Product Description

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6597 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2005-03-29
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 104 minutes

Amazon.com
Four extremely beautiful people do extremely horrible things to one another in Closer, Mike Nichols' pungent adaptation of Patrick Marber's play that easily marks the Oscar-winning director's best work in years. Anna (Julia Roberts) is a photographer who specializes in portraits of strangers; Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer struggling to become a novelist; Alice (Natalie Portman) is an American stripper freshly arrived in London after a bad relationship; and Larry (Clive Owen) is a dermatologist who finds love under the most unlikely of circumstances. When their paths cross it's a dizzying supernova of emotions, as Nichols and Marber adroitly construct various scenes out of their lives that pair them again and again in various permutations of passion, heartbreak, anger, sadness, vengeance, pleading, deception, and most importantly, brutal honesty. It's only until you're more than halfway through the movie that you'll have to ask yourself exactly why you are watching such a beautifully tragic tale, as Closer is basically the ickiest, grossest, most dysfunctional parts of all your past relationships strung together into one movie. Ultimately, it falls to the four actors to draw you deeper into the story; all succeed relatively, but it's Law and Owen whose characters will cut you to the quick. Law proves that yet again he's most adept at playing charming, amoral bastards with manipulative streaks, and Owen is nothing short of brilliant as the character most turned on by the energy inherent in destructive relationships--whether he's on the giving or receiving end. --Mark Englehart

From The New Yorker
Patrick Marber has adapted his own hit play, of the same name, and given the lucky director, Mike Nichols, a script that he can chew on. Some viewers, or listeners, may flinch at the profanity here, or at the level of honesty that demands such profane expression, but peel away the carnal talk and what you are left with-the bone structure of the piece-is not so different from that of Noël Coward's "Private Lives." We get two interlocking couples: Dan (Jude Law), a writer who falls in love with Alice (Natalie Portman), a night-club stripper, and Larry (Clive Owen), a doctor who marries a photographer called Anna (Julia Roberts). The transactions are quick and brutal: Dan has anonymous online sex with Larry and a yearlong affair with Anna, Alice leaves Dan and finds work at a club, Larry finds her there and tells her precisely what he wants, and nobody is happy. The film is more civilized than the play, the acid slightly diluted, and Law, for one, looks eaten away by the bitter pace of it all. Roberts, too, is haunted and pained, whereas Portman and Owen drink and spit their lines with undiminished relish, often at speeds that Nichols can barely handle. Not recommended for couples on a first date. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Boring
This was one of the most boring movies I ever saw! It makes the word love truly just a "four letter word".

I even brought it to work and let my coworkers borrow it to get their opinion. Only one out of six said it was worth watching. I gave the movie to them!

Too close for comfort
Been there, done that. Who hasn't? That's why this movie is so watchable. Most of us, if we admit it, can identify with how these characters seek self gratification, hurt others, realize their mistakes, then go right ahead and make them again and again. We call it real life. Which you don't often get in movies. Highly recommended. But hasn't Jude Law played this same character now several times in movies, as well as at least once that we know about in real life with the babysitter?

Absolutely Appalling...
I can't believe what a piece of trash this movie was. Between the pornographic language/images and absurd storyline, how this won or got noimated for anything is beyond me. Whatever possessed such big name actors to take on this cinematic garbage is not something I can understand. Don't see it, you will surely regret it.