Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Drama • 2h 1m
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Ken Ogata, Kenji Sawada, Bandō Mitsugorō X, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami, Junya Fukuda, Yuu Tokui, Junkichi Orimoto, Naoko Ohtani, Go Riju, Masato Aizawa, Yuki Nagahara, Kyuzo Kobayashi, Yuki Kitazume, Haruko Katō, Hisako Manda, Naomi Oki, Miki Takakura, Imari Tsuji, Koichi Sato, Reisen Ri, Setsuko Karasuma, Tadanori Yokoo, Yasuaki Kurata, Mitsuru Hirata, Hiroshi Katsuno, Naoya Makoto, Kunihiko Ida, Jun Negami, Ryō Ikebe, Toshio Hosokawa, Hideo Fukuhara, Yosuke Mizuno, Eimei Esumi, Minoru Hodaka, Masahiko Sakata, Alan Poul, Ren Ebata, Yasuhiro Arai, Fumio Mizushima, Shinji Miura, Yuichi Sato, Sachiko Akagi, Riki Harada, Mami Okamoto, Atsushi Takayama, Kimiko Ito, Kojiro Oka, Tatsuya Hiragaki, Shinichi Nosaka, Sachiko Hidari
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 10 months ago
See Chris's review
UHD tiers
Overview
A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, combining dramatizations of three of his novels and a depiction of the events of November 25th, 1970.
Director: Paul Schrader
Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray has DNR applied and encoding could be better. Possible issues in Dolby Vision
Great source, poorly encoded but it does look significantly better than the Blu-Rays.
Director: Paul Schrader
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Paul Schrader
Director: Steve James
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray poor compression, otherwise Second Sight has best Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
> BFI 4K Blu-ray. caps Criterion presents the master as originally graded in SDR whereas FiM added HDR / Dolby Vision for the BFI.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray's audio mix has more detail than BFI’s and same applies to the subtitles, covering both English and France spoken word
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Director: Terrence Malick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Lovely underlying remaster by Criterion and Resillion but encode is sadly low-pass filtered by Pixelogic, and even then, the encode is still less than ideal. Still easily obliterates any prior disc release, but certainly wouldn't hurt to have a UK or German label take a crack at this same master.
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.
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: Samuel Fuller
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Criterion Blu-Ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Steve De Jarnatt
2024 Kino Lorber Blu-ray
UK Transmission 4K Blu-ray in January 2027
Either the 2015 Kino Lorber Blu-ray or the Arrow Blu-ray
The 2024 Kino Lorber Blu-ray is botched.
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Liliana Cavani
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
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.
Edit history
Every recommendation follows the same method — how these calls are made.