Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Vicky and Cristina are two young Americans spending a summer in Spain, who meet a charming "Casanova" and his beautiful but volatile ex-wife. When they all become romantically entangled, the smoldering sparks begin to fly in hilarious fashion.

Woody Allen is very hit or miss with me. Sometimes I love his films but more often than not I feel they are just a bit too pretentious. This one hit the right note though. It is an interesting look at love and relationships and how sometimes it takes something a bit untraditional to make it work. The cast is great and I loved the Barcelona backdrop.

The HD presentation is good but at times a bit inconsistent. The color palette wavers from rich saturated tones to an anemic look. Detail is also a bit all over the place with medium to long shots looking a bit too soft while close ups show great fine detail and dimension. Thankfully the mix favors the detail more than not, but it was still noticeable.

The soundtrack is a bit bizarre. According to the packaging the disc only offers a Dolby Stereo mix. That is just not the case. There isn’t even a Dolby mix to select in the menu! The disc is encoded with a 3-channel PCM mix (L/C/R). This caused chaos with my system set to bitstream out the audio track for some reason. I finally got it to work with a player set for internal decoding despite the track being a PCM mix to begin with. Despite the track only delivering from the front channels there is still a nice broad soundstage with plenty of ambiance and environmental cues. The dialogue is balanced nicely in the mix and tonal balance and timbre are very natural. This isn’t a very dynamic mix but I loved the details in the score and musical selections. Just realize this disc may require some tinkering depending on your system to get it to work right.

Surprisingly no extras on this one.

This is definitely one of my favorites from Allen and a solid love drama with great acting. A perfect fit for couples or even date night.