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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Foreign > Asian > Bright Future

Bright Future

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Main Program: C+

 

 

Two friends are stuck in menial work with no chance of a better life in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Bright Future (2002), a barely-comic feature work shot in Sony Cine-Alta digital High Definition format.  Washing clothes and not knowing what to do with their free time, one of them becomes obsessed with a poisonous jellyfish.  The other has no idea what to think of this, until he become deeply involved in ways he never imagined from events he never expected.

 

I give the creators credit for staying relatively serious throughout the shooting, so nothing is goofy or gimmicky.  Still, the haziness of the HD image is often distracting, especially in dead spots of the film.  This is one of those films where the term “quietly understated” certainly applies to the actors, but I simply was not compelled or impressed by what I saw.  What is most frustrating is how this always seems like it is going to breakout and deliver, but never does.  In some odd way, it was like watching a Wes Anderson knock-off.  Bright Future may have even been trying to be ironic, but it never gets well rounded enough to pull off enough to make any kind of statement.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is from what is probably a single HD tradedown, but its haziness would be there in any generation.  If you can stand it, then the story should get to you more quickly.  The theatrical sound used is the analog version of DTS, with Pro Logic-type surrounds, which is exactly what the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo delivers.  It is the highlight of the disc and is about a cut above the usual location taping you would get on lesser video formats.  The extras include a trailer for this and two other Palm Pictures DVDs, plus a 75-minutes making-of program that is as interesting as the film.  HD has a bright future of its own, but the productions are going to have to look better than this, while Bright Future seems almost experimental.  If only there was even a bit more there.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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