Just got done with MI 1 and dear lord, is this UHD gorgeous. First things first: this was shot and finished on 35mm anamorphic, so naturally the film opticals (titles, subtitles, dissolves, etc) take an obvious hit in terms of sharpness, though it's worth mentioning that the opening 'KIEV' title has been recreated digitally, the rest appear to be the originals. A good example of the softness is when Ethan is doing his email messages to Max and we get a series of dissolves to indicate time passing, when the camera lingers on Ethan falling asleep at the table it's the tail end of the optical so it's very soft, but when it cuts back to him after seeing his vision of Jim he's razor sharp. The colour also takes on a sallow tinge during most of these shots. This happens on and off throughout the film, it is what it is.
But when we get the first generation material, oh mai. The detail, the texture, the fine grain, I never dreamed it would ever look this good. The ladies are also shot with various amounts of filtration which imparts a gauzy look in some shots, rather an outmoded concept now but I love it when I see stuff like that in movies, it's old-school Hollywood glamour. No signs of any overcooked noise reduction or "grain management" that I can see anywhere, and thank **** for that.
Colour is nice and healthy, perhaps a bit too healthy as skin tones can veer towards the ruddy at times, but I'd rather ruddy than orangey or yellowy. That said, when poor old William Donloe is retching in the bathroom he looks pale as anything, I'd say that was intentional! Red in particular is good and vivid, even something like Kristen Scott Thomas' lipstick caught my eye. HDR enhances the range without wrenching it into eye-melting territory, it still 'looks' like Mission Impossible, and the black levels are excellent, neither distractingly crushed nor ridiculously thin and grey.
Yes, there's a bit of that customary chroma noise sprinkled here and there but it's kept under control for the most part, and I only noticed artefacts in the lights (as mentioned by another poster) in one shot, the rest were fine. I spotted a vertical scratch in one shot (Ethan pinning Claire to the bed) but apart from that this image is pristine in terms of dirt and damage.
I even turned on my AVR for this and cranked it, I thought the sound was excellent. Some people wondered why this was done in TrueHD 5.1 when they had DTS-HD MA 5.1 encodes ready to go but when comparing the two I thought that the newer encode had the edge, it sounds crisper and more dynamic, right from the opening drumrolls it just seemed to be more 'airier' and open. So although this hasn't been redone in immersive (you'll get over it) I think they've re-recorded the 5.1 audio as part of this remaster in general.
And I just wanna say how much I enjoyed the film, I've always loved it but seeing it in this quality - arguably better than when I saw it twice in 1996, not that I can remember what it looked like
- was an absolute joy. So many spine-tingling moments, such a twisty-turny spy yarn, all wrapped up in De Palma's masterful usage of Dutch angles, split diopters and badass anamorphic framing in general. For all the column inches that this franchise generates about its stunts, there's nothing else in this series that's as tense as the restaurant debrief scene between Hunt and Kittridge.
Note the lack of lens flares too (apart from some CG-generated ones on the chopper in the Chunnel), it looks so 'clean' and I do wish filmmakers would start to reign them in, it's not big and it's not clever! Even the music is a delight, Danny Elfman delivering a deliciously quirky score (though not Tim Burton quirky) and man, when the big triumphant cue kicks in as Ethan takes care of business with Phelps at the end, I literally got chills from head to toe. Even getting a little tingle as I type this.
I can't emphasise enough how much I love this film, and the UHD presentation ain't far behind. Superb. The only bad thing I can say is that I've now got to follow it up with MI-bleedin'-2. Oh, joy. Maybe I won't despise it this time, I'll settle for mildly disliking it.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
That's my plan in hoping to get $10 pricing on Black Friday for these and several other movies. I managed to snag a disc for MI: 3 for $8 a couple weeks ago.
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