Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Invited to Nightmute, Alaska, to head a murder case, a veteran LAPD detective finds his investigation disrupted by an ever-shining midnight sun that wreaks sleep-depriving havoc on him - and by personal guilt over a second crime that may be real...or a figment of his increasingly unstable consciousness.

Christopher Nolan is by far one of my favorite directors working in Hollywood today. This is the only film I have any conflict with from his filmography, but only because it is a remake of a film that really didn’t need to be remade. We see this happen a lot in Hollywood with recent examples being Death at a Funeral and the already announced The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In this case the original film wasn’t even very old and the acting and directing in it were superb (and nearly identical to this film in a lot of ways). While this is still a VERY good adaptation of the original Swedish film, I wish Hollywood would steer away from English remakes of successful foreign films.

Nolan always makes gorgeous looking films and once again he teams up with D.P. Wally Pfister for an outstanding visual treat. Depth of image is jaw dropping at times and fine detail comes up in spades. I love the stark contrast of the film and the dimensionality it adds. Fine film grain is preserved nicely and I didn’t notice any compression problems in the more difficult sequences. The DTS-HD Master Audio mix is also solid with great presence and range. The score lends a lot to the film with plenty of punch and spatial cues. A tremendous presentation for this great catalog release.

Extras include some deleted scenes and a pair of feature commentaries. You also get some production features that shed some light into making the film and the trailer. Also included in the package is a movie cash coupon toward a ticket to Nolan’s upcoming Inception film, which is by far my most anticipated film of this year!

Nolan’s sophomore outing is a great addition to the Blu-ray library with a top notch transfer and soundtrack. If you haven’t seen this yet, do yourself a favor.