6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lyndon Johnson becomes the President of the United States in the chaotic aftermath of JFK's assassination and spends his first year in office fighting to pass the Civil Rights Act.
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Anthony Mackie, Melissa Leo, Frank Langella, Bradley WhitfordBiography | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
History | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 2.0
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
My home state of Oregon may not be known as a cultural bulwark, perhaps more famous for the likes of Tonya Harding than for more prestigious hosting duties it provided to artists like Ernest Bloch, but for theater lovers, Oregon is a bit of an oasis on the west coast, with a number of incredibly fine companies not necessarily limited to its larger cities. One of these groups is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which is a major mover and shaker (not to mention employer) in the charming southern Oregon town of Ashland. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has a beautiful outdoor theater that is supposedly a replica of the Globe (I can’t vouch for its absolute authenticity, though I can vouch for how hard the seats are), but among the more interesting things about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is that it isn’t necessarily relegated to “only” offering Shakespeare as part of its annual seasons. While there may be a certain Shakespearian tragedy aspect to the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, All the Way was actually commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as part of its commendable pursuit of creating a “history cycle” built around the United States that would be at least somewhat analogous to the famous Shakespeare “history plays”. That particular production didn’t have the marquee value of one Bryan Cranston in the role of Johnson, but once Cranston did essay the part (beginning in 2013 in Massachusetts), it became the latest in a series of signature acting pieces by Cranston, who has proven over and over again how facile he is at fully inhabiting characters. Cranston ultimately won a Tony for his performance once the play matriculated to Broadway, and his performance accounts for one of the twelve Emmy nominations this HBO version currently has racked up, awaiting the awards ceremony that is scheduled to be broadcast in a couple of weeks. All the Way is a fascinating character study, though its narrative is kind of bifurcated, perhaps intentionally so, charting the course of a couple of epochal incidents in Johnson’s presidency.
All the Way is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While the very nature of this outing doesn't offer a lot of opportunity for "wow" visuals, this is an often impeccably sharp and well detailed presentation which offers a natural looking palette and some excellent detail levels, something that's helped by director Jay Roach's preference for extreme close-ups. Commendably, even with those close-ups and great fine detail levels, no "seams" on Cranston's impressive makeup really make themselves known. The piece uses quite a bit of archival newsreel and actual news broadcast footage, and those elements are understandably quite fuzzy looking, often attended by video anomalies like ghosting. Occasionally a few dimly lit interior scenes don't have huge levels of shadow definition, but are almost always above average in that regard.
Similarly to the video presentation, All the Way's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix struggles at times to provide an overwhelming audio experience, but there are nice moments of immersion and even some relatively forceful low end, as in the gunshots that start off the piece (in an auguring of Kennedy's fate). Noisier environments like the cacophonous Democratic Convention of 1964 probably provide the best and most consistent use of the surround channels, but dialogue is always cleanly presented, and fidelity is fine throughout the presentation.
Kind of like HBO's recent Confirmation, All the Way can't quite overcome the hurdle that many in the audience are going to know how the story ultimately turned out, and so the interest comes not from "what happened" but from "how it happened." The telefilm does a generally admirable job in getting into some of the nooks and crannies of events and even interrelationships, but it's simply too generalist an overview to ever resonate emotionally. One of the few really visceral moments has to do with a completely "inconsequential" supporting character who shows up once at a funeral King is supposedly providing the eulogy for, and who urges the black congregation to "stand up", perhaps one indication that the larger than life characters at the core of this story are simply too titanic for most viewers to relate to. Still, Cranston's performance is superb and he makes All the Way watchable even if it's not especially moving. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, All the Way comes Recommended.
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