Strange Days

Strange Days (1995), directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Koch 20th Anniversary remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including 5.1 remaster, sort of a commentary track, and subtitles in English and German.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/

Video encoded in two-pass 10.0 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image. Audio encoded separately with Apple AAC for the highest-quality AAC sound available. Commentary track synced and cut with stereo mixdown of the original 5.1 track.

Subtitles converted to VobSub and repositioned.

Note : I've talked a lot about the 90s cyberpunk thriller boom of the 90s before, and here's what's in my opinin the absolute best of the lot, a genuinely great movie (although it did badly at the box office), with a killer cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Vincent D'Onofrio, the 90s' favorite villain Michael Wincott, and William Fichtner. While some details ground it firmly in the mid 90s, the subject matter and dilemmas could be practically ripped from today's headlines, with the police abusing their power, murdering and covering it up, vicarious living through recorded first-person experience, some really disturbing sexual violence, and LA being partially on fire. Story and part of the screenplay is by James Cameron, which shows (Jimmy has never met a cop he didn't want to just see get beaten into a pulp), but it's Angela Bassett's Mace who stands out as the tough as nails noir protagonist here. Nearly flawless.

LA, late 1999, the city is more dangerous than ever, and Lenny Nero is a former cop who trades in illegal sensory recordings of experiences, grabbed straight from the cerebral cortex. As Lenny is viewing a recording of a robbery gone wrong, elsewhere in the city a woman is on the run from a pair of cops, and narrowly escapes. Lenny misses his ex-girlfriend Faith, and relies on the support of Mace, a limousine driver and bodyguard who has unrequited feelings for Lenny, and Max, a private investigator. Through Faith's music business connections, Lenny receives a recording of a brutal rape and murder, and tracks down another disc related to the recent killing of popular rapper Jeriko One, which now means everyone's after him.

This is a decent enough remaster, at least for being from 2015, but the color isn't entirely filmic, and the image could be sharper. Grain retention is decent, though, and it's very watchable. The 5.1 track is punchy and nice. There wasn't a commentary track on this one, but I've spliced in a talk given by Kathryn Bigelow about how the opening first person sequence was shot, not quite a replacement for a commentary track, but interesting and better than nothing.

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