4k-UHD/Movie Review: IT: Chapter Two

 

IT: Chapter Two is the 2019 sequel to 2017's IT. It is the second part of the adaptation of Stephen King's novel IT. In this movie, the adult versions of the children who vanquished IT/Pennywise in the first movie are introduced into the story. The film stars Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, and Bill Skarsgard, reprising his role as Pennywise from the first movie. 

This movie is a double-edged sword because it allows for using well-known actors (Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, etc.) and more violent and gory imagery than in the first movie. Still, it is (in my opinion) the weaker part of the story. This is partly because they have to reintroduce and develop the characters as adults and essentially have them go through the same horrors with Pennywise until they do (mostly) the same thing in the final confrontation with him as they did as kids. That said, the movie does add new elements, so it is not just a total carbon copy of the first movie. It is also great to see the young actors alongside their older counterparts in different scenes. Bill Skarsgaard delivers another wonderful performance as Pennywise, this time with part of it being done via motion capture, as used in movies like Lord of the Rings, Avatar, the new Star Wars movies, etc. Steven King also has a cameo as the mean shopowner Bill repurchases his bike from.

The 4K set is a three-disc set with a UHD disc and two regular Blu-Ray discs. The movie looks and sounds excellent in UHD. The UHD disc just has the film and the commentary track if you want to listen to it. Then, there are two regular blu-ray discs, one with just the movie and one with all the extras (over an hour's worth). Those include chapters 1 and 2 of making-of and behind-the-scenes material, the first either taking a lot from or reusing the same feature that was an extra on the release for the first movie and the second new for the second movie. They are the longest of the bonus material. Then, there are a few shorter features. A very good amount for those who still like getting the physical disc releases.

While I cannot say everyone will love the movie, it did a good job of wrapping up the story. Of course, it is much different than the TV miniseries done in the 1990s, and even with a nearly three-hour running time, it still could not incorporate everything from the book. It is worth checking out if you can accept those things about it.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Molly's Game

 

Molly's Game is a 2019 crime drama starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Michael Cera, and Kevin Costner. It is a semi-biographical movie telling the story of Molly Bloom (played by Jessica Chastain), a competitive skier who was injured in a skiing accident and ended up out in Los Angeles working in a bar. She would, through a series of interesting events, end up running multi-million dollar poker games involving movie stars (including, reportedly, Toby McGuire), athletes, and various members of the 1%. She ends up being arrested as the FBI attempts to get her to flip on members of her poker games who are connected to the mob. Idris Elba plays her high-priced New York lawyer, and Kevin Costner has a small role as her father.

Chastain is great in the role of Molly and plays Bloom with a great mix of cocky, bordering on arrogant, funny (albeit dark humor), and vulnerable. Her chemistry and ability to banter with Elba (in a non-romantic role) really make the movie work, so much so that even the parts that don't work as well (like trying to buy Michael Cera as a badass) are easy to overlook. The movie looks and sounds great on Blu-ray. The extras are mostly non-existent. Just what amounts to an extended TV spot for the movie. So, if you only get the physical discs when there is a lot of bonus content included, you will probably just want to stick with streaming this. That said, if you have a little more than a couple of hours to kill and are looking for a good movie to watch, this is definitely worth checking out.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Interstellar

 

Interstellar was the first major movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan after his Batman trilogy ended. The basic plot of this movie is that in 2067 the Earth is becoming more and more uninhabitable because of a planet-wide blight/dust bowl, which is making it harder for food to grow. Matthew McConaughey plays Coop, an ex-astronaut turned farmer who is recruited for a mission to pilot an expedition to a series of possibly habitable planets to which advance scouts have already been dispatched. To get to the prospective planets, the ship must travel through a wormhole that opened near the planet Saturn. This requires him to leave his only child, Murph (played by Mackenzie Foy at the beginning of the movie, then by Jessica Chastain later on) on Earth, promising her that he will return. The rest of the cast includes Nolan veterans Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine, as well as Wes Bentley (from American Beauty), John Lithgow, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and David Oyelowo.

The blu-ray has a ton of great extras, and the A/V quality is stellar. The most comprehensive extra is an almost hour-long documentary on the science of Interstellar, in which Nolan explains what they did to get as much of the science correct as possible. This included using a physicist as a consultant to do things like help create the CGI black hole, and how the time aspects of the movie would work. Then, there are a series of 14 making-of featurettes titled Inside Interstellar, which details the process to make various aspects of the movie, and then the three trailers for the movie are included.

Overall, the movie is great. It is well-written and very well-acted. As an engineer, I like that they actually get a lot of the science correct (although some of it is embellished for dramatic effect), and they get concepts like gravity around a black hole and the resulting time dilation effects correct. McConaughey and Chastain are definitely the standouts, as they get the most material to work with, but the entire cast does a great job with their characters. It is an awesome movie and definitely worth multiple viewings.