Must See Reality

2023's Reality is a film I've been itching to talk about for a while.  It's the superior of two films (though the other one's not bad either) about Reality Winner, the former NSA translator who was sent to prison for leaking classified documents to The Intercept about the Russian government's attempts to hack US voting machines during the 2016 presidential elections.  Don't worry if the subject matter doesn't grab you; it's a taught psychological thriller with a unique capacity to force you into the anxiety if being interrogated.  It's also the perfect reminder of how impressed we all were with Sidney Sweeney when she was undeniably talented indie darling, before she became some kind of weird sex symbol of the culture wars.  She's really great in this, playing against Josh Hamilton (Kicking and Screaming, The House of Yes) and a whole supporting cast who are all perfectly, terrifyingly banal.

What's so unique about Reality?  Well, it's one of very few, if any, examples of Verbatim Theater in film.  Yes, it started out as a play, and even on stage, Verbatim Theater is pretty rare.  The concept is simple: to take a real world transcript of an actual event, or in this day and age, an audio recording, and perform that as your script, word for word, including every pause and tic as it actually happened in real life.  Probably the best known is Bloody Sunday, a 2005 London play built out of the Saville Report study of the 1972 Bogside Massacre in Ireland.  The most most famous example up to know on film would surely be The Colour of Justice, a 1999 BBC TWO production based on the courtroom transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence murder trials.  Man, do I wish the BFI would give us that on disc; I'd love to see it.  Here in the US, the closest examples I can really think of are the work of Anna Deveare Smith, who conducted and curated hundreds of interviews based on a handful of subjects, like the LA riots, then performed all of the interview segments herself, first on stage and later on HBO.  We desperately need those VHS-only releases updated to disc, too - they're so great!

But Reality is the truest, purest example yet: it's literally based on one, unedited audio recording, performed in real time, from beginning to end.  It enables director Tina Satter to slip you inside the interrogation in a way no traditional dramatization or documentary could, leaving you with this strangely relaxed sense of danger, in a way that reminds me of Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent, but of course in a very different style.  And admittedly, I could see some of the strength of Reality being diluted if lots of films and shows started doing this same thing - it does seem like a fairly repeatable gimmick.  It wouldn't be quite so exciting if its novelty were stripped away and we were seeing it on Court TV every day.  But it would still be pretty damned effective, and honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of it.

Reality was first released on DVD in Australia from Madman in 2023.  But it didn't hit blu until 2024 when Metropolitan put it out in France.  I'm always anxious about French discs' subtitles being forced, though (to be clear, I don't believe they are; I just didn't want to risk it) so I held out for the German release from Plaion Pictures a few months later (that subtitle on the cover translates to "TRUTH HAS ITS PRICE," if you were curious).  To this date, those are still our only three options, and I wouldn't hold my breath for any more, as it was acquired by HBO Max to be a streaming exclusive here in the states.

2024 German Plaion BD.

For starters, you'll notice plenty of grain in the image, but it must be fake, post production stuff, because this was shot on digital (confirmed in this interview with the DP).  It still lets us gauge how well the image is presented on disc, though, in that the grain is sharp and clear.  This is a contemporary film, so we're not worried about how well the elements have been preserved or scanned.  But it would surely have to be softer on the DVD, and looks like it could look a little bit better in 4k, but not much.  The aspect ratio is 2.00:1 (that interview claims it should be 2.1, but I just checked on HBOMax and it's exactly 2.0 there as well), and audio consists of the original English 5.1 track, plus a German 5.1 dub, both in DTS-HD with optional German subtitles.  And on-screen slugs are in their original English.

Extras ain't much.  There's an all too brief featurette that barely explains the concept and lets us hear from the director, Sweeney and even the real Winner.  Unfortunately, it's like five minutes long.  They filmed her in multiple locations, and they have that little footage to show for it?  Where ya stashin' the goods and why can't have a look?  Anyway, besides that, there's just English and German versions of the trailer and a couple of bonus German trailers.  And they do give you reversible artwork so you can hide the ugly green ratings logo, which is a welcome touch.

Apart from trailers, extras are the same in France (and Australia), so you're presumably just as well off getting one blu as the other.  But you should get this film, because it's a great and unique film, and you don't need to still be interested in Russiagate to appreciate it.

Two Unsung Recommendations from Dark Force

Yaknow, nobody asked me, so I thought for today I would share two really neat titles from Dark Force that I haven't seen anybody really talking about online.  These aren't brand new, but they're both from the last two years and seemed to have slipped out virtually under the radar.  Like, I'm sitting here getting tired of all these posts about John Woo 4ks, thinking: why is nobody giving these titles some fanfare?

So let's begin with 1996's The Ex.  Do people realize this is a Larry Cohen movie?  It just came out this past October, right in time for Halloween.  And it's one of those titles Dark Force released in conjunction with Kino, so it's easy to find inexpensive if you're allergic to the Dark Force Superstore (though I found it there the cheapest, personally).  If you appreciate his more off-beat fare, like the kind of titles Scream Factory included in his Mystery and Misdirection set, this should be right up your alley.  In fact, it's a little closer to his traditional horror output than any of those; though objectively, you'd probably categorize it as a thriller.

And it's a fun thriller.  Here, Cohen is adapting a novel (John Lutz's The Ex, which had just come out that year), so despite the fact that it went direct-to-video and has a super generic title, it's actually smarter and better made than you would've thought spotting it on Blockbuster's New Releases wall.  It's directed by Mark L. Lester (Commando, Class of 1984) with some solid production values: big fire effects, plenty of locations, a constantly sweeping camera.  Yancy Butler (Witchblade) is delightful as the titular ex, a woman who must've seen Fatal Attraction and thought, I can top that.  She's constantly prevaricating between cleverly twisted mind games, classic femme fatale speeches, and rocketing up her body count.  Nick Mancusco (Nightwing, Stingray and the original prowler from Black Christmas) is her unfortunate love interest who's sort of brought it all on himself and Suzy Amis (a.k.a. Mrs. James Cameron) has the fairly thankless role of the stoic, put-upon wife.  Oh, and the kid they have playing their son is pretty great, too.

2025 Kino/ Dark Force BD.

Given that The Ex was a direct-to-video title from the 90s, and it never got a DVD release, this is already a treat just because this is the first time any of us are able to see it in widescreen.  One might quibble why this is 1.78:1 instead of 1.85, but it's clear this film was always intended to be seen wide.  it looks great, almost suspiciously good.  I was starting to look at this like, is that gain fake?  It turns out, this isn't the old master retrieved from Live Entertainment's basement like you'd expect.  Apparently Lester is supervising restorations his films these days, and the A-list results speak for themselves.

That also goes for its lossless DTS-HD 2.0 sound mix with optional English subtitles.  And there are some solid extras.  They got Yancy Butler and Nick Mancuso to come in for a pair of great on-camera interviews (well, Yancy's is better).  They also include the trailer, to give a taste of its old, boxy 4:3 home video framing, and seven(!) bonus trailers.  And it comes in an attractive slipcover.  First class all the way.

And for our second recommendation, this one was a real surprise, in the sense that I went into it with my expectations on the floor.  Deconstructing Dunning, about obscure but talented cult actor Douglas Dunning, is presented as the first "Dark Force Original," though it becomes clear listening to the commentary that Dark Force bought the documentary after it was completed for distribution.  They were selling this for just five dollars, so I threw it in my cart with something else.  It's like when Code Red used to sell their DVDs of A Day At the Beach for $2.99, desperate to get rid of them.  Frankly, I was expecting a real piece of crap, but it's actually a very good, and quite entertaining, documentary, and you should totally get it!

It's certainly flawed; but it's flaws are rolled into its appeal.  Some of these interview subjects are beyond "off the cuff."  John Landis looks like he was stopped on the street, surprised but still happy to be on camera; and the film begins with director Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, Star Trek 2) complaining about how they ambushed him for this interview.  But that's a heck of a lot more entertaining than your average talking head!  Dunning gives the filmmaker tremendous access as he's kicked out of his home by his roommate, living in a storage space and getting extensive oral surgery.  We also get Dunning reconstructing his time in prison like a sequence from The Act Of Killing, and Laurene Landon being perfectly candid, and still a bit puzzled, about how Dunning stalked her.  Some of the people interviewed really hate him, and at certain points we find out why; but most people who've worked with him remain genuinely supportive, and this film had me feeling the same.

2024 Dark Force BD.

Deconstructing Dunning is presented in 1.78:1 and the HD footage looks great when it does.  Like many docs, this is composed of mixed media, including some vintage rapes, interviews shot on lower quality cameras, and some sections where Dunning is given the camera and allowed to film what he likes on his own... which tends to be completely out of focus.  But that's the film, not the transfer, which is surely taken from the official DCP and looks as good as it possibly could.  Audio is a lossless stereo track in DTS-HD, but there are no subtitle options.

And there's a collection of great and terrible extras.  First up, we get "Savage Tracks Vol. 6" where "Demon" Dave DeFalco keeps walking away from the mic, calling Vinegar Syndrome on his phone, and everybody is talking over each other about god knows what.  A good chunk of the time is devoted to somebody "sneaking" into the recording session dressed as an ape?  I've never listened to a Savage Track before, but this one was enough for me.  BUT, they did get Dunning and the film's producer to join them, and when they get a word in edge-wise, the producer adds some good tidbits of information, and Dunning continues to be a wild character.  They also include the entire, unedited interviews with Bert I. Gordon and Franco Nero, which Dunning himself interview, and are quite something.  Dunning keeps asking them questions about his life, and they are baffled.  Finally, we get the complete collection of abusive phone messages Dunning left his former boss, which we heard highlights from in the film.  There are also a couple promo trailers under the previous title Resurrecting Dunning.

These are what I've been having a great time with lately.

Four A24s, Part 4: Bring Her Back

The best horror film of 2025, and quite possibly the best film of the year period.  The Philippou brothers' Talk To Me was an impressive debut that outclassed the annual teen horror fare, but with Bring Her Back, I really think they've graduated to an enduring horror classic.  Only time will tell of course, but revisiting A24's blu-ray reconfirmed everything I experienced when I saw it the first time: a consistently intelligent, taught horror story that manages to balance the authentic human drama and the supernatural through and through.  Like if you look at Hereditary, another generally first class horror drama (are the kids still saying "elevated?"), but all the witchy stuff in the last act betrays the weight of everything that led up to it.  It's a really tough balancing act to pull off, keeping these two disparate elements perfectly in tune with each other from beginning to end.  The Exorcist managed it, and Bring Her Back manages it.  And that's on top of everything else it nails.

This movie asks a lot of its child actors, yet gets excellent, nuanced performances out of each of them (actually, something it has in common with The Exorcist and Hereditary); but it's Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) who really blows you away here, somehow managing to be the most lovable and most horrible at the same time, without sacrificing her perfect veracity for a single moment.  And when I say "most horrible," yeah, this movie goes hard.  Uncompromising is the word; there's no place this movie is afraid to go, but it also never veers away from its sympathetic human story for cheap shocks - not that it fails to shock.  It's got an effective, minimalistic score, terrific camerawork and some seriously unnerving special effects.  And it looks great in 4k.

2025 A24 UHD.

A24's UHD frames the film in its OAR of 2.00:1, except for a few scenes that shift to 1.78:1 (an intentional aspect of the film), like the last shot directly above.  Now, Bring Her Back was shot on digital, so there's no film grain to judge, not even "fake grain" like on Showing Up.  So if you look at all that bokeh behind Hawkins in that second set of shots, for example, it's nice and smooth, but all of her dangling hairs are delicately captured and discernible in front of it, with no hint of blocking, banding or pixelation.  These guys don't cut any corners with their encodes, and in this case, they've even sprung for a triple-layer disc.

And as with the previous A24 discs we've looked at, BHB comes with an impressive 7.1 TrueHD mix, an English descriptive track and optional English & Spanish subtitles.

The Philippou brothers provide a highly enthusiastic audio commentary and also contribute to a good, 20-minute behind the scenes featurette.  Besides that, they've included one not particularly compelling deleted scene; but they did talk about it in the commentary.  So if you listened to that, it's nice to be able to actually see it.  Finally, we get the "Russian video" which is the VHS tape within the film that Hawkins' character keeps referring to - handy if any viewers at home want to try bringing back someone from the dead.  Also included are the standard six art cards.

Most of you guys probably guessed this would be how I ended my Four A24s series: their biggest, most successful cult horror title of the year (Marty Supreme was their biggest money maker in general), and such an artistic triumph.  I'm happy to be Mr. Obvious, though, when it comes to such a satisfying film.  and thank goodness, the quality of its physical release lives up to it.  In a couple years, I could see Second Sight coming through, conducting a bunch of additional cast and crew interviews, recording a couple video essays, and releasing an even more packed special edition, probably in a great big box with a hardcover book.  But they're not likely to improve on this presentation of the film itself, and the most compelling extra will still probably be this commentary.  So this is a pretty safe investment and just a highly entertaining disc.

Four A24s, Part 3: A Different Man

Today we have another BD-only (as opposed to 4k Ultra HD) release; but in this case, I'm a little less surprised they went that route.  A Different Man was one of A24's least successful films at the box office, not even recouping half of its modest $1.4 million budget back, which is a real shame.  If you haven't seen it yet, you might be looking at this movie wondering: is this just a Mask 2.0, another afterschool-spirited film made to tell us to be nicer to people with disabilities?  Like that inane one with Julia Louis Dreyfus and the giant parrot?  Thankfully, no.  This is a weird, thoughtful, subversive little movie, perhaps more in tune with the Jim Carrey Mask than the Eric Stoltz Mask.  Although actually, if you were to moleculary fuse the two together in a Brundle pod, you'd be getting closer.

Captain America's Sebastian Stan is surprisingly natural as a nebbish Woody Allen-type, a struggling actor with neurofibromatosis and a crush on his playwright neighbor (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World).  He agrees to participate in a futuristic medical experiment that transforms him, both physically and circumstantially, until a sort of doppleganger (Adam Pearson, Under the Skin, Drib) arrives to take everything away from him.  What results is a dark, cutting and mind-bending look at the humiliating interplay between art and artist.  Also, the soundtrack is terrific and the special make-up effects won the Academy Award.  I enjoyed writer/ director Aaron Schimberg's first film (Chained for Life) well enough, but this is a much more self-possessed and stimulating work.

2025 A24 BD.

A24 presents A Different Man in its proper OAR of 1.85:1.  This film was shot on 16mm (another reason they might've felt this title would be fine without a 4k), so there's a lot of film grain, which is handy because it makes it easy to judge the transfer.  And I have to say, wow, once again A24 has exceeded my expectations with how perfectly encoded this is.  This is as finely captured and preserved as you could hope for outside of a UHD; and even then, the distinction would probably be fairly mild. 

And they've gone all out in the audio department, too, giving this a 7.1 TrueHD mix with Dolby Atmos, plus an English descriptive track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

And the extras are strong, too.  Schimberg and his two leading men give a breezy but still incisive audio commentary, backed up by a solid 20+ minute 'making of' featurette.  There are also four deleted scenes, a couple of which we'd heard about in the commentary track, and a fun fifteen minute high-speed document of the entire shoot in 8mm.  Again, no trailer.  I guess A24 doesn't believe in including them.  No biggie, but considering how dedicated to perfection they seem to be with their physical releases in all other releases, it's a bit curious.  We do get another six art cards, this time with pages of the screenplay printed on the back of each one.

A24 is one more consistent production companies in cinema history, especially considering all of the big chances they take with their films.  But still, usually I'm happy to just see them once and move on.  Maybe I'll revisit 'em on streaming a decade down the line when I realize I can barely remember them anymore.  And this is one I really wasn't expecting much of, but it turned out to be a real must-have release for me.  Who knew?

Four A24s, Part 2: I Saw the TV Glow

It took me a while to get my hands on this one.  I Saw the TV Glow sold out fast upon its initial release last summer.  Apparently they seriously underestimated the demand for this title.  And then it popped up on a few online shops, but in very limited quantities.  So if you didn't snatch it up within the first day of its listing, you missed out again.  An alternative Canadian edition came out, but it was missing the special features, so pass.  By the time A24 finally came out with more copies, my enthusiasm had been sapped, and I was questioning whether I really needed this in my collection anyway.  Sure, I'd enjoyed it when it first came out.  It had some great visuals and some funky, weird moments.  But was it really an "I must own it" masterwork, or just a decent new release I got a kick out of?  So I held off.  But I eventually broke down and threw it in the cart when I was ordering some other titles (watch this space for Parts 3 & 4).  And now that I've revisited it on blu, yes, it is a must own masterwork that I needed in my collection.

2024's I Saw the TV Glow is Jane Schoenbrun's follow-up to the her initial cult hit, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.  That was interesting, but it feels like a warm-up for this far more accomplished work.  This film is directed with a more confident hand, with striking visuals and richly layered performances.  It also has a clever, original premise: where young adults' shared obsession with a young adult horror show (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Goosebumps) overtake their lives to a shockingly literal degree.  This is obviously, not buried particularly deeply in the subtext, a story about coming out - or not - as trans.  But the themes are so personal and universal at the same time, that they should prove powerful for anyone who's ever repressed a dream.

2024 A24 BD.

A24 slightly mattes this film to a proper 1.85:1, and occasionally pillarboxes it to 1.38:1 for the show-within-the-show scenes.  You might be surprised to hear that this film was shot on 35mm rather than digital, and it's very well captured and encoded here.  Film grain is consistent and rendered as well as you could ask for on a 1080 blu-ray.  The director refers to this getting a 4k release in the special features, but A24 only sprung for a BD.  That's a little disappointing (again, it seems like they didn't anticipate the audience this film would develop), but as good as this looks, it's hard to complain.  In other hands, this could've looked worse on a UHD.

A24 has also given this an impressive 7.1 TrueHD mix, with an English descriptive track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

And the special features are more satisfying than they were on Showing Up, starting with an audio commentary by Schoenbrun and star Brigette Lundy-Paine.  They start off unserious and frankly a little annoying - I was starting to think maybe I should've just picked up that Canadian disc and saved myself the hassle.  But as the film unfurls they find their groove and start providing some genuine insight.  Then there's a 'making of,' which is just over ten minutes, but offers a pretty fun look behind the scenes, followed by a collection of deleted and extended scenes.  Like the other A24 releases, this is a digipack housed in a side-loading slipbox and includes six art cards, in this case styled to look like Polaroids.

So it was a bit of a rocky road, but I'm glad I've finally got my grubby little hands on this.

Four A24s, Part 1: Showing Up

To start off the new year, I'm introducing A24 to our label collection with the next short series of posts.  Now, you might be saying, hey dummy, you've already made several A24 posts: The Lighthouse, On the Rocks, You Hurt My Feelings, Zola...  To which I would say, first of all, "dummy?"  Let's try to keep it civil here.  But no, those were all A24 films they released in conjunction with other labels.  These next four discs are from their own in-house label that they sell primarily through their website.  And depending on the title, specialty dealers like Diabolik might stock a few copies; but they tend to sell out of there fast.  Their first release was Krisha on blu-ray in 2017 and they've got BD and UHD releases of The Smashing Machine due out at the end of the month.

We're starting today with 2022's Showing Up on 4k Ultra HD (they do also have a 1080p BD version).  This film has writer/ director Kelly Reichardt reuniting with Michelle Williams, who'd also starred in her films Wendy & Lucy, Meek's Cutoff and Certain Women.  This time they've created what I would call an especially light comedy about the academic art world.  At least that's the milieu; I guess you'd say the story is more just about Williams stay afloat within this world, which is also populated by her dysfunctional family, passive aggressive landlord, and an ailing pigeon she feels responsible for.  Reichardt isn't really following a plot here so much as just building a world breathing life into it.  It's populated by a bunch of fun supporting players including James le Gros, Amanda Plummer, Matt Malloy (In the Company of Men), Andre 3000 of Outkast and Judd Hirsch.  And the artwork itself fleshes the viewing experience out further.

2023 A24 UHD.

This is framed at 1.78:1.  And, well, as I'm always reminding you guys, HDR screenshots look darker than in an online, SD format, because they're intended to be viewed on a higher nit display.  But even on my HDR set, this transfer is kinda low-lit.  I assume this is a originating factor of the film itself, rather than the home video transfer, since new releases being put out by their own distributor are surely taken more or less directly from the DCP.  It's not like we're judging a restoration made from old film elements here.  In fact, despite the deep 16mm-like grain structure here, this movie was shot on digital and made to look more film-like in post.  But the grain is helpful because it shows us this 3840p disc is perfectly rendering each fleck, authentic or not.  This is as sharp and detailed as you can get.  The saturation isn't super high, but the colors are natural and vivid in those scenes where the artwork is prominent and appropriately muted when characters are in their dingy home environments.

The audio is given an impressive True HD 7.1 with Dolby Atmos track.  It also includes an English descriptive audio track for the visually impaired and optional English subtitles for the hard of hearing.  There are Spanish subtitles as well.

Cal State, Long Beach, CA, January 2020

And A24 tends to cook up some nice extras for their releases.  The main special feature here (the specialist?) is an audio commentary by Reichardt, her DP Christopher Blauvert and Michelle Segre, who made a bunch of the art featured in the film.  It's a good chat, but they're diligent in crediting all the local artists whose work appears throughout the movie, and unfortunately this winds up equating to them spending a lot of time dropping an alienating and seemingly endless list of names that means nothing to almost all of the listeners.  Still, most of it is engaging and insightful.  Then there are two "short films" by Reichardt, which are nice to have here, but it's kind of overstating the matter to call them short films.  They're under ten minutes apiece of 1.66:1 footage of some of the art pieces from the film being created.

And that's it; no trailer or anything else.  Like all of these, it's a digibook in a side-loading slipbox and includes six art cards (particularly appropriate in the case of this movie).  Of the four, this is the slimmest special features package.  But it's an ideal presentation of the film itself, which is a joy that doesn't need to be adorned with bonuses.

Import Week 2025, Day 1: Return To Seoul

Okay, gang, it's time for a new "Week:" Update Week 2025!  For starters, as you can see, we've got 2022's Return To Seoul, where the import blu is superior to the domestic release.  Every Day hereafter will go another step even further: each release is DVD-only here in the states, and only available on blu via import.  Of course, as always, this is written from my local US-centric point of view in regards to what constitutes an "import."  Depending on where you live, dear reader, you may instead be learning some ways you're better off than your American compatriots.  Either way, you're going to be looking at some lesser known, yet higher quality, releases of some great films, so let's get started.

Return To Seoul is the second, but really the international break-out, feature by Korean writer/ director Davy Chou.  Park Ji-min is a French citizen whose holiday gets diverted to her birth country of Korea, where she gets unexpectedly gets put on the path to finding the parents who put her up for adoption/ emigration as a baby.  What's great about this film, besides its luscious photography and incredible lead performance, is how militantly unsentimental it is.  This is the polar opposite of some sappy, Hallmark family drama, and the plot goes in some directions I can guarantee you won't predict unless you've had it spoiled for you.  Is it dark?  Yeah, but more to the point, it just stubbornly refuses to replace honesty with your typical Hollywood romanticism.  This is the rare movie with an ending that hits because it cut no emotional corners along the way.

So Sony Pictures Classics released this on DVD and blu in 2023.  I've just got the DVD for us today, because it was barebones and so undesirable.  I mean, I would've gotten the BD if that was all there was, but in the UK, Mubi released it just a couple months later as a nice, little special edition.  There's also a French 2-disc set, which looks enticing as it also includes Chou's debut, 2016's Diamond Island, but neither blu is English-friendly at all, so that's off the table.  But Mubi's in the UK, so it's perfectly English, right down to the packaging (I don't know why, but I see some people online get really hung up on that).

2023 US Sony DVD top; 2023 UK Mubi BD bottom.

This is a new release, so it was safe to expect the same DCP to be used as a master on every release of this, as we can see is the case between Sony and Mubi.  It was also shot digitally, so there's no questions of film scanning or grain hunting.  But you can definitely see the quality jump between SD and HD.  First of all, Sony is slightly horizontally pinched to 1.83:1, while Mubi has the exactly correct 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  But more critically is just the jump in resolution.  Chou's imagery is full of fine detail, which gets soft and distilled on the DVD.  Furthermore, the many underlit club and night scenes get hazy, where it's harder to discern facial expressions on the Sony.  So it's really worth spending that little bit extra for a blu.

Of course, it helps that both blus have the original 5.1 audio in DTS-HD.  The DVD is obviously lossy.  Mubi also throws in a 2.0 mix, also in DTS-HD.  Both discs include optional English subtitles, parsed out into three separate versions on the Mubi: full, HoH and only for the non-English dialogue.   Sony drops the third, but throws in French and Spanish subtitles for international viewers.  So all in all, I'd say that makes the Mubi slightly preferable for English-language viewers.

Cambodia 2099

But of course where it really shines is in the extras.  All Sony has is the trailer, and a collection of bonus trailers.  Though, to be fair, the trailer is curiously absent from the UK release.  But that's hardly competitive to what Mubi's got, starting with an on-camera interview with Chou.  He speaks in English, though there are still optional English subtitles as well.  Then there's his 2014 short film, Cambodia 2099.  Presented in 1.86:1 HD with removable subs, it's not as powerful a work as Return, but it's still rather good.  Finally, there's a behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsal for Ji-min's famous dance scene.  Interestingly, here her friends are also dancing, which they do not do in the final film.  Mubi also springs for the fancier packaging, including six art cards and a slipcover.

So sure, if you just want to watch the film, the US release will do just as well.  But fans who care will definitely want to spring for the Mubi. And if you're thinking of getting any of these international releases this Import Week, I'll just throw in a gentle reminder that you might want to do so before our president locks us ever deeper into our tariffed off fortress nation.