The fun is in the believing, and Sonnenfeld makes it easy to do that.
Video:
Picture-wise, "Men in Black" fans should be pleased with this release. Some of the scenes featuring that Frankenstinian fellow from another planet who's using a farmer's loose-fitting skin look the roughest, but even those scenes are sharper than in previous DVD releases. Sony has been using AVC/MPEG-4 encoding, and the transfers have been fairly free of artifacts. That's the case here. Colors are natural rather than brilliant, with those scenes starring Vincent D'Onofrio as the zombie-like alien looking a little tired and soft. But those scenes are thankfully few, and on the whole the 1080p picture (1.85:1 aspect ratio, which fills the entire screen) is a joy to watch.
Audio:
The main soundtrack options are English, French, or Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and while I can't say that the soundtrack rocks, the tonal quality is pleasant, there's a nice balance between treble/bass and between dialogue/music/FX, and there's just enough rear-speaker action to give you the surround experience. If the soundtrack falls short, it's in the area of ambient sounds in quiet moments (I know, you're thinking, When was there a quiet moment?). Well, there aren't many, but that's when you notice the rear speakers take a holiday. But I think we can nitpick audio-visual quality to death on these releases. When you get right down to it, everything's based on the master and the transfer, and you're going to get a product that's either overall very good or one that's disappointing. This release is overall very good.
Extras:
There are a ton of extras here, but I have to say that this is by far the most sluggish of any Blu-ray I've reviewed-so much so that it was a real pain-in-the-butt to watch the bonus features. Everything took forever to load, with a response time so slow that I could go make a sandwich and not miss a thing. That's a problem Sony needs to address. Another problem for movie fans is that you'll need a magnifying glass to read the back of the box. I swear they're using 4-point type for some of the information. I realize that the smaller area of the Blu-ray boxes poses some design problems, and there's a tendency to want all the info on the box, but what good is it if nobody can read it?
Obviously, the load-time is the bigger issue, and it doesn't make you want to jump around the disc menu when you click on a few features that are disappointing. Let's start at the bottom: An "Ask Frank the Pug! Interactive Game" is so stupid that it isn't even on the level of that eight ball you'd turn over after asking a question. Original trailer and teasers? Nice to have, but . . . . Then there's a music video starring Smith and Mikey if you're into that sort of thing, art and photo galleries, all of which are marginal content. Then there's a "Scene Editing Workshop" that's a carryover from the DVD that's an exercise in exercise. If this was school, you'd think of it as busy work. So what features are worthwhile? Well, alien lovers will appreciate the Character Animation Studies, would-be filmmakers will think the Visual Effects Scene Deconstructions (with commentary) useful--same with the Storyboard Comparisons. Trivia lovers also might appreciate a multi-level, multi-player game that's good because it's so fast and you don't get second chances.
All the content is a carryover from the DVD, actually. Here as well is that short making-of feature, and for those who want to know how the concept evolved from the Cunningham comic, there's the roughly half-hour "Metamorphosis of Men in Black." The same commentaries are here as on the DVD, with Sonnenfeld and his visual effects and production design people from ILM doing a technical walk-through on how things were done. Those who have this on the DVD know that it's pretty well done, a non-stop lesson in filmmaking. A little lighter commentary track is provided by Sonnenfeld and Jones cutting up with a mix of stories and tech talk. This "enhanced telestrator commentary" which allows the director to "circle and create arrows on the screen" is nothing new, either. The enhancements can't change the fact that it's more of a distraction than anything. If this were a John Madden analysis of the Super Bowl, I could see it. But what's the point here? That "enhancement" is one Blu-ray add-on. But the main one is a BD-Live multi-player trivia game where up to eight players can play. The alien subtitle track is okay . . . but don't get me started on that dumb Pug game!
There's a lot here, but it's really a mixed bag. There are as many misses as there are hits.
Bottom Line:
It's all pretty "out there," but the fun is in the believing, and Sonnenfeld makes it easy to do that. He blends highly believable special effects with a tone that's just right, and he juggles the comedic and action elements with so much skill that it all comes together in a way that makes us wonder whether there really are aliens among us. A few suspects immediately come to mind. And J and K? Smith and Jones are as much fun to watch as any buddy cop team out there in movieland.
Picture-wise, "Men in Black" fans should be pleased with this release. Some of the scenes featuring that Frankenstinian fellow from another planet who's using a farmer's loose-fitting skin look the roughest, but even those scenes are sharper than in previous DVD releases. Sony has been using AVC/MPEG-4 encoding, and the transfers have been fairly free of artifacts. That's the case here. Colors are natural rather than brilliant, with those scenes starring Vincent D'Onofrio as the zombie-like alien looking a little tired and soft. But those scenes are thankfully few, and on the whole the 1080p picture (1.85:1 aspect ratio, which fills the entire screen) is a joy to watch.
Audio:
The main soundtrack options are English, French, or Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1, and while I can't say that the soundtrack rocks, the tonal quality is pleasant, there's a nice balance between treble/bass and between dialogue/music/FX, and there's just enough rear-speaker action to give you the surround experience. If the soundtrack falls short, it's in the area of ambient sounds in quiet moments (I know, you're thinking, When was there a quiet moment?). Well, there aren't many, but that's when you notice the rear speakers take a holiday. But I think we can nitpick audio-visual quality to death on these releases. When you get right down to it, everything's based on the master and the transfer, and you're going to get a product that's either overall very good or one that's disappointing. This release is overall very good.
Extras:
There are a ton of extras here, but I have to say that this is by far the most sluggish of any Blu-ray I've reviewed-so much so that it was a real pain-in-the-butt to watch the bonus features. Everything took forever to load, with a response time so slow that I could go make a sandwich and not miss a thing. That's a problem Sony needs to address. Another problem for movie fans is that you'll need a magnifying glass to read the back of the box. I swear they're using 4-point type for some of the information. I realize that the smaller area of the Blu-ray boxes poses some design problems, and there's a tendency to want all the info on the box, but what good is it if nobody can read it?
Obviously, the load-time is the bigger issue, and it doesn't make you want to jump around the disc menu when you click on a few features that are disappointing. Let's start at the bottom: An "Ask Frank the Pug! Interactive Game" is so stupid that it isn't even on the level of that eight ball you'd turn over after asking a question. Original trailer and teasers? Nice to have, but . . . . Then there's a music video starring Smith and Mikey if you're into that sort of thing, art and photo galleries, all of which are marginal content. Then there's a "Scene Editing Workshop" that's a carryover from the DVD that's an exercise in exercise. If this was school, you'd think of it as busy work. So what features are worthwhile? Well, alien lovers will appreciate the Character Animation Studies, would-be filmmakers will think the Visual Effects Scene Deconstructions (with commentary) useful--same with the Storyboard Comparisons. Trivia lovers also might appreciate a multi-level, multi-player game that's good because it's so fast and you don't get second chances.
All the content is a carryover from the DVD, actually. Here as well is that short making-of feature, and for those who want to know how the concept evolved from the Cunningham comic, there's the roughly half-hour "Metamorphosis of Men in Black." The same commentaries are here as on the DVD, with Sonnenfeld and his visual effects and production design people from ILM doing a technical walk-through on how things were done. Those who have this on the DVD know that it's pretty well done, a non-stop lesson in filmmaking. A little lighter commentary track is provided by Sonnenfeld and Jones cutting up with a mix of stories and tech talk. This "enhanced telestrator commentary" which allows the director to "circle and create arrows on the screen" is nothing new, either. The enhancements can't change the fact that it's more of a distraction than anything. If this were a John Madden analysis of the Super Bowl, I could see it. But what's the point here? That "enhancement" is one Blu-ray add-on. But the main one is a BD-Live multi-player trivia game where up to eight players can play. The alien subtitle track is okay . . . but don't get me started on that dumb Pug game!
There's a lot here, but it's really a mixed bag. There are as many misses as there are hits.
Bottom Line:
It's all pretty "out there," but the fun is in the believing, and Sonnenfeld makes it easy to do that. He blends highly believable special effects with a tone that's just right, and he juggles the comedic and action elements with so much skill that it all comes together in a way that makes us wonder whether there really are aliens among us. A few suspects immediately come to mind. And J and K? Smith and Jones are as much fun to watch as any buddy cop team out there in movieland.
Average user rating (1-5):
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[release]23517[/release]