Last Chance Harvey (2008/Anchor Bay Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture:
B-/C+/C Sound: B/B- Extras: B- Film: B-
Ignored
until The Golden Globes gave it some surprise nominations, Joel Hopkins’ Last Chance Harvey (2008) turned out to
be one of the year’s pleasant surprises.
Without bad digital effects, torture porn murders, or people who were
born yesterday and are as shallow as they are clueless, Dustin Hoffman plays a
TV executive whose life is a dead end wreck.
He has job security and is trapped in misery alone. Then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson in
her best role in years) who happen to meet in London.
It is not
totally a meet cute, but something is there and they know it, but maybe not
totally. They eventually decide to meet
again, but as you know, these things do not always work out as we would
like. From there, it becomes a comedy,
character study and Hopkins’ screenplay even goes further to flush out the
situation in terms that work. The result
is a film that works very well throughout and gives its talented co-stars a
chance to shine. They also happen to
have great chemistry together. James
Brolin also stars.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image is a little noisy and soft, but not bad
throughout either, shot in Super 35mm film by John de Borman (The Full Monty) with good color and
some full images making up for the flaws.
The anamorphically enhanced DVD is softer and not as good, but it is
much better than the bonus 1.33 X 1 pan & scan DVD edition included for old
analog TVs that is really bad. The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 mix is warm and rich for a quiet, dialogue-based film, but also
works the times the sound gets worked up.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the DVDs are not as good, but the soundmix
is quiet and only so challenging.
Extras on
both editions include the trailer, a making of featurette and feature length
audio commentary by Hopkins, Hoffman and Thompson.
- Nicholas Sheffo
