4k-UHD/Movie Review: Don't Worry Darling

 

Don't Worry Darling is a 2022 film starring Florence Pugh, Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and Chris Pine in the leading roles, and a supporting cast featuring Sydney Chandler, Nick Kroll, Gemma Chan, Kiki Layne, and Dita Von Teese. Olivia Wilde also directed and was one of the producers of the film. It is a hard movie to classify, as it blends genres, specifically thriller, mystery, drama, suspense, and sci-fi. Pugh and Styles play Alice and Jack Chambers, who live in a 1950s desert "company town" run by Pine's character, Frank. Each morning, all the men go off to work at a secretive compound called Victory Headquarters in the middle of the desert, and are not allowed to discuss what they are working on, while the women are all homemakers who spend their days shopping and gossiping. It is implied that the men are working on some kind of national security project akin to the Manhattan Project, but as the movie progresses, we learn that not everything is as it seems. It is hard to fully describe the film without giving too much away, but if you combine bits of The Stepford Wives, The Matrix, Inception, The Truman Show, and The Astronaut Wives Club, you would get something like this.

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a standard blu-ray. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is outstanding. The movie looks and sounds wonderful in UHD, with both audio and video near reference-quality. The bonus content, however, is very sparse. It is just on the standard blu-ray disc and consists of just a making-of featurette that runs just over 17 minutes and one deleted scene. The movie is well-written and very well-acted. Pugh's character is the centerpiece of the movie, and she does an excellent job in the leading role, but the entire cast does a great job in their respective roles. The writers do an excellent job of not giving away too much too soon. While you know very early on that something is off about the town and its people, they do a good job of not making everything obvious. Ultimately, it is an excellent film that is absolutely worth the time to watch. 

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Fighting with my Family

 

Fighting With My Family is a 2019 biographical drama/comedy written and directed by Stephen Merchant starring Florence Pugh, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden, and Vince Vaughn. It is a semi-biographical movie about the WWE career of professional wrestler Paige (Saraya Bevis), played by Pugh. It is based upon a documentary by the same name about Paige and her family of professional wrestlers in England that Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), who was a producer of the movie, along with making a few cameos, saw and convinced director Stephen Merchant to take it on as a project. Paige is played wonderfully in the movie by Florence Pugh. Lena Headey plays Paige's mother, and Nick Frost plays Paige's father (and steals every scene he is in).  Jack Lowden plays Paige's brother, who is also a wrestler trying to make it in the WWE, and Vince Vaughn plays a WWE trainer.

The basic story is that Paige and her brother, who wrestle in their family's small promotion in Norwich, England, are trying to get a tryout with the WWE. They get a tryout, and she is picked to go to WWE's developmental unit in the United States, and he does not. So it becomes a fish out of water story as she tries to make her break while her brother deals with being left behind at home. It mostly skips her rise to popularity in NXT, just showing her training and getting adjusted to life as a pro wrestler for the WWE, then ends with a very fictionalized version of her first match on the main roster. For a film about pro wrestling, it is very well done. It is an excellent combination of funny and heartfelt and takes a story about a profession that is over-the-top in absurdity at times very seriously.

The A/V quality of the Blu-Ray is very good, especially for a movie that does not make use of CGI or special effects. The extras consist of about 8 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, an 8-minute (give or take) making-of featurette, a gag reel, and a feature commentary track with the director. There are also two versions of the movie, the theatrical version as well as a director's cut. There was not much bonus material, but what was included was good. It would have been nice if Paige and Florence Pugh had been included on the commentary track instead of just the director.

Overall, it is a good movie. It is enjoyable even if you are not a huge fan of professional wrestling, but I think the people who enjoy it the most will be pro-wrestling fans. For those who are more old-school WWE/WWF fans, some clips from "back in the day" get sprinkled throughout the movie, and some cameos with some of the main roster WWE stars aside from The Rock. It is definitely worth checking out.