The Favourite is probably one of the more disappointing movies of 2018 for me with a plot that became too tedious and despite being less than two hours, felt too long. That being said, the performances from the cast were all incredibly strong.
The Favourite
(2018)
Genre(s): Drama, Comedy
Fox | R – 119 min. – $34.98 | March 5, 2019
Date Published: 03/08/2019 | Author: The Movieman
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Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post.
The opinions I share are my own.
THE MOVIE — 3.0/5 |
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Plot Synopsis: In early 18th-century England, a frail Queen Anne (OLIVIA COLMAN) occupies the throne, and her closest friend, Lady Sarah (RACHEL WEISZ), governs the country while tending to Anne’s ill health and volatile temper. When new servant Abigail (EMMA STONE) arrives, Sarah takes Abigail under her wing as she cunningly schemes to return to her aristocratic roots, setting off a rivalry to become the Queen’s favourite.
Review: The Favourite is a movie I was really looking forward to, based mainly off of a great core cast, especially Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, though truth be told, not entirely familiar with Olivia Colman’s career. But after watching, I really found the movie to be on the tedious side and despite being under two hours, felt like a good 20-30 minutes could’ve been excised. On the positive side, I will say Olivia Colman was absolutely deserving of her Best Actress Academy Award, often times outshining her co-stars who themselves did at least have some wonderful scenes, particularly when they’re one-on-one, each of their characters one upping the other in their vicious and, admittedly, uncomfortable competition and jealousies, to the point it became a challenge to side with either of them (depending on your viewpoint). In any case, both Stone and Weisz were absolutely fantastic. The Favourite was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, but having never seen his other more abstract films like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, I can’t attest to how his style compares with those movies. What I can say is Lanthimos certainly had some interesting style choices such as, multiple times, utilizing what I can only describe as a fish bowl lens and pan sweeps across a room, reminding me of M. Night Shyamalan’s work on Signs, strangely enough.
In the end, while I did feel it was too long and the story wasn’t always engaging, the performances from Colman, Stone and Weisz were all excellent, easily makes this at the very least a rental. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.0/5 |
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This comes with a glossy slip cover and inside is the Digital Copy redemption code. Unfortunately this is not an especially packed release with only some Deleted Scenes (2:47), The Favourite: Unstitching the Costume Design (22:18) featurette and the Theatrical Trailer (2:11). |
VIDEO – 4.5/5 |
| Fox releases The Favourite onto Blu-ray presented in its original theatrical 1.85 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer. This is in a word a gorgeous looking movie with rich textures in both the costumes and sets, to go along with Robbie Ryan’s (American Honey) beautiful cinematography which comes through in HD with amazing sharpness and while colors are more on the muted side with the production leaning toward more natural tones, there were some splashes here and there that comes off the small screen rather nicely. |
AUDIO – 4.5/5 |
| The movie comes with your standard yet still effective DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. While this is mostly a dialogue-driven movie, this is a depth-filled lossless track. The bulk of the sound comes from the center channel though the front and rear channels does get good usage for the score or ambient noises such as during a couple of the party scenes where idle chatter can be heard. |
OVERALL – 3.0/5 |
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The Favourite is probably one of the more disappointing movies of 2018 for me with a plot that became too tedious and despite being less than two hours, felt too long. That being said, the performances from Olivia Colman (deserving of her Oscar), Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were all incredibly strong. This Blu-ray release from Fox offers up great video/audio transfers though the features were a bit lackluster. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.