5.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After surviving a plane crash a young conservative woman suffers a crisis of faith.
Starring: Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Octavia Spencer, Holly Hunter, Nick OffermanRomance | 100% |
Comedy | 70% |
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 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Screenwriter Diablo Cody likes to push comic situations to the edge, so that they risk crossing the boundary of what's funny. A self-confessed outsider, she creates heroines whose circumstances place them far enough outside "normal" to justify their acerbic commentary on everyone and everything—except, usually, themselves. The comedy often comes when they bump up against their own limitations. Pregnancy and precocious verbal dexterity separated the teenage heroine of Juno, and multiple personality disorder served the same function in the HBO series United States of Tara. In Cody's script for Young Adult, a combination of arrested development and stalker-ish romantic obsession threatened to make the heroine thoroughly unappealing, but the film succeeded against all odds because of precision direction from Jason Reitman and a dazzling high-wire performance by Charlize Theron. Paradise is Cody's first effort at directing her own feature script, having gained experience directing episodes of Tara, but she has written a story that would give even a seasoned film director pause. Her heroine is a teenage girl who has suffered third degree burns over half her body in a plane crash and now, after a year of painful skin grafts and surgery, is just able to return to a world that she sees through completely different eyes. Cody has said that she wanted to explore how people cope with unimaginable trauma, but as Robert Redford demonstrated in Ordinary People, it's possible to do so without creating a ghoulish display of effects make-up to turn the main character's skin into what she herself describes as "turkey bacon". The injury and the practical necessities of treating it become a distraction. As the heroine says in addressing her church:
Look, I know that you're all pretending that you're here for my testimony about how, through the grace of God, I recovered from my near-fatal accident. But let's be honest. You're all just hoping to hear the gory details about the crash. Like, for instance, how could I smell myself burning . . . .The same "freak show" factor ends up overwhelming Paradise, and Cody can't immunize against it by inoculating the film with a few lines of dialogue.
According to the commentary, Paradise was shot with the Arri Alexa. The cinematographer was Tim Suhrstedt, whose distinguished resume includes Little Miss Sunshine, several films for Mike Judge and the original Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Image/RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced from digital files, is typical of discs created from sources originated on the Alexa: clean, noiseless and detailed, but with a smooth, almost film-like quality and no digital harshness. The range of colors is exceptional, encompassing both the more sober, earth-toned palette of Montana (actually, Louisiana) and the garish brightness and suggestive shadows of Las Vegas, with its constantly changing lights and attractions. Blacks and shadow detail are excellent, so that even the dark club scenes show everything you'd want to see. Since this is Image, a BD-25 is only to be expected, but digital imagery can be more tightly compressed without risk of artifacts, and the average bitrate of 20.99 seems to have been sufficient to accommodate the 87-minute film.
Paradise sports an unusually aggressive 5.1 soundtrack for a comedy, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA, which announces its immersive presence right from the opening, when an image of cotton candy burns violently away to reveal Lamb Mannerheim emerging from the ocean. The Vegas scenes are full of club and casino noise, with aggressively pounding music and deep bass notes, either nearby or in the distance, depending on the setting. Various "subjective" sound effects are woven into the sonic texture to accompany Lamb's voiceover narration, and the score by Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman winds through the story, providing a comic counterpoint to the overcooked Vegas beat. The dialogue is always clear.
After the success of Juno, Cody was criticized and parodied for that film's distinctive idiom, which reflected the attitude of its young protagonist. But the language was just packaging. Cody's subsequent work has demonstrated stylistic flexibility, as she has explored different settings and other types of protagonists. Paradise suggests, however, that she may need the additional, contrary perspective of an independent director (or of directing someone else's script) to ensure that every aspect of her vision is thoroughly tested and expressed—and also to eliminate the things that don't work and distract from the real themes. Cody is a major talent, and people like Octavia Spencer's Loray (who reveals herself as a film school student) will someday write papers about her. They will be the ones to watch Paradise. Everyone else should pass.
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