6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 2.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
A crew of international astronauts are sent on a private mission to Jupiter's fourth moon.
Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Sharlto Copley, Daniel Wu, Christian Camargo, Embeth DavidtzThriller | Insignificant |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A film about a space mission to a moon of Jupiter that encounters something unexpected can't help but remind viewers of Stanley Kubrick's landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Sebastián Cordero addresses the issue up front by having mission control play the crew an excerpt of "The Blue Danube Waltz" shortly after takeoff. They've all seen Kubrick's film, and the crew smiles at the reference. They know they're following in the footsteps of the ill-fated Discovery, but they don't know at this point that their ship, the Europa One, will encounter difficulties that are equally dangerous, though less metaphysically vexing. Besides being an entertaining sci-fi adventure, Europa Report also serves as a kind of cinematic dialogue with Kubrick's epic across a span of 45 years. The script by Philip Gelatt shares much of 2001's sense of the individual's—and even humanity's—cosmic irrelevance before the vastness of space. Cordero wisely doesn't try to compete with Kubrick in conveying that sense visually, but he does find new ways of capturing the efforts of ordinary people to adapt to the closed quarters and unnatural environments of space travel by using the now-familiar techniques of "found video". Replacing Kubrick's omnisciently roving camera with the mechanized omniscience of recording devices located through Europa One (a technique foreshadowed by Kubrick in the HAL-9000 computer's multiple sensors), Cordero shows us the crew at work and leisure, as well as innumerable details of their mission and its challenges. But that isn't all Cordero shows us. The title of the film is Europa Report, and as the film's composer, Bear McCreary, notes in the extras, the film doesn't present itself as "found video". It's a documentary edited, shaped and narrated by the CEO of the corporation that funded, designed and guided the Jupiter mission—and now that company urgently needs to do some public damage control after sixteen months of public inquiries about the mission. Early on in this "report", we are told that a crew member has died, but not until halfway through the film do we learn the circumstances. (The crew member is identified in passing, and it quickly becomes evident who is missing.) Why the postponement of that information? Why the multiple narrators? Why has the footage—recently declassified, according to onscreen text—been presented out of order and structured like an adventure story? What is the real purpose and who is the real audience of this "report"? To avoid spoilers, I won't try to address these questions, but they are worth pondering as the end credits scroll.
Europa Report was shot by Enrique Chediak, who also shot director Cordero's 2004 feature Crónicas, as well as The Faculty for Robert Rodriguez and 127 Hours for Danny Boyle. Given the video nature of the footage, the principal challenge for Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is to present an accurate record of the various interviews, which are, for the most part, distinctively lit and colorful, and of the Europa One spaceship's various recorders, which are generally clear and sharp, but flat and dull without much in the way of bright or saturated colors, except upon the approach to the mission's destination, when the planet Jupiter comes into view. As one would expect from automated systems, a degree of video noise appears in response to bright light sources, but this is almost certainly intentional. Otherwise, the footage is generally clean and detailed, except where deliberate glitches have been introduced in post-production to reflect interference (a key plot point once the landing module reaches Europa) or damage to the ship (which occurs from several causes). Some of the news footage is less than pristine, presumably to simulate the quality of the genuine article. Since the elaborate effects work was created digitally and the film was finished on a digital intermediate, it's safe to assume that the Blu-ray was sourced from digital files. What we see is undoubtedly what we're meant to see. The average bitrate of 22.98 Mbps is perfectly adequate for a digitally originated project. If there were any compression errors, they were hidden in the glitches and effects work.
As composer Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) explains in the extras, his score for Europa Report has two elements. One is a traditional orchestral underscore, which he kept minimalist and non-intrusive. The other involves synthesizers and low tones that McCreary intended to blend with the film's sound design, which is largely front-oriented to complement the documentary illusion. It is McCreary's score, with both of its components, that truly opens out the film's soundtrack, filling the listening space with odd groans and ominous portents. A series of earthquake-like rumbles after the landing module has set down on Europa provides additional sonic excitement late in the film, but for most of its running time, Europa Report relies on McCreary's contribution to expand the silence of space into something more dramatically active. The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack reproduces the various elements of the crew's activities and McCreary's score with precision, broad dynamic range and deep bass extension. Dialogue is generally clear, although a few of the accents are occasionally thick enough to warrant assistance from the optional English SDH subtitles.
The Europa Report's glitching, fritzing video feeds make it inevitable that the film will remain classified as a "found video" creation, but the film is much more. The constant interruptions by narrators are a reminder that even what appears to be "found" is a manipulated reality shaped by an editorial point of view. The handwriting of the author (or, in this case, authors, plural) can never be completely erased, and it can be identified if one knows where to look. Cordero, who wrote and directed the very fine Crónicas (2004), is obviously intrigued by the relation between the storyteller's purpose and the story he chooses to tell. In Europa Report, he has blended that theme with the grandest speculations of which science fiction is capable. Highly recommended.
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Includes "The Invisible Boy" on SD
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1951
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2000
40th Anniversary Edition
1979
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