Highest 2 Lowest (2025)
Thriller, Crime, Drama • 2h 13m
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Elijah Wright, Aubrey Joseph, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, LaChanze, Dean Winters, Wendell Pierce, Michael Potts, Frederick Weller, Rick Fox, Rod Strickland, Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos, Nicholas Turturro, Aiyana-Lee, Ice Spice, Nuri Hazzard, Princess Nokia, Jensen McRae, Jade Cayne, Imana Breaux, Andy McQueen, Sunni Valentine, Samm Davis, Allison Worrell, Eoin O'Shea, Gregory Dann, Don Lemon, Eddie Palmieri, Herman Olivera, Nelson Gonzalez, Joseph Gonzalez, Luques Curtis, Camilo Molina-Gaetan, Vincente Rivero, Jose Claussell, Conrad Herwig, Jimmy Bosch, Brad Mason, Manuel Ruiz, Louis Fouche, Ivan Renta, Katia Washington, Jackson Lee, Kevin D. Benton, DeShawn Harold Mitchell, Kevin Sibley, Craig 'Radio Man' Castaldo, Imani Coleman, Nadera Johnson, Valerie Ryme, Jezziah Ubiles, Rickey Pageot, Evyn George, Jeremy Sample, Manny Joseph, Cooper Traluch
Best video release
A24 4K Blu-ray see caps
UHD tiers
About the film
When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
- Alternative Titles
- Highest to Lowest
Director: Spike Lee
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Imprint 4K Blu-ray > UK ICON > Criterion.
Imprint is same master as Criterion but encoded by Fidelity in Motion without Pixelogic’s filtering.
See: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=23389310&postcount=10 and https://criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=844792#p844792
Director: Spike Lee
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Kane Parsons
Canada Elevation 4K Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Canada Elevation 4K Blu-ray > US A24 comparisons
USA Lionsgate/A24 4K Blu-ray for Dolby Atmos mix
Netherlands Remain in Light 4K Blu-ray for the alternate Auro-3D mix
(caveat: no English subtitles for Mandarin/Cantonese dialogue)
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Video format: 4K Streaming
Director: Charlotte Wells
Director: Ari Aster
Theatrical Cut: Germany 4K Blu-ray
Director's Cut: A24 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: Japan 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut Blu-ray has extras that the DC 4K Blu-ray lacks
Directors: Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
More Thriller on Blu-ray
Director: Roman Polanski
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
UK 4K teased by 88 Films https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=24252379
Carlotta France 4K Blu-ray > Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray (better encode on Carlotta without any low-pass filtering, more extras and English subtitles on Vinegar Syndrome)
4K restoration of the original 3D left eye and right eye camera negatives
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Arrow has a different grade and a better encode than the Shout! Factory, though the difference in either is not major. Imprint release, which leaves Shout! Factory's master and subtitles as is, is encoded by FiM. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24473097&postcount=56
Original mix: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray
Alternate mix: Scanbox Nordic PAL DVD
Surround remix: HK Video France 4K Blu-ray (5.0)
Original mix: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray (similar to Criterion LaserDisc, but less distorted)
Alternate mix: Scanbox Nordic PAL DVD
Surround remix: HK Video France 4K Blu-ray (5.0)
Arrow used the alternate mix, but with extra filtering and lowered dynamic range. The alternate mix has much better fidelity.
Imprint presumably used the Shout! Factory original mix and left it as is, though no official confirmation.
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Criterion 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray
1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Director: Jonathan Demme
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: vitalpassenger.com (opens in a new tab)
FiM are mistakenly credited, one of the four known instances of this for a Cinématographe title (the other three being Thieves Like Us, Who Killed Teddy Bear?, and The Gambler). 4K encode was done by Vital Passenger. https://vitalpassenger.com/our-work
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
The 4K discs in both Criterion and Imprint sets are FiM encodes, but low-passed, Imprint minimally less so. Unfortunately, unlike with The Killing, Kino does not hold up at all, the grain is much rougher and the compression visibly struggles making for a much less pleasant watch, even if select stills look better.
All discs use the same source transfer. Criterion cleaned up some hums and hiss, but lost a little bit of high-end detail. Unlike The Killing, the difference's relatively mino.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
The 4K discs in both Criterion and Imprint sets are FiM encodes, but low-passed. The compression is better, but some of the grain is lost. Difference is pronounced in screen caps, but not likely to be noticed during playback, without a reference to compare it to. Comparisons
All discs use the same source transfer. It's not of the highest quality, and it includes some slight distortion, looping, clicks, pops, and hum. Criterion cleaned it up for their release, but unfortunately also lost a lot of fidelity in the process.
MGM NTSC DVD doesn't seem to have some of the more prominent distortion and has slightly different EQ but is otherwise the same.
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
WB 4K
Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab)
An undeniably significant improvement from the BD yet still severely flawed. See DFIC's review.
Director: Bernard Rose
Scream Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray or Turbine 4K Blu-Ray
SF and Turbine also have the 2004 Audio Commentary with Bernard Rose, Clive Barker, Alan Poul and actors Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Kasi Lemmons
Director: Rob Reiner
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · instagram.com (opens in a new tab)
UK Arrow 4K Blu-ray > US Kino Lorber/Germany Capelight - caps and audio comparison on this page. Discussion is still ongoing about the 2.0 but as none of the three 4Ks seem to have the true original mix, I think it's fair to leave them all in the blue tier for now and only note that Kino Lorber has the worst PQ.
The initial release of the Capelight 4K mediabook had some playback issues with Dolby Vision on Panasonic devices due to an encoding error, the HDR10 apparently works fine, see Capelight’s official response here.
The 4K master has a shot at the very end of the movie (on James Caan's face) that looks incredibly soft and not good at all. This was visible on the DCP as well so it might just be a source issue rather than being the fault of Kino, Capelight or Arrow.
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