[The News Bot]

Reviewed by Cas Harlow, 29th September 2009
I am not wholly surprised that The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum received the Criterion treatment on the other side of the pond, and it has been respectfully treated with its new region-free Blu-ray release in the UK, coming with expectedly poor video, decent enough audio and a bunch of decent extras. The film itself is fairly timeless due to its acute observation of oppressive authorities and unchecked press behaviour, but a well-handled re-imagining in a contemporary, modern environment would probably not go amiss, especially considering the relevance that the story has today. Fans will be happy to finally add it to their Blu-ray collection, newcomers who are interested in this kind of film should pick it up as it will unlikely not disappoint them, but those a little more sceptical about whether or not they will be able to see beyond its age and low budget might want to consider just a rental, and then see what they think about the potentially slightly more accessible remake that may come out next year.
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[richard_t]

I've just watched this my copy of this disk myself and have to call into question whether or not you've actually done the same at any point (or at least anything like the final retail copy of it)?

Frankly your review of the film bear little if any resemblance to what's actually on the disk. First you incorrectly state that the films aspect ratio is 1.85:1, when it's clearly 1.66:1 (if you'd watched the disk you'd have known this by looking at the reasonably thick black bars running down the left and right hand sides of a 'normal' 1.78:1 screen). Even the information on the back of the packaging states that it's 1.66:1. I'm guessing that you've just looking at the information on IMDB for this that states 1.85:1?

Your comments regarding the image quality though amazed me the most. It's nothing even approaching anything like as poor as you say. Other a couple of scenes near the beginning that are in quite poor condition and tiny little bit of a stability issue with the colour during the funeral scene right at the end, the print is close to flawless (considering it's age). It's fairly sharp, has a nice layer of grain and exhibits a decent amount of detail. I've no idea where you got the images from that accompany the review but they don't represent the contents of the disk in the slightest.

This review completely throughs into question the integrity of all reviews on the site for me and I'm extremely disapointed.