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Lone Star
review by Wes D.
Rated R
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Starring Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña
Studio: Warner
Directed by John Sayles
Retail Price: $19.99
Features: Theatrical Trailer
Specs: 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, Dolby Digital
English Surround, Dolby Digital French Surround, English
Captions, French Captions, Chapter Search
Lone Star tells the story of an 35 year old unsolved
murder set against the backdrop of a small Texas border
town. Director John Sayles enjoys weaving a story of complex
relationships between numerous characters and different time
periods, that in the end, clearly explains the motives and
the actions of all the primary players. While, the murder
storyline moves the movie along, the true beauty here lies
in the character development and the transitional elements
from the past to the present. Sayles will often use a simple
panning of the camera from the past into the present as a
scene transition within the same location. This is
remarkably effective as the flashback takes place at the
same location as the present-day story and the camera turns
from the young character slowly up to the old character
without breaking the shot. I guarantee you that once you've
seen this done a couple of times in the movie, you'll see
the both the brilliance and the elegance of this maneuver.
While the transfer looks clean and crisp and the
artifacting is kept to a minimum, there isn't much here to
stretch your system or make you really notice anything
particularly challenging. Fortunately this is a widescreen
anamorphic transfer so, there is little to complain about
there.
Again, same thing as the video. There is nothing special
about the Definitely nothing fancy on this front, we're
talking Dolby 2.0 here. Everything is clear and easy to
hear, but nothing to show off that nice new system with. The
movie doesn't really lend itself to a strong 5.1 anyway, so
I doubt you'll miss this much..
I almost gave it a 0, but they did include the trailer so
I really can't give them no credit. If you consider a
trailer an extra, than you'll be happy. If you think it's a
cheap tack-on like I do, then.well this needed some work. I
would have LOVED to get a commentary track on this flick,
but I guess it was not to be.
Here's the hard part. This movie is near and dear to me
as it was the best movie I rented in 1998, BUT this DVD
doesn't begin to do this film justice. If you're just
looking for a good copy of the flick that is widescreen,
then hey, pick it up. But if you're looking for anything
extra AT ALL..leave it alone. Maybe, we'll get a better
version someday.
 (4/5, NOT included in
final score)
(4/5)
 (2.5/5)
 (.5/5)
 (3/5,
NOT an average)
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