Evans Above

Paramount has released the psychological horror film Smile on 4K and I had a chance to take a look. Written and directed by first-time feature director Parker Finn, it’s based on Finn’s 2020 short film Laura Hasn’t Slept.

Sosie Bacon plays a therapist who witnesses the suicide of a patient and begins to suffer from hallucinations that she begins to believe are supernatural. The movie also stars Kyle Gallner, Rob Morgan, Kal Penn, Caitlin Stasey and Jessie T. Usher.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with HDR10 and Dolby Vision is presented in a 2.00:1 aspect ratio. The image has excellent clarity with a stunning amount of detail in facial features, hair, textiles and environments. The colour palette is somewhat muted and fits in with what the characters are going through. The HDR colour grading makes for bright whites, while the black levels are deep with no loss of detail in the shadows.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby Atmos soundtrack (which folds back to Dolby TrueHD 7.1) as well as French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Turkish. Horror films are perfect for modern soundscapes and the height and surround speakers will immerse you in every knock, bang, crunch and other terrifying noises you can think of. Dialogue is clear and centred.

The 4K disc of Smile also comes with a digital code. Extras include commentary by writer/director Finn, a look at Smile’s adaptation from short to feature, the aforementioned short, a look at the film’s score and deleted scenes.

Fans of horror will be rewarded by the Smile 4K and it’s excellent audio and video presentations.

The raunchy and lovable quartet of Kyle, Kenny, Stan and Cartman return for two more specials in the Paramount Blu-ray release of South Park: Post Covid, which includes that title and the follow-up Post Covid: The Return of Covid. These roughly one-hour South Park specials take us into the future where our boys are now adults dealing with new realities like Kenny being a scientist and Cartman being a rabbi. Time may have passed, but that trademark South Park humour is still there. I had a chance to take a look.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. As per usual the animation presents us with bold colours and good details that really shine in the Blu-ray format.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH. Dialogue and music are clear and the surrounds are give a nice workout with action cues and atmosphere.

This release does not contain a digital code and there are no bonus materials.

With solid video and audio, fans of South Park will want to add the South Park: Post Covid Blu-ray to their collection.

Audiences will be familiar with Jack Reacher character either through the novels by author Lee Child or the two movies that starred Tom Cruise. The new Reacher series goes back to the beginning for the character and is based on Child’s book The Killing Floor. Paramount has released the eight episodes of Reacher Season One on Blu-ray and I had a chance to look.

Reacher, played by Alan Ritchson, is a retired military police officer who finds himself arrested for murder in a rural Georgia town. Released, he begins an investigation that leads to a web of corrupt police, politicians and businessmen. The series cast includes Malcolm Goodwin , Willa Fitzgerald, Chris Webster, Bruce McGill and Maria Sten.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 2.00:1 aspect ratio. It’s a clear and sharp image with excellent detail in facial features, textiles and environments. The colour palette ranges from popping primaries to more muted tones with bright whites. The black levels are deep and satisfying with no real loss of detail in the shadows and darker scenes. This is a very good video presentation.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack as well as French and German Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, and German. It’s a great track. Your surrounds will be filled with everything from ambient noises to action sound effects. Your subwoofer will add satisfying bass to both the score and the action, while dialogue is clear and centred.

The three-disc Blu-ray set does not come with a digital code. There are a couple of featurettes exploring the character and the production.

Well-acted and with great video and audio, the Reacher Season One Blu-ray is a good intro to the series.

Paramount and Nickelodeon are releasing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Series on DVD and I had a chance to take a look. This release is of the computer-animated series that ran for five seasons between 2012 and 2017. It features the voice talents of Jason Biggs, Dominic Catrambone, Seth Green, Rob Paulsen, Sean Astin, Greg Cipes, Hoon Lee and Mae Whitman.

The 124 episodes are spread over 20 discs and housed in a large plastic case that allows this collection to also be used to work on your bicep curls. The DVDs are presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The show was an HD broadcast, so you might be asking why this 10th anniversary set wasn’t released on Blu-ray. I’ve said this before with DVD releases: it boils down to numbers. The shows that tend to get Blu-ray releases are very popular shows with a rabid fanbase. If Paramount knew this would fly off the shelves, there’d be a Blu-ray. So DVD it is. The 20 disc set gives the 22 minute episodes room to breathe, so the DVD presentation isn’t suffering from bad compression. The animation looks fine here.

On the audio side, the set comes with an English 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack. Only disc two comes with French and Spanish stereo tracks. The dialogue is clear and centred, the music sounds good, and effects play around in your surrounds.

If you’re a fan of the 2012 series, you’ll want to grab a pizza and add the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Series DVD to your collection.

Now in its fourth season, Star Trek: Discovery finds Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the crew taking on the Dark Matter Anomaly, which threatens the whole universe. Paramount has released Star Trek: Discovery – Season Four on Blu-ray and I had a chance to take a look.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The image has a great amount of clarity in textiles, faces and surfaces, the colour palette is can be muted but certain elements pop with colour. Black levels are good, but the image can be noisy at times, especially in darker scenes.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track as well as French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. Dialogue is clear and centred and the score is dynamic and placed across the front and back channels with a nice amount of bass. The surrounds are busy in this soundscape delivering both action and ambient sounds throughout.

The 13 episodes of season four are spread over four Blu-ray discs. There is no digital code. Bonus materials include deleted scenes, featurettes on the story and production, a look at shooting during Covid-19 and a gag reel. One of the episodes features an audio commentary by Michelle Paradise, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Sonequa Martin-Green and David Ajala.

The Star Trek: Discovery – Season Four Blu-ray will keeps fans of the show happy with solid audio and video and a good collection of bonus materials.

At this time of the year it’s all about Christmas movies, but John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a comedy that focuses on U.S. Thanksgiving. Neal Page (Steve Martin) is just trying to get home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. After a series of events he misses his flight and ends up seatmates on a new flight with Del Griffith (John Candy), a slovenly shower curtain ring salesman. When the flight is diverted to Wichita, they find themselves thrown together and sharing a series of mishaps during their attempts to get home. Martin and Candy are able to mix the comedy and the drama in a way only great comedians can. Paramount is releasing the movie on 4K and I had a chance to take a look.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Like some other Paramount 4K transfers — I’m looking at you Fatal Attraction and Saturday Night Fever — Planes, Trains and Automobiles seems to suffer from issues with grain management. One scene (or even one shot in a scene) the image is razor sharp with a pleasing grain structure and the next digital noise reduction seems to have been used to smooth out the grain resulting in an almost waxy image that appears to have an artificial grain added to it. When the image is great it’s the best the movie has looked but when it’s not …

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack as well as Spanish (Latin American) and Portuguese Dolby Digital Mono, and Spanish (Spain), German, French, and Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The 5.1 soundtrack is recycled from past Blu-ray releases, which like many comedies is front heavy. The dialogue is clear, centred and well prioritized and music cues are bright and dynamic. Your surrounds do get some work when the comic action calls for it.

The 4K comes with a digital code and a bonus Blu-ray disc. On the 4K disc, there’s a bunch of legacy extras including a press conference with Hughes, Candy and Martin, a couple of featurettes on Hughes, a tribute to John Candy and a deleted scene. The bonus extra Blu-ray is the real gem. Called Lost Luggage, it features 75 minutes of deleted and extended scenes recently found in Hughes’ archives. There’s also an audition scene from Dylan Baker.

John Hughes. John Candy. Steve Martin. A funny and heartwarming story. This should be a grand slam home run of a recommendation for a movie loved by millions. The video presentation is plagued with the smoothing issues I mentioned above, so it’s not really a huge upgrade over the previous Blu-ray release. If you don’t own it, I’d say the bonus disc with 75 minutes of extra Candy and Martin would be the selling point of this Planes, Trains and Automobiles 4K release.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season One of the Paramount+ series Halo on both 4K and Blu-ray. I had a chance to get a look at the Blu-ray version.

Based on the insanely popular video game franchise, the series follows a 26th-century war between the UN Space Command and the Covenant, an alliance of alien races who want to eradicate humanity. It stars Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a genetically engineered supersoldier and Jen Taylor as Cortana, a AI implanted in the Master Chief’s brain to influence his decisions. The series also stars Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Yerin Ha, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, Danny Sapani, Bokeem Woodbine, and Natascha McElhone.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 2.00:1 aspect ratio. Facial features, armor and sets have excellent clarity and detail whether they’re real or CGI creations. The colour palette ranges from golds and greens to cool blues. The black levels are deep with details in the shadows. Though there is some occasional noise, it’s a very good transfer.

On the audio side of things, there is an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack with subtitles available for English SDH and Spanish. Though there is generally good immersion with the surrounds though the soundtrack does feel a bit subdued at reference levels. The music is clear and dynamic while dialogue is centred and well placed in the mix.

The nine episodes of season one are spread over five Blu-discs. There are several hours of bonus material with each episode getting a piece that includes recaps, fan reactions and cast and crew interviews hosted by Sydnee Goodman. There are also several pieces looking at the characters and production design. The package also includes several collectible character cards.

Halo: Season One comes with excellent video and good audio plus a ton of extras. I haven’t seen the 4K but I imagine that fans of the series and video game will want that version for the higher image resolution.

The neo-Western drama Yellowstone, created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson, has been a cultural phenomenon spawning both water cooler conversations about the Dutton family and a spin-off, 1883, that tracks the ranch’s origins. Corrupt politicians, corrupt businesses and family chaos have kept people glued to the TV. The original series stars Kevin Costner, Luke Grimes, Wes Bentley, Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, and Gil Birmingham while 1883 stars Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, Isabel May, LaMonica Garrett, Marc Rissmann, Audie Rick, Eric Nelsen and James Landry Hébert. To get newer fans up to date — and to extract some more money from collectors — Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Yellowstone: The Dutton Legacy Collection Giftset Blu-ray. It bundles together seasons 1 — 4 of Yellowstone and 1883 into a decorative cardboard case and adds some Yellowstone coasters for your binge-watching whisky.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfers are presented in a 2.0:1 aspect ratio. They’re really good looking Blu-rays with a clear, sharp image. Details are sharp from facial features and textiles to the interiors and landscapes. The colour palette is well saturated, from the many hues of terrain and foliage, the wide open blue skies, and the muted tones of the ranchers’ clothing. Black levels are nice and deep with detail in the shadows. It’s a great looking collection.

On the audio side, the discs come have an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack and English SDH subtitles. The track is heavily favoured to the front with the surrounds used sparingly to add some atmospheric effects and action. The score is dynamic and dialogue is clear, centred and well prioritized in the mix.

Yellowstone: The Dutton Legacy Collection Giftset totals sixteen Blu-ray discs and packages the original seasons in their individual clamshell cases as well as including the aforementioned coasters. There are no digital codes. Each disc contains various episode overviews and behind-the-scenes production featurettes.

If you or someone you love has somehow managed to not yet see Yellowstone, then the Yellowstone: The Dutton Legacy Collection Giftset would be a nice way to get up to date with the show.

It’s been 36 (!) years since Top Gun gave film-goers a shot of high speed, high altitude fun and audiences and critics alike have said that its sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, was worth the wait with a perfect blend of action and poignant moments. A huge success at the box office, the film is now available for your home library with Paramount’s 4K release. I had a chance to take a look.

Tom Cruise returns as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who is now a test pilot pushing new plans past their limits. His antics have always seemed to have him on the verge of dismissal, but this time around he’s called back to the Top Gun training facility to prepare a new batch of pilots for a very dangerous mission that will require the skills that Maverick has to teach. One of the pilots, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller) is the son of Goose, Maverick’s late radar intercept officer and best friend. Rooster blames Maverick for his dad’s death and the pair frequently clash. The movie also stars Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Ed Harris.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio for most scenes and the IMAX aspect ratio of 1.90:1 for action sequences. The video presentation looks amazing with fantastic detail in facial features, environments and textiles. The colour palette and contrast is amazing as well, with bright blue skies, white clouds, and scorching sunlight. The HDR adds to the highlights of fiery explosions and metallic reflections, while the black levels are deep and allow for detail to remain in darker moments and shadows. I’m going to say it again, it looks amazing.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby Atmos soundtrack that folds back to Dolby TrueHD 7.1 as well as Czech, Spanish, Latin Spanish, French Canadian, Italian, Hungarian and Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, and Thai. I’m going to use that word again: the audio on this disc is amazing. The Atmos soundtrack places you in the cockpit and in the middle of every scene with perfection. You subwoofer will rock you with every explosion or knock you back as the jet engines thunder fighter jets through the sky. The score is powerful and dynamic, while dialogue is clear, centred and well prioritized. This is the type of movie that people will use to show off their home theatres.

The 4K disc comes with a digital code. Bonus features include featurettes on the flight sequences and training the cast went through, a look at the production complexities of shooting the aviation scenes, a look at Cruise’s love for flying, a piece on the creation of the test vehicle Maverick flew, a 49 minute interview with Cruise at the Cannes Film Festival, and music videos from Lady Gaga and Onerepublic.

I’ve used the word amazing a lot, but the Top Gun: Maverick 4K deserves it. Of course it’s recommended.

Saturday Night Fever is an iconic film that truly transitioned John Travolta from TV sitcom star to big screen leading man. It’s an iconic film that captures the disco era and since its release so many shows and movies have paid tribute to or parodied its iconic scenes. The Bee Gees-led soundtrack was a giant hit but the movie isn’t all white suits and throbbing lights, with a darker side to the story. It’s not every day that you get a gritty dance film with amazing dramatic performances. Paramount has finally released the film on 4K for its 45th anniversary and I had a chance to take a look.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The video presentation reminds me of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem where he wrote “And when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.” The movie does have some soft focus and diffused shots and with an excellent transfer it might have made the transition. The movie is razor sharp in some scenes and in others it looks like they took the digital equivalent of sandpaper and smoothed out all the grain. Your head spins as scenes and even individual shots move from crystal clear to waxy. On the bright side, the dance scenes seems to have avoided the ugly stick and the HDR makes the colours look amazing. Black levels are deep and there’s detail in the numerous darker scenes.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack as well as French, German, Japanese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks.. Subtitles are available for English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, and Swedish. Oddly, the 4K has an issue with audio as well. While the 4K disc and the included Blu-ray from 2017 have the same audio track, the 4K’s is more subdued at reference sound levels.

The Saturday Night Fever 4K comes with a digital code and a copy of the 2017 Blu-ray disc which includes both the theatrical and director’s cut. The only bonus content on the 4K disc is an audio commentary by director John Badham. The Blu-ray contains the audio commentary, some featurettes looking at the production, a dance lesson and a deleted scene.

Saturday Night Fever is a classic movie with an amazing performance by John Travolta that should have received a classic 4K transfer. It’s frustrating that the video presentation swings from excellent to bad and back while the audio can sound thin. I can probably recommend it if you don’t have the 2017 Blu-ray already, but if you own that, this does not present a major upgrade. Travolta’s dancing is amazing but this 4K trips over its own feet.

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