New to Blu: July 24 – 31

Alita: Battle Angel

➢ “Unsurprisingly upscaled due to the inherent technical limitations of its 2K Digital Intermediate, Alita still largely impresses, bringing all manner of other visual tools into play in order to wring as much detail, texture and depth out of the image … All-in-all, this is a beautiful looking piece of grungy sci-fi spectacle.” — AVForums.

➢ “The single best way to sum up all the picture quality advantages of the 4K Blu-ray Alita is simply by saying that it looks consistently more beautiful than the HD Blu-ray …  Alita: Battle Angel is the first 4K BD from Fox – and only the second 4K Blu-ray ever – to carry both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision versions of the film on a single 4K Blu-ray disc.” — Forbes.

The Missing Link

➢ “The great thing about Laika films is the handmade quality of the features. For a Blu-ray release, it means having a chance to observe the fine level of detail that comes with their productions. You can really see all the little elements that helped bring this film to life, from the puppet designs to the various pieces of stitching on all the costumes. It all comes through quite clear and looks terrific thanks to a great transfer.” — WhySoBlu.

➢ “This film features beautifully crafted stop motion animation that looks superb in high definition. The colour range mates perfectly with the source material and are reproduced naturally, revealing subtle degrees of delineation that sparkle. Each of the characters has distinctive physical qualities that are attributable to them and all are easily discernable.” — AVSForum.

Hellboy

➢ “The uptick in detail is obvious from the first moment of imagery, with the chainmail and festering face of a corpse more precise looking, and with the striking black and white photography (with one notable exception) really offering stunning contrast. Depth of field is also at least marginally improved, though my hunch is a lot of the backgrounds were either finessed with or done completely by CGI. Once the film gets into its colour element, Dolby Vision really adds a number of enjoyable new highlights.” — Blu-ray.com.

➢ “The mighty Beast of the Apocalypse rides unto Blu-ray with a fantastic, near-reference 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode, boasting excellent clarity in almost every scene. The makeup work done on David Harbour is simply superb, and this freshly-minted transfer exposes the smallest feature, crack and the fractured edges of Hellboy’s sawed-off horns” — High-Def Digest.