Results Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Results Blu-ray Movie Review

There Aren't Any

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 21, 2015

Results is an attempt by writer/director Andrew Bujalski, whose previous films have all been loose-limbed affairs with non-professional casts (e.g., Mutual Appreciation), to make a mainstream movie. "Scratch pretty much any experimental or indie filmmaker", says Bujalski, "and you'll find a fan of traditional Hollywood storytelling—at its best, anyhow." Unfortunately, Bujalski chose romantic comedy for his experiment, which is a format that depends heavily on tight plotting—and plotting is not Bujalski's strength. If you're going to work within a traditional format, you have to know how to make its formulas work, even if the goal is to bend them. In Results, it's not even clear that Bujalski understands the essential ingredients.

By his own admission, Bujalski conceived Results by imagining the chiseled good looks of Australian actor Guy Pearce next to the hangdog face of indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan (currently appearing on TV's Public Morals). Then he created a scenario in which a woman would serve as the catalyst that brings them into conflict. In theory the approach has potential, but on the screen it dissolves into a series of disconnected scenes where the actors are obviously giving their all, but the director has no sense of how the parts fit together.

Trevor (Pearce) is a personal fitness and lifestyle guru who runs a small health club in Austin, Texas, called "Power4Life" that he wants to expand. Kat (Cobie Smulders, The Avengers) is his most popular trainer. They were briefly in a relationship, but their temperaments are dissimilar and they want different things from life, partly because of the gap between their ages.

Now, "traditional Hollywood storytelling", in Bujalski's phrase, would get this essential information out on the table as quickly and efficiently as possible, because it's the foundation for the conflicts in the film. But Bujalski's quasi-mumblecore style dribbles out these basic facts over the film's entire 105 minutes. By the time you realize that the film is supposed to be grounded in questions about Kat's and Trevor's relationship, you're almost at the credits.

A major reason why any connection between Kat and Trevor fades into the background is Results' focus on Danny (Corrigan), a new client who pays for two years of in-home sessions in advance. We know from an opening scene that Danny has recently suffered a relationship crisis. Having relocated to Austin, he now lives in a luxurious and barely furnished mansion, spends money carelessly and has the disheveled look and poor eating habits of a guy who isn't used to taking care of himself. Clearly Danny is searching for something but doesn't know what, which is why he is attracted to Power4Life and is so easily sold by Trevor's upbeat sales pitch. Reality sets in when Kat, his personal trainer, turns out to be pretty much what she represented herself to be: a trainer, not a companion. To create some minor drama, Bujalski has her slip up and give Danny the wrong signals, but Kat quickly pulls back.

A well-structured comedy, romantic or otherwise, can make room for numerous subplots and secondary characters, as long the writer and director know how to subordinate them to the main storyline. The pitfall for filmmakers like Bujalski, who try to adapt a plotless, character-driven style to a traditionally structured genre, is that they continue giving equal weight to every character and event. Thus, the attorney played by Giovanni Ribisi, whom Danny meets in a bar, appears to be destined for a meaningful role, but he turns out to be no more than a plot function. The real estate agent (Constance Zimmer) who shows Trevor a new and expensive space for his potential expansion is also just a necessary piece of narrative machinery, but Bujalski can't resist exploring her as if her story were eventually going to merge into the film's ultimate resolution. (It doesn't.) And the Russian-born fitness magnate, Grigory (Anthony Michael Hall), whom Trevor idolizes, does turn out to be a key figure, along with his adoring wife (Brooklyn Decker), but his key scenes do not arrive until late in the story. Before then he is seen only in TV ads, which are edited into the film so sloppily that Grigory appears to be the competition about which Trevor is always complaining.

Even though Results was inspired by the contrast between Guy Pearce and Kevin Corrigan, it is Corrigan who dominates, giving a vanity-free performance in which the actor isn't afraid to be unlikable and, at times, downright creepy. The more we learn about Danny, the more pathetic he appears. Even the manner in which he became wealthy marks him as a loser (in his own eyes as well), and he spends his money like some instant lottery millionaire who has no clue what anything is worth. Bujalski gives you the basics on Trevor, and then Kat, by having each of them spout self-help platitudes, but he leaves Danny a mystery for too long, so that your attention is inevitably drawn to the one guy whose romantic problems can't be resolved by the end of the movie.

Results Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Results was shot on the Arri Alex by Bujalski's usual cinematographer, Matthias Grunsky. With post-production completed on a digital intermediate, Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path. The Blu-ray's image reflects all the usual virtues of digital capture; it is sharp, clear and detailed, even in night scenes (none of which are particularly dark). At the same time, the Alexa's ability to create a softer and more film-like appearance is also on display. The color palette ranges from the cool and sterile whites of Trevor's gym to the bright colors favored by Grigory, the only character in Results who seems to be enjoying life. Grunsky and Bujalski often frame oddly, but none of this seems to have caused a problem for either the lighting technicians or the focus puller.

Magnolia has mastered Results with an average bitrate of 29.99 Mbps, which is excellent for digitally acquired material, and the compression has been carefully done.

Results Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Results has a modest 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. There are some effective stereo separations for off-camera activities (Kat listening to her roommate with her lover is amusing) but little in the way of rear-channel activity. Dialogue is always clear. Since this is a film about working out, numerous exercise-worthy pop songs are heard on the soundtrack. The underscoring is by Justin Rice, who has appeared as an actor in several of Bujalski's films.

Results Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Getting Results: Shecky & Raymond (1080p; 1.85:1; 4:40): Adventures with the film's two animal performers.



• Results Fitness Promotional Videos (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:30): A "play all" function is included. Portions of these play throughout the film.
• Power4Life #1
• Power4Life #2
• Grigory



• Interviews (1080p; 1.78:1; 34:53): A "play all" function is included.
• Cobie Smulders
• Kevin Corrigan and Writer/Director Andrew Bujalski
• Brooklyn Decker and Anthony Michael Hall
• Constance Zimmer



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:16): The trailer is an interesting demonstration of how a skilled editor can extract what looks like a coherent plot from the film's meandering succession of scenes.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for The Little Death, Iris, Tangerine and The Wolfpack, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back for updates".

Results Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I am willing to cut filmmakers a lot of slack to try something new, but I also believe they have an obligation to let the audience know, within a reasonable time, what kind of film this is and where it's going. Results fails that basic test and never fully recovers. The disc is technically proficient and several of the performances are first-rate, but the film is a misfire.