2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
From Roland Emmerich, director of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW and INDEPENDENCE DAY, comes the ultimate action-adventure film, exploding with groundbreaking special effects. As the world faces a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, cities collapse and continents crumble. 2012 brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors. Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover. Now this is how you destroy the world. Roland Emme
Rating:  List Price: $ 38.96 Price: $ 10.52 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
UFO sighters contact aliens; original version.Anybody who has written him off because of his string of stinkers–or anybody who’s too young to remember The Goodbye Girl–may be shocked at the accomplishment and nuance of Richard Dreyfuss’s performance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Here, he plays a man possessed; contacted by aliens, he (along with other members of the “chosen”) is drawn toward the site of the incipient landing: Devil’s Tower, in rural Wyoming. As in many Spielberg films
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(out of 413 reviews)
(out of 331 reviews)
Review by Rosemary Thornton for 2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
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So, when the world ends, it’s the politicians and bureaucrats that we’re gonna save, and the writers and the artists and the spiritual leaders are left behind to deal with the apocalypse. That was the most depressing element of the movie. What will the world look like if we only save the “important people” in Washington? Heaven help us. Seriously. If the future world is to be populated with the slimy-dog politicians and their ilk, I think I’ll take my chances with eternal life, thank you very much.
Sitting in the darkened theater watching 2012, I was reminded of “The Bunker” at White Sulphur Springs (in West Virginia). Construction on the 110,000-square-foot bunker was started under Eisenhower’s watch, when we were worried that the USSR might blow us up into lots of radioactive pieces. Turns out, our beloved elected officials were prepared to push The Red Button that’d end the world as we know it, and then turn-tail and run into their bunker, slam the blast-proof door behind them and emerge 90 days later when the danger had passed. And the most amazing part: The Bunker is outfitted with gee-whiz features that’d lead the unsuspecting public to believe the lawmakers were still comfortably ensconced in Washington, DC. In other words, The Bunker was *designed* to perpetrate a fraud on the American people.
Watching “2012″ I thought about The Bunker and realized, this movie is probably right. If and when the world ends, it’ll be the politically important that are given seats on the lifeboats. And it’s probably right that if there is a cataclysmic event, the Powers That Be will not tell the unwashed masses what’s going on, lest they try and steal one of those seats on the lifeboat.
That’s just depressing on so many levels.
But I digress.
This movie is definitely impressive on the big screen, and the soundtrack has plenty of bass (which I like). But the script and the writing was a little sappy for my tastes. And as to believability – well – this movie fell short on that score, too. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but NO ONE can drive a limousine *that* well. On the plus side, the graphics are truly amazing and scarier than anything I’ve ever seen before. I had to turn away from the screen to avoid some of the scary-as-hell images. It’s a pretty intense flick, and it does a good job of drawing you in.
A nice side effect: After watching this movie, I’m a lot less worried about getting those pesky credit cards paid off. Does make you think a little more about enjoying every day, and appreciating the simple beauty in our world.
In conclusion, it’s an interesting flick with awe-inspiring graphics, and it’ll hold your attention – if you can suspend disbelief for a couple hours.
Review by Annihilatrix1138 for 2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
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I think people judge these movies very unfairly. It surprises me when a movie like 2012 comes along and it’s ripped apart before it’s even released. “This movie’s gonna blow, it’s two and a half hours of things blowing up.” I have to play back the sentence in my mind and figure out what was negative about that concept. These movies are meant to be fun, and usually nothing more than that.
I say “usually” because sometimes you get a movie that has absolutely no other reason to exist than to make things explode and momentarily lower your IQ (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Single-Disc Edition) is out now. Fun movie.) but occasionally you get something like 2012, which not only offers the calculated mayhem that fans of the action genre desire, but it also offers a surprisingly deep philosophical undertone. Go figure, right?
The movie opens with a fifteen minute montage that sets up the events that will eventually transpire on 2012, and gives us a look at the backroom dealings that occur in the wake of this disturbing discovery concerning the fate of humanity. Once that’s over with, the movie picks up rather quickly, introducing us to the main character, Jackson Curtis, his more-than-dysfunctional family and a grab bag of supporting characters. After a botched camping trip, things kick off rather quickly.
What follows are two hours of absolute chaos. The CG in this movie is astounding, and I cannot stress this enough. The action is relentless, creative, and satisfying on the whole. The LA sequence alone will have you smiling, then you will realize you still have a lot more movie to go, and it never disappoints. The pacing is excellent in this regard. I was in awe the entire way through.
That’s the bottom line: If you love action movies or a good old fashioned thrill ride, the disaster sequences alone are worth the price of admission (unless you’re an astrophysicist, in which case you might be crossing your arms and groaning at this film all the way through).
But what I liked the most about this film was its underlying religious theme. People might be quick to pick up on the major references to this, such as (POSSIBLE SPOILER, though it’s in the trailer): the crack forming between Adam and God on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” at the Sistine Chapel, the destruction of Christ the Redeemer, Vatican City, and the Buddhist temple. With these and other biblical references that you will miss if you blink, Emmerich seems to postulate a world in which you don’t need God for miracles, and where everyone is back on even ground again.
Another theme that Emmerich sets up is the social borders that divide us more than we think. In a world that is coming to an end, it’s not the strong who survive, only the smartest and the wealthiest. The film argues against utilitarianism on several fronts, going so far as to say that to embrace such a concept to an outrageous extent, even to save mankind, would result in a race of humans deprived of its humanity.
Now, I could be wrong. I’m not saying that my interpretation of the movie is spot on, but the movie did make me think, and that’s what I found remarkable returning home from watching a film in which I thought I was just going to watch things blow up for two hours.
I walked in knowing that no one makes disaster movies better than Roland Emmerich, but I ended up watching something that entertained me immensely, made me think, and spurred on a very long conversation between my friends and I. THAT’S how a movie more than earns the price of admission.
Review by K. Simicevic for 2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
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Wow. Just wow.
I can’t even begin spelling out all the problems with this movie. Bad script? Check! Bad acting? Check! Predictable? Check! Way to long? Check! Two dimensional characters? Check! Silly situations? Check! Overblown CGI? Check! Cartoonish destruction? Check!
This review would be 30 pages long if I started to take this movie apart. But my biggest problem is the science. I know, this IS a sci-fi, disaster movie. I know they had to make something up to make the end of the world seem possible; I have no problem with that. My problem is that it seems to me that Roland Emmerich just took a 6th grade science textbook and threw it out the window, I mean, there’s stuff in here that would make a 10 year old shake his head.
My favorite example: John Cusack’s character is in a car, on an airplane, flying 40,000 feet above the middle of nowhere over the Pacific Ocean, and is playing with the car radio trying to find a station. He turns to his wife and says: “There’s nothing. Not even an emergency signal!”. WELL OF COURSE! YOU’RE IN A PLANE OVER THE OCEAN! HELLO?
To enjoy this movie, you have to know nothing about how anything in this world works, from the government, to airplanes, to even radios. My biggest problem is that these little things don’t let me believe the movie. Nothing in it is plausible. I loved Star Wars because the characters and situations seemed believable, and that movie stretches science even farther than this one. But I can believe it.
I can’t do the same for this movie. It just seems to me that humans can never act the way they do in this movie. Or airplanes. Or radios. This movie is a fraud. I want my money back.
Review by J. Forst for 2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
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(Possible spoiler alert though I doubt it)-
Does John Cusak have any good movies left that are pitched to him? To say that this even had a realistic plot is going a far stretch. Outrunning earthquakes and destruction w/ a small airplane? Hopping across broken earth in an RV? Somehow breathing and seeing underwater to untangle cables to save the lives of everyone? I know that movies like this are just CGI-fests for the eyes but this is just too much. Reuniting of old lovers, your kids who ignored you now love you – basically any stereotype of safety net you could put in a movie is here. John Cusak must laugh his butt off on his way too the bank cashing these ‘acting’ checks. Another horrible plot with predictable acting and an even more predictable script. Just like the movie “day after Tomorrow” – you had a good idea that was plagued w/ bad acting and even worse scripts. Yeesh.
PS – Woody harrelson must of needed some weed money to accept a few scenes in this movie. His over the top performance as a ‘hippie dude’ (go figure) is just too much for me in this one.
Review by A. Dent for 2012 (Single Disc Version) [Blu-ray]
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There isn’t a lot to say about 2012 so, let me start with the Blu-ray single disk version features and virtues. I will then say a few words about the movie itself.
CONTENTS
This release comes with:
- an alternate ending (not very interesting)
- a picture-in-picture commentary – every now and then a little window opens in the lower right section of the screen and team members discuss various aspects of movie making
- alternate sound track commentary
- MovieIQ – a feature seen in other Sony Blu-ray features, offers access to an online movie database that displays information related to the scene playing. One neat feature allows you to get the MovieIQ info synced in real time and have it displayed on your computer or iPhone.
- 1080p HD at 2.40:1
- 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio sound is available in English and French
- Subtitles in English and French
TECHNICAL MERIT
Regardless of the movie’s artistic merits, the audio-visual execution is impeccable. Anyone into disaster/destruction thrills should seek this movie. The CGI is realistic to the minutest of details and the surround sound engineers made sure that you will feel the collapse of the Earth’s crust pounding in your tummy – if you play it loud enough.
THE PREMISE
As it was the case with ‘The Day After’ – global warming triggers a new ice age – the 2012 science ranges somewhere halfway between implausible to plain ridiculous. The idea that neutrinos coming out of the Sun “mutate” into a different particle and heat up the Earth’s core (but not, let’s say, the scientists who came up with the explanation) would cause most physicists to either pull their hair in frustration or laugh uncontrollably. And I won’t even touch the mystical aspect (Mayan predictions) which make it all so much confusing: was there some supernatural force that forced the Sun to produce ‘mutated’ neutrinos? We don’t know.
A lot of the movie’s science is ridiculous beyond belief. Overnight thousand-mile shifts of Earth’s crust or the magnetic pole moving to Wisconsin would be outcomes of changes so catastrophic, we would see not mile-high tsunamis but watch (so to speak) the entire planet break into pieces. My impression is that the script writers either had no idea of what they were writing about or maybe they underestimated the audience’s ability to detect nonsense when ‘scientific words’ were used. Quite depressing.
THE STORY
Well… we have two main threads. It’s the end of life as we know it, with billions dying and, equally important, the story of Jackson’s (John Cusack) family that starts as ‘split’ (divorce?) but, by the time the Himalayas go under water, they are reunited and it’s reasonable to assume that they won’t separate again, at least not before the children grow up or another disaster affects the family’s inegrity.
RATING
I will give this movie 2 stars for the picture and the sound effects. And these are not ‘cheap thrills’ given the $200 million budget. Sadly, there’s not much more there. A little bit of humor when portraying a Russian tycoon and an end of the world enthusiast living in a tent at Yellowstone (they both die) and John Cusack’s reliably good performance and not much else.
I’m afraid that many viewers may find watching this movie a waste of their time.
Review by Ivan K. Samuelson for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
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Now this is the way it should be. You get all three cuts, all remastered in 5.1 surround and all have been digitally transferred. Thank you so much Mr. Spielberg because this without a doubt has to be one of your best (along with the original ET).
Last night, I watched the original theatrical version and forgot how much was removed for the “Special Editions” and the final “Director’s Cut”. In my mind, the original version is the best and to finally have it in all it’s uncut 5.1 surround sound (which didn’t exist back then) glory is simply wonderful.
The packaging is nice, although I found it very difficult to remove the DVDs without fearing I might snap them because the locking mechanism seems to not want to let go of the DVDs no matter how hard I press down on them. I suppose I could look at it in that I shouldn’t fear them coming off during shipping and getting scratched up.
The box is nicely designed and inside are some wonderful items. It comes with a poster that gives a time line for each movie and where each cut differs which I found really interesting. It also comes with a book full of bios on the actors and other people that worked on the film. Plenty of in-movie and behind-the-scene shots. Finally, the three DVDs are housed in a tri-fold container. Inside and outside are colorful shots from the movies and it really makes the entire set look nice.
In addition to the three editions of the movies, there is also a new “30 Years” documentary looking back over time at how CE has been a favorite movie that has stood the test of time. Also, the making-of documentary that was on the original Director’s Edition that came out a few years ago has been split across the three DVDs. Also included is the 1977 making of documentary which was also on the previously released Director’s Cut DVD.
Missing are all the “deleted” scenes that were included on the Director’s Cut. So, if you own that one, it might be best to keep it since they are absent from this edition.
Overall, this is an excellent release and no one should be without it. To finally watch it like I did when it first came out back in 1977 (and I lived in Muncie, Indiana at that time so you can just imagine what the crowd did when that came up during the movie) was so refreshing and wonderful that I can’t wait to watch it again!
Review by Michael Porter for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
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This two-disc set features a THX-certified 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of Spielberg’s (so far) favored cut of the film (the third!), dubbed the “Collector’s Edition” after its 1998 release on VHS and laserdisc, and runs 137 minutes. The anamorphic transfer is minted from a hi-def transfer created at Sony’s DVD center in Culver City, California and cleaned up for this release. The disc features both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, the 102-minute “The Making Of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” documentary by Laurent Bouzereau created for the 1998 laserdisc, a collection of additional deleted scenes, a featurette on the film’s enduring place in the sci-fi film pantheon entitled “Watch The Skies” (which, coincidentally, was the original working title for Spielberg’s opus), talent files, and two theatrical trailers. Note that the still gallery on the laserdisc will not be carried over to the DVD. The set also comes packaged in Columbia’s new “book-like” special edition casing with extensive production notes.
Review by Alex Diaz-Granados for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO classic, is the thematic antitheses to 1996′s Independence Day. While Roland Emmerich’s ID4 is a throwback to 1950s “invaders from space” flicks, Spielberg’s vision of a “close encounter” between humanity and extraterrestrials is more mysterious and, in the end, more hopeful and awe-inspiring. Instead of exchanging bullets and “heat rays,” humans and aliens communicate by using musical notes.Spielberg’s screenplay divides Close Encounters roughly into three acts, basically corresponding to each of the three kinds of “encounters.”In the first category, sightings of a UFO, we first see a very strange sight in the Mexican desert: an international team of researchers led by French UFO expert Lacombe (the late Francois Truffaut) and guided by several Mexican Federales finds five World War II vintage Grumman TBM Avengers. The planes are abandoned but strangely intact, as though they were brand new. “Who flies this kind of plane?” asks a bewildered cartographer/interpreter named Laughlin (Bob Balaban). “No one,” replies another astonished researcher. “This is Flight 19.”(Flight 19, of course, is a reference to a Navy training flight which took off from Ft. Lauderdale one morning in December 1945 and vanished, along with a Martin Mariner search plane sent up to look for the missing planes and crews. Flight 19 is now famous in the lore of unsolved mysteries related to the Bermuda triangle.) Laughlin is baffled by something else, as well. A Mexican villager, old, sunburned, and seemingly delirious, keeps repeating, “El sol salio anoche y me canto. El sol salio anoche y me canto.” When Laughlin asks what the phrase mean, a researcher who is fluent in Spanish says, in an awed tone, “He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.”Later, in the Indianapolis Air Traffic Control Center, a more dramatic close encounter of the first kind plays out on the radar scopes as airliner pilots call in reports of bright lights in the sky and unknown contacts make their presence known. For a few tense minutes it look as though tragedy is imminent, but within moments the contacts vanish into the night sky. Torn between reporting a UFO sighting or just letting the incident slide by, pilots and air traffic controllers alike opt to keep quiet, mainly to avoid having to fill out tons of bureaucratic paperwork.As important as these sequences are, the focus of Spielberg’s story is on Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), an employee of a Midwestern power company whose life on Earth is ordinary, hectic, and somewhat unfulfilling. Sent out to investigate a section of power lines in rural Indiana (caused, of course, by the UFOs’ passage), Neary has a close encounter of the first kind and impulsively goes on a truck-borne pursuit of two small “flying saucers.” This sequence, which ends with a Keystone Kops-like police chase of the same UFOs, triggers an obsession within Neary that neither his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) nor his children will understand, much less accept. Neary, along with several hundred other people from different towns and states, will soon be haunted by both a visual image and a simple five-note musical phrase. The traces of the UFO flights that leave traces behind (sunburn on people who, like Neary, were exposed to bright light at night) are known as close encounters of the second kind.Spielberg weaves Neary’s everyman-faces-an-extraordinary- situation plot with the official investigations being carried out by the UN-sponsored Lacombe team and a more secretive U.S. government First Contact program. These plot threads will all lead to a climactic and awe-inspiring close encounter of the third kind: actual (and documented) contact between humanity and another space-faring civilization.The Columbia/Tri-Star Collector’s Edition brings not only a newly re-edited version (trimming some excess material from the 1980 Special Edition) of the 1977 film, but also comes with a second disc loaded with extras such as a Laurent Bouzereau documentary on the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a 1977 promotional featurette, and the theatrical trailers.
Review by SeaKayaker for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
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OK, here’s a review of the DVD itself. (5 stars because the studio finally has released all 3 cuts of the film) There’s never enough info out there on the DVD content alone, but there are hundreds of people’s reviews and opinions of the movie. Suffice it to say I love the film, always have; simply one of Spielberg’s best films ever. And to now have the actual 1977 cut of the film on DVD is a huge payoff for fans of this modern classic film.
OK, this standard DVD release is on 3 discs. The 1977 Original Theatrical Version on disc 1; the 1980 Special Edition on disc 2; and the 1998 Collector’s Edition (aka The Director’s Cut) on disc 3. The studio split the 101 minute 36 sec “making of” documentary directed by Laurent Bouzerau into 3 parts, one part on each disc. Not very convenient but at least its the same documentary, same length, as was on the 1998/2001 “Collector’s Edition” DVD. The two trailers from that earlier release are here although the 1977 trailer here is called Original Theatrical Preview and is 1:20 longer (for this one they add 1:20 footage up front from the air traffic controllers scene; almost sounds as if the narrator is different, see what you think). The Special Edition trailer is the same as on the Collector’s Edition DVD. The 1977 “Watch the Skies” featurette has also been released here on the 30th Anniversary Edition as well. What’s totally new here is a newly-filmed conversation with Spielberg called “Steven Spielberg: 30 Years of Close Encounters” running 21:21; and a 2 minute 30th Anniversary release trailer. One of the coolest things of all is a 14″x21″ glossy poster with a complete guide to the 3 versions (edits) of the film indicating which scenes are unique to each version and which scenes were trimmed, added, excised, etc. laid out in a “timeline” (of the 2 hour+ running time) fashion. Finally CE3K fans can get straight which scenes were in which version after all these years! The reverse side of the poster is the 1977 movie poster. There is also a really nice booklet (lots of pages) with production stills and filmography information on Spielberg and the 4 main stars. The only thing not included here that was on the Collector’s Edition DVD are the 11 deleted scenes totalling 24:17 – so between that release and this, you should have pretty much all you need! (The 1990 Criterion laserdisc material would be great to have as well, but it’s not a perfect world – this set and the Collector’s set together make this fan completely happy!)
Disc 1:
- 1977 Original Theatrical Version (135 min)
- Making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Part 1 (39:15)
- Original Theatrical Preview (6:02)
Disc 2:
- 1980 Special Edition (132 min)
- Making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Part 2 (47:30)
- Special Edition Trailer (1:58)
Disc 3:
- 1998 Director’s Cut [as it's called on the DVD menu; aka Collector's Edition] (137 min)
- Making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Part 3 (15:29)
- Steven Spielberg: 30 Years of Close Encounters (21:21)
- Watch the Skies [1977 featurette] (5:55)
- 30th Anniversary Trailer (approx 2 mins)
Review by Paul McElligott for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]
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This version is basically the 1980 “Special Edition” without the ridiculous “inside the Mother Ship” sequence at the end. All of the other scenes added for the special edition (The ship in the desert and the additional scenes of Roy Neary’s breakdown) are here. The main scene cut from the original version, which shows Roy Neary at work at the power station is still missing, but it is present as one of 11 deleted scenes on the second disk of this set. Most of these scenes were justifiably cut from the film, adding nothing to the story. Most interesting is an alternate meeting between Bob Balaban and Francios Truffaut in a limousine at an airport. Similar dialog but different. This scene was clearly meant to follow the air traffic control scene that is still in the movie. Also includes the obligatory “Making of Documentary, clearly shot at the same time as “Saving Private Ryan” as Spielberg is filmed in front of a debris strewn European street. This is a first class DVD presentation. I just wish that they could have done what they did with “The Abyss” and include BOTH versions of the film.