6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.3 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.1 |
When an alcoholic relapses, causing him to lose his wife and his job, he holds a yard sale on his front lawn in an attempt to start over. A new neighbor might be the key to his return to form.
Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Glenn Howerton, Stephen RootComedy | 100% |
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)
English, 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 | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Saturday Night Live has spawned a rather large number of film projects, not to mention a wide variety of comedic movie careers. But who among us would have predicted when we long ago saw Bill Murray as a smarmy lounge singer oozing out a version of John Williams’ Star Wars (complete with the most absurd lyric ever) that he would eventually become a dramatic performer of rather profound capabilities? Similarly, few probably would have predicted much dramatic potential for Will Ferrell, another SNL silly man who has defied the odds and branched out into straighter dramatic fare with a great deal of success. His latest entry in a semi-dramatic mode is Everything Must Go, a bittersweet little film that has the same tonal ambiguity that Ferrell’s Stranger Than Fiction did—while neither film is really laugh out loud hilarious, they both have a gentle humor to them, but the underlying foundation is a more questioning, yearning spirit that grounds both films in a surprisingly serious demeanor. If anything, Everything Must Go is a far more sober (no pun intended, considering its hero’s incipient alcohol problem) and probing film that looks at a middle life crisis the likes of which has rarely been portrayed on screen. The Great Recession of the last few years has given us a slew of films of good (if sometimes slightly damaged) men (and women) suffering the cruel vagaries of fate, finding their lives upended with job terminations and personal wreck and ruin. But Everything Must Go is rather unexpectedly courageous in giving us a central character who is anything but good. Ferrell portrays Nick Halsey, a not so recovering alcoholic who is fired from his longstanding job and then arrives home to find that his wife has left him, locked him out of his house, and left all of his possessions on the front lawn. While Nick may be sympathetic due to his circumstances if nothing else, the film doesn’t shirk from this character’s many faults, and that’s what gives Everything Must Go its decidedly post-modern edge, a bitter pill of realization that some people bring ruin on themselves through their own mismanagement of their lives.
The first moments of Everything Must Go give a good indication of what this Blu-ray's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1 have to offer. As Ferrell ponders his new uncertain future in his car, we get a side shot of his face, and fine detail is so astounding we can virtually count every pore and seemingly are about to get to the subcutaneous level. This is a film filled with the soft amber hues of Arizona dusks, and that autumnal golden color suffuses the film with gorgeous hues which nonetheless cast a very subtle haze of softness on several sequences. Everything Must Go has an abundance of closep-ups, and those offer abundant fine detail, but even some of the outdoor location shots offer wonderful depth of field and sharp and appealing elements. Colors are good, though fleshtones seem more dependent upon the (apparently) natural lighting sources than in more studio bound films, so you will notice several distinct changes in the color of Ferrell's skin, adding a certain pallor as he moves through different environments. Despite a lot of the film taking place in the twilight or outright darkness, the film boasts excellent shadow detail and solid black levels.
Despite being set on a rather small stage, sonically speaking, with lots of small moments between two characters, Everything Must Go features a surprisingly spacious lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. A lot of this is due to the fact that so much of the film takes place out of doors, where some artfully placed ambient environmental sounds perk up the surround channels. Listen for example to the nice panning of the dastardly automatic sprinkler system which keeps spraying Nick in the morning as he attempts to sleep on his favorite recliner. Though this soundtrack is quite subtle, there are numerous little effects like this which dot the soundfield, and they add up to a very immersive, albeit sometimes quietly immersive, track. Fidelity is excellent and though there's no real dynamic range to speak of, the few bursts of sonic energy when Nick loses his cool are well supported.
This is an actors' piece above all, and the good news is that Everything Must Go is blessed with uniformly excellent work from both seasoned pros and relative newcomers alike. The film itself is a little sketchy, literally, with not enough detail for us to really get underneath Nick's skin (despite the fine detail of the transfer). But this is still a very compelling little film which casts a very unique spell, and it comes Highly recommended.
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