Ghostbusters [2016 version] (4½ Stars)

I know I only watched this film nine days ago, but I couldn't resist seeing it again. It has everything I want in a film: horror, comedy and strong women. Maybe not in that order.

One thing that I noticed in the Blu-ray release of this film is that the picture frequently stretches outside of the frame. This is obviously just a gimmick for the release on disc, because it's not possible on the cinema screen. Let me give you a few examples.

This is the usual aspect ratio of the film, 1920 x 804 pixels. The HD video format of the Blu-ray disc is 1920 x 1080 pixels, so there are black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

 By the way, don't you think that intelligent women are sexy?

In this scene from the subway tunnel the sparks from Melissa McCarthy's machine shoot off the bottom of the frame. Framebusters! I have a "normal" HD television with a ratio of 16:9. I wonder how this scene would be displayed on a widescreen television with a 21:9 ratio. Would the bottom of the picture be cropped?

A few seconds later Kristen Wiig's machine shoots sparks out of the frame in both directions.

The ghost in the subway tunnel is too big to fit in the frame.

It's not all about sparks and ghosts doing the framebusting. There are more subtle scenes, such as Kate McKinnon needing extra room to do her gun-licking. Tasty!

It's not the first time I've seen this done. In "The Life of Pi" the dolphins jump out of the frame.

I've never known a film that so many people expected to be bad but ended up being so good. In my opinion it was all about prejudice. The original film, made in 1984, was so popular with fans that they couldn't imagine it being made with a new cast. That's the same as me not accepting the new cast in the rebooted Star Trek franchise. It was even worse for the fans that the new team would be all female. This drew out the lowest dregs of misogyny. When the first trailer was released on YouTube it received 12,000 Likes and 13,800 Dislikes within 24 hours, which showed how fans were polarised. That's approximately 45% who judged the trailer on its quality and 55% who rejected it because they were prejudiced. After two years the trailer has over a million Dislikes, making it one of YouTube's most disliked videos ever. Normally I would laugh about things like this, but the negative propaganda scared people away from the cinemas, and it ended up being only a lukewarm success. Plans to make a series of films with the new cast have been shelved.

I've cast three votes for the film. I "liked" the trailer. I laid my money down to see it in the cinema. I've bought the film on Blu-ray. If you like, my positive reviews in my blog can be considered a fourth vote.

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