Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Beyond his unique and powerful visual sense, honed largely on an eclectic mix of music videos, director David Fincher also has a knack for choosing compelling scripts, resulting in several of the boldest, most original and memorable movies of the past three decades. He certainly hasn’t been rushing to make them all available on 4K disc, but two more titles from his catalog have recently dropped, which was apparently reason enough to revisit a third (which remains one of his best).

---

Se7en 4K (Warner)
What could have been just another police drama, pairing a somber soon-to-be retiree and a hotshot new transfer on the trail of a serial killer, became so much more in Fincher’s hands. This being his first feature film following the ill-fated Alien³, perhaps Fincher had something to prove, and he swings for the fences, a seething energy buzzing beneath the surface of every scene.

He used a state-of-the-art digital toolkit to make a number of revisions to the movie for this latest disc release, not only adjusting framing, color and contrast but changing and adding elements within the image itself. If you go back and compare the different versions of this movie over the years, each has a slightly different character, but this new 8K scan/master represents Se7en the way he wants it to be seen. Maybe it helps to think of this as a longstanding work in progress, as many artists view their work.

The City somehow looks more miserable and uninviting than ever (that’s a compliment), a dreary pastiche of brown and grey decay. There’s more than ample info to be gleaned from the dark areas of the 2.39:1 frame, with strong contrast. I especially like the distinctive look of the flashlight beams poking around in various shadowy spaces. The film packs a new remix by the original sound designer, frequent collaborator Ren Klyce, albeit still in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1: I love this soundtrack but am left scratching my head as to the absence of an immersive mix.

The extras are 100% archival but abundant. All four multi-participant audio commentaries feature Fincher: Stars, Story, Picture and Sound (we here at S&V live for stuff like these last two), preserved from the 2000 Platinum Series DVD. In fact, almost all previous extras have been collected here and are worth the hours needed to enjoy them in toto. A SteelBook edition is available, but I reviewed the digipack, which is impressive in its own right, a photo-filled double gatefold with magnetic closure, although I will never be a fan of jamming a disc into a cardboard pocket. (Unlike the next two titles, Se7en is a single-disc release, although all include a Movies Anywhere digital copy in 4K.)

---

Panic Room 4K (Sony)
Fincher set the bar high for himself with Fight Club, and three years later he delivered the taut home invasion thriller, Panic Room. It’s better than I remember, but in all its impossible camera moves and clever plot contrivances, it does wind up feeling like a movie more than a long night spent with a mother, her daughter and three robbers in the confines of this pricey “townstone.” Props to young Kristen Stewart though, who manages to steal her every scene even from Oscar-winning co-stars.

Incredibly, this one never received an HD Blu-ray release, despite being a Superbit DVD release (remember those?) more than 20 years ago. The Ultra HD disc debut is born of a new 4K scan of the original camera negative (the movie was shot in the Super 35 technique) and the image is tremendous, quite sharp and maintaining the bleak hues of the old, not-quite-moved-into house at night. Skin texture in some closeups looks a tad off, but more noticeably the computer-enhanced shots tend to take on an inorganic, digital appearance that can be mildly distracting. The effortless new 360-degree mix displays real subtlety in the music and the rain or even something as inconsequential as the fluffing of a bedsheet. Some great story moments also presage the arrival of height channels, notably hurried footsteps overhead.

No extras can be found on the 4K disc for some reason, despite 100GB to fill. Fincher again leaned hard into extensive bonus content, all archival here, starting with the three commentaries on the supplied HD Blu-ray of the movie: his own, one for the stars, and one for screenwriter David Koepp joined by legendary scripter William Goldman. There are also two substantial documentaries and a couple of Easter eggs, before we even pop in the third platter. There, dozens of featurettes await us, many of them focusing on individual special effects, others providing a fascinating look at crucial but often overlooked steps in the post-production process. At present, Panic Room 4K is only available as a SteelBook, and Sony put some real thought into its design.

---

The Social Network 4K
I was as surprised as anyone at how hard this movie slaps, the well-researched saga of Facebook’s bumpy road to success as the world’s premier social media platform. The genesis, the personalities involved and the betrayals committed are eye-opening (and perhaps worth re-evaluating in the current age of the tech broligarchs), while the music of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross enhances and often energizes the many moods.

This is a handsome SteelBook repackaging of the three discs once found only inside the big, pricey Columbia Classics Volume 2 boxed set from 2021, but what a terrific edition that was, so if you missed it, or if you just love SteelBooks, this one is highly recommended. Reuniting with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, Fincher shot The Social Network digitally on the way to a 2K master, here upscaled, with an uncompromising purity and clarity plus some punchy hues folded into the largely muted palette. For this historical journey, we must opt into the Atmos/TrueHD 7.1 track to conjure you-are-there realism, only accessible on the "unrated" version, Fincher's preference, which as far as I can figure boils down to the alteration of one line of dialogue, involving an F-bomb.

Outside of a trio of 4K trailers, all of the extras can be found on the HD Discs Two and Three, among them David Prior's outstanding feature-length documentary that answers many a cynic’s question, How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook? There’s also a commentary with Fincher and another with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who deservedly won an Oscar for his work here, joined by members of the cast, plus many vignettes that go deep into particular aspects.

David Fincher’s masterful work is very easy to enjoy, and these three excellent releases are hard to pass up.

---