7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The first manned space flight to Mars is cancelled and a hoax is put on TV by the U.S. government. Things get ugly for the astronauts when they're not supposed to return.
Starring: Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, Sam Waterston, O.J. SimpsonThriller | Insignificant |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Though I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, my very own dear departed maternal grandmother was one of those people who resolutely refused to believe we had actually landed on the moon. Now Grandma wasn’t a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, she was simply a fairly intelligent but relatively uneducated (or perhaps undereducated) woman who had witnessed all sorts of technological miracles during her lifetime but still for whatever reason wasn’t able to quite wrap her mind around Man having the wherewithal to shoot three men first into outer space and then, later, two of them onto the lunar surface. My grandmother never really revealed how she thought the footage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin frolicking in lesser gravity was created, though the obvious implication was that it was all staged. And so for a certain segment of the population the rather outlandish premise of 1978’s Capricorn One probably played less like a thriller than a dramatized documentary. The target of the launch might be a tad more ambitious—Mars instead of the moon—but otherwise Capricorn One plays solidly to those who are tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists, positing a shady and corrupt government out to bamboozle a gullible citizenry into believing that a manned mission to the red planet is actually taking place, when instead an elaborate hoax is being foisted upon everyone.
Capricorn One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Timeless Media Group, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is at best a modest offering, and at worst a fairly lackluster one, though one that at least has not been put through a digital wringer. The general look here is decidedly on the soft side, with even close-ups failing to really deliver superior levels of detail and fine detail. Midrange and wide shots are even less convincing at times. On the plus side, colors are quite nicely saturated and appear to have undergone little if any fade. Elements are also in generally fine condition, with only expected anomalies like flecks and specks of dirt showing up. Grain is occasionally problematic, tending to clump and again at times having an ugly yellow component, a tendency that also afflicts Shout!'s release of On Golden Pond, though not to this degree. For these reasons, some may feel a 3.0 score is overly generous, though to be fair the presentation looks better in motion than some of these screenshots might suggest. That said, despite the deficiencies on display and room for improvement, Capricorn One at least offers a generally organic look if not outstanding levels of depth, clarity and sharpness.
Capricorn One features a surprisingly robust lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, one which more than capably handles the film's dialogue, effects and Jerry Goldsmith's enjoyable score. There's a perhaps unexpected energy to the low end and the midrange is also nicely full, offering good support for some of Goldsmith's more punchy cues. There are no issues of any kind to report.
Some who are old enough to remember the excitement of watching hero astronauts blast off either into orbit or even more incredibly to the moon are also of the same generation who watched in horror as the Watergate conspiracy and its aftermath showed just how devious various governmental types could be. Those two disparate elements are combined somewhat precariously in Capricorn One, but for those willing to put a certain amount of logic aside, the film delivers a decent amount of paranoid dread. Video quality here is acceptable though lackluster, so fans of the film will probably want to peruse the screenshots included with this review to help them make any decisions about purchasing.
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