Movie Reviews By Chancellor

[chancellor]

DARK WATER (2005) DVD



My thoughts of the movie:
Actually I shall start reviews with Dark Water, the U.S version with my childhood favorite actors Jennifer Connelly. Movie is directed by Walter Salles who's actually pretty unknown person to me, but overall I didn't have nothing to complain about his directing, he doned a good job. I haven't seen the original Dark Water by Hideo Nakata, but I shall check that later on, so sorry about that. The people who have seen movies like The Ring and Grudge knows what to expect from this one, since this movie has the same kinda feel to it. The kinda movie that tries to appeal under your skin with psychological way. Well did it work, you might ask? I have to say yes and no. The reason for both opinions is that I just knew what to expect and so it didn't blow my mind the ways it could have. You kinda already know what's gonna happend, atleast I knew, since the similar style of Japanese horrors, there's no shocking mind blowing ends that take your socks up to the roof. Dark Water is merely a drama than horror, since horror is too heavy genre to mark this. You could also say it's a thriller, but that also feels a bit too exciting stamp for this movie, so how could I put it. It's a psychological drama, yeah that's it. The cast for this movie is well choosed, with Jennifer Connely as lead actress, Tim Roth makes a nice role and Pete Postlethwaite carries always the class as being the same familiar himself. The lenght of this movie was about 100 minutes and I have to admit at some point I had to check how much to go more, since it kinda dragged in some scenes. I really liked the beginning of this movie and you're on your toes the first half, but when it starts to happend in the end, it ends before you'll know it. The same has happened with other so called horror flicks also. Some might say it's art of filmmaking, but I kinda felt I was left half empty half full glass. I remember when Sixth Sense came I was quite surprised by it's end and very pleased with it back then, not sure if I would like it nowadays, but the kinda "whoa, I couldn't have quessed" was really missing and this movie will be forgotten pretty quickly. The plot of this movie in simple was "A mother and daughter, still wounded from a bitter custody dispute, hole up in a run-down apartment building. Adding further drama to their plight, they are targeted by the ghost of former resident". The movie was filmed nicely, ugly apartments and buildings really made it feel dirty and the very dark toned. The kinda reason that pulled me to watch this movie was Jennifer Connelly, since I'm a big fan of her and she pulled it nicely once again. No complains about the rest of the cast either. Overall a decent movie.

Dvd Video Quality:
I watched this movie with projector and the dvd was Widescreen 2.35:1 (anamorfic) and it looked decent. The 2.35 fits just perfect my screen, so I didn't have to make alterations to settings. The dark tones of black and gray gave a really good gloomy feeling this film and I was quite pleased it video quality in many ways. It surely could have been better, but not as bad as I thought in advance. I don't know how this looks on Lcd/Plasma tv's, but I wouldn't get hopes too high. Decent quality overall.

Dvd Audio Quality:
Well, the music was composed by the great Angelo Badalamenti, but I think this time he didn't succeed as he has often times. If I'll try to remember the music of this movie now I cannot think anything of it really. It was presented in the usual 5.1 Dolby and didn't actually give much to go with. Audio was pretty lame overall and surely they could have made it more exciting with different balance in the mix, but we'll have to see in future if we'll get a HD version of this with Dolby Plus sounds with different kinda mix, might happend might not. There is already a Blu-ray disc of this movie, but that has the same Dolby audio as DVD, so you might wanna check on that mainly from the better picture point of view. Overall better audio on this disc than video quality I could say. Nothing spectacular on audio department.

Dvd Extras:
As the movie was what it was, I didn't bother to check the extras. I usually check the extras if the movie is good and extras seem interesting, but this time and at this moment I'll pass. So I cannot say how much quality there's in extras, but I'll review it from amount of point of view this time. Anyhow here's what it includes.
> The Making Stories Of Dark Water
> The Sound Of Terror
> Extraordinary Ensemble
> Deleted Scenes
> Analyzing Dark Water Sequences
> Interactive Bathroom Scene

Overall Dvd Rates:
The movie: 7 / 10
The picture: 6 / 10
The audio: 7 / 10
The extras: 7 / 10

[chancellor]

BLACK RAIN (1989) HD DVD



“There’s a war going on here, and they don’t take prisoners.”

My thoughts of the movie:
After Michael Douglas doned success in movies like Fatal Attraction directed by Adrian Lyne and Wall Street by Oliver Stone it was time to team up with Ridley Scott. I must admit that I adore Ridley Scott and he's directed such great classics as Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator to mention few. Not the kinda director to makes lots of movies, but when he does, he does it with such a grace using visual style & dedication to the film. There's one another director who's approach is alike, James Cameron, not many movies, but the ones he doned were superb. Anyhow this movie plot is that two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. In Japan, however, he manages to escape. As they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game the Japanese way. The other cast includes Andy Garcia who's such a great actor, Kate Capshaw (Steven Spielberg's wife) perhaps best known from Indiana Jones and the temple of doom and Ken Takakura "The Japanese Clint Eastwood" as his nickname. He's very known actor in Japan and has doned like 200 films on his career. So the cast is pretty nice and director is topnotch. Not many people remember that this movie was nominated for 2 Oscars back in 1990 for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing and Best Sound. It also won Best Foreign Language Film in Japan, but in U.S it was blaimed to be a racist film with bad image of Japanese people, so because of it's negative image many people missed this movie. Actually a shame since this movie is a great buddy cop movie, with intense action, good photography, visual style, acting, music and directing. Most underrated film I must say. So how did I eventually dig up this movie if it was so underrated and not very famous. Well, when this movie hitted on vhs rental in 1990 my parents picked it up because it had their favorite actor Michael Douglas in it. I was like 8 then and the same movie freek as nowadays and wanted to see the film. Ofcourse my parents sent me to my room since it was Rated R movie, but I sneaked out of my room and saw a few clips of it. Like the horrible scene where head gets chopped off, but ofcourse after seeing Alien at age of 6 with my cousins it wasn't that shocking anymore. I was merely excited back then, hahah . Anyhow I have seen this movie like 20 times and owned all formats available, so no wonder I had to get HD DVD version, but to be honest I was surprised that they released a HD DVD so quickly of this film. Very surprised...

Dvd Video Quality:
All I can say is WOW! The dvd was something awful to look at and always felt so disappointed with it's quality, but they hitted a jackpot this time. As the movie is so very visual, it's excellent movie as on High Definition. All the neon city lights and various colors of this movie looks so amazing that it's blows my mind. After watching 4 Hd discs, this one has the best video quality so far and the fans of this film will be in heavens and those who suffered the dvd's misery. There's also a little downside to this High def image, since it shows Michael Douglas aging in kinda a bad way, all the wrinkles, bare tired face and so on. So HD may not the best thing for actors, since so much detail is revealed. If some actors curse this HD, all I can say is "no wonder!". For viewers this is fresh and exciting thing, since you get a some of what a new experince of old movies, in many ways. Overall a very good transfer on this nearly 20 years old movie.

Dvd Audio Quality:
This HD continues on successful path. The audio on this disc is so awesome and there's even two excellent options to choose from. There's Dolby 6.1 DTS and Dolby 5.1 Ex Plus and when there's incredible score by Hans Zimmer (my idol) it surely works 100 %. In the old dvd you couldn't hear the awesome score well enough, because it was mixed so low, but now the audience can hear the both the soundtrack and score so nicely. There's even background songs that I didn't know to exist and it adds this fresh experience and you feel like the disc is worth 30 $. As the movie was nominated in sound effects and sound now you'll now why for the first time ever. Such a great audio on this disc that the walls were almost falling from a gun shot. Big Winner on Hd audio's so far. You could think that Apollo 13 could have a superb audio, but this was far better than that.

Dvd Extras:
Finally some extras on this movie.There's commentary by director Ridley Scott, Black Rain The Script, The Cast, Making The Film: Part 1, Making The Film: Part 2, Black Rain Post - Production and Theatrical Trailer HD. All extras were interesting, Post Production as being the most interesting perhaps. The extras show how hard this movie was to made, because of the filming rights in Japanese cities. The reason why so many Japanese movies are filmed in country is because of these legal issues. By the way one thing that's missing is that the original movie ran 2h 40 minutes (2h now), so where's the missing scenes. I believe we're gonna see a extended version in the future. The menus are animated with bounding Hans Zimmer's score on the background. Very cool I must say and the interactive menus work so nicely once again.

Overall HD Dvd Rates:
The movie: 9 / 10
The picture: 9 / 10
The audio: 9 / 10
The extras: 8 / 10

[Darth Valrum]

I understand that your doing this about 2 different movies, but you shouldnt have back to back posts. Click the modify button and fix that, or just from the start post both in one post.

[Lord Brama]

Palps. No need for that.

I am now telling you to modify the posts. You are not supposed to make back to back posts like that.

Also I deleted your last post in here.