Battle Royale (2000)
バトル・ロワイアル
Drama, Thriller, Action • 1h 53m
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Takeshi Kitano, Taro Yamamoto, Masanobu Ando, Ko Shibasaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Takashi Tsukamoto, Sousuke Takaoka, Yukihiro Kotani, Eri Ishikawa, Sayaka Kamiya, Takayo Mimura, Yutaka Shimada, Ren Matsuzawa, Hirohito Honda, Ryou Nitta, Sayaka Ikeda, Anna Nagata, Yukari Kanasawa, Misao Kato, Hitomi Hyuga, Satomi Ishii, Asami Kanai, Satomi Hanamura, Yousuke Shibata, Shiro Go, Yuuki Masuda, Shigeki Hirokawa, Tamaki Mihara, Tomomi Shimaki, Yasuomi Sano, Shin Kusaka, Gouki Nishimura, Shigehiro Yamaguchi, Osamu Ohnishi, Satoshi Yokomichi, Junichi Naitou, Tsuyako Kinoshita, Mai Sekiguchi, Takako Baba, Haruka Nomiyama, Aiko Nogami, Ai Iwamura, Ai Maeda, Minami, Michi Yamamura, Kazutoshi Yokoyama, Gô Tatsukawa, Takashi Taniguchi, Ken Nakaide, Kanako Fukaura, Yuko Miyamura, Takeyuki Hirai, Tomu Asakawa, Yûya Nakahara, Takashi Komori, Ryôta Nakamura, Akihiro Ugajin, Yôichi Murakami, Tsuguharu Niizaki, Jun'ichi Nashiki, Hiroshi Kitagawa, Hideaki Kawashima, Umiji Tasaki, Hidetsugu Okumura, Daisuke Yazawa, Nobuki Baba, Naoki Iwasawa, Kôji Tokuhisa, Mikiya Sanada, Kazuhiro Yokokura, Shigeki Homma, Kazuo Araki, Gôshi Matsuhara, Akira Yoshizawa, Kenzo Shirahama, Kanji Okumura, Shôji Takano, Ryoji Sugimoto, Hajime Yoneda, Hideaki Kojima, Mitsuaki Tachikawa
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 8 months ago
> Lionsgate 4K Blu-Ray
UHD tiers
Overview
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Directors: Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton & Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
France Rimini 4K Blu-ray see caps vs Artificial Eye Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
(Indicator 4K Blu-ray, based on review)
Director: Otakar Vávra
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray see nic review
Restored: Deaf Crocodile 4K Blu-ray
Unrestored: Czech PAL DVD
Preferences will vary, the restored track sounds good, but not necessarily faithful to the original elements.
Director: Anthony Mann
Criterion 4K Blu-ray, Universal 2008 DVD
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2008 Universal DVD mono
The mono on the Criterion is severely filtered resulting in it sounding incredibly muffled. It is nearly as filtered as the 2003 original Universal DVD which had extreme filtering and sounds horribly thin. The 2008 DVD remaster and original Laserdisc analog mastering are mostly left alone. The original LD master is from a worn element but otherwise sounds very natural. The 2008 DVD is the highest quality version we have without the heavy filtering and the defects of the LD master. It isn't perfect but easily the best of the main four sources by a dramatic margin.
The existing 4K SDR restoration looks excellent, but the Criterion extras are limited and disappointing. The classic Stewart interview commentary from the LD is ported over but given a new mastering. Compared to past releases it has been very slightly noise reduced.
Director: Basil Dearden
Excellent 4K master and encode, except for opticals grain is very fine, grading is beautifully silvery and luminous, nice HDR re-grade by Fidelity in Motion
Director: George Pavlou
Arrow 4K Blu-ray teased
Germany Wicked Vision 4K Blu-ray better than US Kino Lorber?
Director: Bruce Robinson
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has stronger encode than Criterion
Director: Olivier Assayas
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Encoding is clunky on both Arrow and Criterion BDs but Arrow at least included the original stereo mix in addition to the 5.1 remix, while Criterion only included the 5.1 remix.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
Director: Federico Fellini
Director: Lewis Teague
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray disappointing
R1 DVD
R1 DVD sounds best and has the original mono and a Dolby Stereo remix
Director: Ron Shelton
Australia Imprint 4K Blu-ray disappointing, nice new master, but poor encode, grain completely crippled in some scenes, artifacts abound, etc, makes Kino Lorber look like FiM.
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