Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Newly arrived on Ultra HD Blu-ray from Lionsgate is this trifecta from the canon of auteur filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, all making their 4K disc debuts. Do they kill?

Jackie Brown 4K
For the longest time, I resisted watching Jackie Brown for the simple reason that I admire Quentin Tarantino first and foremost as a writer par excellence, and JB was him indulging his fondness of the great Elmore Leonard rather than conjuring wholly new realms as he had done with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction before it. The resulting adaptation of the book Rum Punch can rightly be considered lesser Tarantino, as a cast of heavy hitters can’t always make us care about the somewhat stock, less-well-defined characters all working toward an overly complicated scheme to abscond with half a million dollars of a gun runner’s cash. And at over two-and-a-half hours, it kinda drags.

The good news is that Jackie hails from earlier in Q’s career and predates his detour into 2K masters (see below) and looks stunning on this native 4K, Dolby Vision disc. Wonderfully filmic details are revealed in both the bright highlights and the dark areas of the 1.85:1 frame, the grain is well-managed and colors are delectably vibrant. The movie was shot in sharp focus and this is an older troupe of actors so we can appreciate the world-weariness in their faces.

The ported DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is dialogue-heavy, set off against restrained environmental audio, although one particularly impressive scene finds Jackie walking from a department store into the bustling hub of a mall, effectively enveloped by the cacophony. No extras are provided on the 100GB 4K disc, lots on the HD Blu-ray, most dating back to the DVD days, plus a more recent recycled critics roundtable segment.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 4K & Kill Bill Vol. 2 4K
Kill Bill was originally intended to be a single epic tale of The Bride (Uma Thurman), an AWOL assassin seeking blood-soaked revenge on the former colleagues who done her wrong, so although they are now two separate 4K disc releases, I’m covering them together. Both were shot on the Super 35 format on the way to a final 2K digital intermediate, which here have been upscaled to 4K. As with many other upscales, what we get is softer than ideal 2160p, akin to a fine 1080p Blu-ray. Taking advantage of the UltraHD format’s strengths, the colors at least are rather peppy, Vol. 1’s anime in Chapter 7 looks terrific, and all of live-action Lucy Liu’s freckles are maintained. In Vol. 2, the more-evident grain suits the Pai Mei training scenes, which are also desaturated, conjuring the feel of an old-school martial arts flick.

The real test was Chapter 5’s live burial (a theme the director revisited for his CSI: two-parter), not utter blackness but one of the darkest scenes I’ve ever watched. There’s consequential dramatic information imparted and it is beautifully resolved on my 4K OLED. The same scene on the included HD Blu-ray remains every bit as messy, unnatural and generally awful as I remember it looking on formats past.

The Gogo fight scene in Vol. 1 Chapter 12 is still a fun 5.1-channel demo, although the surround usage for her whooshing weapon of choice is more limited than I recalled. What curdles my cheese is the missed opportunity for an Atmos upgrade in Vol. 2’s aforementioned burial, as mounds of fateful dirt rain down on The Bride’s coffin, presumably dooming her to an unsavory end. In other words, death from above, if only there were height channels involved. QT’s notorious needle-dropping is in full force (I bought both soundtrack CDs), fidelity and dynamic range on the eclectic tuneage is top-notch, and Chingon’s rendition of “Malagueña Salerosa” is pure joy. Volumes first and second repeat their respective extras between each’s 4K and 2K platters, all legacy and dating back to the early ‘00s, worth skimming if you’ve never seen any of it before.

All three also include single-vendor 4K digital copy codes.

With these, seven of Tarantino’s nine official, solo “directed by” feature films have been released on 4K, with his two westerns, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, still missing. His fans are an enthusiastic crew so I expect this trio will sell briskly, and Lionsgate Limited is also offering them as SteelBooks, along with a “Mr. Pink Edition” SteelBook reprint of the 2022 Reservoir Dogs 4K, so be sure to save up those bills.

Chris Chiarella