6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Police hunting for a serial killer are helped when a victim manages to escape for the first time.
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Cary Elwes, Tony Goldwyn, Billy BlanksPsychological thriller | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish DD 2.0=Latin
English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Cantonese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
On CBS's long-running detective series, Castle, the titular author played by Nathan Fillion is often compared, usually unfavorably, to crime novelist James Patterson, who sells more books than Steven King, John Grisham or Dan Brown. Castle is his own most colorful creation, but Patterson's best-known character is criminal psychologist Alex Cross, who has worked, at various times, for the D.C. Metro Police, the FBI and the private sector. Cross has now appeared in three feature films and been played by two different actors. The most memorable were 1997's Kiss the Girls and 2001's Along Came a Spider, both of which featured Morgan Freeman in the role. Both films are being released on Blu-ray by Paramount and distributed by Warner under the studios' three-year licensing deal. Like Paramount's other catalog titles being given a U.S. Blu-ray release in October 2015, the discs appear to be identical to those previously issued overseas some two years earlier.
Kiss the Girls was shot by Aaron Schneider, who would go on to direct Robert Duvall in the independent feature, Get Low. The vintage of the transfer used for Paramount's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is unknown, but it is at least several years old. Nevertheless, the presentation of the widescreen anamorphic photography is quite good. The image is detailed without obvious indication of intrusive digital manipulation. It is also sharp, within the limited focal range of anamorphic lenses, which have a shallower depth of field than spherical lenses, so that much of the frame may be out of focus. (A single split-diopter shot occurs near the film's end in order to keep two characters in focus at different distances from the camera.) Kiss the Girls preceded the advent of digital post-processing, which introduced the now-familiar high-contrast look that causes so many viewers to downgrade a Blu-ray's video quality when that look is absent. In fact, this is a reasonably faithful presentation of a film-originated project completed photochemically. The blacks of night scenes are solid and deep, and colors are richly saturated so that the many scenes in the forests surrounding Durham are darkly green in a manner that is almost menacing. As is often the case in popcorn entertainment, everyone dresses too well and looks too good to be real, and the film's cinematography was obviously designed to complement that style. The Blu-ray delivers it accurately. Paramount has mastered this Warner-distributed disc with an average bitrate of 33.98 Mbps, which is certainly enough bandwidth, and the compression appears to have been capably performed.
Kiss the Girls's original 5.1 soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it has some impressive set pieces, notably the extended sequence of Kate's escape, which fully engages the surround array to convey her sense of disorientation and panic. Her abduction also uses sound creatively for suspense, as noises from all directions in her home leave both Kate and the viewer uncertain of where an intrusion is occurring. Several scenes in L.A., which can't be described without spoilers, also provide memorable sound cues. Dialogue is always clear, and so is its placement, including the disembodied voice of Casanova, who remains off-camera until the very end. Mark Isham (42 (The Jackie Robinson Story)) provided the thriller score.
The disc has no extras. Paramount's 1998 DVD contained the initial theatrical trailer (the one that didn't gave away most of the plot).
Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd had such effective screen chemistry, and Freeman so enjoyed the experience of working with the actress, that they reunited in 2002 for High Crimes, in which both actors played very different characters in a potentially (but only potentially) more interesting dramatic situation that the plot failed to develop credibly. In this film as in that one, Freeman and Judd remain the two best things on the screen. Paramount's Blu-ray is a satisfactory presentation and is recommended for fans of the film.
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