Sunday, July 25, 2010

BD impressions: After.Life

11:49 PM / BD Impressions / Comments5 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

No, I don't know why there's a full stop in the title either.

AFTER.LIFE attracted me with its interesting premise: a young woman, supposedly killed in a car accident, wakes up on mortuary slab and is informed by the funeral director that she is dead. She denies it - how can she be dead when she's here talking to him? - but he is insistent and tells her she must stop denying to herself what has happened. So what's going on? Is she actually dead and in some sort of afterlife/state of limbo, or is she the victim of an extremely twisted psychotic?

Unfortunately, we don't really get a whole lot of answers, and the few that we do get tend to contradict each other. In this, her feature debut, director/writer Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo conjures up some unsettling imagery and clearly has an eye for an interesting composition, but does little to exploit the coolness of the premise, and leaves you feeling that the numerous scenes featuring that yuppie from the "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" commercials trying to get to the bottom of what happened to his girlfriend are basically just there to pad the running time. Liam Neeson is suitably creepy as the funeral director, but you can tell he's just cashing a cheque, while Christina Ricci seems to have been cast primarily due to her willingness to do copious (and I mean copious) amounts of nudity rather than because she can bring anything profound to the character. It's not a bad film as much as one that is more interesting on paper than it is in execution.

Image quality: Pretty underwhelming, to be honest. The grain looks rather clumpy and there are numerous shots in which facial textures take on a mushy, smeary look, suggesting (perhaps selective?) grain reduction (see especially Example 11). It's basically watchable, but I can't say it wowed me at any stage, and in fact for most of its duration I found myself thinking of underwhelming Warner offerings such as KISS KISS, BANG BANG. 7/10

After.Life
studio: Anchor Bay; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.5 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 25.83 Mbit/sec

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5 Comments

1. bosque said:

Maybe they thought with an obscure title they could get away with a sprinkling of DNR without the "screen-cap police" noticing and commenting on the internet ! It looks a bit like one of those 90s flics with Jeff Golburg - and you've piqued my interest now, so I'm going to drop off at Blockbusters tonight to see if they have a copy - or is this only available on a UD disc ?

(Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 11:44 AM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

I've had a look on Amazon and apparently it's not due to be released until August 3rd. I got mine from AxelMusic, who quite often ship early.

(Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 12:03 PM)

3. bosque said:

Thanks. Michael - I meant to type US not UD (in case anyone is wondering what a UD disc is). I've used axel in the past but they've started an irritating pricing process where you have to pay in dollars and this (as far as I could work out) added a couple of £ to the price of their discs - so although they'd sent me a free postage email offer I would end up paying more anyway. Too confusing !

(Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 12:16 PM)

4. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Yeah, looks like it's US only for the time being. Prices aside, I do like AxelMusic, particularly their rewards scheme whereby you accumulate points over time which can then be put towards selected purchases (I got the WATCHMEN director's cut for free, for instance).

(Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 1:38 PM)

5. FoxyMulder said:

Not sure but perhaps this is one of the many films Liam Neeson signed up to do after his wife died in that tragic skiing accident, he did a lot of movies after that, so maybe not a case of a pay cheque and more a way of coping with his grief by doing as much film work as possible.

Christina Ricci is a very good actress, i doubt she was cast simply because she was willing to do nudity, i mean in Europe actresses tend to be less afraid of nudity and it's unfair to say that's the only reason she was cast, i mean to say would there even be a discussion of nudity if this was a European actress. Of course you have seen the movie and i have not so your opinion on her acting holds more weight, even if she wasn't good in this movie she has been fabulous in many others.


As for the transfer, well Anchor Bay have a record so far of releasing very poor/average transfers on blu ray, hopefully that will change.

(Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 1:12 PM)

 
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