Blu-ray Movie Reviews

For reasons known only to them, the studios have been saving some of their absolute best and most interesting 4K releases for the waning days of 2024, among them the most hotly debated movies of the past 12 months, as well as cult favorites and a few outright classics. In between the egg nog and the champagne, we pulled together this list of must-see-in-Ultra-HDs for your consideration as we toss another calendar into the recycling bin.

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The Searchers 4K (Warner Archive)
The Duke made it just under the wire but this epic adventure is indubitably one of the best discs of the year. With the rise of 4K specifically within the physical media collector sphere, many were the times I wondered if and when the rarified Warner Archive Collection would expand their wares from HD to Ultra HD, and their retort came not as a whisper rather a resounding bellow in the form of John Ford's landmark 1956 Western, The Searchers. One of The Shield’s crown jewels restored from the VistaVision negative, here with Dolby Vision HDR.

The results flaunt a frequent “OH MY GOD” beauty to the colors and the clarity of the image, which has been painstakingly compressed, authored, and encoded for its new home on a BD-100 platter. The mono audio too has been carefully cleaned up, with only the archival Peter Bogdanovich audio commentary included on the 4K disc as an extra. The bundled HD Blu-ray of the newly restored movie also includes an excellent complement of further legacy bonus content.

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No Country for Old Men 4K (Criterion Collection)
They had me at “new 4K digital master, supervised and approved by director of photography Roger Deakins,” and Criterion’s new 4K disc with Dolby Vision reveals the movie to an extent never before possible in the home. The cinematography was Oscar-nominated, along with the sound mixing and sound editing—preserved here in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1—and this was also the Coen Brothers’ only Best Picture win… so far.

Deakins and the bros are on hand for in-depth new discussions of their preeminent work, in addition to a collection of archival bonus content featuring the cast, including the magnificent Javier Bardem, who always catches me off-guard with his charm when he’s not killing people with a pneumatic bolt gun.

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Joker: Folie à Deux 4K (Warner)
If ever a movie didn't need a sequel, 2019’s Joker qualified, and my disappointment at Folie à Deux makes me like the original less somehow, as if it suffers from this successor’s retroactive funk. As with the star, director and writers, cinematographer Lawrence Sher has returned, and we are given reference-quality video once again that gives an unflinchingly stark look at Gotham, one of America’s ugliest fictional cities.

Likewise the Atmos mix is another stunner, this time combining Oscar-winner Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score with a variety of evocative musical numbers. Extras are where this one pulls ahead of the first Joker, with several enlightening featurettes proving that inspiration and perspiration don’t always guarantee success.

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 4K (Warner)
The ghost with the most is unleashed upon the unfortunate Deetz family once again in the sequel that many wanted but Tim Burton and Michael Keaton were in no rush to deliver. I guess a lot of story ideas piled up over the years, and the results sometimes feel like controlled chaos, which is appropriate I suppose.

Burton still knows how to utilize his camera, production design, set decoration, costumes and special effects, so this one is a high-bitrate, Dolby Vision feast for the eyes, with accompanying Atmos that’s fun, wild, and over-the-top (pun intended). The director’s enjoyable commentary is joined by a fine assortment of the featurettes we’ve come to expect from Warner.

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The Wild Robot 4K (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)
DreamWorks’ touching adaptation of Peter Brown’s bestselling book mixes in a bit of Iron Giant as a mechanical stranger in a strange land sets about survival but soon gains much more as he/she makes nice with the locals, namely a sassy cast of talking animals that includes an orphaned baby goose. (Pro tip: You might want to keep some tissues handy.)

The breathtaking 4K/Dolby Vision image is less about the photo-realism sought by other animation studios, instead exquisitely capturing the distinctive painterly style used by director Chris Sanders. The Atmos audio offers generous surround usage and LFE implementation, and while many of the extras feel somewhat been-there-done-that, the creative team commentary track is truly outstanding.

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Alien: Romulus 4K (20th Century/Disney)
Set between the first and second installments in the hit franchise, this “interquel” (not my word, don’t hate) has been one of the most buzzed-about -quels in a year filled with buzzy sequels et. al. Indeed, Romulus is an intriguing blend of saga Easter/alien eggs and a return to the horror roots we haven’t seen since Ridley Scott’s original Alien, as an intrepid band of young colonizers go somewhere they really shouldn’t and fight for their lives against some familiar—and unfamiliar—xenomorphs.

These movies have always relied on things that go bump in the shadows, and the inky Dolby Vision blacks pair beautifully with the crisp detail on the predominantly practical effects employed by director Fede Alvarez. Environments and their various inhabitants are suspensefully rendered in the disc’s thrilling Atmos track. The included HD Blu-ray provides a solid array of behind-the-scenes featurettes in addition to deleted and extended scenes.

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Demolition Man Limited Edition 4K (Arrow)
1993’s Demolition Man puts a high-concept spin on the tried-and-true cop actioner, as a tough “present-day” (1996) officer is frozen in CryoPrison only to be thawed 36 years in the future (umm, 2032, math is hard) to help re-capture a notorious criminal (Wesley Snipes). It’s funny, the setpieces are terrific, and I’ve always enjoyed it, never more than in Arrow’s amazing limited edition, newly restored from the 35mm negative and with a welcome Atmos remix.

There are two new audio commentaries, one with director Marco Brambilla and co-writer Dan Waters, in addition to an archival track with Brambilla and producer Joel Silver, along with an intriguing video essay and a menagerie of new interviews from original crew members. Plenty of pithy printed goodies are also supplied, all tucked inside one of Arrow’s famous rigid slipcases.

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Transformers One 4K (Paramount)
This is the first go at a fully animated theatrical Transformers since 1986’s old-school The Transformers: The Movie, and it takes a big risk in replacing the singular Peter Cullen with Chris Hemsworth as the voice of Orion Pax who (SPOILER ALERT) eventually becomes Autobot leader Optimus Prime.

Thankfully, after an early stretch of some tyke-friendly humor, One becomes a satisfying exploration and expansion of the Transformers mythos. The elaborate digital animation is absolutely state-of-the-art, making the characters genuinely feel like living machines, with precise lines in their mechanical contours and bold, vibrant colors. The Dolby Atmos is big and mighty when it needs to be (which is often) and happily nuanced when the story calls for it. The extras are a tight assortment of featurettes.

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Legends of the Fall 4K (Sony)
Sony’s recent 4K drop of Edward Zwick’s high drama from 1994 flew under our radar but, as the winner of the Oscar for Best Cinematography, is worth a good, long look. Shot by the great John Toll (who copped another statue the following year for Braveheart), Legends has been scanned from the original camera negative and is categorically gorgeous in the home theater, particularly in its sweeping vistas of the American West.

The movie was nominated for Best Sound too, although here it’s been remixed for Atmos on top of the original lossless the 5.1 which is provided as well, both dependably naturalistic in the Montana scenes and capturing the power of the World War I battles. These tracks further offer the opportunity to revisit one of James Horner’s most underappreciated musical scores. One commentary is delivered by director Zwick and star Brad Pitt, another by cinematographer Toll and production designer Lilly Kilvert, alongside a few deleted scenes and a couple of featurettes.

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Willow 4K (Walt Disney)
Willow came at a time of creative and technical experimentation for executive producer/co-writer George Lucas (i.e. Labyrinth was two years prior), and is looked upon as a watershed moment in visual effects, specifically morphing, or "morfing" is it was known back then.

A family-friendly fantasy that doesn’t skimp on the spectacle, director Ron Howard’s film benefits from a native 4K master that gives new life to the fine detail, the color, and the skintones in particular, while bright fairies flit about in high dynamic range. Even the 5.1 soundtrack has been tweaked for this 4K debut, which is only available in a SteelBook edition, also containing an HD Blu-ray disc of the movie and ported supplements plus a digital copy code.