Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 23 October

Dredd (aka Dredd 3D) (Travis, 2012)

I try and scat­ter my atten­tion lib­er­ally but I’m afraid this is the second film from 2012 to get a recom­mend­a­tion in less than a week. And I saw it on the same trip that got me Moonrise Kingdom, too.

The reas­on I want to men­tion it now is because there is a gor­geous new col­lect­ors edi­tion 4K UHD edi­tion out from ViaVision (via Madman) and I should recom­mend it while there are still cop­ies in stores. It has three discs – the UHD, Blu-ray 3D and flat Blu-ray, some post­cards and one of those len­ticular cov­ers where the pic­ture changes when you tilt it.

The trans­fer and extras appear to be the same as the ori­gin­al 2017 Lionsgate release, a release which was not well regarded at the time but I found it to be more than accept­able. Pretty good look­ing, in fact.

I reviewed the 3D cinema release while I was on that USA/UK trip in 2012:

Also achiev­ing pretty much everything it set out to do is Dredd 3D, a second attempt to turn the beloved but tacit­urn chin of future law enforce­ment into a Hollywood fran­chise (the first belonged to Sylvester Stallone in 1995). Mega-City One is an ungov­ern­able seeth­ing mass of human­ity over­seen by “Judges”, mobile cops with lots of fire­power and the right to sen­tence crim­in­als to their pun­ish­ment right there on the spot – includ­ing death if neces­sary. I’m giv­en to under­stand – from fans of the ori­gin­al 2000AD com­ic book – that the film does a fine job of offer­ing tid­bits to the fans and can con­firm that it also offers a fair few thrills to the neutrals.

Refer a friend

While there are sev­er­al not­able names involved in the pro­ject – screen­writer Alex Garland wrote the nov­el The Beach and the scripts for 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go, Dredd Karl Urban is a gradu­ate of the Shortland Street School for Comedy & Drama as well Starfleet Academy, but the most inter­est­ing name on the crew sheet is cine­ma­to­graph­er Anthony Dod Mantle who, if you saw Keanu Reeves’ doco Side by Side on the trans­ition from film to digit­al, you’ll know is the most invent­ive and adven­tur­ous dir­ect­or of pho­to­graphy around. The 3D ultra slow motion is often quite beau­ti­ful des­pite the blood and teeth fly­ing around.

A plus not men­tioned in that review, but wel­come non­ethe­less, is that Dredd has a run­ning time of only 95 minutes.

Pete Travis is the cred­ited dir­ect­or but Urban reportedly con­siders the film to be screenwriter/producer Garland’s debut. And he was there.

Also reviewed in that Capital Times column from October 2012: Aussie crowd-pleaser The Sapphires, anim­ated Adam Sandler in Hotel Transylvania, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, art­house fantasy Ruby Sparks, and Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth in the franchise.

Where to watch Dredd

Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix and TVNZ+ (free with ads). Also on lim­ited edi­tion 4K UHD.

Australia: Streaming on Netflix and Stan

Canada: Streaming on Netflix and Prime Video

Ireland & UK: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on Prime Video

Correction

In yesterday’s news­let­ter I implied that the forth­com­ing Terror-Fi fest­iv­al was only in Auckland and Wellington. I obvi­ously hadn’t scrolled far enough down their webpage and should now con­firm that there are also screen­ings in Christchurch. The error is regretted.