Tully was a surprisingly well done drama from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, both teaming up again for another solid film. Along with those two, Charlize Theron turns in a wonderful and powerful performance.
Tully
(2018)
Genre(s): Drama
Universal | R – 96 min. – $19.99 | July 31, 2018
Date Published: 08/05/2018 | Author: The Movieman
|
|
|||||||||||
Universal Pictures 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 — 4.0/5 |
|
Tully is the latest drama from director Jason Reitman and re-teams with screenwriter Diablo Cody following Juno and Young Adult. The film is a quiet and thoughtful drama giving a great perspective, and appreciation, for motherhood and more controversially, postpartum depression, with some advocacy groups taking issue with how it was handled, or more specially, not handled. The story focuses on Marlo (CHARLIZE THERON), a housewife about to give birth to her and husband Drew’s (RON LIVINGSTON) third child. Drew is a hardworking guy with no clue on the demands on Marlo and following the birth, she is at her breaking point. As a maternity gift, her wealthy brother offers to pay for a nighttime nanny and after initially resisting, Marlo ultimately hires one.
In comes Tully (MACKENZIE DAVIS), a free-spirit young woman who almost is an instant help to Marlo, only waking her up for feeding, and allowing her to get a good night’s rest. Soon enough, the two women grow closer with Marlo confiding in Tully about her life, lost dreams and dealing with her son, who has his own challenges. We got a sprinkling of information on Tully but not a whole lot other than she is a wealth of knowledge and is having problems with her roommate. I actually was impressed with Tully and that’s something I usually can’t say for other Diablo Cody written and/or Jason Reitman directed films, although from memory I did enjoy Juno, Up in the Air and Jennifer’s Body. This is a sweet and heartfelt film that not only excels with a tremendous and award-worthy performance by Charlize Theron (hopefully the Academy will remember by year’s end) and Diablo Cody deserves recognition for her taut and finely written screenplay.
I’m going to go into SPOILER territory here, so you might want to skip this section. It’s not often that you can look back on a movie and discover things you missed or putting together the pieces. There is a surprising, for the genre anyway, twist where it’s revealed Tully is in fact a manifestation of Marlo’s youth (in fact, Tully is her maiden name), and is there to help Marlo get through this rough post birth patch. It’s quite clever and the sprinkling of clues throughout was really clever (for one, Marlo had a major in history lit and Tully has a wealth of knowledge, which Marlo had forgotten). In the end, Tully was a very well directed and written drama and some might knock it for its advertising as a drama-comedy and outside of a couple humorous moments, this is very much a drama. With that in mind, I think this is well worth a rental. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.5/5 |
|
This release comes with a title-embossed slip cover and inside is the code for the Digital HD copy. Unfortunately there is a single featurette, The Relationships of Tully (10:00; HD), with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with members of the cast and crew. |
VIDEO – 4.5/5 |
| Universal releases Tully onto Blu-ray where it is presented with a 1.85 widescreen aspect ratio and given a 1080p high-definition transfer. This is a wonderful looking picture with sharp detail throughout and colors, even those at night, are fairly bright. There were no obvious signs of artifacting, aliasing or any other flaws. |
AUDIO – 4.25/5 |
| The movie includes a well rounded DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track with its crisp and clear dialogue levels and really good surround usage mainly for ambient noises (like at the bar toward the end) or the soundtrack/score. |
OVERALL – 3.5/5 |
|
Overall, Tully was a surprisingly well done drama from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, both teaming up again for another solid film. Along with those two, Charlize Theron turns in a wonderful and powerful performance not readily told on film. The Blu-ray release offers up great video/audio transfers but sadly only a singular featurettes. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.