Sin City (2005)
Crime, Thriller • 2h 4m
Directors: Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller
Cast: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Rutger Hauer, Benicio del Toro, Alexis Bledel, Michael Madsen, Powers Boothe, Nick Stahl, Devon Aoki, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood, Jude Ciccolella, Jeff 'JJ' Dashnaw, Jesse De Luna, Jason Douglas, Tommy Flanagan, Rick Gomez, David H. Hickey, Greg Ingram, Nicky Katt, Helen Kirk, John McLeod, Lisa Marie Newmyer, Tommy Nix, Nick Offerman, Marco Perella, Randal Reeder, Jeff Schwan, Marley Shelton, Frank Miller, Korey Simeone, Paul T. Taylor, Rico Torres, Makenzie Vega, Arie Verveen, Patricia Vonne, Ethan Maniquis, Ken Thomas, Chris Warner, Ethan Rains, Cara D. Briggs, Christina Frankenfield, Evelyn Hurley, Jason McDonald, Clark Middleton, Charissa Allen, Jessica Hale, Samantha Inoue-Harte, Ashley Moore, Amanda Phillips, Emmy Robbin, Lauren-Elaine Powell, Kelley Robins Hicks, Penny Vital, Monika Spruch, Katherine Willis, Charles Charpiot, Babs George, Ron Hayden, Scott Teeters, Lucina Paquet, Sam Ray, Ryan Rutledge, Shaun Wainwright-Branigan, J.D. Young, David Alex Ruiz, Danny Wynands, Texas Presley, Robert Rodriguez
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 6 months ago
Overview
Welcome to Sin City. This town beckons to the tough, the corrupt, the brokenhearted. Some call it dark… Hard-boiled. Then there are those who call it home — Crooked cops, sexy dames, desperate vigilantes. Some are seeking revenge, others lust after redemption, and then there are those hoping for a little of both. A universe of unlikely and reluctant heroes still trying to do the right thing in a city that refuses to care.
2D: Spain Emon Blu-ray
3D: US Lionsgate, Germany StudioCanal, or Netherlands Entertainment One 3D Blu-ray?
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Director: Quentin Tarantino
2025 Taiwan Deltamac 4K Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
> US Paramount 4K Blu-ray (Taiwan 4K Blu-ray is not low passed as the US 4K Blu-ray and has better grain and fine detail retention)
Director: Godfrey Reggio
International Cut: France StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray
(forced, but not hardcoded France subs, no English subtitles)
2023 Criterion 4K Blu-ray (meh compression) / Curzon 4K Blu-ray (visible chroma noise)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2023 Criterion 4K Blu-ray (bad compression) / Curzon 4K Blu-ray (visible chroma noise and meh compression)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
More Crime on Blu-ray
Director: Michael Mann
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · thedigitalbits.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray is encoded by FiM and is better than Criterion, see caps https://slow.pics/c/Z2RRQAAT
Criterion 4K Blu-ray vs Blu-ray: caps colors are more different and nuanced than anticipated even in the SDR-converted caps and the usual gain in highlight detail is also apparent. Encode looks excellent except for the brightest areas as usual.
5.1/5.0 mix (essentially a 4-track mix in 5.1 and 5.0 containers respectively)-Arrow/Criterion 4K Blu-ray. Only imperceptible differences in bit-depth: 20 vs 24.
2.0 mix- Arrow 4K Blu-ray (original stereo)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion 4K Blu-ray (included in the Complete Kubrick box set with FiM encode of the same master from the WB release without the filtering)
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Comparison between the Criterion and WB.
5.1: WB 4K Blu-ray, a remix but has higher fidelity
Mono: Criterion 4K Blu-ray (restored for the box set)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
US Magnolia BD
UK Entertainment One release contains directors commentary track
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Both come from a 4K scan of a 35mm film out which was made from the original 2K DI but the Lionsgate release has visible dust and damage marks while the Universal release is cleaned up more thoroughly. Both releases suffer from DNR which seems to have been baked into the DI. The colour grade is basically the same for both releases but the Lionsgate has Dolby Vision whereas the Universal is HDR10 only. The compression on the Lionsgate UHD base layer is apparently fine so the FEL doesn't make much of a difference.
The Lionsgate UHD has Dolby Atmos whereas the Universal UHD has DTS:X. Kick-ass was originally released with a 5.1 track which may be on the Universal Blu-ray.
The Lionsgate UHD is on a BD-100, the Universal UHD is on a BD-66.
The Universal UHD has no extras.
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)
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: 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
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
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