Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Wilson Blu-ray Movie Review

Cast Away's volley ball finally gets the biopic it has long deserved.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 21, 2017

Do major film studios have historians or at least custodians of their institutional legacy any more? If not, that may account for 20th Century Fox’s reuse of one of the less lustrous titles from their past, Wilson. In 1944, Wilson was released to actually at least somewhat positive critical acclaim, but it flopped big time at the box office, becoming an albatross for Fox and Daryl F. Zanuck, whose involvement indicated this had been something of a pet project for the studio impresario. That Wilson was a pretty staid and frankly not very compelling portrait of the 28th President of the United States of America, and some wags have said it’s the most boring film to ever garner a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. (Fox’s historians could probably have a whole display of less than successful Fox releases that some studio shills have been able to market for sometimes absurd numbers of Oscar nominations, with both Wilson and the much later Doctor Dolittle springing instantly to mind.) The foregoing is, of course, said with tongue planted firmly in cheek (as is the deck below the title above, a reference to another Fox distributed film which featured a "character" named Wilson), since 2017’s Wilson is culled from a graphic novel bearing the same name, with both the graphic novel and the film’s screenplay having been written by Daniel Clowes. This particular Wilson (Woody Harrelson) is a guy who might alternatively be called a misanthrope, curmudgeon and/or geezer, three terms which might help to indicate that this focal character is probably not going to be a traditional hero who will automatically spark audience sympathy, let alone adulation, though in both Clowes' and Harrelson's formulations, Wilson does have some redeeming characteristics and (actually kind of annoyingly) does try to repeatedly reach out and touch various people. Another Clowes graphic novel was adapted into Ghost World, but with a generational (and arguably multi-generational) difference between that film’s teen girl characters and Wilson’s middle aged grump, some of Clowes’ tendencies toward acerbic skewering of hipster culture seem oddly out of place.

As someone who is probably more or less in Wilson’s same demographic, I can say from personal experience that there’s a certain freedom that accrues when you reach a certain age, a liberation that means you give “zero cares” (with a certain expletive perhaps being utilized in the place of “cares”) about how people see you or respond to you, at least insofar as casual acquaintances or complete strangers who wander into close proximity (like the lawn, which needs to be kept off of). Wilson’s inherent snarkiness means he’s not the most traditionally social person around, but there’s a certain clear headedness about at least some of his pronouncements that may in fact endear him to certain “seasoned” audience members. That trenchant quality, though, is sometimes undercut by a formulaic plot that actually tips awkwardly toward the maudlin side at times.

The character walks a rather thin tightrope that Harrelson is actually rather adept at maneuvering, where Wilson both obviously hates most people, and yet is ineluctably drawn to many of them like a moth to a veritable flame. His first interchange of note is with a woman who’s admiring his pet dog Pepper, where his lack of suffering fools (or fawning females) gladly is on display. A quick riposte with his roommates Robert (Brett Gelman) and Jodie (Mary Lynn Rajskub) also boils down to Wilson’s predilection to make everything all about him, but soon enough thereafter, Wilson is actually shown purposely getting close to complete strangers with whom he has no real connection for no other reason than to talk to them. It’s an odd dialectic, and one which the film never really sufficiently contextualizes or explains, and that, coupled with some very brief appearances from supporting characters (like the aforementioned Robert and Jodie) make the film feel like an episodic, vignette driven, affair a lot of the time.

When Wilson’s father dies, it seems to spark some geniune human emotion in him, something which in turn causes him to reevaluate his life. He ends up tracking down his estranged wife Pippi (Laura Dern), a formerly troubled woman with a substance abuse problem who seems to have gotten her you know what together, but who is perhaps surprisingly open to Wilson’s advances, despite his association with an earlier, less happy, time in her life. That reunion leads to major narrative in the middle part of the film, when Wilson and Pippi track down their daughter Claire (Isabella Amara), whom Wilson had long believed Pippi had aborted, but whom Pippi had in fact put up for adoption. With the dysfunctional kinda sorta family dynamics fully in place, Wilson starts examining these relationships before once again going off on a kind of bizarre detour, with Wilson relegated to prison for ostensibly kidnapping the minor Claire.

While Wilson’s narrative throughline is both compartmentalized and probably overly sentimental when you get right down to it (something especially odd considering Wilson’s own rants against sentimentality), from a performance standpoint the film is quite enjoyable. Harrelson essays this prickly but ultimately lovable role with a nice, haggard and even haphazard charm. Dern is spunky as a woman who has seemingly turned the corner on a troubled past, but who doesn’t quite have total control of her emotions. Amara, an actress I was previously unfamiliar with, does what she can with a kind of underwritten role which is nonetheless the lynchpin for many of the film’s dramatics. My favorite performance in the film, though, is by the graceful but quirky Judy Greer as Shelly, a woman Wilson hires to dog sit Pepper while he’s away dealing with his Dad and everything that comes after, but who ends up meaning a bit more to the story than might initially be expected. There’s also a nice if brief turn by Margo Martindale as a potential love interest for Wilson, and Cheryl Hines is also excellent as Pippi's upwardly mobile suburban sister.

Wilson Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wilson is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The closing credits list Arri as having provided cameras and lenses, but there was no "captured by Alexa" logo, so I can't authoritatively state what camera was used, though some online sources do list the Alexa. The film was lensed by Frederick Elmes, a kind of bizarrely underappreciated cinematographer who has a lot of credits with David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet), as well as several other directors of note. The look here is both kind of drab realistic and at times whimsically semi-cartoon like, perhaps subliminally referencing the source graphic novel, though the general appearance here is what I'd term workmanlike and competent, if never really overwhelmingly sharp and precise. Grading is apparent, if subtle, adding both yellow and blue highlights to certain scenes. Elmes and director Craig Johnson seem to favor lighting regimens that often add gauzy halos around focal characters at times, something that adds at least the perception of softness to some sequences. Close-ups have often superb levels of fine detail (see screenshot 6). There are no issues with image instability and no compression anomalies.

Wilson Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Wilson's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is, like the video component, workmanlike and competent, but never really having opportunities to fully exploit "wow" surround activity. There are well placed ambient environmental sounds dotting the surrounds throughout the film, especially (though not solely relegated to) outside scenes. The bulk of the film is resolutely dialogue driven, often with only two characters in the frame simultaneously, and as such while immersion is somewhat limited, fidelity is fine. There are no problems with distortion or damage on this problem free track.

Wilson Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 16:48)


• Promotional Materials are all brief EPKs:

  Who is Wilson? (1080p; 2:00)

  Strip to Screen (1080p; 1:49)

  The Women of Wilson (1080p; 1:41)

• Gallery (1080p; 2:05) offers Auto Advance and Manual Advance options. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailers (1080p; 4:34)

Wilson Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I liked Wilson at least a little more than my colleague Brian Orndorf, who reviewed the film's theatrical exhibition here. The film has manifest issues, including incomplete development and a lack of context quite a bit of the time, but for me, the performances made at least some of these hurdles easier to overcome. The disc boasts respectable if not exactly mind boggling technical merits, for those considering a purchase.