The Movie: This again is one of those movies that I should have seen a long time ago, but didn't. Everyone was raving about Nicolas Cage's performance in this movie, plus I am also interested in watching movies about Las Vegas because I love seeing the images of Vegas. Even the seedy underbelly, which is where a lot of this movie takes place. Well, I thought the movie was pretty good, but very, very depressing. There isn't really a resolution... you see a guy on a downhill slope, and he just keeps going downhill. Then he goes downhill some more. And a little while later, he goes even more downhill. The End. If this movie doesn't make you want to stop drinking alcohol, nothing will.

The DVD: To my surprise, this movie was anamorphically encoded. A lot of these "older" DVD's were letterboxed unless they were some kind of "special edition" or something, but yeah, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, baby! The film transfer is mediocre... kinda grainy, but I've seen much worse. There is also a pan-and-scan option, but who the hell would want that? haha. Special features are pretty sparse, standard trailers and notes. But in my opinion, I don't think studios should feel obligated to fill up a bunch of special features just to have them... if you want to include behind the scenes footage, or deleted scenes, at least make sure it's interesting to watch, and not just a bunch of crap!

[note: To be fair to the video transfer, I've since discovered that this film was shot on 16mm which would explain the graininess.]