When it came to thriller titles on Blu-ray Disc, MGM Home Entertainment got in early on September 15th with a collection of releases including Misery.
The movie is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and follows the story of an author named Paul Sheldon.
When Paul runs off the road in a severe snow storm, he is rescued by his ‘number one fan’ Annie Wilkes, who takes him in and nurses him back to health.
However what seems to be an act of kindness begins to be seen in a different light as it becomes clear that Annie is at best a little unbalanced and has no intention of returning Paul to civilization.
With every passing day the two play cat and mouse, with Paul trying any way he can to escape from his rescuer turned captor.
The lead roles are expertly played by Kathy Bates and James Caan, with support from Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen and Lauren Bacall.
Misery was directed by Rob Reiner, who also directed The Princess Bride and This Is Spinal Tap, and the Director of Photography was Barry Sonnenfeld.
With a Rotten Toma
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toes score of 90% and an IMDb score of 7.8/10, the movie was clearly well received by critics.
Misery was also earned $61.3M at the US box office.
The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 31 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
Full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc can be found at the details page for Misery.
The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels – 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.
The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 36.2 GB used and is coded for All Regions.
The only real extra included with the Blu-ray Disc is the DVD of the movie, however there are a number of extras on this DVD.
So it appears that not only is the DVD provided to allow playback on a conventional DVD player, MGM has also opted to let the DVD extras stand and not replicate them on the Blu-ray disc itself.
Misery is certainly a great thriller and the Blu-ray release from MGM Home Entertainment offers a nice upgrade for this title to high definition video and audio.
The retail price is attractive at only $24.99, and it is a great deal right now at Amazon for only $13.99, saving 44%!
Synopsis:
A “heart-stopping psychological thriller” (Joel Siegel), this Academy Award-winning film is “one of the best horror movies” (Time) ever. Adapted from a Stephen King novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman (All The President’s Men) and directed by Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men), this chiller starring Kathy Bates (Titanic) and James Cann (The Godfather) is “a Hitchcockian kind of cat-and-mouse” (The New York Times) game played between two cunning minds — one as sharp as a tack and the other as blunt as a sledgehammer. Novelist Paul Sheldon (Cann) doesn’t remember the blinding blizzard that sent his car spinning off the road. Nor does he remember being nursed back from unconsciousness. All he remembers is waking up in the home of Annie Wilkes (Bates) — a maniacal fan who is bent on keeping her favorite writer as her personal prisoner…for the rest of his ‘cock-a-doodie’ life!
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