Blu-ray Review Starting Over – Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[t1g3r5fan]

Let’s dig into Starting Over. Starting his career as a producer – working in tandem with director Robert Mulligan, with To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) being the high point of their 7-film association – Alan J. Pakula made the transition to the director’s chair with the bittersweet romantic drama The Sterile Cuckoo (1969). For much of the 1970’s, Pakula truly made his name with a trio of thrillers loosely considered as “The Paranoia Trilogy”: Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). However, he had a change of pace at the end of the decade when he teamed with James L. Brooks to film an adaptation of the Dan Wakefield novel Starting Over. Previously released on DVD by Paramount, Kino has licensed the movie for its Blu-ray debut.



Starting Over (1979)



Released: 05 Oct 1979
Rated: R
Runtime: 105 min...

Continue reading...

 

[Robert Saccone]

Great review! I bought the disc because I loved this movie back when it first came out. I watched it with my wife last weekend and it does hold up. Excellent performances all around.

 

[Will Krupp]

Great review, Mychal!

I seriously love this movie; they really don't make adult comedies like this anymore. I got the blu-ray last week and it does, indeed, look stunning. I wasn't expecting it to look as good as it does.

As you mentioned, great performances all around (the stars are incredibly likable even when they're behaving as they shouldn't) and Candice Bergen's first real attempt at comedy (which certainly paid off for her in the long run.) What's not to like?

(This never gets tired!)

 

[Wayne Klein]

Reynolds had a run of making some really good movies before he started making movies like Cannonball Run (I’ll admit as entertaining as those kind of movies can be, they are, at least for me bad).

 

[lark144]

Great review, Mychal!

I seriously love this movie; they really don't make adult comedies like this anymore. I got the blu-ray last week and it does, indeed, look stunning. I wasn't expecting it to look as good as it does.

As you mentioned, great performances all around (the stars are incredibly likable even when they're behaving as they shouldn't) and Candice Bergen's first real attempt at comedy (which certainly paid off for her in the long run.) What's not to like?

(This never gets tired!)

I saw this movie when it came out--it played the theater I managed--and remember loving it, but today I was looking at reviews from The NYTimes, The Boston Phoenix & Roger Ebert and they were all mostly negative. Ebert, for instance, gave the film two stars. I find Mychal's review much more in line with what I recall.

Though I have the disc, I haven't gotten around to watching it all the way through yet.

I did check the visual quality just now. Pretty terrific.

The original dye-transfer prints from Technicolor on this were really extraordinary, with limpid colors and sparkling surfaces that evoked Gustave Caillebotte, turning Boston winters into an impressionist wonderland, while still retaining that realist edge.

I've always considered this Burt Reynolds greatest performance, especially considering he takes a character that is thrown into situations that are funny but illogical, something those negative reviews hemmed and hawed about, yet makes it completely believable. You're with him all the way. Such subtlety, the way he telegraphs his inner turmoil with a shrug of his shoulders, evoking such sympathy. The Boston Phoenix reviewer wrote, oh, it's just another Burt Reynolds vehicle, but it's so much more. He goes really deep, with very few actorly traits. It's not a star turn but something very real. What also comes across is his generosity, how he feeds lines to his co-actors, ands helps them look their best.

And yes Will, Candice Bergen's singing is for the ages. Why she didn't get a Grammy I'll never know.

I also recall Jill Clayburgh came to see a movie at my theater wearing that frumpy red overcoat. She stood out in that cosompolitan New York crowd like a Philly cheesesteak in a caviar bar. A few weeks later I saw STARTING OVER and understood. Apparently, she liked wearing the clothes from the movies she was in, though in this case, I think she might have resisted.

 

[DarkVader]

Great review! One of my favorite comedies of the 1970s. This is the film that convinced me that Candice Bergen could act. I was never a fan of his star vehicles...too much macho posturing for my taste, but Burt Reynolds' performance in this film is one of my favorites. Clayburgh could sit there and read the phone book for all I'd care and I'd hand that woman every acting prize known to man.