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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Ocean's 8 (4K Blu-ray) (2018)

Ocean's 8 (4K Blu-ray) (2018)

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Released 5-Sep-2018

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Caper Deleted Scenes
Featurette-Making Of-3
Rating Rated M
Year Of Production 2018
Running Time 109
RSDL / Flipper No/No
Dual Disc Set
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By Gary Ross
Studio
Distributor

Roadshow Home Entertainment
Starring Sandra Bullock
Cate Blanchett
Anne Hathaway
Mindy Kaling
Sarah Paulson
Awkwafina
Rihanna
Helena Bonham-Carter
Case ?
RPI $39.95 Music Daniel Pemberton


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Atmos
English Dolby TrueHD 7.1
English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 5.1
English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 5.1
French Dolby Digital 5.1
Italian Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 2160p
Original Aspect Ratio 2.40:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English for the Hearing Impaired
Arabic
Portuguese
French
Cantonese
Chinese
Mandarin
Danish
Finnish
Italian for the Hearing Impaired
Korean
Spanish
Norwegian
Russian
Swedish
Thai
Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    The Oceans films started in the 1960s with the original rat pack vehicle, Ocean's 11. Then in the 2000s, Steven Soderbergh revived the franchise with a string of three films which all did quite good box office. All four featured a huge cast of glamourous male stars pulling off daring heists. This time around, in Ocean's 8, the glamourous male cast members have been replaced by glamorous female leads, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter and more. As an idea this has merit and with the talent in front of the camera should have resulted in an entertaining, suspenseful, amusing and exciting film. Unfortunately, it doesn't. To my mind, it is only the quality of the cast that rescues this from being truly dire.

    Anyway, the story sees Debbie Ocean (Bullock), sister of Danny Ocean from the previous films released from jail after 5 years with a plan she has been working on for a heist fully thought through. She is planning to use the famous Met Gala, one of the social events of the year in New York as cover to steal an incredibly valuable diamond necklace. To do this she constructs a crew of specialists including Lou (Blanchett), Amita (Mindy Kaling), Constance (Awkwafina) and Tammy (Sarah Paulson). They add to this team hacker Nine Ball (Rihanna). The other main characters who are duped into getting involved are the actress who will host the Met Gala, Daphne Kluger (Hathaway), a dotty and out of fashion dress designer, Rose Weil (Bonham-Carter) and Debbie's ex-boyfriend, Claude Becker (Richard Armitage). The film follows the team as they form, prepare and execute the heist, without ever really doing anything interesting or lacking in cliche.

    The big problems with this movie are behind the camera, the script is flat and lacks zing and therefore the characters lack personality, with many of the actresses just feeling wasted especially Cate Blanchett. This is combined with direction from Gary Ross that lacks efficiency and tightness with some scenes seeming to drag on for ever for no real purpose, especially in the first act. The film improves during the actual execution of the heist but only enough to keep you watching rather than get you excited about what is to come. There are lines which are obviously designed as comedy but they fall flat so there are no laughs to be had either. The film is shallow and contrived, lacking any emotion, tension or laughs. There will be some audiences (as can be seen based on some of the better reviews of this film) that get more out of this film, especially those who are interested in people like Anna Wintour (who has a cameo), events like the Met Gala or the fashion industry.

    It looks good, but what a disappointment!

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Transfer Quality

Video

    Unfortunately, I also found this to be a disappointing 4K UHD disc compared to others, despite the presence of Dolby Vision. Based on information available this seems to be an upscale of a 2K intermediate, perhaps explaining why is doesn't jump off the screen like other better UHD discs.

    The feature is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio in 2160p. It is encoded in HEVC and incorporates High Dynamic Range, Dolby Vision and a wider colour spectrum. It is certainly clear and well textured throughout but lacks the depth of colour and detail that some other 4K discs have. It is certainly better than the accompanying Blu-ray especially the way the diamonds jump from the screen and with added texture to faces and clothes. It is certainly a very good transfer just not up with the best the format has to offer. At times it seems a little washed out from a colour perspective but this may be more of an artistic choice.

    There were no artefacts except some mild motion blur/jumps in some early scenes.

    There are subtitles available in English for the Hearing Impaired which are clear and easy to read plus a huge range of other languages.

    

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is very good, again without setting the world on fire.

    The main audio track here is a Dolby Atmos one (resolving as True HD 7.1 on non-Atmos systems). In addition there are Audio Descriptive tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 (one with an American voice, one with an English one, which is a nice touch) plus other language tracks in French, Italian, Spanish (both Castilian and Latin), Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Thai all in Dolby Digital 5.1. The Blu-ray includes the Atmos track, the US Audio Descriptive track plus the Italian and Castilian.

    Dialogue was decent but a bit hard to catch at times especially in early scenes.

    This is not a big action film so you cannot expect aggression in the soundtrack but lots of atmosphere is provided including party sounds, street sounds etc but nothing that really focused the attention. The music sounds good and the subwoofer assists as required.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    No extras on the 4K disc, the accompanying Blu-ray contains the following minor extras.

Menu

    The menu includes music.

Deleted Scenes (1:53)

    2 extremely minor additions which add no value.

Reimagining the Met Gala (12:47)

    I can only assume this Mat Gala thing is a big deal in the US as this featurette goes into why it is such a big event and then talks about how they put the scene together and shot it. Not bad.

A Heist in Heels (11:35)

    A making of featurette focused on how they took the concept and changed it to women, how they linked it to the previous films and developed the project.

Oceans Team 3.0 (13:20)

    A casting focused featurette that goes through each main character and how they were cast.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    This release seems to be the same format globally.

Summary

    A poor film, shallow and contrived which wastes a great cast.

    The video quality is very good but not up to other UHD discs.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are featurettes on the Blu-ray disc only.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Daniel Bruce (Do you need a bio break?)
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Review Equipment
DVDSony UBP-X700 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player, using HDMI output
DisplayLG OLEDC8PTA 55”. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 2160p.
Audio DecoderBuilt into amplifier. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum.
AmplificationMarantz SR5012
SpeakersMonitor Audio Bronze 2 (Front), Bronze Centre & Bronze FX (Rears) + Sony SAW2500M Subwoofer

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