5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
When her mom is attacked and taken from their home in New York City by a demon, a seemingly ordinary teenage girl, Clary Fray, finds out truths about her past and bloodline on her quest to get her back, that changes her entire life.
Starring: Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Robert Sheehan, Lena Headey, Jonathan Rhys MeyersFantasy | 100% |
Adventure | 83% |
Action | 68% |
Teen | 52% |
Romance | 51% |
Supernatural | 26% |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Bach is to demons what garlic is to vampires.
So, according to The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, good old Johan Sebastian was a demon hunter, huh? Who knew? Hey, if Jesus and Honest Abe were vampire hunters, then anything's possible, and it all
makes sense in the cosmic wasteland of the cinema absurd because, there, anything can fit any analogy. On that note, then, it's right to say that
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is to quality cinema like Chicken McNuggets are to
aliens (it's no more crazy than Bach and demons) or Kryptonite is to Superman. In other words, it ain't good. Indeed, this movie is more
like a Silver Bullet to a werwolf and less like spinach to Popeye. The film, based
on the novel by Cassandra Clare,
wants to replicate the success of something else and forgets to just be itself. Here's another
book translated to the screen with
aspirations of becoming the next big Tween sensation to shine in the afterglow of Twilight's mega-dollars success, the other big one being Beautiful Creatures (by the way, take a gander down the Teen isle at
the bookstore and notice how just about every book has a black cover with glittery accents and flowery letters; it's really quite something to see).
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones fares significantly worse than any of the movies based on Stephenie Meyer's runaway bestsellers.
Take everything most movie watchers hated about those films, make them all worse, and add in the "ripoff/cash-in" angle and behold this movie in
all
its anti-glory.
Ready for battle. One of them, anyway.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones features a solid, but not particularly noteworthy, high definition presentation. Sony's latest mostly hits spot-on, usually showcasing balanced colors and sturdy details, especially in its brightest scenes. There, viewers will encounter film-perfect definition across face and clothes, not to mention more textured background surfaces and objects. Colors also look magnificent, from bright blue eyes to brilliant red hair. It's in the film's darker scenes that the image suffers. Blacks often look pale and washed down. Colors, too, suffer from a faded appearance and details come up rather flat. Overall, however, the transfer proves enjoyable and crisply defined, showcasing very light grain and suffering through no appearances of edge halos, blockiness, jagged lines, or other imperfections. It's sometimes not a very attractive movie, but the transfer certainly does a decent enough job of bringing it into the home.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones arrives on Blu-ray with a balanced, but not perfect, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack Generally, it does everything well bout nothing spectacularly. Music is nicely spaced, full, and smooth, but it lacks that precision and seamlessness of the finest tracks. Heavy club beats generally come up short of aggressive perfection but the track delivers score with a more even hand. This lossless presentation features a variety of ambient effects, nicely immersing listeners in everything from driving rain to clattering action. The bigger action scenes offer suitably robust, but not fully dynamic, elements. The surround channels carry a fair bit of information throughout the spectrum, and bass is generally evenly produced and never too little or too much. Dialogue plays crisply, consistently, and efficiently from the center. All around, a solid but not particularly memorable soundtrack from Sony.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones contains a handful of short featurettes, an interactive character map, deleted scenes, and a music
video.
If fans really hated Twilight, they'll despise The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. The difference here is that there probably won't be cultural over-saturation with this series, just scattered chuckles at its attempt to recreate a different series. The source material seems decent enough, if not a bit mundane and forced, but the filmed adaptation certainly leaves much to be desired. It's not Twilight, but it desperately wants to be. There's nothing new here, just the same tired sort of characters, drama, action, and romance that's lately been done to death both on the page and on the screen. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones features satisfactory video and audio. A light assortment of extras complete the package. Skip it.
w/ Rune Medallion Necklace
2013
With Exclusive Bonus Disc
2013
2013
2012
2013
2013
Special Edition - Theatrical Version
2011
Special Edition
2010
2009
Extended Edition
2012
2015
2010
2008
2013
2013
2013
Extended Edition
2016
1981
2013
2014
2012
2017
2016