Film  

The best way I can think to describe Battle: Los Angeles is that is a cross between Independence Day and Black Hawk Down, albeit without the humor of Independence Day. In fact, there are scenes lifted right out of both films in this film. The comparisons are obvious. Aliens invade the Earth. They position their attack ships outside of major cities all over the planet The aliens are tall with big heads and spindly legs. They have advanced weaponry that we can hardly deal with. We have a parent with a young child, wounded in the attack who dies. We have an alien with an achilles heel and a brave soldier who figures out how to breach their defenses and bring down each of the mother ships around the world which are controlling each of the attacks. Sound familiar?

On top of this is the gritty look and unrelenting action of a film like Black Hawk Down, presented in a documentary type fashion with hand held jerking cameras. In fact, it is the unrelenting action which is the saving grace of the film as it keeps you are least mildly interested in the film and helps you to overlook the plot and even the lifted dialogue and scenes from other films. It is because of this and the reference video and audio presentations as noted below, that I can give this film a recommendation.

Video  

The video presentation here is darn near perfect and is reference material all the way. The film does not exactly have a bright color palette as it is filled with browns and grays but has exquisite levels of clarity, depth and detail. Blacks are deep and inky. Shadow detail is fantastic.  Each skin pore and blemish, each hair on a soldier’s face is clearly visible as are the fine textures of the uniforms and clothing as well as the metal skin of the military equipment. If you are looking for demo reference material to show off your system and show just what the Blu-ray format is capable of delivering, Battle: Los Angeles is the release for you. The video presentation here is simple sensational. Need I say more?

Audio  

The audio here is a perfect match for the video presentation and is just as reference as the video. The sound mix is superb, with the surrounds engaged aggressively throughout the entire film, placing you smack dab in the center of the action. When the soldiers are holed up in a home in Santa Monica hiding from the advancing alines and trying to regroup, it sounds like you are in the room with them as the room ambiance is captured beautifully. You can hear things falling in the alleys around you, with gun blasts in the distance. The dialogue is beautifully recorded and well placed in the sound field and never ever gets lost in the mix. Dynamics are superb with deep and room shaking bass. The overall fidelity is simply superb, sounding smooth, rich and lifelike with transparency and imaging which is simply off the charts. The sound is just effortless, never straining  and sounds superb, regardless of the volume levels. Listen to this baby cranked up! It really doesn’t get better than this. Superb.

Special Features   

Battle: Los Angeles comes with several extras which while standard fare, are at least mildly interesting. The film comes equipment with what is described as “Command Control” which enables you, via picture-in-picture, to watch storyboard comparisons, battle points and items of interest while watching the film. Quite frankly, watching the film is enough for me. This is a feature that you will only want to access once you have watched the film one time through.

The bulk of the extras consist of featurettes about the making of the film and include “Behind the Battle”, “Aliens in LA”, “Preparing for Battle”, “Creating LA in LA”, “DIrecting the Battle”, “Boot Camp” and “The Freeway Battle”. These featurettes are rather self explanatory as they take you behind the scenes to show how the film was made and show how particular scenes were staged and filmed and feature interviews with the cast and crew.

Final Thoughts  

I found Battle: Los Angeles to be mildly entertaining due mostly to the non stop nature of the action in the film. In addition, this film features reference audio and video presentations that were simply superb. Whether that alone is enough of a reason to purchase a particular title, I will leave up to you.

Film  

The Green Hornet is probably the worst of the most recent comic book based films and by a wide margin. As a fan of the old comic book and the very short lived TV series (canceled after one season), I was expecting a lot more than what this film delivers. In hindsight, I should have known better given that the film was written by Seth Rogan. What the film has in abundance, and what most Seth Rogan films seem to always have in great abundance, is stupidity and at times gross stupidity. Cross a super hero film with crap such as Observe and Report and you have The Green Hornet.

This film totally misses the point of what makes The Green Hornet such an interesting character. Rather than the urbane Britt Reid of the old radio series, the comics and the TV series, we get Britt Reid the a-hole, the non stop partier, without any social consciousness at all and one who has total disregard for his sidekick Kato, who here, unlike the prior incarnations of this character, is the only brains behind the duo.

The film picks up showing an early interaction between Britt and his father, played by Tom Wilkinson, the publisher of The Daily Sentinel, one of LA’s great papers. Britt’s father is to be kind, disappointed, with how Britt was running his life. However, Britt is in for a rude awakening when his father dies suddenly and mysteriously as a result of a bee sting. Britt is then placed at the helm of the paper and suddenly and out of the blue, decide to become a superhero. There is no foundation laid for this change and even so, it is played purely for comedic effect. There is a ton of wasted talent here, from the director, Michel Gondray of the Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless MInd, to Tom Wilkinson and to Christoph Waltz as the lead villain.

Sure the film looks good and has some nifty although totally unoriginal special effects and some great gadgets. The problem, the film has no plot and is totally stupid. The real cool version of The Black Beauty featured in the film is not enough to save this film. There is a great story to be told here. However, Seth Rogan is not the man to tell it or star in it for that matter. At best, I can give this film nothing more than a tepid rating as a rental. What a shame and what a wasted opportunity. Hopefully, the next one (isn’t there always a next one these days) will be better, much better, and hopefully, sans Mr. Rogan.

Video  

While I didn’t like the film, I loved the transfer, which looks fantastic. The film features a bright and bold color palette with natural looking flesh tones. Blacks are deep and inky giving the overall image a very nice sense of depth. I found the overall clarity, detail and depth to be excellent. The only thing that keeps me for giving the film a 5 star rating is the level of detail, which although excellent in its own right, falls just a tad short of the very best I have seen and hence, just a bit short of reference quality and I mean just a tad short. On a different scale, the video here would rate a 4.75 out of 5, it is that good.

The transfer is remarkably noise free, even in the very dark sequences and as one would expect given the age of the film, is in pristine condition. Fans of this film should be more than pleased with the video presentation here. It should be noted that I only screened the 2D version of the film as I do not have a 3D display (a Kuro will just have to do!) However, with the exception of a couple of obvious sight gags, I can’t really see 3D adding much here given that the film was not shot in 3D. I will, however, leave that judgment up to you.

Audio  

As impressed I was with the video presentation, I was even more pleased with the audio, where is excellent and of reference quality in every way. The film features excellent dynamics and deep and powerful bass. The bass response is top notch and lacks some of the overly exaggerated bass that we see in some action films which tends to be over the top and bloated. The bass here is rock solid, tight and impactful, without overtly calling attention to itself. I wish that all action films sounded this good. If I had to pick a word to describe the audio here, it would be effortless.

The overall fidelity is smooth and open with excellent transparency and imaging. Depth both from side to side and front to back is exceptional, creating a huge sound field. The surrounds are used aggressively to create an excellent sense of immersion. Sound effects such as explosions and gun shots, and there are many in this film, have an excellent sense of heft and authenticity. The various panning effects are done beautifully as well. All in all, this is a great sounding film that is reference in all respects.

Special Features  

The version of the film that I was provided with is a 3-disc combo pack, containing a 3D version of the film, a 2D version of the film as well as a DVD copy. As I do not have a 3D display, I only watched the 2D version of the film. I believe that in addition to the 3D combo pack, a 2D combo pack of the film is also available. For those of you with 3D capabilities, the 3D disc contains a 3D Animated Storyboard Comparison.

The 2D disc contains many extras including the usual commentaries, a gag reel and deleted scenes. The extras also include The Green Hornet Cutting Room which allows you to edit car cash scenes yourself.

Also included are several featurettes about the making of the film and the film makers including “Trust Me” with director Michel Gondry, a Writing the Green Hornet featurette, The Black beauty: Rebirth of The Cool, The Stunt Family Armstrong,, FInding Kato and The Art of Destruction.

We also get 2 Easter Eggs Jay Chou’s Audition and Double Barrel. While there are a ton of extras here, I can’t say that I found any that were really compelling, with the rating noted above based more on volume rather than content.

Final Thoughts  

The Green Hornet was a huge disappointment for me as a film. There is great potential here with these characters and this is a story that really deserves a much better effort, with people who really understand the characters and what makes action films so compelling. I would just love to see what someone like Christopher Nolan could do with this story. I have seen enough of Seth Rogan. Rated as a rental only.

Film

David Ayer’s S.W.A.T. gets a direct to video sequel, which seemed odd to me. Considering David Ayer’s filmography can be broken into two categories: grungy critically successful films such as Training Day and Harsh Times and critically panned hits like Fast and the Furious and S.W.A.T.

When compared to The Fast and the Furious, which is about to become a pentalogy it’s strange that S.W.A.T. wouldn’t follow suit and have more sequels released considering it’s very successful box office performance. Instead were given a by-the-numbers low budget sequel 8 years later.

The film follows a new S.W.A.T. team as they train in Detroit  with a new captain from out-of-town, played by Gabriel Macht (The Spirit)  the first of many actors who could only be here for a paycheck. From having both Terminators in this film: Robert Patrick and Kristanna Loken I was immediately reminded that it shouldn’t be a surprise considering Robert Patrick played an over-the-top bad guy in The Marine a while back and Loken can be spotted in a tirade of Uwe Boll flicks. All of the characters in the film are incredibly flat playing walking clichés of characters from other films. Even the main character doesn’t have any depth… he goes from being a tough swat leader to a tough swat leader who is being targeted by a mad man.

With over the top acting and really poor writing the film feels like a bad joke. There’s a scene that displays the genius behind the script in which there is a cell phone conversation between Robert Patrick’s villainous character at a firing range and our protagonist at a different firing range and as they want to emphasize their points, they decide to begin firing at their targets…  It’s hard to take the script seriously when almost every aspect of it feels like a 12 year old wrote it.

Video

S.W.A.T. Firefight’s video is displayed using the AVC MPEG-4 codec. The video quality of the film is pretty decent. The movie is generally sharp and maintains a clean image throughout. Sometimes the film softens up or gets bit blown out due to inconsistent camera settings but the video is pretty good for a low budget flick.

The video is artifact free and due to the softness in the lower lit shots ends up having an almost noise-free run, but the film does lack in  some fine detail because of it as well.

The colors of the film are really over-the-top, trying to achieve that blockbuster Hollywood color grade which involves having dark teal shadows and yellowish orange highlights. The film generally has a blue cast over it for the most of the film and the skin tones suffer from the drastic color balance change.

The film’s visual content isn’t too appealing either, for I felt the director felt pretty nonexistent for the film and decided to go crazy for a few shots randomly. Whenever there was an establishing shot that took place in a different part of town they would go through a dozen panning and dollying shots of the streets sprinkled with random close-ups of power lines and other nonsense. Then at times he would go for a P.O.V. gun shot that mounted a mini camera on the top rails of the S.W.A.T. team rifles… Instead of looking cool or original it made me feel nauseous.

Audio

S.W.A.T. Firefight’s audio comes at us using the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. The sound is a step up from the video quality. It manages to mix all of the elements pretty flawlessly. Some of the sound effects use some nice panning, such as gunshots at the firing range.

The dialogue is clean and centered while the surrounds get some nice usage out of the sound effects and recreating urban ambience during the scenes in the city. The low frequencies don’t get much love except for a couple big explosions, but even then it feels a bit flat.

The score is beyond cheesy, with some really patriotic sounding horn pieces to the crappy hard rock guitar riffs that are layered over stupid slow-mo S.W.A.T. team members as they walk… and be cool. Sometimes the score seemed a bit too loud, but I’m almost certain I only feel that way for the fact that it’s a really lame composition.

Special Features

For a film that comes off like a cash grab doesn’t earn much respect offering one very lame extra. It follows the director Benny Boom as he goes over ideas dropped from the film and goes over some of the training involved, which surprised me that there was any planning involved in this film.

Final Thoughts

A film that didn’t require a sequel gets one that feels like it only uses the S.W.A.T. moniker to try and squeeze a few more hard earned bucks out of our pockets. The script is garbage, the acting is all over the place and the direction is audacious. The technical aspects of the film doesn’t save anything and with a single bonus feature, the lazy effort of a movie is well rounded with a lazy effort from the distributor.

Film  

The Tourist is a rather pedestrian film with a rather familiar story line. Maybe you have heard it before. An apparently innocent man is mistaken for someone else. This mistake puts his life in great danger and attempts are made on his life. He meets a beautiful and seductive woman on a train and falls in love with her and at the end of the film, risks his life to save hers. If that sounds familiar, it should, as it is the basic plot for Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, North By Northwest. To be sure, The Tourist is a lift of the complete story, more of North By Northwest with a twist which I will not elaborate on so as to spoil the end of the film.

Johnny Depp is Frank, an American math teacher from Wisconsin (Image that!) who boards a train from Paris to Venice and who is picked out of the crowd by Elise, the stunningly beautiful (in this picture at least) Angelina Jolie on the instructions of her boyfriend who is on the lam from the authorities in the UK after stealing billions from a gangster. Elise is under 24 hour surveillance at the behest of the Metropolitan Police in London, who hope she will lead him to her boyfriend and the cash.

It is Elise’ job to convince the authorities that Frank is their man so that her boyfriend can escape, so she hooks up with Frank at a posh Venice Hotel. However, much to her surprise and those of the authorities, the gangster and his thugs who are Russian (who could guess!) gets wind of the fact that Elise and her boyfriend are in Venice, and arrives there with his thugs to kill her, capture him and grab the cash. Will the authorities get to him first or the gangster and his thugs? Will he escape with the cash? You will have to see the film to find out.

Is The Tourist a bad film? No, really more disappointing than anything. Angelina Jolie is simply stunning through the entire film, as is Venice. I have been fortunate enough to have been to Venice and the film captures the beauty and uniqueness of the city beautifully and makes me want to return as soon as possible. I just wish I could. if you decide to go after seeing the film, don’t go in July and August as while the city is still beautiful, the canal water stinks to high heaven. The real issue I had with the film is that it has no real identity and no real suspense.

Parts of the film play like a comedy, others like an action suspense film. The real problem is the comedic parts aren’t all that funny and the action sequences lack the tension of a great action film. You can’t can’t be everything to everyone. Alfred Hitchcock can pull it off as he did in North By Northwest, which managed to be very funny and very suspenseful at the same time. It is clear to me anyway that North By Northwest was the template for The Tourist. Unfortunately, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck is no Alfred Hitchcock, at least not yet. While the film does have its moments, I can rate it no better than a rental.

Video  

While I had issues with the film, I have no issues at all with the encode and the cinematography. The film and Venice in particular, looks superb. The film has a very pleasing color palette, most of which is a bit skewed to cyan. Elegant and glamorous come to mind in describing the look as well as the tone of the film. The interior darker shots do have a bit of a warmer golden glow, especially skin tones. Blacks are deep and inky. Fine details such as facial details and fabrics is excellent. The same can be said for the overall clarity and sharpness of the image. Shadow detail is excellent as well, with not even the hint of black crush. The only fault that I can find with the look of the film is some general softness in certain scenes, especially those during nighttime interior shots. Overall, this is a great looking film and an excellent encode. Venice has never looked better on film. Can’t wait to get there again. For now, The Tourist will have to do!

Audio  

I was just as impressed with the audio here as I was with the video. The terms silky smooth and refined come to mind in thinking about how to describe the sound. James Newton Howard’s score sounds superb, with silky smooth and lush strings and rock solid bass. The overall fidelity of the sound is top notch, sounding smooth, rich, full and open with excellent transparency and imaging. Panning effects and the other sound effects are superb with excellent detail. Just listen to the fine subtle detail of the jagged knife as it is pulled across Angelina Jolie’s lips near the end of the film. Even during the more active sections of the film, fine details and subtle sounds are never lost in the mix.

The surrounds, when engaged, sound superb, adding just the right mix of ambiance and action into the sound field. The surrounds are not employed as actively and aggressively as I would otherwise have preferred but when employed are employed beautifully. If I would have one quibble with the sound, it would be the deployment of the surrounds as I prefer a totally immersive sound filed during what is really at its core, an action suspense film. Other than that, the audio on The Tourist is excellent and a match to the stunning visuals.

Special Features  

The extras are rather mundane with the exception that they show you even more of Venice than the film. All of the extras are presented in high definition. They include a directors commentary, a very brief and strange outtake reel and an alternate animated title sequence for the film which is totally forgettable.

The main extras are the four making of featurettes entitled “A Gala Affair”, “Bringing Back Glamour” , “Action Venice” and “Canal Chats”. “A Gala Affair” details the filming and design of the gala ball sequence near the end of the film, highlighting the construction and design of the set on location in Venice. “Bringing Back Glamour” describes just that, how the director uses glamour as a backdrop for the story, from choosing to film in Venice, the style of the clothing and the use of the hotels. “Action Venice” takes you behind the scenes for the action shots filmed at night on the canals of Venice, showing how and why they were shot the way the were. I must say that I was not surprised that the actors who had to jump into the canals on those shots had to take antibiotics for a month prior to the shooting, given the filthy state of the water in the canals. The last of the featurettes is “Canal Chats” where the director, cast and crew discuss filming the movie in Venice. All in all, all four of the featuretes are rather brief and worth your time, if even for a more extensive look at Venice.

Final Thoughts  

While The Tourist features a great cast, Venice as a backdrop and fine visual and audio presentations, the film was still a disappointment. However, all is not lost as there is enough here to give the film a recommendation, but as a rental only.

Film 

After watching the film and thinking about how to describe it for this review, I came to conclusion that Takers could best be described as a cross between Oceans 11 and American Gangster. Like Oceans 11, the film focuses on a group of accomplished criminals. However, rather than focusing on comedy, the group in Takers is a well dressed group of urbane and sophisticated guys, who like the finer things in life and use creative and inventive heists as their way of acquiring the cash to posses them, hence the term “takers”.

The film is like American Gangster in terms of the use of violence and the overall tone as well as the fact that the main protagonists and antagonists in the film don’t really meet and interact until the very end of the film. Here it is the hardened old school detective Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and his flawed and ethically compromised partner, Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez) who are looking to track down the group responsible for a bank heist and who come upon evidence that indicates that the group is about to do and even biggest heist.

The film actually tries to get you to root for the criminals as they are much more likeable than the “good guys”. There is really quite a bit to like about the film. There is certainly plenty of action and the idea that is the basis of the film is quite good. However, where the film fails for me is in the lack of character development. While we learn a little about Welles and Hernandez, we learn little about the team of criminals and their motivations. Too much of the film is devoted to showing them setting up the second heist rather than telling us who they are and what their motivation was for their criminal enterprise, other than the love of money.

I also found parts of the film to be a little too predictable. Rather than give it away, I will just say that the end of the film is pretty obvious about 10 to 15 minutes into the film. Takers was directed by John Luessenhop and written by Peter Allen, Gabriel Casseus, John Luessenhop and Avery Duff. The film also stars Paul Walker, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Michael Ealy, Idris Elba, Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, Johnathon Schaech, Nichloas Turturro, Zoe Saldana and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Overall, the film boasts a fine cast and is well acted. It is just the script and storytelling that falls a bit short of the mark for me. Rated as a rental only.

Video 

Overall, this is a very fine looking film which looks great on this Blu-ray release. The film features a rather stylized color palette which is all over the place in terms of color. Some scenes have a bit of a cool blueish tinge to them while others are skewed to the colors brown and gold. In some scenes, the colors are richly saturated and in others, a bit undersaturated. Black levels are consistent throughout the film and are deep and stable. Overall detail and in particular shadow detail is excellent, with fine facial and background details clearly visible.

The overall image of the film is sharp, clear and detailed with the exception of the some of the lower lit interior scenes which are just a tad on the soft side. There is some video noise visible in the night time shots but that is really kept to a minimum. On the whole, despite a couple of minor shortcomings, Takers looks great and Blu-ray and boasts a transfer that fans of the film should find quite pleasing.

Audio 

As good as the video presentation is, the audio may even be a tad better. The overall fidelity of the sound is quite good. The dialogue track is well recorded and well placed in the mix. What impressed me the most about the audio mix was the overall dynamics which is sensational.

If you love deep bass, there are several sequences in the film that will thrill you. Explosions simply rock the room. Listen to the thunderous bass as the armored vehicles fall into the hole blown in to the street. The same can be said for the audio of the gun battle near the end of the film which is, at times, simply deafening. Gun shots and explosions have a very lifelike sound and an excellent weight and impact.

The surrounds are used fairly aggressively throughout the film but fail to convey the sense of total immersion is characteristic of the very best sound mixes. In that sense, the mix here falls just a tad shot of the very best sounding films but is excellent in its own right and will certainly give your subwoofer a real workout at times.

Special Features 

Takers is a one disc release and contains little other than your standard bare bones extras and is rather pedestrian.

The extras include an audio commentary with director John Luessenhop, Producers Will Parker, Jason Geter and Tip “T.I.” Harris. Also included is a music video for “Yeah Ya Know” by T.I. Harris.

We also get two featurettes presented in high definition, including a behind the scenes look at the making of the film featuring interviews with the cast and crew aptly entitled “Executing the Heist: The Making of Takers” as well as a look at the making of the various action sequences in the film entitled “Take Action”.

The release also contains movieIQ+sync and is BD-Live enabled which enables you connect live to real time information about the cast, crew, music and trivia while watching the film. Other than a few previews of some other films available from Sony Pictures, that is all for the extras folks.

Final Thoughts 

While takers certainly has its moments, the lack of character development keeps the film from being a real keeper. Rated as a rental only.

Film 

The movie begins in 1978 where a group of five childhood friends win a junior high basketball championship. During the post game celebrations at a lake house their coach tells them to live their lives the way they played that game. Thirty years later those kids are Lenny (Adam Sandler), Eric (Kevin James), Rob (Rob Schneider), Marcus (David Spade), and Kurt (Chris Rock) and they have all gone their separate ways. That is until their coach “Buzzer” passes away and the group rents the lake house to honor his memory. Accompanying them are their families and its clear instantly that they have all chosen very different paths in life. The duration of the movie explores their relationships and the groups encounter with the team they beat in their childhood basketball game who of course challenge them to a rematch.

With a cast like this you really expect nonstop laughter; and anything less is really a disappointment. But even if I had low expectations of this movie I would still be disappointed. The humor was almost nonexistent; I mean sure there were a few parts that have you going but ultimately I was disappointed. I think Adam Sandler and Fred Wolf focused too much on trying to create character chemistry and forgot about the fact that this movie was advertised as a comedy.

The cast as a whole is mostly great; a lot of classic Saturday Night Live alumni in one movie is the initial draw. But then you realize that people like Rob Schneider who is barely palatable at his best, takes his redundancy to a whole new level. Honestly if the movie was just Adam Sandler and Kevin James I think they could have focused more on laughter than trying to deal with five people all vying to be the star. Instead what we get is a story that tries to be coming of middle age, nostalgic, and witty but falls very short.

In conclusion; I may have come across as completely harsh about this movie but it wasn’t all bad.  There are a few good one liners and while the story is pretty linear and predictable what do you expect from a proposed comedy. But that’s where the problem lied for me; with this movie it seemed like they tried too hard to make a decent story but fell completely short and forgot about doing comedy. Nonetheless I would still recommend watching it, but buying it is a different story.

Video  

Presented in 1080p 1.85:1 aspect ratio and encoded in MPEG-4, Grown Ups comes to Blu-ray with some slightly disappointing results.  The unrealistic looking color palette is what really disappointed me.  Instead of realistic flesh tones we are given overblown hues that actually makes skin textures look orange.  Other colors also look overly saturated and often cover up otherwise visible details.  That’s not to say that the picture looks soft, quite the opposite actually. For most of the movie the picture looks highly detailed and sharp.

Honestly considering how well this movie did at the box-office, I would have expected a bit more care taken in the video transfer.  As it stands we are given an average transfer for this release.

Audio 

Sony has included a 5.1 DTS HD audio track with the release of Grown Ups and like the video, it fails to impress.  Although a comedy, I would have liked to have the track open up a bit more.  The soundtrack does very little to enhance the film, but does give the needed boost to an otherwise flat presentation.

Dialogue is fortunately technically impressive, with a clear and crisp presentation free of any balancing issues.  This is by no means a bad sounding audio presentation.  Although flat at times, it is more the fault of the given material rather than the technical track.

Special Features 

Although on paper it looks like we are given quite a few special features with this release.  Unfortunately the features themselves are short and offer no real substance.

• Audio Commentary
• Laughing is Contagious
• Riff-O-Rama
• Dennis Dugan: Hands on Director
• The Lost Tapes of Norm MacDonald
• Outtakes & Deleted Scenes
• Busey and the Monkey
• Movie IQ

Final Thoughts 

The fact that this movie has such a decent cast really set the bar high, but I didn’t let that create a bias and I was legitimately disappointed. But there still were a few laughs to take from this movie, and just because it wasn’t a laugh out loud affair it made for a good family movie.  I would still recommend a rental, but do just that before purchasing it because I have a feeling you might be a little disappointed. However, despite the film itself not being the greatest the audio and video transfers were quite adequate so for those of you fans of the movie I think you’ll find this disc worth purchasing.
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Film 

To say that I enjoyed this film would be an understatement. The film is essentially a John Hughes style 1980′s teen comedy based on the classic book, The Scarlet Letter. The John Hughes homage is made clear by the fact that several of his films are mention in the film itself, with clips from Ferris Buller’s Day off and 16 Candles shown in the film. The plot is fairly simple.

The film stars Emma Stone as Olive Pendergast who lies to a friend about losing her virginity (noted as her “V” card ) in the film to a totally made up college freshman on a weekend of debauchery which in reality was spent in her room at home alone. The problem was that Olive’s conversation with her friend occurred in the ladies’ room at school who was overheard by two students, one of them a holy roller and leaders of a Christian student’s group of students at the school ( the real Ojai High School in California) who did the very un-Christian thing of telling her friends what she heard at school which spread like wild fire.

Rather than telling the truth and facing up, Olive embraced the mantle of school harlot, going as far as wearing suggestive clothing and wearing a scarlet A on her top. Olive, being a true entrepreneur, sees an opportunity to make a few bucks by agreeing to act as though she was having sex with other students to boost their reputation at school and in the case of one, convincing the rest of the school that he was not actually gay.

Needless to say, this whole ruse backfires when Olive is asked out on a date by a student who thinks she will actually give in to his desires. How she chooses to rebuild her reputation is as creative as the film itself. There will no doubt be a few who may be a bit put off by the anti religious tone of the film as the devout Christians in the film are portrayed in a rather bad light as condescending and for one, totally hypocritical.

I found the film to be very funny and revealing about life in a modern day high school and informative to boot as I have two boys in high school. Emma Stone is excellent in her role as Olive. Just as good were Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s parents, Dill and Rosemary (get it? Olive, Dill and Rosemary?) who, in a word are a riot as her quirky parents. The film was directed by Will Gluck and was written by Bert V. Royal. The film also co-stars Dan Byrd as the gay student who wishes to be thought of as straight, Malcolm McDowell as the school principal, Thomas Hayden Church as a teacher and Lisa Kudrow as his school counselor wife.

This film is totally original, very funny and a very enjoyable and fast paced film. Even as a grizzled middle aged male, I can highly recommend this film for those of all ages. By all means get and enjoy it. You will be glad you did. Highly recommended.

Video 

There is a lot to like about the video presentation of Easy A on this release. The film features a nice bright and at times bold looking color palette. While the film is certainly pleasing looking, the color palette is skewed to gold, with skin tones especially noticeable for their goldish-orange look. However, the whole film has this rather stylized look. I can only assume that the director wanted the film to have to golden tinge of that Ojai sunshine.

For the most part, detail is outstanding, with skin textures and clothing textures clearly visible. However, if I have an issue with the visuals here, it would be with the black level which is wildly inconsistent. Exterior daytime shots look great with deep blacks. Interior and some night time shots can at times look downright awful with blacks that are at best, gray. The film is also speckled with webcam footage and snippets of John Hughes films which are grainy and murky. While most of the film looks great, the black level issues are just enough of an issue for me to drop the overall grade for the video presentation to a 4 star out of 5 rating.

Audio 

I was not expecting to be bowled over by the audio design here and as such, was not disappointed. This is your fairly typical teen comedy audio design. The audio is rather front heavy with the lack of much in the way of real dynamics. The dialogue track is well recorded and well placed in the mix and always intelligible. The overall audio fidelity is quite nice, sounding smooth and open. The music score also sounds quite nice as well although I can do without using the surrounds for the musical score. The surrounds are used occasionally for room ambiance and some sound effects in addition to the music but for the most part, this is a front heavy mix. All in all, the sound design is appropriate for a film of this type.

Special Features 

The extras included with this release are rather mundane. They include a gag reel as well as the webcam footage that Emma Stone shot are the request of Will Gluck as part of te auditioning process. The extras also include an audio commentary with Will Gluck and Emma Stone.

Also included with the extras are several featurettes:

• “The Making of Easy A” which provides a behind the scenes look at the making of the film with interviews with the cast and crew.

• “The School of Pop Culture: The Movies of the Eighties” where the cast and crew discuss the John Hughes teen comedies of the 1980′s.

• “The Vocabulary of Hilarity” where members of the cast and crew discuss the origins of some of the rather inventive language used in the film, such as the aforementioned “V Card”.

We also get a Pop Up trivia track as well as movieIQ+sync. The release is also BD-Live enabled. All-in-all, the extras are rather nondescript and only mildly interesting.

Final Thoughts 

Easy A is a gem of a film and is well worth your time and is highly recommended.

Film 

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky tells the story of the real life affair that took place between one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers, Igor Stravinksy and Coco Chanel, of Chanel fame. The story is set in Paris from 1913 through the 1920′s.

Coco Chanel is something of an original, a very successful business woman and patron of the arts as well as a bit of a seductress who takes an immediate interest in Stravinsky, in more ways than one. Her intentions are made clear from the start in the way she looks at him. She must have him sexually and even goes so far as to invite Stravinsky’s ill wife and their children to live with her at her country estate, under the guise that it would be a better place for him to compose his music and would afford better air for his wife who has some sort of lung ailment. The real reason for the move was as that she could isolate him and manipulate him into an affair, which she sets out to do.

The film contains several graphic sexual scenes which are almost soft core porn. The balance of the film focuses on their relationship and the effect that it is having on Igor as well as his wife. The film really plays Coco out as the villain, a vain woman who uses people in her life and then discards them, without ever establishing an emotional bond. Igor is by far the most pathetic character in the film, as he is aware of what she is doing to him and his family and is unable to stop, perhaps because it is having a positive effort on his composing.

While the film has an interesting concept at its core, I found the film to be rather ponderous and slow paced and rather uninteresting. Once you get through the introductions of the characters and the settings, there really isn’t much there to like. I would score this in the opportunities missed category and would rate it as a rental and a tepid rating at that.

Video 

The video is a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the film is rather soft, especially the dimly lit interiors in Paris. Detail in those scenes is rather weak. The rest of the film looks quite nice, with a nice and natural color palette, nice levels of detail and a sharp image. In addition to the overall softness of the image, I also had an issue with the blacks here where are crushed to death. There is little if any shadow detail visible in the dimly lit scenes where faces and images drop right off into total darkness. While the film does have its moments visually, I am sure than many will find it to be too soft for their tastes. While I have rated the overall score as a 4, I must state that is just barely qualifies for that score. In our rating system here, I have to choose between a 4 and a 3.5. Somewhere in the middle would seem just about right.

Audio 

I must say that I was a bit disappointed with the overall audio on this release. It terms of fidelity, the sound is quite nice. The real winner here is the musical score and the opening performance at the Theater Des Champs-Elysees, where the music has excellent imaging and transparency, deep bass and a smooth and open sound. The dialogue track, most in French with some Russian and English thrown in, is well recorded and well placed in the mix. Where the audio fails for me is the lack of use of the surrounds where are not used as aggressively as I would have liked, resulting in a sound field which is just too front heavy for my taste. The overall fidelity of the recorded sound is just good enough to pick up the overall score to a 4 star rating. As was the case with the video, the audio barely reaches that level.

Special Features 

The only real extra presented here is a making of featuerette which is presented in widescreen standard definition mostly in French with English subtitles. I found the featurette to be rather disjointed and uninteresting, looking like it was thrown together at the last minute for this release. I wouldn’t recommend you spending much time with it.

Final Thoughts 

An opportunity missed is how I would sum up this film in terms of the film itself as well as the audio and video presentations. Rated as a lukewarm rental at best.

Film 

OK, I will admit it upfront, I am a little biased here in regards to The Natural. I am a life long baseball fan and just loved this film when it was released way back in 1984. Along with Field of Dreams, it is one of my favorite sports themed films of all time.

Based on the book of the same name and in part on the real life story of former Phillies and Cubs first baseman, Eddie Waitkus, The Natural stars Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs, as gifted a baseball player one could find who is shot by a crazed women in black (Barbara Hershey) in a hotel in Chicago where he has traveled for his tryout with the Cubs in 1923. He spends the next 16 in exile until he is signed to play for the woeful New York Knights in the National League. He arrives in New York in 1939 as a late thirties rookie, with nothing but the clothes he is wearing and his bat named Wonderboy, which he made out the wood from the tree under which his fathered died after a heart attack, which was later struck by lightning.

The Knights manager, Pops Fisher (Wilford Brimley), didn’t take kindly to the thought of Roy Hobbs, thinking that he was a joke, foisted upon him by the team’s co-owner known as The Judge, who was locked in a fight for the ownership of the team with Pops and who wanted the team to fail for his own selfish reasons. However, once Pops was able to see Roy hit his truly tape measure home runs in batting practice, it wasn’t long before Roy Hobbs was the team’s right fielder and something of national star.

Roy is smashing homers left and right and is leading the team to the top of the league, only to be sidetracked with a love affair with a women (Kim Bassinger) who has a clear ulterior motive. Roy is not set back on the right tracks until he comes across his old flame (Glenn Close) in Chicago when she comes to see him at a game at Wrigley Field. Just as the Knights were about to take the pennant, Roy is struck down and unable to play due to a stomach condition that was related to his old gunshot wounds. Will he risk his life and play in the winner take all playoff game to save the team for Pops? What do you think?

The Natural is a truly excellent film which captures the look and sounds of the game from way back when, with beautiful cinematography, and features a story that is based on the tales of ancient mythology of hubris and redemption. It is beautifully written and acted and was a true joy to experience all over again on Blu-ray and is highly recommended.

Video 

Overall, this is a great looking film. The encode here retains the very film like texture of the film, without even a hint of the application of digital noise reduction or edge enhancement. Film grain is consistent throughout and the film has the same warm look that I recall ( or think I recall!) when I saw the film in the theater all those years ago. I just loved the way light is captured by the cinematographer, from the more stark looking nighttime baseball action, to the golden glow of daytime baseball and to the golden hues when Roy would play catch with his father in the wheat fields of his native midwest.

If I would have one quibble with the look if the film it would be in the inconsistent level of detail and clarity from scene to scene. The actual baseball action looks excellent for example, with great levels of detail and clarity. An example would be the fine details in the wool flannel uniforms and hats worn by the players, with the fine texture of the fabric visible during both close-ups and more distant shots.

The scenes in the rest of the film are rather soft, resulting in less facial detail, background detail and clarity than the rest of the film. Don’t get me wrong, this is how the film is supposed to look and these scenes look sumptuous in their own right, but lack the deep blacks, clarity and detail that one would expect from a film with a 5 star video rating for example. I loved the look of the film on this Blu-ray release which is completely true to the look of the film that I recall experiencing in the theater and have little doubt that fans of the film will be more than pleased with the video quality on this release.

Audio 

I must admit that I was a a bit surprised by the sound quality here which was much better than I had anticipated, especially given the age of the film. The quality of the audio is obvious from the opening scene with Roy at the train station. One can clearly hear the train as it approaches from well off the left side of the screen until it rumbles and I mean really rumbles across the front of the room with exceptional levels of sonic reality. Overall, the film has excellent levels of dynamics and deep bass, from the sound of the ball off the bat, to the ball hitting the seats, light towers and the clock at Wrigley Field along with the crackle of lightning.

The surrounds are also used rather aggressively during the entire film to create a nice sense of immersion, especially during the baseball sequences, but even during interior scenes, creating a very realistic sense of room acoustics. The overall level of fidelity is excellent as well characterized by a smooth and open sound with very nice depth. Randy Newman’s score sounds sensational throughout the film. The dialogue track is also well recorded and well placed in the mix. Overall, this is a great sounding film and is one that will thrill fans of the film. I know it did me.

Special Features 

In addition to enjoying the film, I also enjoyed the extras immensely which I found to be really informative. The extras include a making of featurette “When Lightning Strikes: Creating the Natural” which details the original novel, assembling the team that made the film and the shooting of the baseball action sequences. Also included is a featurette entitled “Clubhouse Conversations” in which Bob Costas, George Will, Don Mattingly and others discuss their love of the game of baseball in general and the film in particular.

My two favorite extras “A Natural Gunned Down: The Stalking of Eddie Waikus” and “knights in Shining Armor: The Mythology of The Natural”. The former tells the true story of the staking and shooting of Phillies’ first baseman Eddie Waitkus in a Chicago hotel room in 1949, with interviews with a historian as well as Ediie Waitkus’ son. The latter points of the various elements of Greek mythology featured in the film, from the names of the characters to the timeless themes of failure and redemption featured in the film as well as the references to King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. Very interesting and thought provoking stuff.

The extras also included some very short featurettes entitled Extra Innings which detail elements of the film such as the slow motion techniques used and the creating of the film’s uniforms among others as well as a short film entitled “Heart of The Natural”. All are well worth a look.

Final Thoughts 

In short, The Natural is a great film that sports fans as well well as non fans should find appealing. It looks and sounds great on Blu-ray and is packed with many interesting and informative extras and is well worth your time. Highly recommended.

Film 

Replacing Terry O’Quinn, the original stepfather, is Dylan Walsh, whom some people will know from the television show Nip/Tuck, but I will always remember as Dr. Peter Elliot, the scientist who sang California Dreamin’ to a talking monkey in Congo. He had big shoes to fill, but he does a fairly decent job with it. Unfortunately, he’s the best part of an otherwise boring slasher film apparently aimed for a pre-teen audience.  The “Unrated Director’s Cut” included in this Blu-ray seems identical to the version I watched in the theater.

Admittedly, the movie is a mild improvement over the Prom Night remake. It has a great deal more character development than Prom Night which comes with the territory, since the original story was a character study and an examination of the presumed sanctity of the family. Still, the movie makes too many bad choices. None more obvious than the changing of the heroine played by Jill Schoelen, my favorite 80’s scream queen, to a male character. It was far more suspenseful and scary imagining this psychopath at the head of a table full of woman.  The new movie features  Penn Badgley as the other “man of the house` and he honestly looks like he could handle himself leading up to the movie`s shockingly anti -climatic ending.

There have been far worst remakes like the previously mentioned Prom Night or the atrocious The Fog., but there have been much better too. Look no further than this year`s incredible The Last House on the Left, to see how you can take a popular horror favorite and make it relevant today and even better than it`s predecessor. This movie is an afternoon time waster at best and would probably only appeal to the younger set looking for scares who can`t get into the more commonly rated 18A horror movies

Video

The Stepfather’s video comes at us in its original aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and uses MPEG-4 AVC 1080p codec. The picture quality is quite clean and bright. There’s good detail in the transfer and image is sharp as well.

I found myself thinking the film looked quite polished with little visible grain and warm colors. However this is a horror film… I don’t necessarily want to see picture perfect images throughout. A grungy color palette and some low light shots would fit perfectly, but instead we get something that looks like an episode of CSI: Miami at times.

I can’t complain about the transfer though I think that overall it’s very well done with no artifacts or distractions, however the cinematography choices of the film (which I attribute to the Picture Quality) are very inconsistent to the subject matter of the film.

Audio 

The Stepfather ‘s audio comes at us in DTS-HD 5.1 surround, which is my favourite codec due to the versatility of the sounds it can produce. Whether it’s an action packed thrill ride with explosions and robots or a horror film where every eccentricity of the score is authentically produced in a manner to efficiently raise the hairs on your neck.

The Stepfather’s mix is underwhelming, which seems to be the running theme with this release. The dialogue doesn’t come through the mix that well and it feels like the foley and score are all overbearing, not to mention front heavy with little to no surround. To top it off sometimes the sounds overlap poorly causing some distractingly noticeable seams in the mix.

Although most of my complaints with the technical qualities are a bit nit-picky, I feel that for a film that’s this disappointing, then it better have great A/V specs to make up for a rental. I will go out on a limb and watch a sub-par film if the viewing experience is going to be enjoyable… Transformers comes to mind.

Special Features 

The special features included in the release are basic and considering my overall feelings towards the film, there should’ve been more interesting features to keep my interest. A commentary track that feels like even the director and stars (Nelson McCormick, Dylan Walsh, & Penn Badgley) realize no one will listen to is very boring and forces you to watch the film again… yikes. There’s also two behind-the-scenes featurettes about the making of the film and the stunts involved in the film as well as a “gag” reel that fails to live up to its name.

Besides some trailers and movieIQ the special features are underwhelming, much like the film itself.

Final Thoughts 

The film is pretty lame, the audio/video presentation is decent and the amount of special features doesn’t make up for the aforementioned. If you’re a fan of the original or just a horror buff who’s looking for a new film to watch, instead of renting this film I would suggest just going out and watching the original again. One good thing to come out of this remake is the welcome arrival of the original cult classic on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time ever.