Shoot Em' Up is a stylish film, well paced and exciting with some fab camerawork, it reminded me a little of a Bond movie and it made me think that perhaps this is what an R rated Bond film would look like.

Clive Owen plays Mr Smith, he witnesses a pregnant woman being chased by a gunman so reluctantly decides to help, other gunmen arrive on the scene and during a frantic shootout he delivers the baby but the woman is killed, Smith decides to rescue the newborn baby and he then goes on the run, along the way he gets aided by Donna. ( Monica Bellucci ) Smith must try and find out why the hitmen are after the baby and who Hertz is. ( Paul Giamatti )

Featuring enough action to satisfy even the most demanding of fans this film moves at such a pace that you are never bored, it has blood and violence that some may consider over the top but it's done with such style that you can forgive any script defiencies, truly an enjoyable film and the cast all seem to be enjoying themselves. As the baddie, Paul Giamatti gets to chew up the scenery and revels in it.

The love scene between Mr Owen and Miss Bellucci takes place during a shootout and is funny and exciting at the same time, it's not often you see characters having sex take part in a shootout, i recall Desperado having a scene like that but the characters were not having sex during the shootout.

The image quality on the disc is superb, i spotted no issues which took me out of the movie, a nice layer of film grain was present and the picture was sharp, detailed and film like.

The sound mix was also excellent, when the bullets start flying you are transported into the thick of the action and there is nice directionality as sounds pan from the front to centre to rear and at all times i found speech through the centre channel to be clear and easy to understand, the subwoofer also kicked in loud and deep and the bass could be felt in the room, i was thoroughly engaged by this soundtrack and feel it's a strong and exciting mix.

This movie might be a bit much for some tastes, it's not subtle but i enjoyed every second of it and if action films are your cup of tea then i recommend this film.

View blu ray screencaps of Shoot Em' Up below. Click twice for the full HD image.

This is the French edition and as a bonus features the directors cut of the film, there is also lots of additional extra content on the disc but it is in 576 PAL so may not work in some territories.

Angelina Jolie was asked if she wanted to be a Bond girl, her reply was that she wanted to be James Bond, in this movie you can see why as Miss Jolie is well suited to action scenes and holding her own against male competition.

Nicole Kidman was originally cast as Mrs Smith but dropped out, Johnny Depp was at one point to have been Mr Smith but his committment to other film projects meant he had to drop out.

Mr & Mrs Smith are both assassins, they work for rival agencies and live a normal life, neither are aware of each other's real job.

One day Mr & Mrs Smith are assigned to kill the same man and only then do they discover the truth about each other, their agencies are not too happy and assign them the task of killing each other, do they choose to carry out their contract or continue in marriage guidance!

This movie is a lot of fun, it has chemistry between the lead actors and assured direction by Doug Liman, i also liked the music score, for this directors cut edition you get six extra minutes of footage, this includes an extension to the love scene between Jolie and Pitt and changes to some of the interactions between Mr and Mrs Smith, changes to the soundtrack are also present with The Dust Brother's soundtrack for Fight Club being added to some scenes, indeed near the end of the film you can see a character wearing a fight club t-shirt.

I wasn't aware of any changes made to the violent scenes in the film, even the love scene is not very graphic but apparently was too sensual for the American PG-13 certificate.

The 35mm prints of this film come from a digitally grain reduced digital intermediate, it had many grain reduction artifacts, this helps explain why the film looks the way it does on blu ray where i saw a number of artifacts when i increased my brightness levels, watch it on a calibrated display and you will likely only spot a few such as in the scene near the beginning of the film which has strobing lights during the dance sequence between Jolie and Pitt, check screencap 15 below for this example and remember it does not look that bad on a calibrated display, it seems this is a direct result of the noise reduction applied to the film's digital intermediate. Therefore what we get on blu ray is a representation of the way the film looked in cinemas.

At the one hour and 7 minute mark i thought the scene in the restaurant looked like it had some background noise issues, again thats likely due to what they did to the digital intermediate.

Its a shame they felt the need to grain reduce the digital intermediate and that all 35mm prints come from this, this is something reviewers will need to take into account on this film and many others, not always easy to assess and i would hope that the film makers just use low grain film stock and the right type of film lenses and filters in future, perhaps they should even consider shooting the film digitally if they want lower film grain present in the image.

The sound mix is active with lots of fabulous front, centre and rear sound activity, the music score is good and stays in your head long after the film is finished and the subwoofer goes deep with well controlled bass. There is a lot to like here, i feel it's a reference sound mix.

The disc features DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtracks in both English and French.

I enjoyed Mr & Mrs Smith and would love a sequel, i'm glad i imported this edition as its not available as a directors cut in the UK or North America, i think the image quality is representative of the release prints but bear in mind any image artifacts present are because of the grain reduction applied to the digital intermediate and not because it was applied to the blu ray.

View blu ray screencaps of Mr & Mrs Smith below. Click twice for the full HD image.

Tom Hanks is Captain John H. Miller, in Saving Private Ryan he survives the D-Day landings and together with his company he is ordered to go on a mission to locate a young soldier by the name of James Francis Ryan, Ryan's three brothers have all died during the conflict and military chiefs decide it would be good for morale if they can locate Private Ryan and send him home safely to his mother.

The plotline is taken from events that happened during the American Civil War, during that war a Mrs Bixby had lost her sons and Abraham Lincoln had written a letter to her, it turns out Mrs Bixby lied about the sons she had lost, only two out of five died and she was also a Confederate sympathiser, it's believed Lincoln didn't write the letter but that one of his advisers did.

Steven Spielberg directs Saving Private Ryan.

Many of the cast were not huge names when this film was made but you will recognize the likes of Vin Diesel, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Giovanni Ribisi and Paul Giamatti.

I noticed Nathan Fillion in the movie and many will know him from the tv shows Firefly and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Jeremy Davies is also in the cast, he played Daniel Faraday in Lost, he is instantly recognizable if you watch that show, he has also appeared in many movies.

It was interesting to see Ted Danson in this film, his cameo is memorable and Ted is a good actor and he shows it in this film, indeed before the tv show Cheers, Ted gave good acting performances in movies such as The Onion Field and Body Heat.

Hanks gives one of his finest acting performances in this film, he really was at the top of his game when this film was made and when you look at his eighties movies and then watch the films he made in the nineties you can see his maturity and development as an actor.

Spielberg does not shy away from showing the cruelty of war and the opening D-Day landing scenes are explicit and gory, bodies are ripped in half, limbs are lost and the blood flows, the audience is as shellshocked as the characters during these opening scenes.

The final act of the film is tense and has a great build up, it's a testament to how skillful Spielberg is as a director that he can put you right into the middle of a war where the action flows thick and fast but still find time for quieter reflective moments that make you care about the characters, other film makers should take note because too many forget about quality dialogue and well rounded characters and instead they concentrate on action, action, action, so much so that they forget to give us people we can root and care for. The best film makers give us it all and Spielberg was brought up in an era where well written characters were the norm unlike todays MTV generation directors that think fast cutting will hide the deficiencies in their script.

Image quality on this disc is superb, Spielberg has deliberately went for a certain look to the production and this means film grain is prominent and intentional, there is also some dirt and specks that show up and once again this is intentional and appropriate to the production, the colour was drained by about 60% from the film print to create a less saturated look, black levels are perfect for this release and fleshtones look accurate. During World War II there was film cameramen shooting the war and they would mainly use 35mm camera's, i believe Spielberg is trying to recreate that look during the opening intensely realistic frenzied battle scenes.

If you check out frames 7,8 and 9 below you can see deliberate photographic choices made for the movie, thats all intentional and not an issue with the disc.

The sound mix is impressive, watch the beach attack and listen to how good the soundstage is, rear speakers get a massive workout with lots of split surround activity, the bass is very deep and there is a lot of channel panning, speech is clear unless deliberately drowned out for some of the battle sequences. This is one hell of sound mix and one of the best i have heard.

Great movie although its not in my top three of Spielberg movies, that would belong to Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Jaws and Jurassic Park.

View blu ray screencaps of Saving Private Ryan below. Double click for the full HD image.

Seraphim Falls is set sometime after the American Civil War and features two fine performances from Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson, Brosnan plays Gideon, a man being hunted by Carver. ( Neeson ) The reasons are at first unclear but flashbacks show a tragedy that happened during the war set events in motion and Carver now wants to exact revenge on Gideon and will hunt him down no matter what.

Carver is unrelentless in his pursuit of Gideon and a final showdown is inevitable, in a way you could say Carver is as obsessed with revenge as Captain Ahab was when hunting the whale, Moby Dick.

The final act of the film features much symbolism and i thought the character of Charon represented all that is good and fair and just while Madame Louise is a representation of evil and deception and possibly even Satan himself, it's also very possible those two characters are hallucinations and not real since by this point of the film both men are exhausted.

Seraphim is a type of angel in theology and the way the film is structured one can conclude that two fallen angels are battling each other from the mountaintops of heaven to the fiery deserts of hell, of course one can simply watch it as a western with Seraphim being the waterfalls, its also interesting that the characters start out fresh and by the end of the film the hunt has completely worn them down to the point that they are absolutely tired in both mind and body.

The image quality of Seraphim Falls disappointed me, i think they have applied processing to the movie and filtered the finer detail away, i felt there was grain reduction and i noticed some ringing and compression artifacts, closer inspection of the disc reveals hard to see lines on three sides of the image, ( top, bottom and right side ) i have seen these lines on other films which have ringing and which i believe have had filtering applied to the image, i think it's done to make the film easier to encode when using less space. The film itself takes up just 15.9 GB of space on the disc.

The sound mix was average on this film, speech was clear, surrounds were used for ambience, bass was not deep but present in some scenes, i felt the music score was also average.

This is a decent movie which i did enjoy, i just felt the image quality did not represent the cinema look and i feel they have tried to fit the film onto the disc in as small a space as possible when they could have used more space and a higher bitrate and not filtered the finer detail and film grain away, higher bitrates and more careful encoding would have helped with the handful of compression artifacts i noticed, good movie but missed opportunity and i hope they redo the transfer at a later stage, usually Icon do much better with their transfers on blu ray.

View blu ray screencaps of Seraphim Falls below. Click twice for the full HD image.

Connor MacLeod is an immortal born in 1518 in the Scottish Highlands, he battles throughout time with other immortals for the prize, among the adversaries he must fight is the Kurgan, a vicious deadly opponent who will use the prize for evil.

At the time of the gathering the last remaining immortals will meet and fight for the prize.

The original script was to have fallen angels from heaven fighting each other for the prize, that script was ambitious and costly and so it was rewritten and Highlander was the end result.

It's a fun movie with a good premise, they made many poor sequels to Highlander and a tv series.

They even re-edited this film in America and removed some lines of dialogue to make the sequels work better, this edition is the original European version with all the lines of dialogue as well as some additional scenes fully intact.

As far as the image quality goes i felt some scenes suffered compression issues and i noticed some minor ringing on hilly backgrounds although some of this is likely due to optical effects shots, i also felt they applied dnr ( see glossary here ) to reduce grain during selective moments of the film. I also wondered if some of the film grain was natural.

I did wonder if this transfer was supervised by the director or cinemtaographer and if the selective grain reduction was intentional because it makes no sense to apply it to some scenes yet not others and i actually wondered if some of what i was watching was artificially added grain.

This disc has moments where i think the image quality looks superb but equally so there are moments which to me look sub par, its much better than the DVD edition of the movie but i feel it could be better than what we have here and i feel that it has an inconsistent look which is likely due to dnr and compression issues.

In some scenes – one example being the car park fight scene at the beginning of the film i felt that in some of those scenes the grain structure was at times a touch clumpy and had what i would describe as a digital fizz quality about it. I wouldn't rule out any this being intentional since in the fight scenes it went from grainy to scrubbed looking to grainy again.

You sometimes get that with films where they deliberately use different film stock to create a certain look and contrary to popular opinion not all films are supposed to have a consistent look to them. Whether this was intentional or not i felt it looked better with the heavier film grain and mushy and lacking detail with the lighter probably dnred grain structure.

Some theories about this transfer could be that the master print used had some damage to some scenes or a lot of speckles and they used dnr and aggressive scratch removal on those scenes, perhaps the print available was already scrubbed of grain and then using a computer they added artificial grain to selective scenes, although this is probably not the case, whatever has happened i do feel a number of scenes are not as good as they could possibly look, i also wonder about some of the grain in this film as it looks heavier and less natural than i expected, perhaps thats due to the film stock or perhaps part of the image has been sharpened or perhaps it's artificially added grain, no matter what it is i consider this a disappointing transfer and not only due to the inconsistency of the whole thing but the fact some scenes lack detail and have a fizzy quality about the grain structure. There is also gate weave during the opening titles.

Good news regarding sound quality, not only do they give you a 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 remix but you get the original 2.0 track in DTS HD, the remix sounds wrong to me with boomy bass, the 2.0 track is far more natural sounding and is the one i recommend listening to.

More good news is that despite the back of the case stating this is Region B i can happily confirm the disc will work in any region although some of the extras may not work.

As someone who has seen the VHS and DVD editions of this movie i would say this version is a huge upgrade and if you are a fan of the movie then this is the edition to own, i was disappointed by some aspects of this release and i wish it wasn't so inconsistent.

There is a remake of Highlander coming in 2012, they can use that as a reason to spend money on a restoration and we may see a better blu ray release in two years time.

View blu ray screencaps of Highlander below. Double click for the full HD frame.

Blood: The Last Vampire already has a Manga anime release which was made in 2000, it's also available on blu ray should you wish to view it first before watching this live action film release.

I really enjoy horror/fantasy type movies so tend to overlook script defiencies more than i would for other types of movie, i found this film to be more entertaining than i thought it would be, it mixes the action and horror genres with a touch of fantasy and at 88 minutes long it never outstays it's welcome.

There are well choreographed action scenes in this movie and the highlight for me was the attack by the ninja vampires against Kato in the forest, that scene is wonderfully shot and executed.

The effects sequences are not always up to par and the digital blood is poor but it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the film. It might for others.

I felt the acting was generally good and Yasuaki Kurata, Gianna Jun and Britain's very own Larry Lamb all stood out. The supporting cast were fine enough and did what was asked of them.

The image quality was good but i felt there was some ringing in some scenes and i noticed what looked like black lines in some darker lit moments, i have taken a screen capture of this and converted to black and white and then brightened it so that computer users should be able to see it no matter how their display is set up, click here to view this issue.

Apart from the above issues i felt the image quality was likely representative of the look of the movie, don't expect deep inky blacks though as the film doesn't have them but i feel thats intentional, i liked a lot of the cinematography in this film.

I'm not sure what the above issue is but i noticed it on some scenes and on fade outs during the movie, incidentally this film is region coded and will only work on players which are either set for region B or multi region enabled.

As far as the sound mix goes it's interesting that you get the choice of two lossless codecs on the disc, you can choose between PCM 5.1 or DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, i did briefly compare both and i felt the DTS track for some reason was playing louder than the PCM track.

I chose the DTS codec to view the movie and i felt the mix was very good, speech was always clear, the surrounds were sometimes underused but the bass through the subwoofer was phenomenal, very deep and aggressive and i could feel the bass and i loved it.

Regarding the DTS track being louder, i am not sure if it was louder for all the speakers or whether it was just the bass channel, i have noted this on a number of DTS tracks where the bass channel appears more aggressive and deeper but in reality it's probably playing a good 10db higher than a Dolby or PCM track equivalent and thus it's not "better" it's just louder.

View blu ray screencaps below. Double click for the full HD frame.

When this film was originally announced many thought it would be a sixth and final Dirty Harry film, as it turns out the character Clint plays in Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski, shares similarities with "Dirty" Harry Callahan but has a much softer side.

Walt is a veteran of the Korean war whose wife has just passed away, his neighbourhood has changed and is now mostly Asian, Walt dislikes his neighbours and there is an incident where the neighbours young son Thao tries to steal Walt's Gran Torino car.

Thao is made to pay for his crime by doing tasks around the neighbourhood under the supervision of Walt, slowly a bond forms between Walt and his neighbours but there is trouble with a local gang.

It's good to see Clint Eastwood back onscreen, he not only stars in this film but also produced, directed and sings part of the end title song.

I felt this was a very good enjoyable movie.

I'm glad they chose not to go down the predictable path which i thought was coming near the end, instead they chose to be more subtle and i think it shows maturity on Eastwood's part that he chose to end the film the way he did, i will of course not spoil the film by revealing anymore but it's well played out. Eastwood shoots his films quick and usually under budget.

I have read reviews stating the Hmong actors were not that good in this film but i disagree, they all played their parts as asked of them especially Ahney Her and Bee Vang who play the parts of Sue and Thao, i thought they were superb in this film.

The Hmong live in the mountainous regions of Vietnam as well as Thailand, Burma and Southern China. They helped the USA fight the Vietcong during the Vietnam war and much like the British Gurkha deserve recognition and a place thay can call home.

The image quality on this disc is good, i saw no compression artifacts or any edge enhancement issues, it looked natural and not processed and i think it's representative of the cinema look of the movie. I wasn't that pleased with aspects of the cinematography, i felt they didn't use the whole of the frame and some of the composition seemed to be playing it safe for 1.78:1 screens.

As far as the sound mix goes i felt it was front heavy, not much use of the rear surrounds other than for ambience, the subwoofer really didn't have much to do and only seemed to come into play to aid the music score. This isn't a mix for showing off your sound system.

View blu ray screencaps of Gran Torino below. Double click for the full HD image.

The disc is not region coded and is released on the Universal label. Image quality has been widely praised although i was never blown away by what i was watching but it most likely represents the filmed source material. If your system is not properly calibrated you may spot some compression artifacts on walls and faces.

The disc file size is around 14.5GB and for some reason this is split into three separate chunks consisting of 9.48GB, 3.95GB and 1.14GB files. The reason the files are split is probably because you get the original theatrical edition or an extended edition of the movie on this disc. The film was shot using low grain Fuji film stock.

Sound quality was very good with constant use of the split surrounds. Speech was always clear and easy to hear. The subwoofer kicks in for some scenes and aids the music score and is very deep and aggressive. I feel a little filtering and grain removal has gone on in order to make the movie easier to encode at such a low file size. I do not think it impacts too much on this film but thats just my opinion and i have added the film to my minor issues list which you can view by clicking here.

View blu ray screencaps of The Strangers. Click again for the full HD image.

I found this movie entertaining despite the fact that i felt Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo were miscast.  I wasn't keen on the radiation aspect of the plot which uses French nuclear testing to explain Godzilla's size. I wish they had rewrote the script before making the movie.

The original plot was to have featured Godzilla as an ancient creature that protects the Earth and only awakens when the planet is threatened.  That film would have had Godzilla fighting some huge monsters in the same way the Japanese sequels and it's unfortunate they abandoned the idea because of cost issues. I would have personally loved the original idea.

This film is still enjoyable but i dislike the plot that explains Godzilla and i dislike the ending.

Sony/Columbia Pictures have a good reputation with back catalog titles on the Blu Ray format and i am happy to report this film comes with a very good transfer to high definition.

I think this transfer is excellent and represents the look of the original film well.  Any issues are more related to the actual CGI effects or camera lenses and photography and not because of any transfer problems. Of course CGI has improved since this film was originally made.

The movie has a lot of night scenes with heavy rainfall and the encoding of these scenes was spot on, for the first time on a home format i felt Godzilla looked cinematic and film like.  There was no edge enhancement or compression issues which stood out and that always makes me happy. I have added Godzilla to The Reference List which you can view by clicking here.

The disc is not region coded and will play on any Blu Ray player in the world.

Once you open the Blu Ray screenshot you may need to click the frame again for the full HD image to appear.  These Blu Ray frames are captured directly off the disc.

This film was a big hit back in 1990.

Sam Wheat and Molly Jensen are a very happy couple who have just moved into a new home, on their way home from a night out a mugger tries to steal something off Molly, he runs away and Sam runs after him and confronts him, Sam ends up being killed and returns as a ghost, he comes across Oda Mae Brown who is a psychic and the only one who can see him, together they must find a way to warn Molly of the impending danger to her life and only then can Sam rest in peace.

Ghost features fab performances from the cast, Demi Moore plays Molly with Patrick Swayze as Sam and Whoopi Goldberg as Oda Mae Brown.

The scene where Molly sheds a tear as Sam lifts a coin and the music score swells is an emotional and memorable moment, it's about love and losing the people close to you, it's romantic and the film is positive and has hope in it, the hope that we get to say a proper goodbye to those we lose and that it's okay to show emotion and say i love you.

Image quality on this disc is excellent. This release is one of Paramount's better releases. The grain structure is intact and the detail levels are high and i noticed no troublesome compression issues. There is lots of fine detail on display and this represents the cinema look.

Sound quality was fine, the music score which is superb came across especially well and i always found speech easy to hear, the surrounds are used for the occasional effect and for ambience, the subwoofer does not go really deep but it comes into play for some scenes.

Ghost is not region coded and can be played anywhere in the world.

Check out some blu ray screencaps of Ghost below. Double click for the full HD image.