High drama, high octain in high definition
Philip Wakefield recommends some of the best on Blu-ray.
Wonder Woman: This is not your grandmother’s Amazonian superhero. In what could become the first superhero movie to be nominated for a best picture Oscar, Gal Gadot reprises the role she first played in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to lasso World War I spy Chris Pine and save the world from the devilish Huns. It’s an epic tale of empowerment laced with wit, action and irony. The extras could have been more wondrous but are worth a look for a case study of the character (Finding the Wonder Woman Within) and how she compares to Superman and Batman (The Trinity).
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Spider-Man: Homecoming: SpiderMan’s third incarnation in 15 years is the best, especially if you see it in all its sensationally silky textures on 4K-UHD (which offers both HDR10 and Dolby Vision colour formats). Most of the extras are on the companion Blu-ray but the 4K disc does share Spidey’s Study Guide, a pop-up factoid track that’s a treasure trove of trivia and context. The best of the Blu-ray extras cover the movie’s stunts and Spidey’s new place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also out on 4K-UHD are 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel.
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My Cousin Rachel: This sublimely mounted Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca) adaptation is a teasingly ambiguous psychological thriller starring Rachel Weisz as an exotic older woman who may or may not have poisoned the rich cousin of the latest Englishman to fall for her beguilement and beauty. The suspense may be slight but the storytelling and period production values are exquisite. Extras include a producer-director commentary and a fascinating deconstruction of the movie’s visual effects that will surprise many.
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Wakefield: Despite the promise of the title, this distinctive drama about a New York litigator in mid-life malaise who deserts his family for months and secretly observes them from his hideaway in the loft above the garage never quite delivers. But compensating for its contrivances is another compelling turn by Bryan Cranston as the retrogressing protagonist whose rejection of the values that made him rich makes him homeless. Wakefield intrigues but, like its namesake’s vantage point, remains remote.
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Apollo 13: When so many new movies are being released as merely upscaled 2K transfers on 4K-UHD, it’s fantastic to see a modern classic benefit from a 4K scan as sharp and inky as this. This edition also boasts another bonus for fans of Ron Howard’s tense, exciting yet gracefully heroic deadly side-of-themoon dramatisation: it bundles the 2012 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition that was never released here. And the 4K-UHD disc offers an additional astronaut’s commentary to the Blu-ray’s film makers’ contribution.
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ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Steven Spielberg’s enchanting spectacular about an outer-space orphan who’s adopted by a starry-eyed youngster after he’s missed the last starship home from Earth is unabashedly sentimental but the comic touches are inspired and the relationship that evolves between the earthling and ET is genuinely touching. ET’s finger has never glowed as brilliantly orange as it does in this 35th anniversary 4K-UHD upgrade, which complements the vividly improved resolution with a new 7.1 surround sound track.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Spielberg’s warm-up to ET was so flawed he had three attempts at making the definitive version, all of which are presented on a single 4K-UHD disc to mark the movie’s 40th anniversary (complete with in-movie pop-up graphics to highlight the differences). Whatever the failings of each, the sweep of Spielberg’s vision, Vilmos Zsigmond’s Oscar-winning cinematography, Douglas Trumbull’s special effects and the stateof-the-art digital restorations make this re-release a re-encounter of the most collectible kind.
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Last Days in Vietnam: It lacks the epic scope of the Ken Burns series streaming on tvnz.co.nz but this Oscar-nominated documentary’s narrower focus is no less riveting or enlightening. Directed by Rory Kennedy, whose father was Robert F Kennedy, it cogently chronicles the United States’ April 1975 retreat in both theatrical form and an extended broadcast version that’s 15 minutes longer.