Weekly Blu Ray Review: Aliens, Highlander and Rise of the Planet of the Apes

This is my list of blu rays I have watched this week, beginning the 4/6/12. As you can see, 'Chronicle' still hasn't arrived, much to my annoyance, but I have emailed amazon.co.uk and they are sending me out another copy which they say will definitely arrive on Monday. It better! So this is what I watched this week.

Aliens (1986)

A really good film, one of James Cameron's better ones, the blu ray of this film is alright, it looks pretty blurry sometimes. Most of the time it looks and sounds great, but there are those few moments (especially on characters faces), where it just looks bad. I got this as part of the 'Alien Anthology' and I have to say that compared to the 'Alien Quadrilogy' (the DVD collection) I bought several years ago, this one has barely any special features. It has the 1986 theatrical version, and the 2003 special edition and a few commentaries, and that's it. Whereas the quadrilogy had documentaries on the making of the film and everything. Seems like they rushed to get this out before the release of 'Prometheus'. At least the actions scenes look amazing. I'm going to give 'Aliens' on blu ray, a 6.5/10.

Highlander (1986) Immortal Edition
One of those really cheesy 80s action films that you can't help but love. It's got some bad effects and some awful swords fighting scenes, but its got Sean Connery in it, so instantly we have to like it. As for blu ray quality, it isn't the best. It starts off really well, the first fifteen minutes looks splendid, and sound quite good, but as the film goes on it gradually gets worse, it's as if they just got lazy towards the end. It's a real shame because a lot of the film is set in Scotland, which has some gorgeous scenery, which we see in the film, but we can't appreciate it because it's all blurry. It's a wasted opportunity, don't convert a classic film unless you're going to make an effort with it. On the bright side it has a decent amount of special features, from brand new unseen deleted scenes, to commentaries and documentaries about the script and visual style. So the special features are decent, but the quality of the blu ray as a whole is disappointing. I'm going to give 'Highlander' on blu ray a 6/10.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
This was my favourite film of 2011, I think I scored it 9/10, but that was just on Twitter before I made this blog.The CGI looks spectacular in the film and on blu ray, it still looks spectacular. I mentioned last week that 'Toy Story' was the best blu ray I've watched, well that's in a class of its own because it's animated, this is the best live action blu ray I've watched. There is not a single blurry part in this movie, it looks and sounds epic. Only downfall is that when the CGI looks less detailed in the film, it is more noticeable on blu ray, like I've always said, things are magnified, but there are forest scenes and scene with building with lots of windows and they're normally the biggest give away for a bad blu ray, but they look crystal clear. Even the special features are good, we have deleted scenes (most of them are pre-post production so the apes are just CGI models at this point), audio commentaries, scene breakdowns, a documentary on the motion capture (on the new break-through technology), a section on the species of ape in the movie, a mythology of the apes (talking about the franchise), a documentary on the genius of Andy Serkis (who also did the motion capture for King Kong in 'King Kong' and Gollum in 'The Lord of the Rings'), character concept art and a documentary on composing the score. So you get a lot for your money (plus a digital copy, which sadly, as usual is only in standard definition). I'm going to give 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' on blu ray 10/10.