Romance & Cigarettes is an odd ball of a film, a mixture of genres and while I can appreciate what director John Turturro attempted to do, it just didn’t quite work but with a cats like this headlined by the great James Gandolfini, to go along with Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet, might make at least watchable.
Romance & Cigarettes
(2005)
REVIEW NAVIGATION
The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall
Genre(s): Comedy, Romance, Musical
Olive Films | R – 106 min. – $29.95 | November 24, 2015
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** Click Here to Purchase Romance & Cigarettes on Blu-ray from Amazon.com **
PLOT SYNOPSIS |
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Romance & Cigarettes is the story of a marriage on the brink of collapse. A mid-life crisis has given Nick (JAMES GANDOLFINI), a Queens, NY ironworker, a roving eye much to the bewilderment of his wife Kitty (SUSAN SARANDON). The object of Nick’s affection is Tula (KATE WINSLET), a romantic in the truest sense of the word. Paying homage to classic Hollywood musicals, borrowing from The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven, a jukebox musical where heartfelt feelings are verbalized not through spoken word but through song and dance. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 0.5/5 |
| The only feature included is the Theatrical Trailer (1:56; HD). |
VIDEO – 4.25/5 |
| Olive Films releases Romance & Cigarettes onto Blu-ray presented with a 1080p high-definition transfer (MPEG-4 AVC codec), and original 2.35 widescreen aspect ratio. This actually doesn’t look half-bad in HD. Detail is sharp and blacks are fairly stark and don’t show major instances of artifacts or aliasing. Now, I did see a few scratch marks so it’s not a completely clean transfer or anything but all things considered, it’s probably a distinct upgrade over the DVD version. |
AUDIO – 4.0/5 |
| The movie comes with a nice DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which sounds good and considering this is a musical (in part), the score and songs take full advantage of each channel while dialogue levels come across clean primarily through the center speaker. It’s nothing I’d call outstanding or anything yet it’s still a moderately impressive lossless track. |
OVERALL – 3.0/5 |
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Overall, Romance & Cigarettes is an odd ball of a film, a mixture of genres and while I can appreciate what director John Turturro attempted to do, it just didn’t quite work but with a cats like this headlined by the great James Gandolfini, to go along with Susan Sarandon and Kate Winslet, might make at least watchable. The Blu-ray offers good video and audio transfers but is limited in the bonus material.
Published: 11/24/2015 |
Check out some more screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.