The Cider House Rules (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Menu Audio Dolby Digital Trailer-Aurora Deleted Scenes-5 Theatrical Trailer Audio Commentary-Lasse Hallstrom (Director) Featurette-Making Of-The Making Of An American Classic Biographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	120:16
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (78:18)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Lasse Hallstrom
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Tobey Maguire Charlize Theron Delroy Lindo Paul Rudd Michael Caine Jane Alexander Kathy Baker Kieran Culkin Heavy D Kate Nelligan Erykah Badu
Case	Village Roadshow New Style
RPI	$34.95	Music	Rachel Portman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Cider House Rules is based on the book by John Irving, who also adapted and wrote the script for the movie. For his efforts, John Irving received the 2000 Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Published or Produced.

    Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) has grown up in an orphanage in St. Cloud, Maine. The orphanage's director, Dr. Larch (Michael Caine), always felt that Homer was special, and so he took him under his wing and imparted all of his medical knowledge to him. Over the years, Homer becomes a skilled, but unlicensed, physician who helps Dr. Larch run the orphanage. Dr. Larch and Homer share their compassion for the women who come to the orphanage seeking help, but their ideology differs when it comes to the matter of abortion. One day, a young couple named Wally Northington (Paul Rudd) and Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron) visit the orphanage. They are in need of Dr. Larch's skills to perform a medically safe, but illegal, abortion, which apparently was a common practice at orphanages during the 1940s. After Dr. Larch has performed the procedure, Homer decides that it is time to see what the world outside the orphanage has to offer him, and he hitches a ride with Wally and Candy. While Candy is recovering, Wally and Homer become friends, and when Wally offers Homer a job on the family's apple farm, he graciously accepts.

    Mr Rose (Delroy Lindo) is the boss of the picking crew on the apple farm. He shows Homer how to pick apples, which by the way is not quite as simple as you may think. Soon Wally's recreational leave is up and he eagerly goes back to flying planes in the war. This leaves Homer and Candy alone together. I will leave the rest for you to discover, as Homer learns about life and love in the Cider House.

    If you liked The Shawshank Redemption and Shakespeare In Love then I think you will enjoy The Cider House Rules.

Video

    The sharpness of this transfer can only be described as exemplary. It is clean and crisp from the opening scene to the end of the credits, and is truly magnificent to behold. Shadow detail is also excellent with no low-level noise, grain, edge bleeding or excessive edge enhancement seen.

    The colour is also exemplary, and is beautifully saturated, rich and vibrant. It is without a doubt right up there with the very best transfers. It is worth mentioning that the orphanage scenes use a more muted colour palette, which was a deliberate cinematic choice made by the Director.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen. Aliasing is non-existent, except for one trivial occurrence at 86:17. There is some minor wobble present at the start of the film, which only affects the credits and not the image behind them. This indicates that this fault was introduced during the making of the film and not during the transfer to DVD. Film artefacts are very rare, with only a handful of tiny white specks noted for the entire movie.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 78:18 during Chapter 16, at a scene change. There is a definite pause in the video and more noticeably the audio, but it is well placed and so it is not really disruptive to the flow of the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue was extremely clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie, and is perfectly integrated into the overall soundstage. Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.

    There is only one minor fault with the entire soundtrack which occurs at 111:06, where a small click can be heard in the rear left channel. I checked several times to confirm that it was not caused by an electricity spike sneaking its way past my amplifier's filtering, but alas, it is definitely present in the 5.1 soundtrack, and not in the other soundtracks.

    Rachel Portman's musical score is wonderful. It supports and enhances the on-screen action throughout the entire film.

    The surround channels were superbly used for ambience, music and lots of subtle sound effects. The soundstage is magnificent. It envelops you right from the opening scene to the end of the movie. It has been a long time since I have heard a soundstage this good. Precise sound placement within the sound field is the norm rather than the exception. There is also an occasionally noticeable directional effect. Some of the scenes that contain exceptional surround usage can be found at 97:27, 111:47 and 112:00.

    The .1 LFE channel is seamlessly integrated into the soundstage. It almost sounds like it is not there, but believe me, it is. It subtly adds bass to many scenes, giving them a wonderful depth and reality.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Dolby Digital Aurora

Deleted Scenes (5 - 2:49, 0:56, 2:06, 1:33, 1:08 minutes)

Theatrical Trailer (2:25 minutes)

Audio Commentary - Lasse Hallström (Director), John Irving (Writer) and Richard N. Gladstein (Producer)

Making of an American Classic (22:08 minutes)

Biographies

    If the quality and the number of extras on the R1 version do turn out to be the same as the R4 version then I feel that the R4 version can be considered the superior disc since PAL has better picture resolution than NTSC and does not suffer from 3:2 pull-down artefacts.

    The video transfer of this movie is magnificent, and is of reference quality.

    The audio transfer is magnificent, and is of reference quality.

    There is an excellent selection of extras on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall