5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Diane's feelings for Jack -- the girl she met over the summer -- begin to manifest themselves in terrifying ways when she learns that her friend will soon be moving away.
Starring: Juno Temple, Riley Keough, Kylie Minogue, Leo Fitzpatrick, Cara SeymourHorror | 100% |
Romance | 38% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
There's a great Q&A with David Lynch where he says that "cinema is a language that can speak abstractions...cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-
words things." I think this is true—in much the same way that music can speak abstractions—but the operative word is can. Cinema doesn't
always need to work on the plane of intuitive, unspoken metaphor, and it also seems to me that one mark of a lesser—or more pretentious—
filmmaker is to turn easy-to-say-in-words things into unnecessary abstractions. That is, to overcomplicate the obvious, to say less with more.
Case in point: writer/director Bradley Rust Gray's Jack & Diane, a teenaged love-slash-horror story that needlessly tries to represent the
animalism of pubescent attraction through heavy-handed symbolism. In Gray's film, young love is quite literally a monster—a wolfish, misshapen blood
beast—and this really only serves as a distraction. Take away the horror movie accoutrements—and they could definitely be excised with little damage
to the plot—and you're left with a rather mundane indie romance, all fumbling teenaged sexual awkwardness and stilted dialogue.
Diane & Jack
While most small-budget indie movies nowadays are shot digitally, Jack & Diane is a defiantly 35mm production, and I think the natural filmic look does work in the story's favor. Magnolia's Blu-ray release keeps the grain intact with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that seems mostly true to source and intention. There's no digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, or overt compression issues here, although I did notice what I can only describe as a slight strobing of horizontal lines in some of the stop-motion sequences. I'm not sure what might've caused this, but it's not pervasive or overly distracting. While the picture isn't always extremely sharp—probably due to fast film stock and lenses used—it does yield a decent level of high definition clarity, with good facial and clothing textures in closeup. (See Diane's outfits, in particular.) The color grading goes for a largely realistic look; saturation and contrast are balanced, skin tones seem consistent, and black levels rarely endanger shadow detail. I wouldn't say this is a wowing transfer, but it suits the film just fine.
Jack & Diane features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that more than adequately handles the film's limited sound requirements. This is a mostly quiet, talky film, and dialogue—most importantly—is always balanced and easily understood. (Even if there are a few scenes where the use of lavaliere mics results in a slightly artificial quality to the conversations. That is, they sound recorded, and not like we just happen to be overhearing them on the street.) Moderate use is made of the surround channels, which put out low-level ambience in most scenes— New York street noise, night club music and chatter, thunder—along with the occasional directional effect when necessary. The real highlight to the mix is the film's score, by the Icelandic band múm—yes, uncapitalized, e.e. cummings-style—who make twinkly electronics-augmented bedtime music, with pitter-pattering beats and saw-bow quivering and soft synths. The cues sound great here, spread throughout all 5.1 channels. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
Jack & Diane's premise is killer—A first crush horror movie with creepy stop-motion animation by the Quay Brothers and a soundtrack from múm? Count me in!—but writer/director Bradley Rust Gray's execution is unfortunately off. The film would've worked better had he either ditched the monster movie elements entirely or else done something more impactful with them. As it stands, the story is a weird and unsuccessful hodgepodge of genres, part Cronenbergian body horror freakout and part slush pile reject from a gay film festival. If you're still buy-curious, I'd skip the Blu-ray and wait for the film to show up streaming on Netflix or elsewhere.
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