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Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
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.
Clean and Sober (1988)

Clean and Sober (1988)

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Released 14-Oct-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Drama None
Rating Rated M
Year Of Production 1988
Running Time 119:02
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Glenn Gordon Caron
Studio
Distributor

Warner Home Video
Starring Michael Keaton
Kathy Baker
Morgan Freeman
M. Emmet Walsh
Tate Donovan
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $14.95 Music Gabriel Yared


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.75:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
English for the Hearing Impaired
Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, all the cars leaving an AA meeting.

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

Plot Synopsis

    Daryl Poynter (Michael Keaton) has a problem. He’s an alcoholic and a drug addict. Worse yet, he is in denial. He wakes up one morning next to a girl who has overdosed in his bed. He is up to his eyeballs in debt after stealing money from a commercial property account he is managing to buy drugs and gamble in stock options on the share market. But none of this is his fault. It’s all everybody else’s fault. The world is out to screw him. And he doesn’t have any problems.

    In a stroke of genius, he decides to hide out from his boss, his creditors and the police in a drug rehab centre. He plans to only spend a couple of days while he comes down, but soon finds that he cannot stay unless he gets with the program and attempts to rehabilitate.

    Clean And Sober is an interesting and realistic exploration of addictive personality. The first half of the film is particularly engrossing as we watch Daryl follow a path of self-destruction and self-denial which would be amusing if it weren’t also so brutally true to life. It does lose its way a little towards the end, becoming a little rambling in the Third Act, but for the most part this is an excellent drama and definitely worth seeing for the brilliant performance of Keaton who not only makes this movie, but makes it worth remembering.

    With a little more work, this could have been one of the great films of the 1980s. As it stands, it is still an excellent film, but stops just short of being a masterpiece. If you like your drama personal, this is one worth picking up.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    Presented in 1.75:1, 16x9 enhanced, this is very close to the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

    The picture quality here is reasonably dated, with the 80’s predilection for a slightly brown colour palette (much like the recently reviewed Nuts).

    Overall, the image is well defined if a little soft and grainy. Shadow detail is reasonably good, although some of the shadowy night shots go a little bluish at times. The scene where Daryl breaks into his office is a touch murky.

    There is nothing in the way of MPEG artefacts, and film-to-video transfer artefacts were very minimal. Aliasing was compensated for by the slight softness of the picture and thus undetectable. There was some faint low-level noise as a result of the film grain, but nothing major.

    There is quite a lot of dirt flying around here, particularly on the right hand side of the screen where there is a persistent collection of black dots circulating at random. At 101:35, the dots on the right are joined by a couple of hairs and there are some big black dots on the left hand side of the image. These are blatantly obvious because the shot is of a white room with bright sunlight coming through the window. Other such instances are less obvious because the background is more shadowy, but there are still far too many for a film this recent.

    There is also a faint blue tinge to about an eighth of the image down the left-hand side from 111:49 – 115:10. While this is not glaring given the largely brown background and the smoke-filled room, when Daryl waves his hand through it, which he does from time to time, you can spot the colour differential.

    Subtitles are available in English and English for the Hearing Impaired only. They are white with a black border and follow the audio pretty well.

    This is a single-layered disc.

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

Audio

    The only soundtrack available is an English 2.0 Dolby Surround track.

    Dialogue is generally clear and easy to understand and I didn’t find myself straining to hear very often. I noticed no significant audio sync issues and nothing that was the fault of the transfer.

    The score by Gabriel Yared was a little flat and there is not an enormous ambient range here.

    Sound is generally front driven through the centre speaker. There are a couple of decent directional cues, traffic passing left to right and the like, but nothing spectacular. Surround use is very minimal.

    There was no subwoofer use.

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

Extras

Menus

    All menus are presented in 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, and silent.

R4 vs R1

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

    Aside from the NTSC colour format and region coding, the R1 and R4 releases are identical.

Summary

    Clean And Sober is a good personal drama with a serious look at addiction and addictive personalities. Worth it for the performance of Keaton alone which is frantic, chaotic, heartfelt and ultimately moving.

    The video is acceptable but far from perfect.

    The sound is also acceptable but not great.

    There are no extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Edward McKenzie (I am Jack's raging bio...)
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDPanasonic DVD-RV31A-S, using S-Video output
DisplayBeko 28" (16x9). This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver.
AmplificationMarantz SR7000
SpeakersEnergy - Front, Rear, Centre & Subwoofer

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