5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Jonesy, Henry, Pete and Beaver are bonded by friendship...and by the strange powers each acquired on a fateful day in their childhood. But now a horrific entity is testing their friendship and their powers, and only they can save the world from a menace unlike anything ever seen.
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, Timothy OlyphantHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 31% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Russian: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish 2.0=Latin; Japanese is hidden
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Stephen King liked the movie that director Lawrence Kasdan made from his novel Dreamcatcher, but he was one of the few. Despite a screenplay co-authored with Kasdan by the legendary William Goldman and an array of talent both in front of and behind the camera, the $68 million production quickly acquired bad buzz as a film in trouble. When it opened in March 2003, the reviews were dreadful and word-of-mouth was worse. Dreamcatcher earned less than $34 million domestically, although foreign sales raised that total to nearly $76 million. With video and other ancillary revenues, Warner Brothers made back its money, but Kasdan's career has never recovered. He did not make another film until 2012's modestly budgeted independent, Darling Companion. Dreamcatcher has its fans, but time has not revealed an unjustly criticized masterpiece or even a good film. King wrote the novel while recovering from the June 1999 car accident that nearly cost him his life. Although he sometimes describes the book as just a story about four friends, in fact Dreamcatcher is dense and complex in the deceptively simple style that has made King such a durable author. The best film adaptations of his works have often been the least faithful, where a director chooses to pursue specific elements and either downplay the rest or jettison them altogether (think of Kubrick's The Shining). But Kasdan added back elements that Goldman left out of the screenplay for Dreamcatcher, and he tries to cover too much, giving it all equal weight, so that the film gets bogged down with exposition, much of which gets rushed. The result is a film that feels like pieces of different movies stitched together, as if competing versions of the script had been randomly shuffled.
Dreamcatcher was shot on film by Oscar winning cinematographer John Seale (The English Patient), who is currently completing post-production on Mad Max: Fury Road. Digital intermediates were not yet standard practice, and the film was finished photochemically. Seale's lighting carefully contrasts the cold blues and grays of the present-day scenes in Northern Maine with the warmer tones of the childhood flashbacks. Ironically for such a poorly regarded catalog title, Warner has done a particularly fine job with this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Sharpness and detail are very good, albeit more so in the live-action shots than in the CG effects (which merely reflects the limitations of 2003 technology), and the grain structure has the kind of fine and natural quality throughout the film that one hopes for but rarely sees on such a consistent basis. Black levels are excellent throughout, as is contrast and shadow detail. Perhaps most striking is the bitrate. Having bowed to the inevitable and placed a 134-minute film with substantial supplements on a BD-50, Warner Home Video has actually used most of the available space to deliver an average rate of 29.99 Mbps, which is atypical for WHV (although not for the Warner Archive Program, which is operated by a different team). The result is not only an absence of artifacts, but one of the best images seen on a Warner catalog title in some time.
Dreamcatcher's 5.1 audio mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, provides all the sonic assault you could ask from a creature feature / action movie / supernatural buddy film. The worm-like creatures emit various slithery and snarling sounds, and do even worse as they make their way through human hosts while gestating. The larger alien life form represented by "Mr. Grey" has a subtler audio range, but it's distinctive and creepy. Col. Curtis' military unit brings with it the familiar sounds of warfare—heavy artillery, helicopters, armored transports—and these are delivered with solid force and impact, especially during an all-out aerial assault on the alien creatures. The harsh weather conditions of Northern Maine, especially after a winter storm settles in, provide an appropriate soundscape for Dreamcatcher's bleak tale, and several vehicular mishaps that result sound frighteningly real. In general, this is a well-mixed and involving track with good dynamic range, solid bass extension (where needed) and careful balance that never overwhelms the dialogue. The score by James Newton Howard (Kasdan's usual musical interpreter) blends neatly into the mix; as Howard notes in the extras, he used more electronic elements than usual for him, in an effort to blur the boundaries between sound effects and underscoring.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of Dreamcatcher.
The Blu-ray of Dreamcatcher has already been discounted to a bargain price; so the curious may want to experience it just to see how so many talented people can work so hard to produce such a misfire. It's hard to make a good movie under any circumstances, but it's especially so when the director and the material are mismatched. Kasdan was clearly most comfortable with the scenes of character interaction, but Dreamcatcher needed the crass showman of the movie producer played by Steve Martin in Kasdan's Grand Canyon, who asked his editors, in all seriousness, "Where's the money shot? The viscera on the visor?" Kasdan wrote that character as a parody, but you need to be him if you want to make an effective creature feature. Recommended as a Blu-ray; whether you want to spend your time and money on the film is up to you.
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1983
Спутник
2020
1986
Collector's Edition
1995
Unrated Theatrical and Rated Versions
2013
Haunted
2014
2016
1988
2016
2013
1957