1917 4K Blu-ray Review & Comments

thanks for the review, still not seen this yet. For some reason I thought this was one of those IMAX/full frame releases ? Still sounds like its going to be spectacular from an AV persepctive. I really liked Dunkirk also!
 
I really enjoyed 1917. The single take made it so immersive. I can see why some people might not like it because it feels like a smaller scale story than a film like SPR, but that was absolutely fine with me.

Didn't like Dunkirk at all, felt like a complete mess of a film, and by far Nolan's worst, but respect to anyone who likes it.
 
I watched this streamed on HD last week. For me the single narrative goes a bit too far and you lose a sense of the broader aspects of the war on the Western Front. However visually it’s stunning for the most part.
 
Excellent movie! Really enjoyed this, i have been watching quite a few war films recently from Valkyrie to The darkest hour and this is definitely up there with the best. I liked Dunkirk but i have more desire to rewatch this.
 
I am just watching this on Blu Ray. Amazingly shot! It really feels like you are following them! Good film, not amazing 8/10.
 
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This just dropped through my letterbox. Will watch tonight and post my upsetting opinion tomorrow. :laugh:
 
A balanced review for a slightly off-kilter film.
I liked the film's story overall and so passed over some of the gimmickry. It is clearly some of Deakins' choices that make it what it is but also MacKay's delivery throughout that keeps it very relatable.
I appreciated how it didn't continuously overwhelm you but had humanist respite moments, that must have been so precious to mind and body for those (mainly) men in a questionable onslaught.
 
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A balanced review for a slightly off-kilter film.
I liked the film's story overall and so passed over some of the gimmickry. It is clearly some of Deakins' choices that make it what it is but also MacKay's delivery throughout that keeps it very relatable.
I appreciated how it didn't continuously overwhelm you but had humanist respite moments, that must have been so precious to mind and body for those (mainly) men in a questionable onslaught.

(@Casimir Harlow you have an 'in' in the second para that I assume should be 'is' within a pretty important line).
Considering it is a World War 1 film, it needed more violence! It was a VERY violent war, especially the trench warfare!
 
Considering it is a World War 1 film, it needed more violence! It was a VERY violent war, especially the trench warfare!
No doubt but you'd have to assume there were moments in between the hell or, it would've led to even more death and mutilation that simply would have ran out of victims to feed it.
 
No doubt but you'd have to assume there were moments in between the hell or, it would've led to even more death and mutilation that simply would have ran out of victims to feed it.
True!
 
Thanks Cas. I don't think for a minute it will match say Paths of Glory so I have it on my rental list.
Same for me! :)
"All Quiet On The Western Front" anybody?
 
I didn't get to the cinema to see this and kind of forgot about it. Watched it over the weekend and have to say I really enjoyed it. I think it's rather unfair to compare it to Saving Private Ryan though. They're very different films. I don't think a shot is fired for the first forty minutes. Still a gripping film and an amazing technical achievement.

Strange also to see all the big hitters turn up for just a few minutes of screen time.
 
Deakins is arguably the only one who truly deserved an Oscar for his work on it.????
 
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Nice of you to heap praise on Roger Deakins

The guy sat in a heated easyup looking at a monitor and moaned when we couldn't shoot because the weather didn't tie in to the previous shot. Rarely said hello to anyone and was chauffeur driven to and from set doing very little else.

Lines such as "Deakins is arguably the only one who truly deserved an Oscar for his work on it" is insulting to the hundreds of people who worked very hard, often physically in unpleasant weather conditions to make what it is
 
Well, all that moaning worked, looks gorgeous and he did say at multiple awards about the team effort...
 
A reviewer on a website dedicated to audio and video excellence giving special praise to how a film looked on the disc he was reviewing.........?

Bit left field of you @Casimir Harlow :)
 
Brilliant movie....bought it off Amazon via it's streaming service on HD, WAS BORED like most of us can be right now...PQ was excellent for a HD stream....Disney + 4K HDR....Stream guff....so really interested when the 4k HDR WCG disc arrives on Wednesday...fingers crossed it's far superior to Casimirs 4k disc review of The Rise of Skywalker....worst looking/sounding 4k disc av bought in the last year....well not exactly. The Last Jedi comes a close 2nd
 
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Saw this at the cinema and it was a masterful experience - but for me, what makes this experience so good is the cinematography. Roger Deakins made every frame so perfect that This 4K disc couldn’t fail. It really is (for me...) the best 4K image on disc. The scenes when it all transitions from night to day - My OLED cried. wonderful experience.
 
Watched it tonight. Very good film and as said the PQ and SQ are superb. Unsure as to any replay factor but certainly very good
 
@Casimir Harlow Does the included 1080p Blu-ray also have the Dolby Atmos soundtrack please?
 
Nice of you to heap praise on Roger Deakins

The guy sat in a heated easyup looking at a monitor and moaned when we couldn't shoot because the weather didn't tie in to the previous shot. Rarely said hello to anyone and was chauffeur driven to and from set doing very little else.

Lines such as "Deakins is arguably the only one who truly deserved an Oscar for his work on it" is insulting to the hundreds of people who worked very hard, often physically in unpleasant weather conditions to make what it is
The hundreds of people you refer to owe the prestige they now have from working on this film to the genius of Roger Deakins. It is reasonable to surmise that the film would not have been half as good if he had not been on board.
 
Nice of you to heap praise on Roger Deakins

The guy sat in a heated easyup looking at a monitor and moaned when we couldn't shoot because the weather didn't tie in to the previous shot. Rarely said hello to anyone and was chauffeur driven to and from set doing very little else.

Lines such as "Deakins is arguably the only one who truly deserved an Oscar for his work on it" is insulting to the hundreds of people who worked very hard, often physically in unpleasant weather conditions to make what it is

Kind of reminds me of Terrence Malick's recent films. He gets so much praise for the visuals & yet the actual DP, Emmanuel Lubezki, seldom gets a mention.

As an aside, i always thought Deakins comes across a little aloof. His has a kind of Ronnie Wood esque swagger about him...
 
Right, here we go.

First off, this is an incredible disc. Reference images, reference audio. Absolutely no arguments from me there, though for me LFE was a little overused. I've no objections to huge, chest-punching LFE when things go bang, but for some reason there is a constant LFE rumble through some scenes (not distant shells exploding, just constant low growl). I get that it's designed to add to the power and texture of the experience, but for people like me who, outside of movie theatres, actually listen to the soundscape, it was just a bit jarring.

I have very mixed feelings about the film. On the one hand it is a visual masterpiece. But on the other, I found much of it rather contrived. Several years ago I attempted to write a novel set during WW1. It never got published as I was still learning how to do it, but the research process took about two years. To get all the details right, I read more than 50 books on the period and events of the conflict, countless first-hand accounts and of course soaked up every visual aid I could. This knowledge was a bit of a double-edged sword when watching 1917.

Because much of the mise en scène here is pulled directly from some of the most famous WWI photography. There was a sense of things shoehorned into the images and dialogue not through narrative necessity but because it came from some giant list of 'stuff' that researchers felt should be included to evoke the period. Anyway, that's quite subjective, but I'd be intersted to know if anyone else watching it also had that sense even without a load of WW1 books behind them.

The whole 'one shot' thing is clever, and it definitely keeps you in the action. It works. What didn't work for me was the conspicuous exposition of character background (extraneous information about cherry orchards and so on), or the passivity of the soldiers we follow, always doing their damnedest not to kill or hurt anyone. Since any attempt to do so can only be conspicuous in what is essentially a non-stop action movie, I genuinely think the film would have been much improved by not attempting to give the characters a past through their dialogue.

Clearly both of these things exist so we can empathise by the time we get to one or two scenes at the end of the film designed to deliver an emotional gutpunch. But for me, because the character background exposition is both conspicuous and ineffectual, and because the passivity of the main players makes no real sense given their situation, the 'you're gonna cry now' moments at the end fall flat.

There were also one or two shots (the running shot near the end with all the soldiers running perpendicular behind and around our main character) where the fact that it's a CG/composite shot is a bit too obvious. I couldn't enjoy some of these shots because the visual effects hit the uncanny valley and became too distracting.

Overall an excellent disc, but one that contains a film that could have been amazing, but somehow just isn't. It's a 6/10 from me for the film, and I of course agree with Cas's 10/10s for visuals and audio (maybe a 9.5 out of 10 for the obtuse usage of LFE).
 
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Nice of you to heap praise on Roger Deakins

The guy sat in a heated easyup looking at a monitor and moaned when we couldn't shoot because the weather didn't tie in to the previous shot. Rarely said hello to anyone and was chauffeur driven to and from set doing very little else.

Lines such as "Deakins is arguably the only one who truly deserved an Oscar for his work on it" is insulting to the hundreds of people who worked very hard, often physically in unpleasant weather conditions to make what it is
It's even worse that they did it all for free. You're like one of those people that say the warehouse workers at Amazon do more than Bezos.
 

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