7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
In a distant future world, humans have received longevity but lost their fertility, and are nearly extinct by population decline. The protagonist, a cyborg explorer, enters an underground world where artificially created species live. His mission is intended to research for their secrets of reproductivity. As the story goes on, it becomes gradually clear that the underground world is a kind of dystopia where dangerous monsters roam or ambush, and that the artificially created intelligent species developed a unique society.
Starring: Takahide Hori, Atsuko Miyake, Yuji SugiyamaAnimation | 100% |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Horror | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
for "Alien Dialect"
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Junk Head stretches for the stars but, like its titular hero, plummets into the depths, loses the finesse and strength of its stop-motion body, only to be reborn as a Frankensteinian infant struggling to learn how to use its new arms and legs. Too much? Apologies. I desperately wanted Junk Head to be the next Mad God in my collection; a stunning, stomach-churning masterpiece of a fever dream that took legendary VFX artist Phil Tippett and his team 30 years to complete. Or at the very least, I hoped it would be the next 9; an uneven but engaging dystopian adventure released theatrically in 2009 by Universal Pictures and digital FX animator (briefly turned director) Shane Acker. Instead, Japanese writer/director Takahide Hori's bloody descent into rather generic mutated madness is an adequately animated but poorly edited stop-motion oddity that feels far more like a film student's senior year project (complete with one too many rookie filmmaking mistakes) than a dark epic from the next great animation master.
Synergetic brings Junk Head to Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation that stands as the best aspect of the release. The palette is muted on the whole, with dirty eggshell whites, dusty burlap browns, dingy yellows, and endless hallways of pallid greens and decaying beiges. But color still pops when called upon. Blood is suitably vibrant and tacky, flames erupt and splash across the screen, and black levels are nice and deep. Contrast is solid and consistent (albeit a tad overblown at times under the harsh florescent lights of the underground factories), while detail is as revealing as its source allows. Fine textures are crisp, edges are clean, and delineation allows the viewer to probe the shadows and study everything the animators have put into a scene. There are small hints of artifacting here and there, particularly when scanning large areas of darkness in low-lit shots, but it hardly amounts to a distraction. All told, Junk Head presumably looks as good on Blu- ray as it did in the editing room.
Junk Head's alien language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track is less exciting. No lossless mix. No surround experience. Granted, the film was more than likely created with a stereo track, sans a sound design artist who might have lent a more compelling and immersive mix to the production. Hori can only do so much. Still, voices (garbled and unintelligible as they intentionally are) are crystal clear and neatly prioritized in the soundscape, and explosions, bestial roars and industrial machinery are decently weighty, even without the support of a subwoofer. Music is... all over the place. Under- represented, overbearing... you name it. The volume, prioritization and utilization of the score could really use some work. It never drowns out dialogue but, again, it's an alien language you can't possibly understand anyway, so it doesn't earn points there. In the end it's a serviceable audio track that's probably a good representation of the original sound design and mix.
A single featurette is included but it's a big'un: "The Making of Junkhead" (HD, 42 minutes), a detailed look at the production, character designs, stop- motion animation, music composition and more. I was worried this would be a simple port of one of the animation studio's short EPKs from YouTube. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find a fuller, more comprehensive mini-documentary that -- didn't help me but -- may help you appreciate the film more.
I know some people will enjoy Junk Head far more than I did. A quick Google search of reviews uncovers quite a bit of praise for the film. But I couldn't get past its lesser qualities; the sloppy filmmaking and editing techniques prevalent throughout, the wayward story and abrupt ending, the disjointed score and uneven humor; on and on and on. Junkers is a great character, as are some of his newfound friends, but they deserve a better dystopian adventure. Synergetic's Blu-ray release is better, with an excellent video presentation, a solid stereo track (that presumably is as much as the source film has to offer), and a pleasantly surprising 42-minute production documentary. Honestly, give it a shot. Support independent filmmakers. Junk Head may be a far cry from Mad God but you may still have a good time with its stop-motion wares.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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