix DVD Blog

I was born just two years before Star Wars landed in cinemas and quietly changed everything. I didn’t see it in a theatre at the time for obvious reasons, but its impact filtered down fast, onto television, into toy shops, and straight into school playgrounds. Suddenly, space wasn’t just a backdrop for low-budget sci-fi anymore. It was epic, serious, and full of possibility. Toys, lunchboxes, annuals, and posters started appearing everywhere. Spaceships weren’t just something you watched on TV, they were something you played with, talked about in school, and carried around in your head long after the episode ended. Even if you hadn’t seen the films properly yet, you knew this world mattered.

Some of my earliest memories of going to the cinema aren’t really about the films at all. They’re about the anticipation . As a child, getting to the cinema in Killorglin or Tralee with my cousins felt like a proper event. It wasn’t something you did casually. It was a treat. We queued for junk food at the front counter, impatiently watching the person ahead of us debate popcorn sizes, all the while worrying we might miss the start, even though we were nearly always 30 minutes too early. Once we had our snacks, modest for the time, a drink, popcorn, and a small packet of chocolate sweets, there was the scramble for decent seats (at the back, of course). Then came that familiar ten-minute wait as the auditorium slowly filled.  Then the lights dimmed, the cigarette burn edit marks crackled and fizzled on screen, the cartoon started, and you knew you were locked in for the next couple of hours. There was no pause button. No kettle-boiling tea breaks. No exit. You were there to wat...

It’s a question I see asked again and again, usually phrased some version of this: Will there ever be another Band of Brothers , The Pacific , or Masters of the Air ? Short answer? At the moment, there are no confirmed plans . Long answer?  will-there-be-another-band-of-brothers-series There are plenty of stories still waiting to be told, but each one comes with enormous creative, logistical, and financial hurdles. See if you agree with my suggestions below.

I vaguely remember buying Black Hawk Down on DVD not long after it was released. I was interested in it, I watched it all the way through, but I wasn’t blown away by it, pardon the pun. It felt intense, sure, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression. At the time, I couldn’t quite understand why, given how highly regarded the film already was. I’ve had this experience with a few war films over the years, where the format quietly undermined the impact rather than the film itself , something I touched on in my post  5 Modern War Films You Must See for Intense, Gritty Viewing has some fine examples. Looking back now, the reason for my original view is obvious. I was watching it on a 32-inch TV , using built-in speakers , on a  DVD . Why It Fell Flat the First Time This is not a subtle film. It’s built on scale, chaos, overlapping sound, confusion, and sustained tension. That kind of experience depends heavily on presentation, and my setup simply couldn’t deliver it. On DVD...

If you’ve ever upgraded from DVD to Blu-ray and thought, “That’s nice, but is it really worth it?” , these films answer that question immediately. Blu-ray isn’t just about higher resolution. When it’s done properly, it’s about restoration, colour depth, film grain, shadow detail, and sound design that DVD simply cannot reproduce. Some films benefit more than others, and a handful feel like completely new experiences. These three titles are the ones I always come back to when someone asks me why I still buy physical media.  I’ve written more broadly about this before in my post on why physical media is still worth fighting for , but these three films are the clearest, most practical examples I can point to. This Post contains Affiliate links – I may earn a small commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. Kingdom of Heaven (Director’s Cut) Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is one of the most dramatic examples of how a film can be transformed by both a proper edit and a pr...

I’ve found myself getting increasingly disconnected from what Hollywood and the major studios are churning out these days. It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and it’s certainly not a complaint about actors getting older. Aging is natural. Careers evolve. That’s not the issue. What I miss is something more fundamental. There was a time, roughly from the 1980s through to the early 2010s , when cinema felt reliable in the best possible way. Every year you could almost guarantee two big summer blockbusters , followed by two or three genuinely strong films later in the year , with plenty of solid, mid-budget movies scattered in between across every genre.

Every December I end up looking back at the year in movies and asking myself the same question: why do I still bother collecting discs in a world that wants everything streamed? And every December, the answer gets clearer.