Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie Review

Mill Creek has released Director Sofia Coppola's film 'Marie Antoniette' to Blu-ray. The film first came to the market via Sony in 2016 as part of the controversial 'Choice Collection.' This Mill Creek issue is not great, but it's infinitely affordable at time of writing and also ships with a second film, 'Little Women,' as part of a two-film double feature.

Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This is a fairly typical Mill Creek release. The film looks good enough at-a-glance, but closer inspection reveals some foundational problems, again and as always, it seems with Mill Creek, in the form of macroblocking. Compression is not awful or sloppy, but not as much care was given to the encode as could have been possible. Part of the problem is sharing a disc with another film. The problem is never so exaggerated or exacerbating as to ruin any viewing experience, but it's practically ever-present in some capacity and density so as to make the image far less than ideal, even to the casual viewer. Detail is decent, like the Sony disc, seeming to lack the authoritative crispness that the material would seem to demand given the ornate and complex content that fills practically every frame, both on dense period attire and regal palace touches. Overall, the image is a bit fuzzy and flat, and while it benefits from the HD resolution, it seems to leave much to be desired. Also like the Sony release, the color palette here appears to be somewhat dull, lacking the sort of jazz and vividness and punch that one might expect from a movie with so many colors in it. It definitely favors a washed-out appearance, and I cannot say whether this was the intended filmmaker look, to favor mild tonal depression and flatness, or if both the Sony and Mill Creek discs are simply mishandling the colors. It is not that the colors look awful -- there's a certain soft pastel look to it -- it's just that the film seems to scream for more color impact than is offered here. Whites lack crispness and vividness, blacks are a mix of pale gray and crush, and skin tones are pasty. Some significant print wear pops in from time to time; the bedroom scene around the 22-minute mark is a good example where some of the denser damage may be seen. This is not an attractive Blu- ray, disappointing because the film itself screams for something great.

Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rather than release Marie Antoinette with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless encode, as its Sony counterpart received, Mill Creek has issued the film with a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 offering. The track is still satisfactory for essential delivery characteristics, including rocking guitar riffs over the open, a sense of decent spaciousness inside the castle walls throughout the film, and woodland ambience outside. Musical engagement is good beyond the open, where some of the up-tempo classical notes (listen around the 26-minute mark) play with satisfying vigor and stage stretch off to the sides. The surrounds here are not used in serious extension, and really even in the spatial ambience the back channels are more cursory help than they are prominent pieces of the sonic puzzle. Dialogue can be very shallow (listen around the 11:50 mark for an example) but for the most part plays with decent volume and clarity. As with the video, there seems to be ample room for improvement here, starting with a lossless encode, but this track as-is certainly delivers a decent enough baseline listen.

Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplemental content is included. Absent are the various extras from the Sony disc, including a handful of featurettes. As it ships in the double feature package, no DVD or digital copies are included and the release does not ship with a slipcover.

Marie Antoinette Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Marie Antoinette offers an interesting juxtaposition of classic 18th century stylings with a modern edge, not only in its technical construction but in its mismatched music, too, such as when with Bow Wow Wow's I Want Candy is plopped over a montage depicting Antoinette's excesses that would lead to her country's collapse and her demise (watch for an intentional? anachronism at the 55:54 mark). It's tonally mismatched but kind of intoxicating at the same time. If nothing else, Sofia Coppola brings something new to the table with the movie, a unique vision for a well-known character and point in history, and no matter how well or poorly it may be implemented, there's always something to be said for novelty in cinema. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is not an improvement over the Sony issue and in fact is a step down. Video shows drastic room for improvement and while audio is decent, the lossy encode and flat workmanship limit its ability to impress. No extras are included. For the price, though, this isn't a horrible release, especially paired with a second film.