Close Encounters of the Third KindMost sci-fi films keep everything in sharp focus to wow you with effects, but Steven Spielberg used a more impressionistic style in this 1977 ordinary-guy-meets-the-aliens saga. The backgrounds are often blurred—check out the power-plant scene—and yet they translate beautifully in hi-def. The Blu-ray release has three versions of the film: the original theatrical release, an effects-boosted special edition and the director’s cut.
The Third ManIf you think only color pictures can benefit from hi-def treatment, think again: This latest version of Carol Reed’s 1949 film is breathtaking. Check out the extraordinary detail in the shots of Vienna’s Riesenrad Ferris wheel, where Joseph Cotten’s hero Holly Martins confronts seductive villain Harry Lime (Orson Welles).
LOOK FOR: The film’s silvery, lustrous feel, which comes from the highly flammable nitrate film it was shot on. “With black-and-white transfers, you want to keep that luminous quality,” Kline says.
The Godfather TrilogyDirector Francis Ford Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis spent 18 months on this HD restoration. The team’s decision to recreate the Technicolor look—including the film grain of the first two pictures—was controversial. But look at Michael Corleone’s Italian-restaurant revenge scene in the first picture and you’ll see the atmosphere is perfect.
LOOK FOR: Detail in dark areas, one of the marks of a good transfer. “People see all those subtleties,” says Lee Kline, technical director at Criterion. “They just don’t know it.” Too much digital editing makes shadows look crushed.
2001: A Space OdysseyStanley Kubrick’s 1968 epic offers a stunning array of visual and aural environments, from “The Dawn of Man” sequence to astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman’s eerie bedroom. HD can’t replicate the original 70 mm film (yet), but this Blu-ray still rates as home theater’s ultimate trip.
The Wild BunchThe HD transfer of Sam Peckinpah’s galvanic 1969 film captures all the grit and gorgeousness of the West in exquisite detail—your mouth almost gets dry from all the dust the horses kick up. The quick cuts, shifts from regular to slow motion and spurting blood of the film’s finale—one of cinema’s most virtuosic gun battles—are rendered with a celluloid-like solidity. A less accomplished transfer would have given the viewer motion sickness.
No Country For Old MenThe devil is in the details of this 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. The opening shots of a depopulated desert, the murder-scene scuff marks on a police station’s linoleum floor and every weird strand in murderer Anton Chigurh’s haircut are staggeringly vivid. Composer Carter Burwell’s eerie, insinuating soundscapes—often just the soft desert wind—are reproduced beautifully here as well.
Blade RunnerThis pristine digital rendering of Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking sci-fi thriller, which follows a world-weary police specialist who tracks and eliminates a group of genetically manufactured replicants, corrects a couple of long-cited gaffes—it’s now actress Joanna Cassidy, not a stuntman in a wig, who gets taken down by Harrison Ford—and adds polish to the special effects without compromising the movie’s noir tones. If you had to name one disc that would justify the Blu-ray format, this is it.
LOOK FOR: Film grain that moves. A good transfer, Kline says, will smooth grain, not eliminate it completely. In lazy transfers, grain is static and looks more like pixels or gauze.
Shine a LightMartin Scorsese’s 2008 chronicle of an intimate New York performance by the Rolling Stones flexes all the muscles of your home theater. Viewers can count the multiple lines on axman Keith Richards’s face and discern the gauge of his strings; the incredible surround sound pops, particularly during a jam with blues legend Buddy Guy.
The Last EmperorDirector Bernardo Bertolucci’s films are known for their colorful visual style, and this sweeping but surprisingly poetic epic of modern Chinese history has been given one of the most gorgeous hi-def renditions ever by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. On earlier VHS and DVD releases, the colors of Beijing’s Forbidden City wavered like mad.
LOOK FOR: More accurate colors. Some, such as reds and blues, are hard to reproduce in the video world. But according to Kline, hi-def hues are getting closer to real-life shades thanks to a wider color space, which allows for more saturation and accuracy.
Wall-EThis hi-def disc of Pixar’s imaginative film—about a trash-compaction robot who leads humans back to Earth after 700 years in space—is almost indistinguishable from the theatrical version. Expert digital compression has rendered details without distortion, revealing Wall-E’s futuristic Earth covered in ironic trash.
The Bourne UltimatumThe deliberately unpolished-looking cinematography, whiplash-inducing camera movement and punch-in-the-face cutting of the third Bourne flick can look a real mess on home video, with one varying-focus shot slamming into another, resulting in an indistinct blur. That's not the case on the Blu-ray version—this disc nails the style.
The Adventures of Baron MunchausenTerry Gilliam's whimsical 1989 adventure-fantasy boasts special effects that have a cockeyed handmade quality to them—increasingly rare stuff in the post-CGI world. Proudly loud and garishly colorful, the disc renders all the film's peculiar hues, from the green cheesiness of Robin Williams's King of the Moon to the angry red of Oliver Reed's raging Vulcan, with an accuracy almost impossible in standard-definition NTSC.
The Adventures of Robin HoodThe picture in this 1938 granddaddy of all period action-adventure films captures both the vibrancy and delicacy of Technicolor in its heyday. The detailing is fantastic: Check out the embroidery on Olivia deHavilland's gown (she plays Maid Marian) in the scene of Prince John's banquet. Of course, detail has its downside: The felled stag Errol Flynn's Robin carries across his shoulders when he crashes that party is clearly revealed as a work of taxidermy, but that doesn't detract from the fun of this classic.
BullittThis 1968 thriller's car chase scene, in which Steve McQueen revs through a series of hairpin turns and dizzying ascents and descents in pursuit of some shotgun-toting baddies in a Dodge Charger, is still a high-water mark of action film. The high-def disc really gets the moody and, yes, sometimes grainy quality of William Fraker's cinematography. It looks like the film would have looked in its time, projected under optimum conditions—but that has no bearing on the chase, which looks and sounds great. The action's distinct, nearly palpable.
Crimson TideDirector Tony Scott (Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, Man On Fire) always nails the tech state-of-the-art with each of his pictures, and this 1995 thriller is no exception: It's admired for its slick but incredibly compelling depiction of life inside a nuclear sub. Scott's direction combines the claustrophobic with the panoramic, and when the sub goes on red alert, the Blu-ray picture is as crisp and clear as it's been the whole time—no blur or diffusion. State-of-the-art movie, state-of-the-art disc.
Independence DayEvery high-definition film library needs a title with a ÒkaboomÓ factor to it, and this sci-fi not-quite-apocalypse—featuring the lavishly simulated destructions of Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Los Angeles and various and sundry other world capitals—fits the bill very nicely. Every fireball and exploding building has the eye-popping, floor-shaking impact of a theatrical viewing.
The Nightmare Before ChristmasThe depth of this high-def version of Tim Burton's delightfully twisted stop-motion animated Christmas carol is truly startling—in the hilariously supercute realm of Santa Claus, you're almost tempted to reach out and catch a snowflake. And Burton's typically wide-ranging color palette—from goth grays and browns to almost psychedelic pinks and greens—comes off fantastically.
A Passage to IndiaMaster director David Lean's final film is most likely not the first film movie fans would have preferred to see on Blu-ray. How about, you know, Lawrence of Arabia? Maybe The Bridge on the River Kwai? We'll have to wait for those, but that's hardly a reason to pass up the Blu-ray of this 1984 adaptation of the famed E.M. Forster novel. The disc captures magnificent landscapes (crucial scenes are set in India's Marabar caves) and potent picture details with equal acuity.
Sleeping BeautyThe incredible color and detail of the standard-definition DVDs of this classic Disney animation is the result of a very particular process, in which each of the color separation negatives are scanned, frame by frame. Disney chose one of its most innovative later cartoon features for its first high-def rendering of classic animation: 1959's Sleeping Beauty boasts some of the most elaborate, sophisticated designs in the Disney canon, as well as some spectacular effects. It's safe to say that you and your kids have never seen animation look like this before.
The ThingThis raucous 1982 remake of the 1951 classic The Thing from Another World is an inspired variation on the original and boasts some of the most innovative, disgusting and borderline hilarious special effects of its time. The high-def disc of John Carpenter's tension generator captures all the gory details of blood-dripping sinew; better still, it reproduces the enveloping blacks of the film's most suspenseful scenes with none of the distracting artifacts caused by sloppy compression.
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