The Movie: Having enjoyed some of P.T. Anderson's previous works (Magnolia and Hard Eight, for example), I thought I'd give Punch-Drunk Love a chance, so I stuck it in my Netflix queue... a long... long... long time ago.

I guess the first question a lot of people have about this movie is about Adam Sandler -- can he really hold his own in a more dramatic-type film? Well, I can definitely say he fit this particular role well, though it wasn't exactly a huge departure from many of his past roles as characters with anger management problems.

This is a strange story, and it is told in a strange way. The lighting throughout the film was... different. Lots of natural (or seemingly natural) light, lots of heavily backlit shots... in fact, the way a lot of the shots were exposed reminded me of the way a home video camcorder on automatic mode would try to deal with those situations... which usually is the kind of look most filmmakers try to avoid. Whether or not it was effective in this particular situation, I don't really know. If the goal was to add more to the off-kilter feel of the whole film, then yeah, I guess it's effective.

Honestly, the plot didn't have me glued to my seat, though just wanting to see what crazy thing was going to happen next was almost enough for me. Let's just say that the world of this film is not exactly firmly rooted in reality, but at the same time, not some kind of complete fantasy world either. And in my experience, when films do this, people tend to either love or hate the film.

I guess I can't really recommend people to just go out and see it... it's just one of those things you have to see for yourself and decide for yourself, I guess. Because it definitely won't be universally accepted, though it certainly was interesting and different.

The DVD: As with all Superbit releases, the video and audio presentation on this disc is flawless. The video might exhibit a bit more film grain that some people like to see, but for me, if it's in the original film, I want it on my DVD. The audio was particularly great, with some great mixing and use of surround effects that was subtle, yet effective, and definitely more aggressive than you'd expect from this type of film. Not to mention the pristine quality!

As far as special features go, I can't really tell you about them except to say that there's a lot. You see, they are all on the second disc (there are no special features on the first disc) and I didn't get the second disc from Netflix. But I'm sure there's a ton of good stuff on there, so if you're a fan of the film, you just might want to check it out. Also, there is a separate, single disc release of this film as well, so you might also want to look into that one too.