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Review: This is Spinal Tap

review | This is Spinal Tap

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The first real mockumentary still comes on strong on streaming, despite being tripped up by some overzealous image manipulation

by Michael Gaughn
December 8, 2023

I need to get some bitching out of the way before I dive in—a little bitch and a big one. The little one: I wanted to rent This is Spinal Tap but none of the streaming services offer it for rental so I was forced to buy it instead. Nothing against Tap—it’s one of the great movie comedies (leagues beyond the shrill and humorless Some Like It Hot)—I just have no use for a streaming copy. Amazon only charged a couple bucks more than they would have for a rental, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.

The bigger bitch: It looks like hell. I’m sure many, if not most, people would praise it as looking clean with punchy enough color, but that’s kind of beside the point. Spinal Tap was shot in the early ‘80s on 16mm film and it’s just not convincing as a documentary if it doesn’t look like it was shot in the early ‘80s on 16mm film. But somebody went nuts with the enhancement, creating the kind of too crisp, pointillistic look I get whenever I screw around too much with the sharpening tool in Premiere.

I know that kind of thing is now so common it’s become expected. What was done to The Godfather should have raised howls—I didn’t even hear whimpers. But it’s especially egregious when applied to 16mm, where it can’t look anything other than forced and artificial. And it’s not something that’s easy to get used to. I found its sand-art aesthetic pulling me out of the film over and over for the duration.

I know my issue with this can’t fall on anything but deaf ears at a time when both audiences and studios are determined to make sure everything looks like it’s a product of the present moment, even though the present moment irredeemably sucks. But when it undermines the whole spirit of a film—especially at a time when so many contemporary movies are trying to ape the look of 16mm—there’s just no possible excuse.

All that aside, Spinal Tap holds up mightily—far better than I would have expected going into it. It wasn’t the first mockumentary, but it was the first one to get all the basics right. And it’s got more depth to it than any of the mocus that have come in its wake, partly because Rob Reiner and company achieve the almost impossible task of honoring the conventions of satire while fleshing out the characters in ways the form doesn’t usually allow.

The Office (the U.S. Office) never would have happened without Tap—not just because of the form, but because Peter Smokler, the Office DP who defined the look of the mockumentary genre, cut his teeth on Spinal Tap. In fact, there’s a strong and true through-line from Tap to The Larry Sanders Show to Freaks and Geeks to The Office.

Tap is the pinnacle of Reiner’s career, before he descended into churning out that series of beloved “Rob Reiner” films that were hugely successful but all felt too slick and corporate—soulless. It’s not to take anything away from Reiner’s work on Tap to wonder how much Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest contributed to the film’s genius—because it is a work of genius. Yes, McKean, Guest, and Shearer created a beyond convincing fake band to build the movie around, but they also seem to have been co-equal to Reiner to making the film work as film.

It would be lazy to give too much of that credit to Guest, who would essentially pick up the mantle from Reiner and create his own reputation as a mockumentarian. But even the strongest of his efforts—Best of Show—is just pleasing and diverting. It doesn’t come within lightyears of what Tap was able to achieve.

There’s zero point in rehashing the particulars of Tap at this late date since practically every frame of the film is now baked deeply into the culture, but I have to point out how much Harry Shearer was able to do in the otherwise thankless role of second banana. He gets, and then brilliantly milks, the two best sight gags in the film: the (admittedly an acquired taste) ”stuck in the giant plastic chrysalis” bit and the now legendary “zucchini in the trousers” bit, indisputably one of the great sight gags in cinema.

Lastly, the film’s frequent references to racism and sexism reminded me how long we’ve been stuck in that conversation, have been trying to play by those rules, while making practically no discernible headway, but have instead managed to turn legitimate concerns about decency and fairness into wedges to drive huge swaths of the populace, and single individuals with them, apart. It might be time to give up on playing out that particular lose-lose scenario—it’s clearly become nothing but a way to maintain the status quo—and consider that any kind of sustainable decency might need to be rooted in commonality, not difference, instead.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtable, marketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | Way over-enhanced, in a way that completely undermines the film’s shot-in the-early-’80s-on-16mm documentary aesthetic

SOUND | The on-set sound is about what you could expect from a pseudo documentary. The music tracks are cleaner and more dynamic, though, with the occasional too-extreme separation of the time.

A Little Romance

A Littte Holiday Cheer

A diverse assortment of Valentine’s treats that offers something for everyone. from traditional romantic comedies to more adventurous fare

by the Cineluxe staff
updated January 20, 2024

While not everything in our quirky roundup falls within the more formulaic definition of a romantic comedy, all of the picks display a common lineage and fit comfortably under the something-to-watch-for-Valentine’s-Day umbrella. But it’s a beyond sad sign of the times that of the hundreds of reviews we’ve done, we weren’t able to find any recent films that even remotely fit the required bill, so we had to rely solely on classics instead. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Play It Again, Sam are rightly included here, but we flirted with also including The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, and even Mighty Aphrodite and A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy since almost all of Allen’s best films are romantic comedies at heart. As for the fringier choices: Carnal Knowledge is far more pungent than sweet but offers a biting take on romantic conventions—as does Godard’s surprisingly accessible A Woman Is a Woman. And Casablanca, of course, isn’t a comedy. But it’s undeniably a romance, and pairs nicely—if a little obviously—with Allen’s Sam as a satisfying movie night.

annie hall

“Forget that this is supposed to be a romantic comedy. Forget about its Oscars. Forget about the well-heeled mob of Hollywood conformists bleating for Woody Allen’s blood. Approach Annie Hall as an adventurous and innovative and unusually honest piece of filmmaking and you’ll get the chance to experience—or re-experience—one of the best American films of the final quarter of the last century, the movie that helped start the wave that brought New York back from the dead, for better or worse.” read more

The Apartment

“I can’t say I love this film, but I do admire it, and I found the experience of filtering the past and present of the culture through it if not enjoyable exactly, then intriguing and unsettling and ultimately gratifying. You should watch The Apartment, if you haven’t seen it or haven’t seen it in a while. It’s got some real meat on its bones; and it’s an invaluable snapshot of a both tangible and illusory but undeniably decisive, invigorating—and I would argue, squandered—moment in time.” read more

breakfast at tiffany’s

“It’s a little too obvious to begin a review of Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn, but how can you not? What she does with her character is still breathtaking, somehow managing to stay true to the depth and nuance of Truman Capote’s original conception of Holly while shepherding her through all the standard-issue Hollywood attempts to blandify her, emerging with a conception that’s somehow able to synthesize and transcend both.” read more

carnal knowledge

“Since Knowledge isn’t considered a ‘big’ movie, who knows if it will ever receive the restoration or 4K bump-up it more than deserves. But there are classics of the marketing-driven, ‘I loved that when I was a kid’ kind, and then there are true classics, as in legitimate works of cinematic art. Carnal Knowledge falls solidly in the latter camp and ought to be on the short list of films worth seeking out for anyone who hasn’t yet encountered it.” read more

casablanca

“I don’t have much to say about the movie itself since countless volumes, most of them paperweights, have already been written about it and trying to counter the consensual view would be like trying to push water. But I would like to emphasize how sophisticated—mature—Casablanca is, like many of the films of the ’40s—far more so than their counterparts today, which show little interest in rising above the adolescent wallowing that’s the basic price of admission to contemporary cinema.” read more

Love Actually

“If you’ve never seen Love Actually and you need a little silly and adorkable escapism this holiday season, this is well worth the price of a download. Will it change your life? No. But if you don’t find yourself guffawing through tears by the time the end credits roll, you’ve got the heart of a Grinch.” read more

Manhattan

“Woody Allen has said his biggest regret is that he’s never made a great film. I’m not sure what his criteria are for determining that but by any yardstick I’m aware of, Manhattan is a great film, undeniably (to use a much abused and poorly understood term) a classic. It’s so strong it might even survive the efforts to erase his career, even though it’s frequently waved around as Exhibit A in the culture wars.” read more

Play It Again, Sam

“This is a decidedly minor movie made in the somewhat frivolous style director Herbert Ross (The Goodbye Girl, Footloose) was known for, and all involved had to have known they were devoting their energies to what was basically a throwaway. But Play It Again, Sam is still well worth watching 50 years on, partly because the lines still deliver but mainly because it was the incubator or springboard (pick your metaphor) for everything that would be great about Woody Allen’s later work.” read more

something wild

“This is the closest Jonathan Demme ever got to doing a really good movie, and it succeeds mainly because of a rock-solid script and still astonishing performances by Jeff Daniels and newcomer Ray Liotta and, to a lesser degree, Melanie Giffith. If it were possible to scrape away all the hip-political gingerbread Demme spread indiscriminately over the proceedings, Something Wild might just possibly qualify as great. But all that utterly extraneous gunk is now so congealed and ossified that you constantly have to peer around it to discern the movie’s strengths.” read more

when harry met sally . . .

This isn’t technically a review but instead Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld’s thoughts on shooting this seminal romantic comedy for Rob Reiner and his reflections on how his work as cinematographer fared in the recent 4K release of the film. read more

a woman is a woman

“There is really only a handful of movies that qualify as true classics, a number small enough to rest comfortably in the palm of your hand; films that transcend the zeitgeist, fleeting emotional attachments, and the aura created by relentless marketing and that tap into far deeper and more sustaining currents than the vast majority of fare. This is one of them. But given the aversion, which still persists, to foreign films—or at least to the ones that don’t try to ape American films—it’s necessary to make the case a little more forcefully here than you have to for the Hollywood standards. So let’s try this: You can’t say you know and love movies if you haven’t at least tried Godard. And possibly the best place to begin that journey is the current release of A Woman Is a Woman.” read more

Review: The Muppet Christmas Carol

review | The Muppet Christmas Carol

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While not the Muppets’ strongest effort, this oddly faithful retelling of the Dickens tale is a satisfying experience in 4K on Disney+

by Dennis Burger
updated December 3, 2023

The Muppet Christmas Carol isn’t exactly the creative apex of the Muppets franchise. As the first film in the series to be made after the death of Jim Henson, it lacks a lot of the creator’s bohemian funkiness and marks the beginning of a transition for the Muppets in which they became a little more kid-friendly and a little less clever. (Although, to be fair, you could just as easily level some of the same criticism at The Great Muppet Caper.)

But—and this is a pretty huge “but”—it’s still my all-time favorite interpretation of Charles Dickens’ literary classic, just nudging out Richard Donner’s Scrooged and the excellent made-for-TV version from 1984 starring George C. Scott. A lot of that can be attributed to Michael Caine’s performance as Scrooge, in which he seems completely oblivious to the fact that his co-stars almost all have hands up their butts. Instead, he plays the role straight, leaving the winking and nodding mostly to Gonzo the Great, who plays the role of Dickens himself.

There’s also the lovely soundtrack, with songs written by Paul Williams, who didn’t quite turn in as many memorable ditties as he did for The Muppet Movie or Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, but still gives the movie an extra heaping helping of charm.

Oddly enough, despite the songs and despite the puppetry, The Muppet Christmas Carol is a shockingly faithful adaptation of Dickens’ book, abridged though it may be. And as such, it’s a must-see for me every Christmas season.

But as with It’s a Wonderful Life, one must ask if this movie is actually worth owning. And for now—and only for now—I say probably not. That’s primarily because it’s available for free on Disney+—in Dolby Vision no less. The service was, as best I can tell, the first to offer The Muppet Christmas Carol in 4K, and although other digital providers have caught up, I can’t imagine it looking any better on any of those services than it does on Disney+.

The 4K resolution does very little to add detail or definition to the cinematography, and unless my eyes deceive me, the current 4K master wasn’t sourced from the original camera negative. It frankly looks like an upscale from an HD master taken from a print (or at best an interpositive), with the only noteworthy resolution differences coming in the form of enhanced (but very inconsistent) film grain.

The HDR does add a lot to the presentation, mostly by toning down the over-saturation seen in the HD version, leaving the most vibrant hues for those spots with pure primary colors, like the inside of Kermit’s mouth. The HDR also brings more consistency and subtlety to contrasts, making blacks a good bit more consistent and eliminating some crush.

So this is definitely the best The Muppet Christmas Carol has ever looked. But hang on. In recent weeks, it was actually revealed that the original camera negative for the deleted musical number “When Love Is Gone” have been discovered and would be included in a new ground-up 4K restoration of the film sourced from the original elements.

If you’re not familiar with “When Love Is Gone,” that’s probably because the song was cut from the theatrical version of the film at the insistence of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Disney, for fear that it was too emotionally sophisticated for a children’s film (something I can’t imagine Jim Henson ever allowing, but it was his son Brian’s cinematic directorial debut). The song was integrated into LaserDisc and VHS releases of the film, as well some DVD versions, but has disappeared from higher-quality releases due, one would assume, to quality concerns.

Whether you’re particularly interested in that song or not (for my money, it’s one of the film’s best, and thankfully it’s included as a deleted scene on Disney+ and elsewhere), the news that The Muppet Christmas Carol is getting a proper restoration is enough to warrant holding off on a purchase for now.

But if you’ve got Disney+, you should still add the movie to your holiday viewing rotation this year. For all its flaws, it’s still an incredibly charming children’s classic with tons of genuinely funny moments and some wonderful performances throughout, from humans and Muppets alike. And for what it’s worth, it’s the only cinematic adaptation of A Christmas Carol that has genuinely made me shed a tear over the death of Tiny Tim.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE | HDR adds a lot to the presentation, mostly by toning down the over-saturation seen in the HD version, while also bringing more consistency and subtlety to contrasts

Review: Wormwood

review | Wormwood

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Half the content in Errol Morris’s Netflix documentary series on a CIA coverup is must-see viewing—the other half is just an ill-conceived waste of time

by Michael Gaughn
November 6, 2023

If you’re as annoyed as I am by all those overproduced, content-thin pseudo documentaries full of cutesy animation and labored dramatic reenactments that have come to flood Netflix, blame Errol Morris. His 1988 The Thin Blue Line shook up the moribund documentary genre and took it in a radical new direction by introducing images and conventions—including a sometimes cheeky, sometimes brooding tone—straight out of narrative cinema. He can’t really be held responsible for what far less talented, for more ingratiating filmmakers have done with the form he created. But he can be held responsible for offering up an unintentional self-parody in his effort to try to fit into the Netflix mold.

Half of 2017’s Wormwood—the stuff that directly revolves around Eric Olson and his efforts to find out the real story of why his father fell to his death out of a hotel window while in the care of the CIA—is unsettling and riveting. It offers another badly needed glimpse into that organization’s notorious MK Ultra program, shows the failure of the investigative press to pierce the subsequent decades-long coverup, and tells the wrenching story of Olson, who threw away a potentially brilliant career in psychology to get to the bottom of his father’s death. All of that is well worth watching.

The other half—speculative reenactments of the events leading up to and a way from the supposed suicide, with Peter Sarsgaard anemically portraying Olson’s father—is well intended, thinks it’s being groundbreaking, but is nothing but inept, tepid filler. And although Morris has been threatening to do something like this for years, I suspect these segments are only there to the oppressive degree they are because they’re the kind of thing Netflix feels makes documentaries palatable for its audience. But they’re really just a cringe-inducing waste of time that puffs the series up to six episodes when it would have been far more engaging and powerful at three.

So I’ve got a very odd recommendation to make: Definitely watch this series—it’s well worth it. But know that you’ll want to re-edit it in your head as you go along, blotting out all the threadbare theatrics, instead homing in on just the Eric Olson material—unless of course you actually like dramatic reenactments. In which case I have to ask, what the hell’s the matter with you?

I don’t think I can stress this enough: Wormwood is almost schizophrenic, but in a somewhat trivial way. The Eric Olson stuff is brilliantly done, the material is consistently absorbing, and it plays out with all the teases and reveals of a good mystery story. The other half is like having a son in film school and having to sit through the end-of-term screening of everyone’s final projects—except done here with a redundancy and tonal monotony that can make you feel like you’re trying to catch your breath in a vacuum.

That carries over into both the visuals and sound as well. Translating Olson’s therapeutic photo-collage technique into the supporting graphics works well for the most part. (Although it gets a little flip when it commingles images of actual people with shots of the actors portraying them, and Morris goes back to his “spiking the Cointreau” animation about five times too often.) The Olson’s home movies are well deployed to both convey the family in its time and to underscore key emotional points. The score for these segments—yet another dollop of poor man’s Glass—doesn’t really enhance anything but doesn’t do much to distract you, either. And while the video is dim and almost monochromatic, and the framing too clever by half, it doesn’t really impede Olson, Seymour Hersh, the Olson family’s attorneys, and others from presenting their material.

The reenactments, though, feature that relentlessly murky “did somebody forget to pay the electric bill?” look that’s served as a substitute for truly expressive cinematography for more than a decade now. What does this predilection for wallowing in a world where the sun never shines say about our collective psyche? This so-called aesthetic in no way makes the action more interesting—just harder to see. (And here, it even manages to stump Netflix’ usually stellar encoding, with obvious banding in a shot outside a hotel room door in Episode 3 and in the police interrogation scene and the interview with former Assistant DA Stephen Saracco in Episode 4, among other places.)

The score, which behaves itself for the most part during the Eric Olson-related segments, becomes just silly and grating during the reenactments—that monotonous noodling over dark, ominous tones, big on atmosphere but thin on emotion, that we now accept as the contemporary equivalent of the wall-to-wall scoring that helped sink hundreds of mediocre Studio Era productions. If you’re looking for nice, deep, gut-churning bass, the score serves up heaping helpings whenever it’s trying to cover up for the inept staging and convince you something exciting (or at least interesting) is about to happen.

I realize I’m circling back, but it’s a point worth emphasizing: The arc of Eric Olson’s story is documentary manna so well presented that it allows you to tolerate all the dramatic contrivance elsewhere—and how many filmmakers could manage to rise above their own misjudgment like that? But the reenactments seem to be nothing but an exercise in perversity. You can’t really say they summon up enough energy to qualify as sound and fury but they do manage to signify next to nothing. And Morris just can’t stop chewing on the hotel-room scene, showing it play out over and over again with minor variations when it carried whatever impact it was going to have (which wasn’t much) the first time around.

Anyone attuned knows that Errol Morris has had an odd career, and that he’s deliberately cultivated that oddness as a way to keep himself in the limelight. But something that went well beyond his usual quirkiness happened in the wake of his Oscar-winning The Fog of War, which is undeniably a sui generis masterwork. Like with Truman Capote and In Cold Blood, Morris seemed to have lost something essential by digging so deeply into a character as complex and bedeviling as Robert McNamara. He continued to do films on provocative figures—Donald Rumsfeld, Abu Graib, Steve Bannon—but lost the ability to rise to the challenge of his subjects, producing work that didn’t so much leave you hungry for more as hungry for something—anything. The parts of Wormwood that work work because Morris was almost perfectly attuned to the material and because he obviously identified with and bonded with Olson, providing an emotional undercurrent that’s been missing since he bonded with the uniquely corrupt father figure McNamara. As for the reenactments, the only pertinent question is: What was he thinking?

PICTURE | The consistently murky cinematography manages to trip up Netflix’ codec in a few places, with some obvious banding in evidence

SOUND | Intelligible dialogue during the interview segments—a lot of mumbling during the reenactments. The bass goes deep with impact during the dramatic scenes.

Halloween Treats

We pick more than two dozen films that steer clear of the gratuitous and try stay true to the spirit of the holiday instead

by the Cineluxe staff
updated October 13, 2023

Despite the best efforts of the Hallmark Channel to turn Christmas into a year-round holiday, Halloween has—not so strangely—earned that honor instead. As the culture took a decidedly heavy metal turn, it became inevitable that all things dark and nasty—including, of course, horror movies—should find themselves in permanent ascendance. It would be all too easy to churn out a list of callous and desensitizing hardcore horror flicks, but that kind of cultural effluvia has become so pervasive that there would be little point—and they don’t have much to do with Halloween anyway. The films gathered here are instead meant to invoke the feel of the holiday as a fixed point in time, as a tradition, not a consumerist feeding frenzy. And they’re an effort to move beyond the usual suspects. For every Scream, there’s an Ed Wood; for every It, a Carnival of Souls. The films that follow are meant to offer an opportunity to savor, not wallow.

Alien

Alien has never lived up to its potential on the home screen. DVD and LaserDisc versions were overly grainy and noisy, and the previous remastered Blu-ray version couldn’t do the shadow and black-level detail justice. All of that is made right with this 4K HDR version, which looks fantastic. Fortunately, the restoration isn’t heavy-handed, getting rid of the bad bits of noise and deterioration while keeping Scott’s look and stylistic feel solidly intact. read more

Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice is one of the worthiest UHD HDR remasters I’ve seen to date (almost on par with The Wizard of Oz), and the film itself is such a joyous (and ironic) celebration of life that it stands on its own. read more

THE BIRDS

Without The Birds, there would be no Jaws—and, arguably, no Spielberg, since he lifted so many of his filmic mannerisms from this brutal and detached end-of-the-world tale. The really ironic thing is, while this is far from Hitchcock’s best film, it’s still better than Jaws. I realize that conclusion is heresy to the popularity = quality crowd but it underlines the vast difference between what an adult with adolescent tendencies and a perpetual adolescent with no interest in growing up can do. read more

Carnival of Souls

If the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a B movie, then Carnival of Souls is a solid C—a wild fling at moviemaking by a bunch of naive and repressed Midwesterners meant for second, or third, billing at Kansas drive-ins, a kind of Bergman-goes-to-Topeka thing that must have confused the hell out of the 2 a.m. hangers-on expecting to get off on something like Chain-Gang Girls. And yet somehow out of that impossible equation came art. read more

Castle Rock

The series is slow in parts but definitely picks up near the end. There are some nice King-esque jump scares along the way, along with tons of general creepiness as we slowly move towards solving the mystery of who is The Kid and how did he get here, along with the overall question of, “Why is Castle Rock so rotten?” read more

Creature from the Black Lagoon

I’m not sure what fans of the film will make of this presentation. Maybe, having looked past its visual flaws in the earlier incarnations they’ll be willing to forgive them being heavily underscored here. My take is that drawing too much attention to the technical lapses makes you that much more aware of everything else that’s wrong. But you can’t expect a well-intended but inept ‘50s creature-on-the-loose throwaway to look like Citizen Kane. read more

Dracula (2020)

The myth of Dracula isn’t one I think needs retelling. It, and vampires in general, have been done to death over the past couple decades. But whenever Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss write a project together, I’m intrigued. read more

Ed Wood

I told myself I was going to make this one a quickie and not belabor my points. So, Point No. 1—this is the only good Tim Burton movie. Point 2—it features Johnny Depp’s best performance, by far. Point 3—it’s astonishing Martin Landau did such a great job of playing Lugosi without getting much help from behind the camera. Point 4—Ed Wood died at the box office, not because it’s not a great film—it is—but because it doesn’t fit within the all too predictable definition of what a Burton film is supposed to be. And because it committed the unforgivable sin of being in black & white. read more

Hocus Pocus 2

This is a better movie than the original—better acted, more artfully shot, with a more coherent script and more competent direction, but such praise is relative. This is still a glorified after-school special with a false edge, filled with out-of-touch musical numbers and lazy references to modern culture that will lose what chuckle-worthiness they have before the inevitable Hocus Pocus 3 comes out in a few years. read more

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

If there’s an inherent value in a piece of pop cinema being able to both capture the angst of an era and use it as a springboard to perfectly project the trajectory of the culture, then Body Snatchers has that, and in spades. The film was too easily dismissed at the time and subsequently as an expression of Red Scare paranoia. It’s not. It’s a low-budget B-movie depiction of the loss of self, or soul—depending on how you want to parse that—uncannily prescient, and done with a power that lends it a continuing relevance it never would have achieved as an A-list project. read more

It (2017)

It is a surprisingly good horror movie that thankfully relies more on scares than gross-outs to keep you glued to the screen and huddled under your blanket. Don’t go into it expecting a faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s book (although, given how poorly that one has aged, that’s probably a good thing) but do go in expecting a very satisfying reinterpretation of parts of the novel—one that absolutely works on its own terms, whether you have any intention of watching the sequel or not. read more

Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho won’t be to everyone’s taste, and even if you love it as much as I do, I think you’ll find some flaws with it. Wright attempts to load the film with a bit more meaning than its narrative framework will support. And in paying homage to the whole of the 1960s—from its fashions to its music to the diversity of its cinema, ranging from Polanski to EON Productions—he’s bitten off a bit more than he can chew. All of which makes Last Night in Soho flawed by any objective measure. But it’s one of the most fascinatingly flawed films I’ve seen in ages, which makes it a shoo-in for Day One purchase the instant it’s available on home video proper. read more

The Masque of the Red Death / The Raven

Loosely based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque of the Red Death is a heightened and slightly campy tale of a pandemic plague that sweeps medieval Italy. The Raven, on the other hand, has no intention to be authentically scary in any way. Peter Lorre plays the Raven in bird and human form in a highly comedic performance. And it has a fabulous supporting cast: Boris Karloff, a very sexy Hazel Court, and a very young Jack Nicholson—in tights, no less. read more

The Masque of the Red Death

The Raven

Midsommar

One relatively recent trend that warms my dark heart is the reemergence of horror as a legitimate genre of cinema. This isn’t to say that I don’t get a kick out of schlocky B-movie suspense but for most of my adult life, horror movies have been little more than that, leaving legitimate attempts at making serious films in the genre—like Rosemary’s Baby and Kubrick’s The Shining—in the distant past. So to see Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and Ari Aster’s Midsommar embraced in recent years as art is, if nothing else, a step in the right direction. read more

Muppets Haunted Mansion

Muppets Haunted Mansion ends up being a pretty good time, mostly due to the antics of Pepe combined with the gorgeousness of the imagery. If you have kids, I’m also pretty sure they’ll love the whole thing. And that is the thing I like best about this special. Fun Halloween specials that can be enjoyed by the whole family are few and far between and it’s nice to see another one added to the mix, even if it’s not quite as good as it could have been.
read more

The Nightmare Before Christmas

It ought to be a mess, and yet Nightmare remains one of the most charming and heartfelt holiday films I’ve ever seen. And, yes, it would be more accurate to call Nightmare a “holiday” film than a Christmas film because although it appropriates all the trappings of our modern commercialized, paganized melting-pot celebration of the nativity, the story makes it abundantly clear the trappings of Christmas are hardly the point. read more

Old

While Old isn’t the best of M. Night Shyamalan’s catalog, it’s not the worst, and it kept me involved enough to see how it was going to wrap. And, I didn’t see the particular “twist” coming but it wasn’t on par with “I see dead people!” Also, I felt like he tried to over explain and over resolve the ending, and it would have been better had he stopped about five minutes before he did and let it be more open-ended. read more

Psycho

Anybody who cares about movies beyond junk-food event flicks needs to make the pilgrimage to Hitchcock at some point in their lives, and there are far worse places to start than Psycho (like, say, Family Plot). Whether it gets under your skin on your first viewing is a matter of blind luck, but it will stick with you. If you haven’t seen it in a while, your best chance beyond the local revival house will be these UHD and HDR releases. And if you’re a rabid fan of the film, you should have already hit the download button by now. read more

Pan’s Labyrinth

For my money, Pan’s Labyrinth is as near to perfection as any work of cinema made in the past quarter century. And while I can’t say the same for any of its home video releases, this new UHD/HDR release gets closer to the mark than past efforts. Quite frankly, that’s enough to recommend it as a worthy upgrade for those who are already under the film’s spell.
read more

A Quiet Place 2

A Quiet Place 2 is like a classic horror film where suspense and what you don’t see provides much of the scares, which is perfect for people who don’t like what the modern horror genre has become. The violence is mostly bloodless, and not the focus of the film. Not only does it make for a great night at the movies, I think it actually plays better in a well-designed home theater outfitted with an array of Atmos height and surround speakers for the full experience.
read more

Rosemary’s Baby

Nobody needs to convince you to watch Rosemary’s Baby. Its reputation as a horror classic is unassailable and secure. But I would urge you to first scrape away as many of the accreted conventions Polanski’s shocker has spawned and try to see it as if all those other films had never happened, as this is the place where it all began. read more

Scream (1996)

The teen-slasher genre had been stagnating in the ‘90s when along came Wes Craven of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street fame to totally upend and breathe new life into the genre with Scream. It’s hard to believe Scream is celebrating its 25th anniversary but the good news is that Paramount has given it a 4K HDR transfer. read more

Scream (2022)

This latest Scream is the first film in the series not directed by franchise creator Wes Craven. But it remains true to the spirit of the franchise and brings back key cast, including Randy Jackson returning to voice Ghostface, with some quick cameos and voiceovers from actors that have been in the earlier films. I did find the violence to be a bit more brutal and gorier, and the language to be a bit saltier, so definitely not suitable for younger viewers. read more

The Shining

This release of The Shining will quickly become the jewel of any serious film collection. But it’s not there to be revered but watched. This film’s impact hasn’t diminished a jot since the day of its release. And this 4K HDR version takes us all the way back to that first day without compromise.
read more

Stranger Things 3

Stranger Things 3 is such a tonal, structural, and narrative departure from what’s come before that it can take hardcore fans of the series a few episodes to get into this year’s batch of eight episodes. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the first couple episodes. In fact, the show’s creators demonstrate time and again their ability to lovingly mash up, remix, riff on, and reassemble 1980s pop culture in new and inventive ways. It’s simply that this time around, they’re being a little cheeky about it. read more

Review: Jungle Cruise

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review | Jungle Cruise

In the tradition of Pirates of the Caribbean, the theme-park ride translates well into a family-friendly action film

by John Sciacca
updated October 6, 2023

Like Pirates of the Caribbean, the thing that makes the Jungle Cruise ride ripe for adopting into a movie is that it offers a perfect jumping-off point for any possible adventure with the ability to weave in some nods to the ride along the way. Put some people on a boat, set them on a cruise, introduce a quest and some mayhem along the way. The thing practically writes itself!

I went into viewing Jungle Cruise highly optimistic. Disney has been on a pretty good roll recently, having developed a solid formula for delivering big-action films that hit the right balance of humor and fun that appeals to family watching. Also, I felt Dwayne Johnson was at a point in his career that he wasn’t going to be attached to a stinker, and he’s proven that he can not only carry a big action film but deliver a deft comedic touch—see Jumanji: The Next Level—which was what a Jungle Cruise captain would need to be true to the spirit of the ride.

The chemistry between Johnson and Emily Blunt works really well. And the opening pre-title card scene with Johnson taking a group of tourists on a jungle cruise lifts many lines and sight gags that are lifted straight from the Disneyland attraction, including the always popular “Back side of water” gag.

I wasn’t able to locate any specifications on the resolution used for filming or for the digital Iintermediate for this transfer, but my guess is that this is sourced from a 2K DI. Images are clean and sharp throughout, revealing lots of detail in closeups but just didn’t give that razor-sharp level of crispness you can get from a 4K DI, especially on long shots. Also, with the extensive amount of CGI used throughout, it would likely be in a 2K workflow.

I watched the film twice, once on my Apple 4KTV on my 4K JVC projector at 115-inch diagonal 2.35.1 aspect ratio and then again on my Xbox One S on a new Sony 65-inch OLED. What I mistook for a bit of softness in the opening scenes in a London University on the projector revealed itself to be more smokiness and haze when viewed on the OLED, but on both the colors and clarity definitely get a nice uptick when the action moves to outside.

As mentioned, closeups can have plenty of sharpness, and clean, ultra-fine detail. You can see the weave in the hats worn by characters or the texture in their clothes or the tiny squares in a screen covering a window.

With lots of dark and lowlight scenes, Jungle Cruise certainly benefits from HDR. Whether it’s viewing characters in the warm glow of firelight or lanterns, seeing sunlight streaming through windows into dark rooms, we get lots of rich shadow detail and bright highlights. Jungle greens are rich and lush as are the vibrant reds, with several scenes with fire, along with the busses on the streets of London.

Sonically, the Disney+ version includes Dolby Atmos packed in a lossy Dolby Digital+ wrapper. Even still, there’s plenty here to find entertaining, though you’ll likely want to bump the volume 5 to 10 dB over your normal listening levels (as seems to be the case with most of Disney+ streaming). There are near constant jungle sounds when sailing down the Amazon, creating a believable canopy over your listening room, with a variety of birds squawking overhead. When scenes cut from the open outside of the Amazon, you can “feel” the change in the room, just by how it expands in the outdoors, making a really nice effect. There are also a lot of audio effects wrapping overhead and around the room from creaking vines and snakes slithering about, or a swarm of bees that flies around the room, or the splashes of water coming over the sides of the boat during a harrowing rapids ride. James Newton Howard’s score is also given a lot of room to expand throughout the room, making it much fuller sounding.

There are a few moments where the subwoofer comes into play, and these were definitely more dynamic when played through my Xbox versus my AppleTV, which just seems to compress and crush dynamics. There is a deep rumble of massive waterfalls, the explosions of a torpedo, and the low chug of the boat’s engines.

Ultimately, Jungle Cruise delivered exactly what I expected, which was a fun time with some good action, a few laughs, quality acting, some quality visual effects, and nods to one of my favorite amusement-park rides. After the dour seriousness of F9, this struck the right note of how a film can provide a night of fun and entertainment without taking itself too seriously.

Probably the most experienced writer on custom installation in the industry, John Sciacca is co-owner of Custom Theater & Audio in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, & is known for his writing for such publications as Residential Systems and Sound & Vision. Follow him on Twitter at @SciaccaTweets and at johnsciacca.com.

PICTURE | Images are clean and sharp throughout, revealing lots of detail in closeups

SOUND | There’s plenty to find entertaining in the Atmos mix though you’ll want to bump the volume 5 to 10 dB over your normal listening levels

The Shawshank Redemption

review | The Shawshank Redemption

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The Stephen King movie for people who don’t like Stephen King movies shines brightly in this 4K HDR release

by John Sciacca
updated October 6, 2023

The Shawshank Redemption is the ultimate Stephen King movie for people that don’t think they like King, or who only associate him with supernatural tales like IT and The Shining. What writer and director Frank Darabont did right was truly understand and respect King’s source material. He trimmed where needed, tweaked where it worked better for film, but ultimately stayed incredibly true to the original story. Of course, this is easier to do when the source material is 125-pages instead of 800-plus, which is why many of King’s books just don’t adapt well to the big screen.

King has always been known for having an ear for realistic dialogue, and with much of Shawshank being character driven, with all of the important story information relayed through conversations or from Morgan Freeman’s voiceover, you needed actors who could deliver these lines convincingly. It’s impossible to imaging Red being played by anyone other than Freeman or Andy Dufresne by anyone other than Tim Robbins. Even the smaller roles are handled with aplomb, as if everyone knew this film was going to be something special and they needed to bring their A-game.

For the rest, the 4K HDR transfer will be the definitive way to own and view this movie, with the film looking its very best. Originally shot on 35mm film, this new transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate. Of course, even the best film-to-4K transfers never have the ultra-sharpness of modern digitally filmed titles, but even still the image quality is mostly fantastic throughout.

Where you can most appreciate the added resolution is in closeups, where edge sharpness and facial detail is outstanding. You can see the contrast between the smoothness, fine lines, and small pores in Robbins’ face against Freeman’s more weathered skin. You can also appreciate the texture and weight of the stones, concrete, and cement throughout the prison. Clothing also really enjoys the added detail, such as the texture and fabric on the numbered patches all prisoners wear, the fine pinstripes on the prisoners’ shirts, and on Red’s hat.

As is fairly common in film-to-4K transfers, longer-range shots don’t seem to retain the sharpness and detail and look a bit softer, such as the initial scene where we fly over the prison and see the inmates scattered down below. Fortunately, much of Shawshank is filmed in close to medium shots that benefit from the 4K transfer.

There are a lot of shots in dimly lit areas such as inside the prison or even a cell, the laundry, or solitary where the lighting is often harsh, naked bulbs, and the new HDR grading helps these to have more depth and pop. The flourishes of gold on the guards’ uniforms and hats and the Warden’s cross also get a nice bit of sparkle. We can also really appreciate the many varied shades of blue in the prison uniforms.

A couple of scenes that really stood out to me were the shot outside when Andy and crew are tarring the room. Here you see the sleek, gleaming black of the tar, with the emerald green grass, and the red brick of the building with the blue-grey skies. When Hadley and Andy have their “conversation,” notice the razor-sharp edges of them as they stand over the edge of the building. Another scene was when Red and Andy were sitting outside in the yard chatting, and you could really see the sharp lines in the mortar of the walls, with tons of image depth.

This release features a new 5.1-channel DTS HD-Master mix which I would call serviceable of the material. There were certainly some scenes with ambience, such as in the laundry, or in the prison yard, or the chow hall, but for the most part audio is across the front three channels. You get a bit of expansiveness upmixed into the height speakers, expanding the soundstage of the score, as well as some of the prison PA announcements, and also making outdoor scenes sonically feel bigger and more open. There was a scene where they were unlocking inmates from their cells, and you got a nice sense of people moving around and doors opening above you. The finale’s big thunder and lightning storm also gets some nice weight in the sub channel as well as filling the room with the downpour. Ultimately, the most important audio is the dialogue, and that is well and clearly presented in the front channel.

I’m hesitant to call any movie perfect, but Shawshank is timeless and holds up every bit as well today as it when it was released in 1994. The casting, the acting, the dialogue, the pacing, and the story . . if this isn’t perfect, well, it’s damn close. Watching it again, I can’t think of anything I would change or wish they had done differently. This is highly recommended and sure to please for years to come.

PICTURE | The 4K HDR transfer will be the definitive way to own and view this movie, with the film looking its very best

SOUND | The 5.1-channel DTS HD-Master is serviceable of the material

Review: In the Heights

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review | In the Heights

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rookie musical gets a nice bump, thanks to Hamilton

by John Sciacca
updated October 5, 2023

While the story of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is in no way connected to Hamilton, you can’t help but feel the catchy beats, tempos, meter, breaks, and rat-a-tat-tat style that made Hamilton so groundbreaking were crafted and forged during his writing of In the Heights.

Miranda—likely recognizing he had aged out of playing the lead, Usnavi, but also realizing that attaching his name would give the film another level of cachet—takes on the small role of the Piragüero, a street snow-cone vendor. He doesn’t throw away his shot, making the most of his screen time.

During the lengthy opening number, “In The Heights,” Usnavi, who runs a small bodega that serves as a hub of the community, introduces us to most of the key players and tells us a bit about their story. A few big moments drive the story forward, such as several characters looking to move out of the Heights, a winning lottery ticket worth $96,000 sold at the bodega, and a blackout that shrouds the neighborhood in darkness—and heat—for a couple of days. While I was never bored—and really enjoyed many of the musical and dance numbers—at 2 hours and 22 minutes, there are slow parts and by the end it does start to feel a bit long.

Shot at 7K, the home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate, and the movie is really beautiful. Many of the scenes are shot on location in Brooklyn Heights, and the natural lighting gives the film a great look. Skin tones look natural, with loads of color and shadow detail, and a huge depth of focus.

Overall the film just looks clean, focused, and sharp throughout. The huge array of street dancers shown at the end of the opening number as well as in the community swimming pool after “96,000” are shown with great depth and clarity. Long shots showing buildings reveal tight, sharp lines of brick-and-mortar. Closeups also reveal all kinds of detail, such as in the opening number—as the camera moves through Usnavi’s store, we can clearly see every can, box, and label on the shelves. There are not a lot of effects shots, save for one big dance number (“When The Sun Goes Down”) on the side of a building. But two shots at the public swimming pool where Usnavi looks obviously green-screened in were mildly distracting.

HDR is used to pump up the brightness of neon signs/lights in store windows, and to give the night scenes more punch. In fact, the scene/song “Blackout” would be a great demo scene, with bright flashlights, candles, sparklers, and fireworks punctuating the night.

Even though it’s mixed and presented in Dolby Atmos, the soundtrack—at least as presented by HBO Max—doesn’t feature a lot of height information, and virtually nothing in the rear/surround back speakers, with just some music going to the side and front heights. The mix does give us some nice width and directionality across the front, letting characters and sounds move far off screen left/right as appropriate. There’s also plenty of detail to let us hear individual voices in the layered singing, letting you pick out a given singer in the sonic space. We also get some nice ambient sounds that gently fill and expand the room.

Sonically, the musical numbers are the big star here, and the instruments and vocals are given a lot of room across the front channels, with some space added in the front height and surround speakers. Many of the songs are upbeat and you can’t help but tap your toes.

If you liked Hamilton then I daresay you’ll enjoy In the Heights too since its DNA runs thick throughout. Asking it to convert everyone into a musical lover is a big ask, but there’s no disputing that it has loads of heart and looks terrific, and is certainly worth a night in your theater.

PICTURE | The natural lighting gives the film a great look. Skin tones look natural, with loads of color and shadow detail, and a huge depth of focus

SOUND | Even though it’s mixed and presented in Dolby Atmos, the soundtrack doesn’t feature a lot of height information, and virtually nothing in the rear/surround back speakers

Review: Marriage Story

review | Marriage Story

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The Oscar-nominated Netflix drama turns out to be a deft character study

by Dennis Burger
January 9, 2020

I’m almost ashamed to admit that this year’s Golden Globes played some part in my awareness of Noah Baumbach’s new Netflix-original film Marriage Story—ashamed because I couldn’t care less about awards ceremonies and rarely base any of my viewing habits on self-congratulatory pomp. I do, on the other hand, care quite a bit about Baumbach’s work. And I’m drawn to him, in part, because his films aren’t predictable. While I’ve loved all of his collaborations with Wes Anderson (especially the delightful Fantastic Mr. Fox), his own directorial efforts have been a little more uneven. For every engaging The Squid and the Whale, there’s been an off-putting Margot at the Wedding. For every mercurial Frances Ha, there’s been a muddled While We’re Young.

But even Baumbach’s failures have been noble failures because he has a singular talent for writing dialogue that’s simply unmatched in our generation. And all of that is on full display in what I consider to be one of his best yet.

Marriage Story stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as soulmates at an impasse. It’s ostensibly the story of their divorce, territory Baumbach already explored from one perspective in The Squid and the Whale. But to call it a film about divorce would be to miss the point. Instead, it’s about the individual sense of identity that’s often lost in any marriage, but also the intimacy that’s gained in return. That back and forth, give and take, yin and yang ultimately influences all of the film’s themes.

It really isn’t the thematic or narrative heart of Marriage Story that makes it work, though. It’s the characters that drive the film, as well as Baumbach’s gift for crafting dialogue that sounds completely organic and natural to the ear but upon closer inspection turns out to be a masterfully assembled jigsaw puzzle conglomerated from pieces pilfered from two different boxes.

Characters talk past and over one another, they inject non sequiturs and distractions, they leave thoughts dangling and stumble over interruptions, and if you didn’t know better you might suspect that Baumbach is allowing his performers to improvise. He’s not. Every pause, ever “uh,” every clipped and broken sentence fragment is meticulously scripted to keep the flow of what’s actually being communicated between two characters who aren’t really listening to one another unambiguous for the viewer.

It helps, of course, that the film is perfectly cast. It’s seems clear to me that Baumbach selected Johansson and Driver not merely because of their talent, but as much for the audience’s expectations of what they bring to a film. With Johansson, we expect a certain emotional complexity—an ability to convey two contradictory emotions on her face, in her body language, in her vocal inflections. With Driver, we expect a certain caged-animal ferocity—explosions of intensity and frustrated vulnerability. Baumbach plays around with those expectations in wonderful ways, and I hesitate to say more than that.

The one thing I will say about characterization, though, is that Baumbach seems to be going for more universal relatability with this film than with previous efforts. Much as I love his last Netflix original, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), I’ll admit that as with most of his films, I found its neurotic characters as unrelatable as they were fascinating. It could simply be that I’m from Alabama, where—to paraphrase Julia Sugarbaker—we proudly display our crazy out in the open rather than bottling it up until it boils over, but there’s always been an aloof affectation to Baumbach’s characters that made them seem more than a little alien to me.

That’s far from the case with Marriage Story, save for a few supporting characters whose affectations are more of a contrived West Coast sort that I at least understand. At its heart, though, the two leads are less defined by their neuroses than by their sympathetic human failings.

If all of the above makes Marriage Story seem like the sort of film that could just as easily be viewed on a laptop or mobile screen, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan gives the characters room to breathe, opting for wide shots throughout except when closeups are needed for punctuation. It’s a film that begs to be seen on the largest screen in the home, and one that rewards quality of presentation thanks largely to its distinctive, filmic look.

Shot on Kodak Vision3 200T and 500T film stock in an increasingly uncommon 1.66:1 aspect ratio, Marriage Story is an analog cinephile’s dream. The organic grain structure and photochemical idiosyncrasies of the film stock give the film a unique character that’s missing from so many modern, digitally captured movies.

What surprised me, though, is that Netflix’ UHD/HDR presentation—at least by way of my Roku Ultra—is more than up to the task of delivering this unabashedly analog imagery pretty much perfectly intact. Much as I love this modern era of high-efficiency, relatively low-bitrate streaming, I’m not blind to its limitations. One expects a few seconds here and a few seconds there with a little light banding or digital noise. Indeed, there is a handful of shots in Marriage Story—one in particular featuring characters positioned against an inconsistently lit cream-white wall—where I leaned forward to judge just how prominent the banding would be. And yet I saw none.

Ask me to find a visual flaw in the presentation and I might point to one scene in which the structure of the film grain and the textures of an onscreen object interfere a little and may have been presented a little less noisily in a much higher bandwidth download or on disc. But without being able to do direct A/B comparisons, I’m just guessing.

That aside, Netflix presents Marriage Story beautifully, preserving the slight golden cast of the film stock, as well as its overall low-contrast aesthetic. It’s important not to confuse contrast and dynamic range here, as the HDR does leave a lot of room between the not-very-black blacks and the never-very-intense highlights, allowing us to peer deeper into shadows and appreciate the subtle differences between, for example, two black pieces of clothing dyed differently and aged asymmetrically.

The sound mix also hinges on subtleties. Mostly mono, the barely-surround soundtrack makes another strong case for why the center channel is the most important speaker in your sound system. The mix does spread to the front left and right speakers occasionally, mostly to give width to Randy Newman’s sparse-but-poignant score, but also, creatively, to give some space to the often dense and chaotic cacophony of dialogue.

Netflix, it seems, is somewhat under siege as of late, with some criticizing the inconsistent quality of its original offerings and others (yours truly included) musing on how the service can maintain any semblance of identity in the face of new competitors like Disney+ and the upcoming HBO MAX and Peacock.

If the company keeps supporting the creation of films like this, though, it can count on my $15.99 every month. And if Noah Baumbach is going to keep maturing as a filmmaker and delivering consistently amazing character studies like The Meyerowitz Stories and now Marriage Story, he’s going to convert me into an unapologetic and unreserved champion.

PICTURE | Netflix’ UHD/HDR presentation is more than up to the task of delivering the movie’s unabashedly analog imagery pretty much perfectly intact

SOUND | Hinging on subtleties, the mostly mono soundtrack makes another strong case for why the center channel is the most important speaker in your sound system

Review: The King of Staten Island

review | The King of Staten Island

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Attempting to capture the aimlessness, absurdity, and grunge of the underclass, Judd Apatow utterly misses the mark

by Michael Gaughn
January 27, 2020

I know that people like the characters in The King of Staten Island exist but I don’t like paying to be reminded of that fact, especially over a grueling two hours and 17 minutes. I felt the same revulsion watching American Factory, another grisly reminder of the underclass spawned by successive generations of callous, punitive economics and an increasingly toxic pop culture. Yes, this is who we’ve become, but it’s nothing to be proud of.

I can’t imagine what kept Apatow motivated through the protracted process of developing, writing, shooting, and doing post on something this pointless. When he sat down every morning, what did he see in this dung heap that gave him the energy to carry on?

The answer may lie with the Apatow house brand—which is something distinctly different from his style as a filmmaker, which I’ll get to it a minute. Imagine Freaks & Greeks grafted onto Buñuel’s Los olividados, and you’ll have some idea of where he was trying to go with Staten Island. And that could have potentially been fertile ground. Problem is he couldn’t resist the impulse to apply his patented warm and fuzzy formula in an effort to redeem his irredeemable characters, so what starts out like Trainspotting ends up a lot like It’s a Wonderful Life. The former rings true, but something nobody really needs to be exposed to; the latter is just nauseating.

His distinctive style has been apparent from his earliest directorial efforts. (Even a casual observer can see the clear through-line from the freeze-pop scene in Freaks & Geeks to Staten Island.) And his work has the potential of being tremendously expressive—if he can ever find the right material. The problem is, Freaks remains his strongest effort to date, aside from some occasional moments in 40 Year Old Virgin and This is 40. Whenever he’s tried to bring some discipline to his work and act more like a “filmmaker,” like with Knocked Up, the egregious Funny People, and here, he always goes seriously awry. But he’s definitely onto something, and might actually somehow someday get far enough out of his own way to latch onto a more promising subject.

Staten Island was supposed to have had a limited theatrical run, mainly at drive-ins, but Universal at the last minute decided to send it straight to video. My guess is they couldn’t figure out who the audience was supposed to be and were afraid it would flop hard even at a time when people are starved for entertainment.

But premium video on demand wasn’t such a great alternative. I had to fork over 19 bucks to watch this on Amazon—that’s a hefty amount to wager on a film that doesn’t give you much of a clue of what you’re in for. The bigger problem is that you can be halfway through the seemingly interminable slog of watching it and still not have a clue.

I know it’s heresy to bring this up at a time when every film sprawls and nobody has the creative discipline, or a strong enough sense of mercy, to cut anything to the length it actually deserves, but Staten Island could have easily been a nice, tight 90 minutes and still have been, for better or worse, the same film. At least I would have gotten 45 minutes of my life back.

I don’t have much to say about the acting except that, if you’ve ever seen an Apatow film, you’re seen all of these performances before. And there’s the recurring problem of nepotism. What has to happen to keep Apatow from casting his own family members? His daughter Maude is OK as Pete Davidson’s responsible, grounded, empathetic (insert morally laudable trait here: _____) sister, but is in no way exceptional and is a kind of poster child for the daughters of privilege swelling the acting ranks in New York and LA, people with only modest abilities but terrific connections.

There’s nothing exceptional happening on the technical side either. Staten Island is shot in the standard-issue faux documentary, “independent film” style that’s been dragging down serious films for at least a decade now. (Did I mention that this isn’t really a comedy?) Everything is well enough shot and assembled, but this could have been presented as a radio play with pretty much the same impact. Part of the almost $20 price of admission can be attributed to Staten Island being a 4K HDR release, but I couldn’t see where that really helped or hindered anything.

The audio is perfectly serviceable, and can’t be held accountable for the unpleasant accents and some of the actors’ inability to articulate their lines. There are the obligatory pop-music cues meant to create a false sense of energy, and some firearms are discharged during a robbery scene. I guess the gunshots sound realistic. I’m kind of glad to say I have no way of knowing for sure.

Maybe this thing panders just enough to have an audience beyond self-pitying brats. God only knows Staten Island embodies the corrosive masochism that lies at the black heart of the culture. I just know that trying make our dance with Thanatos more palatable by turning it into something that veers awful close to becoming a musical isn’t healthy for anybody. If you really feel like you really need to piss away $20 online, go play some poker instead.

PICTURE | Shot in standard-issue faux documentary, “independent film” style, it’s hard to see where 4K HDR brings anything to the proceedings

SOUND | The audio is perfectly serviceable and can’t be held accountable for the unpleasant accents and some of the actors’ inability to articulate their lines

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