New to Blu: Movies > January 11-17

The Tree of Life may be bewildering but the Blu-ray of Terrence Malick’s enigmatic meaning-of-life drama is brilliant.

“It’s simply one of the best looking Blu-rays I’ve ever seen,” albeit with the minor caveat of “slight banding” in the creation/space scenes.

“Tree of Life was shot in a combination of 35mm, 65mm, and HD, and the end results are pure magic … The image is consistent across the board; everything is clean, sharp and detailed with richly saturated colours, deep blacks, spot on flesh tones and wide contrast.”

Similarly, “the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 sound mix is one of the most active you’ll ever experience from a film that isn’t an action picture”.

Final Destination 5 is out in both standard and Blu-ray 3D editions.

“For a film shot in native 3D, and a 3D horror movie at that, Final Destination 5 doesn’t have many reach-out-of-the-screen-and-rip-your-throat-out moments.

“And the few its 3D presentation does offer are fairly gimmicky and over-the-top, making for a spotty but occasionally engaging 3D experience.

“3D aside, the image itself is quite impressive, going in for the kill with a slick (but slightly superficial) 1080p/MVC-encoded video transfer that slices and dices with relative ease, glossy CG brain matter and extremely minor compression mishaps notwithstanding.”

Raunchy body-switch romp The Change-Up also scored highly for its HD specs: “This clean transfer features a small amount of grain and a great amount of detail”; “considering how grimy the film is, this transfer is a shiny, near-perfect contrast”.

Indie comedy Cedar Rapids was shot digitally “but you could easily mistake the footage for having been shot on film. I mean that, of course, in a good way.

“The 1080p/AVC-encoded image is rich and warm, almost looking like a very fine-grained 35mm picture.”

Also new is The Smurfs (3D) while going direct-to-disc are: Troll Hunter, Bunraku, Super, Big Mamma’s Boy, Carjacked, Meet Monica Velour, Father of Invention, Wake Wood and Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.