The Directors: Bong Joon-ho

The new episode of our director series concerns the South-Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (b. 1969). He is a master of thrillers and mysteries, but mixes surprising elements to each one of his films. I am quite fond of his genre-bending ways and have loved each film of his a little more (but I'd like to point out I didn't see them in the order they were made). So let's takea a SWOT analysis of his talents.

S trengths

Bong can create a great athmosphere of suspense and create intriguing mysteries without ever getting too gimmicky or messing it up with a hard-handed twist. He has a strong visual style of not utilizing too many colours on screen at once, that reminiscens black-and-white films. He's rarely found to treat heavy subjects lightly, even with his trademark humour bubbling in between. He is also a master in creating a tension-filled athmosphere and by emitting a character's sadness through visual means only.

W eaknesses

Every one of Bong's films has a great deal of comedy, and he can overdo it at some points. His least perfect film, The Host messes with a little too much ingredients and struggles in points to find balance.

O pportunities

Bong could be a true modern Hitchcock or a Korean Fincher. He has an opportunity to blur genre lines even futher and create a string of masterpieces which work on multiple levels.

T hreats

Bong could also water down his thrillers with too goofy comedy, or mix too much elements into the film that they get more and more of a mess.

Barking Dogs Never Bite (Flandersui gae, 2000)

Bong did his feature film debut with this gem, which is my favorite of his films. It is a drama/comedy and quite black at that. The main character Yun-ju (Lee Sung-jae) is the unemployed college graduate who dreams of becoming a professor. As my future (being a student of humanities) is probably to become an unemployed academic, I understand his frustrations all too well. In the Korean culture there is also a level of corruption so you may need to give some bribes to get the position you want. However, Yun-ju is poor and wouldn't want to use his precious few moneys on a thing like a bribe. More pressure is put upon him by his wife who's expecting a child and has her own view of spending the family money. Yun-ju spends his days at home where he gets irritated by the neighbour's dog constantly yapping. He decides to get rid of the mutt once and for all. But his actions have long-term consequences and he soon finds himself in a heap of trouble with dogs. In the same apartment building there seems to live other people as well who aren't that friendly towards dogs.

It is a oft-heard western joke that Koreans like to eat dogs. The animal is a taboo in Western countries only because we think of the animals as being somewhat more humane to other animals and thus ideal companions. The modern South-Korea is in a sort of crossroads between the Western and Asian traditions. Thus, the film makes fun of the persceptions the Koreans have on dogs. What is the faithful friend to one is an annoying pest to others, and a delicious lunch to others. The different classes also come out to play as being the most educated means often being the most immoral and being the most poor may not mean one understands the viewpoints of people from different classes. Bong's comedy is at its peak-point here as the film gets ever-more farcical as dogs keep disappearing and the mystery deepenes. Surely our hero Yun-ju couldn't have wasted all of them off-screen? The Buddhist view of Karma is also both at play and sometimes discarded just to keep things interesting. No bad thing goes unpunished, but then again, no good thing either. The film also benefits from great actor work and a good script that fleshes out omedic characters into multi-dimensional beings that have all-too real feelings. It's a great film.

★★★★ 1/2

Memories of Murder (Salinui Chueok, 2003)

The powerful film magazine Sight And Sound picked Memories of Murder to be on its list of the best movies of the 2000s. And I also regret missing having it on my Thriller list. Memories is basically like the korean Zodiac, except of course Memories became first (is Zodiac the American Memories of Murder?). They both are based on a real-life serial killer and the hunt to capture them, which in both cases proved ultimately to be futile. A serial killer on the loose rapes and kills young women in such a graphic way, the Zodiac Killer himself would shit his pants. The film takes place in 1986 and features also the growing tensions between North and South Korea. At that time the countries experienced border conflicts that sent soldiers into the streets. The hunt for the murderer is equalled as a search for some meaning and stability in a world gone crazy and violent. We can see from the state of the Korean peninsula today, how succesful this attempt was.

The film showcases two different kinds of policemen on the trail of the murderer. One believes in doing intensive research looking clearly through every clue available to catch the killer. The other believes in catching petty crooks and beating them up to get information. The first one is the preferred method of a city-based detective, whereas the countryside police is a lot more amoral and tough with their idea of getting answers. The torturing of suspects reflects chillingly also the US information-gathering in Afghanistan at the time. At the time of the film's release, the USA invaded Iraq and soon put their POWs to Guantanamo Bay. It's almost as Bong had prophesized how the War Against Terrorism will go, for both ways of doing the search are equally unfruitful. Every time the policemen round up a suspect that could be the killer, something goes wrong. The policemen give up to each others ways to get results and the search becomes more and more brutal. Who Watches The Watchmen indeed.

Memories of Murder is the most dark and straight-faced of Bong's films (it and Mother are in a clearly different series to the rest). There is still a great deal of comedy on behalf of drunken and vomiting people. However, the film is perhaps a little too long, although a class act all the way.

★★★★

The Host (Gwoemul, 2006)

Bong tried making a creature feature film with his next one. It was actually the first one of his films I ever saw at HIFF 2006. I was a bit confused by it and it does have a bit too much going on. The Host focuses on one family battling against a huge mutated monster. And the creature itself a wonderful movie monster, one for the ages. You know how the created Godzilla post-WWII from the collective Japanese fear of nuclear weapons? Bong uses some more modern Asian fears such as SARS and the Avian flu to create his new breed of monsters. It looks like a cross-breed between the upside-down beast from Hellraiser, The Predator and a newt. It captures innocent bystaders by surprise and its touch can give you diseases. Or so we've led to believe.

The real baddie isn't the monster, but rather the US Military, that is responsible for its creation by polluting the rivers, doing genetic tests and concealing the truth of their actions. The US also brings its soldiers into the streets which may bring up bad memories in the South Korean collective subconscious. The military also gives Bong the chance to satirize retarded American action films and their connections to the military.

Anyway, the family Park (a reference to fellow acclaimed director Park Chan-wook?) gets caught up in the monster situation, when the young girl Hyun-Seo gets kidnapped by the creature. The other family members get locked up without asking too many questions. The family are as well-fleshed characters as any in Bong's filmography, yet still feel a little too much like archetypes. Bong could've also controlled the amount of stupidity in his main protagonist, Park Gang-du.

So as well as an action movie, monster horror, family drama and a modern affairs satire, The Host is at parts also a comedy. Which may be its biggest flaw. The humour is so goofy, it seems to be aimed at a very broad comedy. Yet all the serious stuff in the film works at its disadvantage. At the beginning the humour feels discomforting, but one gets used to it and it does have a few really funny scenes. But it still ruins so much of the great athmosphere of uncertainty and hopelessness Bong has so masterfully created for a film with such a silly premise. One isn't quite sure whether Bong takes his film seriously himself. Then again, the Asian sense of humour is a lot more goofy than the western one. I find the joke parts in films like Hard Boiled equally hard to watch.


The Host may be Bong's most flawed feature film, but it is still a very welcome addition to both his filmography and the greater giant creature filmography as well. Bong's handling of different genres is always worth a look.

★★★

Tokyo! (2008)
Directors: Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry,  Leos Carax

Episodic films tend to be hit-and-miss, especially if they are done by multiple directors. Tokyo! is one of the better ones, as the styles of the directing two frenchmen and the korean Bong fit quite well together. Also three stories in two hours is not too much and every one has a good story which is told in a pace not too fast and not too slow.

Michel Gondry's effort, which starts the film, is probably the best, and features a young couple that moves to Tokyo. He's an art filmmaker and she does everything she can for him, which leads to a surprising development in her appearance. Leos Carax's part is the most anarchistic, and features a crazed hermit that lives in Tokyo's subvay tunnels. He regularly surfaces to scare the japanese, but when an affair with a couple of hand grenades goes haywire, the man simply called Merde (French for Shit, duh) is put on trial.

These are both pretty fun, but it's Bong's part that I'm discussing here. His short film features a shut-in (another hermit, or maybe the third one as the girl in Gondry's film was pretty much friendless herself) that has an OCD point-of-view in his crammed apartment. This is told in a very Bongian tongue-in-cheek humour. It features falling asleep on the toilet and arranging empty pizza boxes on the wall. Unlike the lonesome main characters in the other stories, Bong's protagonist has a chance for a better life and for love. Where Tokyo drifted the other people apart, the city is more gentle here and seems to want to help the poor bastard. This is done for instance by arranging earthquakes in appropriate moments. Most of Bong's time is spent on running around the place looking for the love. In that it's probably the most boring of the three stories in Tokyo!. Yet, because it is pretty cheerful and sweet-hearted in nature, it is quite hard to dislike. It is nothing special in Bong's career, but a nice effort for a nice episode film.

★★★



Mother (Madeo, 2009)

I talked a little about Mother already in my Love & Anarchy 2010 article. Mother is a close relative to Memories of Murder, as it also presents Korea to be a dark, terrifying place where human life can end at any sudden moment. Yet there is still good and strong values in that world, and the strongest of those is a mother's love. But that would be too easy an approach for Bong to take. The film makes us ponder whether even that feeling is so pure in the end. The Mother (Kim Hye-ja) has some guilt issues she is trying to compensate by helping out her boy. His boy Do-joon (Won Bin) is a little slow, and like Lenny in Of Mice And Men, gets into trouble because of not quite understanding. Do-joon also hangs around a wrong crowd that does not care for him and seems to be laughing at him and not with. The boy is soon blamed for murder and the mother wovs to prove him innocent. Mother is shot mostly in greyish tones and foggy landscapes.

Audience is kept at toes, because Mother takes its time to take its actual form. The film progresses leisurely, focusing on the athmosphere and moods. It may seem like a over-the-top comedy at the beginning, but sudden outbursts of violence and cruelty quickly demolishes this image. If Michael Haneke had a sense of humour, he might create something similar.

The story unfolds wonderfully in fragments and paints different characters we thought we knew in a different light. Bong also utilizes his critical look on Korean institutions. He satirizes the unfair justice system, and the way the Korean society leaves people living on the streets, living with any scraps they can find. Even a poor person that has a crammed apartement to live in can sneer at the beggars and think of them as seedy and untrustworthy. The real threat comes form the Working Class itself and its in-built cruelty and contempt to others. And that is caused by their hardships in day-to-day living as well. The vicious cycle of Korean society is shown to be pretty comfortless. There are no Hostian family values here to get through all the darkness within. And the end result is another Bong class act.

★★★★

I should point out that short films and Episode film parts do not count to the main score.
Bong Joon-ho's Score: 3,88

Perkele! - Finnish Documentary Films at Year 10.

Today the 10th Helsinki Documentary Film Festival DocPoint starts. I've been anxiously waiting for the festival, because this will be the first time I will be able to attend it. I'm looking forward to seeing films like I'm Still Here, Hoop Dreams and Lemmy - more on which later on. But one of the most important films the festival accomplishes each year is to take a look on the back catalogue of finnish documentaries. Our country produces brilliant documentary films each year - more than can be said of our fictional film industry, although that may be getting better as well. This year, DocPoint brings retrospectives to documentary directors such as Pekka Lehto. Inspired by this, I will do a small look on recent, 2010 Finnish documentaries myself.

The Steam of Life (Miesten vuoro)
Directors: Joonas Berghåll, Mika Hotakainen

The Steam of Life has been an audience favorite at Finland. It has a reputation of being a film which makes even grown men cry, and not without merit. The film takes place solely in a sauna environment, where men of different ages and backgrounds discuss their lives. It seems that the finnish male, who has a reputation of being quiet and withdrawn, really opens up in the steams of a sauna. The men in the film are not bashful of talking about even the most painful things in their lives, and showing their emotions too. But if one thinks of this as a mere tearjerker, one is mistaken. Like any good film, The Steam of Life succeeds in having also scenes of hilarious life stories, tongue-in-cheek joking, pure joy and angry resentment of the wrongfulness of life.

The film resembles a little the recent documentary Kansakunnan olohuone, which took place in the living rooms of finnish people. Similarily, regular people opened up their shells and talked and lived their life right in front of the camera. In The Steam of Life there is more camerawork and editing, which makes me suspect that the talking has been rehearsed and having been done in multiple takes. Nevertheless, it does have an aura of genuinity and like any good films, manages to stir emotions. I do admit of having a lump in my throat by the end.

Freetime Machos
Director:  Mika Ronkainen

Freetime Machos is a good companion piece for The Steam of Life. It concerns a group of rugby players in a Northern Finland team located in the town of Oulu. Now, many sport films would chronicle a bad team's rise to the top. Not so in here. The Freetime Machos begin and end as a shitty amateur rugby team. But in fact this film is another study of mascuilinty and a portrait for the finnish male. The sport team is an excuse, a thread which ties men of different ages and backgrounds together. The players are young and their talk is down and dirty in the film. Yet as the documentary goes on, the men start to grow from boys to men. They get into serious relationships, have children and get their stable jobs and houses. The team is a channel for thier mascuilinty because they are quite domesticated at home. But there are a lot of disappointments ahead too, break-ups and lay-offs go hand in hand with their defeat on the sport field. This is a film about the finnish Sisu, or guts. The men have true cojones to keep on trying even when it all seems hopeless. In the end of this film people get results from it.

Interesting is the film's emphasis on sex. The men do a lot of jokes about gay people and there is a clear homoerotic subtext in the film. By the end the confused young ones find heterosexuality and also openmindness to accept other sexual leanings. The characterization of the people in the film is good and one can reflect familiar types inside the film. Yet Freetime Machos can also be repetitive and even mundane, because other films do its job even better. Nevertheless, the film is well wrth a look.

Ito - Diary of An Urban Priest (Ito - Seitti - Kilvoittelijan päiväkirja)
Director: Pirjo Honkasalo



Honkasalo is the most internationally accalaimed documentary maker and she does do her films clearly to be international. So her films lack a finnish viewpoint to start with, which is not a bad thing considering the subjects she tends to choose. Ito is a story about a japanese ex-boxer turned buddhist preacher Yoshinobu Fujioka. He is also a barkeep and the mixture is not so crazy as it may seem. After all, one of the duties of a barkeep is to listen to the problems the customers may have. Kind of like a priest may have.

So like the other finnish documentaries, Ito features people openly speaking about their personal lives and problems in front of the camera, occasionally breaking to tears. There is clearly a trend in the finnish documentaries to have open conversation about lives and concentrating on the people speaking and not trying to illustrate the stories with some stock footage. The emotions on faces will do just fine and tell a lot more. But Ito doesn't concentrate on the millions of stories Tokyo has, but on just one, the story of Fujioka. He gets a lenghty scene where he is discussing with his boxing sensei about his life's recent developments, and he also breaks into tears on gratefullness on the guiding of his boxing life, and the acceptance of his new choices. Honkasalo is a stylish director, keeping herself to the background and having wonderful cinematography and inventive connections within the stories. She seems to also understand the japanese mentality and the importance of traditions in the culture and brings this up neatly too.


Reindeerspotting - Escape From SantalandDirector: Joonas Neuvonen

I think they switched this one for the DVD cover because it was too scary and graphic for children

Reindeerspotting was one of the most talked-about films in Finland in 2010, and it broke multiple attendance records for documentary films. A large part of the discussion was about the rating, which the Finnish Film Board in their infinite wisdom put to No Children Under 18 Allowed, even after multiple complaints. The film in question chronicles the life of drug users in the Northern Finland city of Rovaniemi. It does feature scenes of graphic drug use, but the interest is in the depiction of the drug-addicts life going in circles and not having a way out. It isn't like most anti-drug films in that it doesn't over-emphasize the downsides and the hungover feeling of taking drugs. So it could've been a good anti-drug info for highschoolers and wouldn't have been patronizing and ignorant like most of the study material they will get about the same subject.

The director Neuvonen used to shoot subutex with the main characters and the film started with him just shooting stuff with a loaned camera. The idea of developing the material into a full film has only sprung up later. For such an amateur principal photographer/director, the film is nothing short of a miracle. Most of the credit must go o the editing room, for the film's editing works like a charm. Yet Neuvonen also catches great shots of weird situations such as a reindeer race in the middle of Rovaniemi, during which e of the addicts falls from a balcony. There are occasionally futile attempts for artistic shots like shooting through a mirror, but mostly Neuvonen maintains an utilitarian, interesting viewpoint that captures what his eyes see in his daily routine.

From the daily rat race of shooting up and doing petty crimes to finance the drug habit, the main character Jani dreams of a better life. He hates his home town and wishes for a better life somewhere else. In the film's Rovaniemi, the police can't help any drug addicts, only slow them down. In the circles of the drug addicts, a best friend can turn into a homicidal worst enemy with the bat of an eye. Even if you think you can settle all debts and grudges, new ones will arise for confusing reasons. Towards the end Jani gets his wish of leaving Rovaniemi because he succeeds in stealing a large sum of money. At his trip through Europe there is genuine happiness on his face and some promise that things may be getting to be better after all. But Jani doesn't get rid of the drugs even though he promises, and thus his past life will come back to haunt him for it. It has been sad to learn that the main character has since died in mysterious circumstances in Far Asia. But there is some comfort in knowing that Jani died abroad, where he was truly ahppy, and not in the small Northern Finland town he so much hated.

RIP Jani

Reindeerspotting is the only one of the films presented here that gets a screening during DocPoint. If you are present and haven't seen the film yet, do yourself a favour and check it out.

Into the Wild Blu-ray Wonder

I finally purchased a HD-TV and a PS3. It was about time as I had a pile of Blu-ray films piling up but nothing to watch them with. Now as the equipment was gathered, I can take a look at a few films I've recently watched on Blu-ray.

The Fall (2007)
Director: Tarsem

This was one of the biggest omissions from my list of the Best Fantasy Films of the 2000s. It's good to finally see the film. The Fall worked wonders as a test Blu-ray. The image is crisp, clear and well-lit. Purists will say that it doesn't look like film. Well, every decade has its own look to cinema and this clear Michael Mann-style image will be the one for this one. I found no problems with the image. For instance, in desert scenes the mountain cliffside looks just as magnificent as it does in real life (watching from a distance of course).

The film itself is a little like The Princess Bride in that it's a story-within-a-story told to a sick child. The Fall, however is a bit darker. It takes place in an early 20th century hospital, where a wounded soldier tells a story to an annoying little girl to get her to bring him drugs. His story concerns bandits from different parts of the world planning revenge on a crooked governor. It is an excuse to show off magnificent looking landscapes from all around the world. As it happens, the events which unfold in the real-world hospital start bending the story world accordingly. This mixture of story and reality is nothing new and the same characters popping up in both has been around since at leat The Wizard of Oz. Yet, director Tarsem keeps his strings well in his hands and the fantasy is well likeable. The various locations where this has been shot are simply gorgeous. I just wish there wasn't so much footage of that goddamn crying kid.

Film: ★★★
Picture: ★★★★★


House of the Flying Daggers (2004)
Director: Zhang Yimou

I had fond memories of this film, and Zhang's films are really beautiful visually, so it was a good idea to test this out as a blu-ray. But the results weren't as good as the expectations. For starters, the film seems to be just an upscaled DVD, there are grainy scenes and the image isn't that much clearer. It's good that most of it is set in a bright light, so it doesn't matter that much. I expect it would in a more moody film.

The film itself is a pretty straight-forward romace/escape story. It wasn't even as beautifully shot as Zhang's Hero, but then again it is easily explained, because Hero had Christopher Doyle, the greatest living cinematographer, working on it. HOTFD is still not by all means bad. The fight at the bamboo jungle in particular is great. I just wish the film would be shorter. All the fights are pretty similar and the romance kind of blah. The crime from which the main couple are chased is also a bit petty for my western taste, yet maybe the chinese understand it better. After all, it is pretty strongly anchored to a particular era of which I know nothing about.

Film: ★★★
Picture: ★★


Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection (1989-2008)
Director: Nick Park

I think stop-motion animation is well suited for high-definition. It is usually rich in detail, so the clearer the image, the more small things one can pick up from them. This of course rings also true to this collection of animation masterwork from Aardman Studios. I've seen every short film on this disc numerous times, yet the clear image helped me to pick up new things here and there. For instace, the newspapers Gromit reads are now clear enough to see the article headlines. I also like how the fingerprints and other unevenness is seen in the character designs. There area few a bit grainy bits, particularly in the moon sequence in A Grand Day Out, but mostly this transfer serves the films very well.

The biggest masterpiece on this disc is, of course The Wrong Trousers. It is still about the closest I've ever seen to perfect filmmaking. It is exciting, funny and even heart-breaking at times. The characterization is wonderfully deep, even though Wallace is the only character that can speak. The story is well constructed: there are no continuity errors or plot-holes and everything is set up nicely during the early minutes of the story.
I'm surprised to find that my second favorite is the latest film, A Matter of Loaf and Bread. It is another hitchcockian mystery film that is as fine-tuned and doesn't have an ounce of fat in its running time. Everything is well-spent. The weakest link must be A Close Shave, as I've always believed that it has too much going on. Four characters is usually the maximum you'd need for a good Wallace & Gromit yarn, yet this one boasts five major ones, and a flock of sheep to boot. It is still by no means a bad one, it's still funny and exciting and Peter Sallis does perhaps his best work as the voice of Wallace. It just that it has a few flaws such as deus ex machinas and other plot holes.
The first one of the batch, A Grand Day Out is a little different from the others, and is clearly a story of two halves - one made by Nick Park about alone, and the other in collaboration with Aardman Studios. The story, and especially the climax are of a lot smaller scale than others, yet it has a certain simplistic charm the others cover by true virtuoso craftmanship.

Films: ★★★★★
Picture: ★★★★

Pixar Short Films Collection (1984-2007)

The other little animation studio that could, also boasts with its own short film collection. Yet unlike Aardman, Pixar hasn't always strived for pure quality. One can see from the early films that the point in them was just to test different computer programs for lighting, surfaces and so on. Particularly the first one, The Adventures of André and Wally B, is pretty horrible. One can't blame George Lucas for selling the studio based on that short. The first really good one is 1980's Knick-Knack. Too bad the film on the disc is the 2003 Special Edition, which has cencored some balloony babe bosoms. That's a real shame, as cartoon boobies would've brought a real new layer into the story and strengthened the main character's motivation of breaking out from his snow-globe. Some films are clearly extra material for the DVD releases and don't hold out so well on their own (Jack-Jack Attack). Still, there are plenty of corcers on the disc (For the Birds, Boundin', One-Man Band...) to make it worth you while. After all, it only lasts less than an hour.

The picture quality depends from film to film. The early ones wouldn't look too good on any format any more, but the later ones, which have proper textures, look great. I think I might continue my Pixar collection on Blu-ray.

Films: ★★★
Picture: ★★★★

Gremlins (1984)
Director: Joe Dante

January 13th has traditionally been in Finland the Day of Nuutti, in which and evil man-goat comes to homes taking Christmas away with it. Suitable viewing for that day was Joe Dante's mischievous fantasy film, in which nasty little monsters wreck a small American town's Christmas. It's been a favorite of mine since childhood so getting it as one of my first blu-rays was a no-brainer. There can never be enough live-action Looney Tunes-resembling films.

It was good to test out Gremlins on blu-ray, as it is a little more darkly lit film. Most of the previous films in this article were shot in bright daylight, which usually looks great on blu-ray anyway. The key to a good movie experience is how much mood can the technology create. Gremlins works sufficiently good. The Chinese bazaar, Billy's dimly-lit room and the school's labratory still work in creating tension. Yet the picture isn't that much clearer than in a DVD. It had probably just been upscaled. Yet I traded my cardboard-cased vanilla DVD for this and don't regret it for a second.

Film: ★★★★
Picture: ★★★

Amadeus - Director's Cut (1986)
Director: Milos Forman

This music epic is as historically inaccurate as they get. As anyone probably knows, it's about Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) confessing about how he orchestrated his rival Mozart's fall from grace and subsequent death. In real life Salieri may not have created masterpieces that last through the ages, but he was still very popular and rich. It is the same as saying that Justin Bieber orchestrated the death of Michael Jackson. But the point of the movie is not to depict historical events, but to tell a story about envy and where that can lead. In that aspect Forman succeeds very well. The film is never pandering or too openly moralizing. Salieri is almost symphatetic as the villain as Mozart (Tom Hulce) is depicted as a lewd womaniser and shrugging the notion of hard work until in the end. The classical music pieces fit the film's mood like a hand in glove. The three hour running time of the Director's Cut is about the 20 minutes too long, which were later added to the film. But this Director's Cut is by no means a travesty like some other later cuts.

Amadeus is a film which would also suit testing out Blu-ray equipment mighty fine. It has a lot of well-light scenes at luxurious palaces, which have a lot of details, scenes from operas, which have luscious bright colours, and candle-lit moody parts that take place in the dark. Unfortunately the picture quality is merely adequate. Some things, like the texture on clothes, comes out very good, but background details don't seem too clear and the dark scenes are a little grainy. I wouldn't upgrade a DVD, but otherwise this works fine.

Film: ★★★★
Picture: ★★★
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I like to do these Blu-ray digests as they remind me of the Weeklies I used to do when this blog started. As it's very important to know how a Blu-ray looks before making the purchase, I figure I could do a bit more of these, too. They shouldn't take too long to write, anyway.