Mike Nichols on Blu-ray

[rocknblues81]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

My Regarding Henry BD arrived today from Amazon.

I hadn't seen it since it came out, and it remains a charming, underrated little film, with great performances from Ford, Bening, and the little girl. It's also astounding that JJ Abrams wrote such a nuanced script about complicated adult human interactions at the age of just 22.

The transfer looks decent, it's a dated HD transfer, but perfectly acceptable.

The extras are a trailer, and then a commentary.

Sadly, the commentary is similar to Imprint's for Black Sunday. I'm grateful they went to the effort to record them, but they're not conventional commentaries. They remind me of the very first Criterion commentaries. (In fairness, I only listened to about 15 minutes of this one, while I listened to the entire Black Sunday commentary, but I got a good sense of this one before I gave up.) It seems to be by someone who doesn't know much about the actual production history of the film. Instead, he analyzes the photography of the film while watching it, bringing film theory opinions up about what the various shots mean. He also analyzes the narrative structure, but again from the POV of a viewer with no apparent behind-the-scenes knowledge. For anyone who wants to know about the film's actual conception and production, you're better off with Mark Harris's book above, or by Googling period articles about the film. As with Black Sunday, I suspect this film is just so obscure that it was impossible to find someone with detailed knowledge of it, especially during the pandemic.

Still, kudos to Imprint for bringing this to BD at all, I'm glad to have it.

Will Regarding Henry play region A?