Married Life – Blu-ray Disc Review

August 19, 2008 – 6:26 PM - Posted by: Justin Sluss

Tags: BD-Live, Chris Cooper, Ira Sachs, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams, Sony

has an average rating of 7.1 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
Dolby TrueHD 5.1
only include the basic DVD ports & BD-Live
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– 2007
– 91 minutes
– Sony
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Overall Verdict – At Least Worth A Rental

Buy it for $26.95 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Justin Sluss —

The Movie Itself is based on the book “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” written by John Bingham. The film was Directed by Ira Sachs who also co-wrote the screenplay. “Married Life” tells the tale of a married man named “Harry Allen” (played by Chris Cooper) who’s happily married to his wife “Pat Allen” (played by Patricia Clarkson) or so everyone else would believe. Harry’s best friend “Richard Langley” (played by Pierce Brosnan) so learns otherwise one day after Harry tells him during lunch. Harry proceeds to introduce Richard to the woman he’s having an affair with, “Kay Nesbitt” (played by Rachel McAdams). Pat (Harry’s wife) would appear to be completely clueless about the whole affair her husband is having behind her back and especially his plans that don’t involve a divorce.

Problem is that Harry made the mistake of introducing his friend Richard to his “lady friend” Kay and they start seeing one another behind his back. This at first turns into a love triangle and Harry’s only reasonable solution is to kill Pat, his wife. While this notion may seem a little out of nowhere in this film it’s to be taken with a dark satirical sense at first and obviously then both comedic and (for the most part) dramatic.

Overall, in closing… The film is very unique in it’s storyline, plot’s and even sub-plots that develop. It’s no surprise that this won “Official Selection” at both the Toronto and New York film festivals. Actors Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson and Rachael McAdams all put forth great effort here that make the film that much more enjoyable.

Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 using a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Blu-ray Disc). This 35mm film transfer makes for a pretty nice Hi-Def presentation. The fleshtones are accurate, you get a somewhat vibrant color palette and a perfectly solid black level. There’s certainly a great amount of detail to be found here in the Hi-Def transfer and only a very tiny amount of film grain and noise present throughout. This leads me to believe this didn’t receive much (if any) use of Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) or Edge Enhancement (EE). I give this a pretty solid “4 Star Rating” for the overall video quality.

Audio Quality on this release is in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround. For a film like this it’s very important that the dialogue be delivered very distinctively and this happens to be just the case on this release. You’ll have absolutely no problem understanding dialogue or find yourself needing to adjust the volume here. The original music by Susan Jacobs that serves as a “Score” of sorts comes through with a nice rear channel and bass presence in the TrueHD 5.1 soundscape. Not one of the more impressive TrueHD mixes out there but it does enough to get the job done and earns a “3 1/2 Star Rating” for overall audio quality on this release.

Bonus Material are presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition (480i/p) MPEG-2 video. I’ll note what each featurette is in as far as video goes accordingly beside the runtimes. The audio varies so I’ll be noting those in the descriptions.

• Commentary with Director Ira Sachs
• Three Alternate Endings (20 minutes – SD) with optional audio Commentary from Director Ira Sachs. These feature Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound.
• Original Theatrical Trailer (2 minutes – HD) is presented with Dolby Digital 5.1 @640kbps sound. This comes as a pleasant surprise to see in Hi-Def and in 5.1 surround.

• BD-Live is included on this release which allows those of you with “Profile 2.0″ Blu-ray Disc Players to access online content such as downloadable trailers in HD (Hi-Def) and SD (Standard Def) as well. This feature has yet to be enabled, it will be enabled on street date according to my press release (in hand).

Overall the bonus materials are honestly disappointing in the sense you get no “making of” style featurette with cast and crew interviews as well behind the scenes footage. Sure the audio commentary from the Director, the HD trailer and inclusion of BD-Live are nice but this really doesn’t hold a solid bonus package in the end. Through the beauty of BD-Live though they can easily add more content and you should never have to “double dip” on this title.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

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