6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
Private eye Tom Welles is hired by a wealthy widow to discover whether a "snuff film" found among her late husband's private belongings is authentic or not. He travels to Los Angeles to investigate and is aided by Max, an employee at an adult video store.
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare, Anthony HealdThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
5.1: 3392 kbps; 2.0: 1697 kbps
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
"Everybody's afraid of this script." These were the cautionary words Columbia's executive triumvirate gave to Joel Schumacher about directing Andrew Kevin Walker's script, 8MM. Amy Pascal, John Calley, and Lucy Fisher had approached various directors about the project but they all passed until a copy of the screenplay reached Schumacher. The UCLA grad was burned out and reeling from the reception of Batman & Robin (in more ways than one) but eager to tackle dead-serious material with a hard edge. As the versatile director recollects in a exclusive new interview, an Australian film critic had recommended Romper Stomper and its main star, Russell Crowe. Schumacher and Crowe discussed doing the film all hand-held and the Aussie had fresh ideas about approaching the role of a private eye searching for a teen runaway that apparently appeared in a snuff film. Columbia learned that Nicolas Cage was also available and interested, although the studio unsurprisingly wanted a more conventional narrative. Schumacher was enthusiastic about both actors and leaned on Calley to choose his star. Calley picked Cage to portray PI Tom Welles.
8MM begins in a lower middle-class suburb of Harrisburg, PA where Welles lives with his wife, Amy (Catherine Keener), and their baby daughter. Just as he's about to unwind from a recently completed assignment, Welles receives a rather urgent call from Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), the widow of a wealthy industrial magnet. Mrs. Christian wants Welles to come to her palatial estate to inspect a cannister of eight-millimeter film that Mr. Welles's consigliere, Daniel Longdale (Anthony Heald), has uncovered from a safe hidden behind a large portrait of a gentleman (Mr. Christian?). Welles winces and grimaces as he watches this short film of an innocent-looking girl juxtaposed next to a burly, leather-clad man with a resin mask one would guess belongs to Hannibal. The girl seems to be brutally beaten and maybe left for dead. But is the snuff film completely authentic or a staged hoax? Mrs. Christian tasks Welles with establishing the identity of the girl, who made the film, and the man behind the mask.
Hollywood, here I come.
Schumacher has stated that DVD sales for 8MM "went through the roof" so it's hard to reckon why it finally reached Blu-ray in North America twenty years after its home video premiere. (Schumacher's thirteenth feature has been available in Australia on a BD-25 courtesy of Shock's Cinema Cult sublabel for over a year.) 8MM appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50, which has been encoded at an average video bitrate of 32000 kbps. Though Shout! Factory did not give 8MM a 4K scan, the print used looks rock solid with deep, harsh blacks. There's a little motion blur but no glaring image stability issues. The opening titles have dirt scattered throughout the frame but artifacts nearly go away entirely post-main titles. Daytime scenes in Miami and LA look especially bright compared to the dark and grimy look that Robert Elswit has given it. One critic who saw the release print appropriately called the interiors "dark cellars lit by bare bulbs." Jeffrey Westhoff, who wrote for the daily Northwest (IL) Herald, described the drained colors as "a harsh palette of gunmetal blue and battleship gray" (see Screenshot #s 4 and 8). Elswit often darkens the left and right sides of the frame, leaving only shafts of light on faces. Shout seems to have worked from the same negative that Columbia Tri-Star/Sony used for its original SD transfers but this isn't an upconvert and there are no MPEG artifacts.
Screenshots 1-22, 24, 26, 28, & 30 = 2018 Shout! Factory 2K Transfer
Screenshots 23, 25, 27, & 29 = 1999 Columbia TriStar SD Transfer
Shout! provides their usual twelve chapter markers for the two-hour feature. (Columbia's DVD had a generous twenty-eight scene selections.)
Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (3392 kbps, 24-bit) and a downmixed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1509 kbps, 24-bit). The 5.1 mix has its share of pros and cons. The percussive, ethnic beats from composer Mychael Danna are well-balanced in the fronts and their most propulsive notes stand out in the rear channels. Danna wrote a bifurcated score alternating with Moroccan percussive instruments (to suggest Tom Welles's entry into completely foreign places) and traditional symphonic music played low-key to underscore lingering suspense. The dialogue, general ambience, and f/x is another story. Spoken words delivered while in close-up seem a bit too loud. It seems more of an encode and sampling issue than an ADR problem. Background noise is more limited and doesn't really have an aural presence. Chases and gunshot sounds are above-average but lack the range and crispness of action films from the mid- to late nineties.
The optional English SDH look to be accurately transcribed throughout.
Walker and Schumacher take viewers to some very dark places and the films that they produce. However repulsive the imagery, I couldn't turn away from the screen. 8mm boasts one of Schumacher's best-directed films as well as one of Cage's greatest performances. The new interview with Schumacher contains some stories hitherto untold in the commentary or in print interviews that I read. I listened to the commentary twice and it makes me want to beg Schumacher to record commentaries for several of his other films. Shout! Factory has done a fine job of mastering the image but the lossless 5.1 is inconsistent. While not a bonafide special edition, this comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to fans of director and lead but also to followers of that chameleon, Joaquin Phoenix. The film poses very challenging material to digest (not for faint of heart) but I felt rewarded by some great writing from Walker (Se7en).
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