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Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

review | Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

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Scott Pilgrim fans will rejoice at both the new remaster and new Atmos mix

by Dennis Burger
July 22, 2021

This review was supposed to be done weeks ago. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was technically released to UHD Blu-ray on July 6, 2021. The day it was supposed to arrive, though, Amazon informed me they didn’t have an estimated ship date. So I went to Best Buy—no Scott Pilgrim. I hit Walmart—no Scott Pilgrim. I scoured every online source for shiny silver discs and no one could get me a copy in physical form in anything approaching a predictable timeframe. Thankfully, the disc finally arrived from Amazon this past weekend.

If I hadn’t already decided this would be my last disc purchase, this whole experience would have pushed me hard in that direction. The reality is, discs are a niche product at this point. There’s only one replication facility left in North America that can produce UHD Blu-rays, as far as I know, and when they get backed up, or when there’s more demand than expected for a title like Scott Pilgrim, getting your hands on a copy becomes a frustrating affair. 

But you’re not here to read a treatise about the current state of a dying format. You’re here to read about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and whether the new Dolby Vision remaster was worth the wait. And indeed it was—but not quite in the ways I expected. 

I’ve always just assumed that this, one of my favorite movies, was shot digitally. But about ten seconds into watching the new remaster, I jotted a quick note on my notepad: “This looks like 35mm!” Indeed, the movie was shot on photochemical film and as good as the old Blu-ray was, it just wasn’t revealing enough to deliver the nuance of fine film grain. 

There’s just no denying it in 4K. And mind you, this is a remaster, not a full-on restoration. The original 35mm camera negatives weren’t rescanned. This is an upsample of the old 2K digital intermediate. But it still represents enough of a boost in resolution and fine detail that the film’s analog origins are there to be seen, clearly and unambiguously.

And as subtle a difference as that is, it’s enough to change the entire vibe of Scott Pilgrim for me. It’s a weird movie, if you’ve never seen it—it’s another one of those films that is simultaneously a thing and a critique of that thing. It’s a pop-culture-reference-packed comic book movie that playfully mocks all of the shortcomings of pop-culture-reference-packed comic book movies. It’s a sendup of everything ridiculous about video games, made by and about people who completely adore video games. It’s a takedown of hipsters despite being hipsterish as heck. It sort of takes the piss out of vegans and feminists and the LGBT community but with complete and utter love and respect for anyone who falls under any of those umbrellas. It walks the fine line of laughing with rather than laughing at. 

But perhaps the biggest seeming contradiction at the heart of the film is that it’s a grungy garage-band rock-and-roll picture (with, by the way, the single best original motion-picture soundtrack since Almost Famous, thanks to the songwriting talents of Beck and the vocal and musical talents of the actors, all of whom performed the music seen in the film themselves), but it’s also a super-slick special-effects extravaganza. 

And again, that element has always worked on Blu-ray, but it works so much better in Dolby Vision, since you can see the grit and organic chaos of film stock under the computer graphics and other special effects. It’s not simply that Dolby Vision makes Scott Pilgrim look better—it legitimately allows it to work better as a piece of art, as a story about the weirdness of nostalgia, as a big old bag of very intentional contradictions. 

There are still one or two brief moments where you can see the consequences of the 2K digital intermediate—a bit of lost resolution here and there in the backgrounds or in quickly panning shots. But they’re so fleeting I’m not sure it would be worth the effort to do a ground-up restoration. 

One thing I want to be very clear about is that the Dolby Vision color grade and dynamic-range expansion are very rarely in your face. By and large, the chromatic character of the imagery remains the same. There are a few splashes of color that ring through with more vibrancy and purity. There are also some nice specular highlights on display from time to time. But the new color grade really keeps those splashes of color and brightness in its back pocket and only pulls them out for punctuation. The biggest difference in terms of dynamic range is that blacks are blacker, shadows are better resolved, and the overall image has a more natural dimensionality and depth. 

The new Dolby Atmos remix, on the other hand, rarely shows similar restraint. It’s big, bold, loud, and an outright violation of your subwoofers’ rights. Normally, I would hate this kind of mix, but for such a ridiculous spectacle as this movie is, it just works. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.

Of course, none of this will make a lick of difference if you’re not a fan of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. And if you’ve never seen it, all I can say is that a quick watch of the trailer will tell you whether you’ll love it or loathe it. (I’ve never met anyone who thought it was “just OK.”) 

But if you’re already a card-carrying member of the Scott Pilgrim fan club, this new Dolby Vision release is an essential upgrade. Just maybe skip the hassle of trying to get it on UHD Blu-ray. I spot-checked the disc against the Vudu and iTunes streams and there’s virtually no meaningful difference between them in terms of picture quality. Level-match the soundtracks and there’s no real difference in audio fidelity, either.

So, yes, grab this new Dolby Vision remaster at your earliest convenience. But if you don’t have a Kaleidescape, just go ahead and buy it via MoviesAnywhere. I’m glad I have the disc on my shelf, since I know it’ll be there when my internet service is out and I need my Scott Pilgrim fix right this very now. But if I had to do it over again, I would have just bought the digital copy and saved myself a massive headache. 

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 | The new color grade really keeps splashes of color & brightness in its back pocket and only pulls them out for punctuation. As for the increased dynamic range, blacks are blacker, shadows are better resolved, and the overall image has a more natural dimensionality and depth. 

SOUND | The new Dolby Atmos remix rarely shows restraint. It’s big, bold, loud, and an outright violation of your subwoofers’ rights.

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Review: Big Fish

Big Fish (2003)

review | Big Fish

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4K HDR restores the impact of 35mm film to what might turn out to have been Tim Burton’s last great movie

by Dennis Burger
January 6, 2022

More than almost any other film, it’s nearly impossible for me to be objective about Tim Burton’s Big Fish. For one thing, I almost had a bit part in it but that fell through. For another, it was filmed—almost literally—in my back yard. My niece attends the private college that stood in for Auburn University in the picture. My wife and I often take long walks through the dilapidated sets of the Town of Spectre, which is on an island just north of town and serves these days as a goat sanctuary. 

But all that takes a backseat to my feelings about Tim Burton’s body of work and Big Fish‘s place in it. As a huge fan of his earlier films, I found this one to be a welcome return to form after the disappointing Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. It really felt like a potential turning point for Burton. I saw Big Fish as a new beginning, the first step on a journey that had a more genuine human element, without so much of the affected weirdness Burton became known for after he stopped being a legitimately weird outcast and transformed into a popular Hollywood darling. Instead, it ended up being his second-to-last legitimately good film and his final worthwhile live-action work. So it’s hard for me to watch Big Fish and not get distracted by thoughts of what could have been.

But you don’t care about any of that, do you? Nor should you. Chances are good that if you’re reading a review of a nearly two-decade-old film, you already know exactly what you think about it. You just want to know what it looks like in 4K and how well the new Dolby Atmos mix works with or against the material.

Long story short: Both are astonishing. Big Fish has never been a film that worked well on home video, as the tired old Blu-ray master was overly soft with a weirdly unbalanced and idiosyncratic color palette that did the cinematography no favors.

By contrast, the new UHD/HDR presentation is revelatory. Don’t get me wrong—this is still a somewhat soft and gauzy image. There isn’t a razor-sharp edge to be found within its 125-minute runtime, even in closeups. But the increased resolution of UHD and—one assumes—the new scan of the negative unlock textures in the faces, fabrics, and environment that the old Blu-ray never even hinted at. There’s also a delicious bed of organic film grain Sony thankfully saw fit to leave alone, so you’ll see none of the digital noise reduction and subsequent edge enhancement that so often plagues films with similar aesthetics. 

What you end up with is what was on the photochemical film—nothing more, nothing less. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. In addition to the rich textures and the palpability they lend to the film, the new HDR grade also unlocks subtlety in the color palette I had long since forgotten existed. Skin tones are consistent throughout, and the larger gamut gives the image room to be muted when it needs to be and intensely saturated when appropriate. Kaleidescape’s HDR10 presentation is also abundant with lovely shadow detail, and although you won’t spot many if any eye-reactive extremes of brightness (although the nighttime sequences in Spectre make for a dazzling display of shadow and light), there’s enough bandwidth in the value scale to give the image a wonderful sense of depth and dimension. It deserves to be seen on the best screen you have access to. 

In terms of the audio, I didn’t notice at first that Kaleidescape’s download comes with a new Dolby TrueHD Atmos mix. Don’t take that to mean there’s nothing going on in the overhead channels. There is. But the mix is so well-balanced and thoughtful that the overhead effects don’t draw your attention away from the screen. For the most part, they serve as connective fabric between the all-important front soundstage and the surrounds, making the entire mix more cohesive and far more immersive. Dialogue intelligibility is fantastic, and there’s a wonderful richness and warmth that works to the benefit of Danny Elfman’s score.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this was somewhere in the neighborhood of my 30th viewing of Big Fish at home. But this was the first time I was able to set aside all of the intrusive thoughts I mentioned above and just soak in the film on its own terms. That’s how good this UHD HDR presentation is. It is, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, like looking at projected 35mm. 

And as the credits rolled, I did get hit with that unshakable bittersweetness that arises from this being one of my favorite Burton films but also his last good one. But for just over two hours, I was able to put all that down and get lost in this magical but all-too-human movie, with its spectacular environments, ridiculous scenarios, and tender sincerity. The long and short of it is, this new UHD release captures Big Fish‘s essential cinematic nature in a way no previous home video format could come close to replicating.

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 | This UHD/HDR presentation is revelatory, with the increased resolution unlocking textures in the faces, fabrics, and environment that the old Blu-ray never even hinted at.

SOUND | The Atmos mix is so well-balanced and thoughtful that the overhead effects don’t draw your attention away from the screen but instead serve as connective fabric between the front soundstage and the surrounds.

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Review: C’mon C’mon

C'mon C'mon (2021)

review | C’mon C’mon

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This Joaquin Phoenix road picture transcends the genre thanks to a standout performance from Phoenix’ nine-year-old costar

by Dennis Burger
January 4, 2022

Any film that attempts to bite off as much as Mike Mills has done with C’mon C’mon invariably ends up choking on its own aspirations. By that I mean most films that attempt to be this thematically rich and that try to juggle so much meaning eventually drop a ball or two. The thing is, I suspect Mills would tell you C’mon C’mon is incredibly simple and straightforward, and perhaps he’s right. Perhaps its density is an emergent property of its characters and the positions in which he’s placed them. But for whatever reason I can’t stop thinking about this film and marveling that it never falls apart. 

Narratively, I suppose you’d have to describe it as a road picture. The plot involves Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix), a public-radio audio journalist who has to take a break from an assignment to babysit his nephew, Jesse, whom he barely knows. Jesse’s mom Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) has been called out of state to tend to her estranged husband as he struggles with a mental breakdown. When there’s a holdup on that front and Johnny has no choice but to hit the road again, he brings this odd little nine year old with him, first from L.A. to New York, then to New Orleans. 

Like most good road pictures, the cities themselves serve as characters, but it’s really the relationship between Johnny and Jesse that propels the story, and the bulk of the scenes are set in bathtubs and beds, as well as through cross-country phone calls and text messages. I know none of that sounds very exciting but it’s an incredibly gripping film from start to finish, largely due to pitch-perfect performances by Phoenix and wunderkind Woody Norman, who plays Jesse so effortlessly you almost have to suspect Mills patted him on the back and said, “Go be a kid.” 

But little clues throughout suggest that, aside from a bunch of performances from non-actors that serve as Johnny’s interviewees, this may well be Mills’ most tightly scripted film. Despite that, the sort of impossibly clever dialogue that has dominated his work is nowhere to be found here. Instead, he seems to work through his penchant for having his characters speak in literary prose by having them read books—to one another and to themselves. With that out of his system, the rest of the dialogue sounds like it flows straight out of the brains of his characters in the moment.  

And that’s a consequence of honesty. This isn’t merely Mills’ most genuine film, it’s also one of the most unapologetically frank films I’ve seen in ages and undoubtedly one of the most cinematic (by which I mean I can’t conceive of way this story could have been told in any other medium). 

The script cuts straight to the heart of the weirdness that arises from children and adults interacting, especially when those adults are holding onto baggage from their own childhoods. It’s about adults struggling to understand the emotions of children who don’t yet have the vocabulary to express their feelings, juxtaposed with those children’s lack of inhibitions and their ability to articulate things adults can’t—or won’t. You could say the entire film is about juxtapositions. But if I start rattling off further examples, we’ll be here all day. 

So I’ll just say this: One of the ways Mills explores the importance of honesty is by juxtaposing that truthfulness with artifice—indeed, deceit. And that extends all the way to the look and sound of the film. C’mon C’mon was shot monochromatically—I would call it black & white but there’s a hint of warmth to the imagery that isn’t quite prominent enough to qualify as “sepia toned”—and at first there seems to be no good reason for that. Whether it was a conscious or subconscious decision, though, I think Mills is using the monochromatic palette to reminds us that screens aren’t reality, that even something that seems as genuine as this film is a meticulously crafted construct.

There’s also some auditory evidence I’m on the right track here. For much of the first act, I wondered why the audio was mixed in Dolby Atmos, given that it was largely a monophonic-verging-on-stereo experience to that point, aside from a few musical cues. There’s a scene early on, though, in which Johnny—desperately trying to make any meaningful connection with Jesse that he can—gives the boy his microphone and recording equipment and takes him to Santa Monica for a fun day out. And it’s during this scene—in which we experience the world as Jesse hears it, through his microphone and headphones, then filtered through the magic of sound mixing and out our home cinema speakers—where the mix explodes in every dimension. It’s simply a marvelous sensory experience but it’s done in a way to remind you that, Hey, what Jesse is experiencing—intoxicating though it may be—is one level removed from reality. And what you, dear viewer, are experiencing is at least a few levels further removed. 

And so it goes for the rest of the film, which is served beautifully by Kaleidescape’s PVOD download. The HDR10 transfer gives the imagery room to breathe, especially at the lower end of the value scale, and it delivers this captivating study in light and shadow flawlessly, with no banding, moiré, or misplaced or softened textures. It isn’t a razor-sharp film but it doesn’t need to be to have effect. Kaleidescape also delivers the Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack unimpeachably, and while it may not be the most dynamic or consistently hard-hitting of mixes, it’s still one you want to experience through a good center channel. On rare occasions, the mix gets so dense I expected dialogue intelligibility to be a problem, though it never is. 

I could say more. Hell, I could write a book about this film and feel like I’d only scratched the surface. But C’mon C’mon is so packed with universal truths—and subtle, seemingly intentional deceptions—that I worry any more said on my part would color your own interpretations of the material. All I can do is implore you to watch it at your earliest convenience and on the best home cinema system you have access to. 

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 | The HDR10 transfer gives the imagery room to breathe, presenting this captivating study in light and shadow flawlessly, with no banding, moiré, or misplaced or softened textures.

SOUND | Kaleidescape delivers the Dolby Atmos soundtrack unimpeachably. It might not be the most dynamic or consistently hard-hitting of mixes but it’s still one you want to experience through a good center channel.

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Review: The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1973)

review | The Long Goodbye

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Robert Altman’s sui generis noir looks suitably grubby in this Blu-ray-quality download

by Michael Gaughn
April 14, 2021

Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye is one of the best films of the 1970s—maybe the best—and one of the most influential. That last part is ironic, in a way Altman would have appreciated, because there’s no way it can be in any legitimate sense true. Altman and Kubrick created films that came from such an intricate and hermetic personal aesthetic that it’s impossible for them to be built upon without the result being anything other than travesty. That doesn’t mean legions haven’t tried, but all have failed.

I asked Altman once what he thought of the fact that The Long Goodbye closed almost as soon as it opened but has become possibly his best-known work. He deflected, with a purpose, saying his Phillip Marlowe fell asleep in the early ‘50s—the era of Chandler’s source novel—only to wake up in the early ‘70s, finding his sense of chivalry was no longer in fashion and could only lead to disaster. Even Altman’s Marlowe would be completely lost in the sociopathic present.

The Long Goodbye both is and isn’t a detective movie; is an unforgiving evisceration of Chandler’s work and a very heartfelt tribute. It’s so cynical it verges on nihilism while openly trying to figure out which values, if any, still have meaning. And because it lives both in and outside genre, it gets to feed from both worlds, very much like early Godard. There are very few films that feel this much like a movie.

Altman, of course, makes none of it easy, constantly toying with the audience like a sly, somewhat sadistic, cat. He and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond did everything they could to make the film gritty, flashing the footage, flattening the palette, pumping up the grain. The result eschews superficial prettiness, which tends to be fleeting, to tap into something far more sublime.

This is John Williams’ best score (no, I’m not being facetious) exactly because it’s so awful. Williams isn’t known for having a sense of humor so I have to wonder if he didn’t just write a bunch of straight cues, not fully aware of how Altman was planning to deploy them.

And then there’s Elliot Gould’s almost non-existent range as an actor, which Altman turns to the film’s advantage by making his Marlowe continually spout lame, often improvised, wisecracks. Altman has everything around Gould do the acting for him, which results in Marlowe coming across as smug but ultimately lost.

To add irony to all the other irony, The Long Goodbye probably holds up as well as it does both because it’s Altman’s most genre-driven movie and because enough of what’s best of Chandler’s work manages to survive the merciless beating it receives here to permeate the film and give it a resonance unique to Altman’s canon.

And if all of that is just a little too high-brow for you, watch this movie just to revel in the secondary casting. Sterling Hayden is still astonishing as the washed-up writer on a fatal binge. Just as nobody seeing him as Dix Handley in The Asphalt Jungle could have anticipated his performance as General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, nobody seeing those two earlier films could have ever seen his Roger Wade coming. And yet there’s something at Hayden’s core that creates a through-line that joins those characters in a way that goes well beyond their having been played by the same performer. 

And nobody seeing Henry Gibson on The Dick Van Dyke Show or Laugh-In could have anticipated his Dr. Veringer in a million years. Gibson and Altman conspired to pull off a tremendous practical joke that’s simultaneously, when seen from just the right angle, chilling. It’s that he’s the least likely villain ever that makes him so apt.

As for the presentation: How do you judge the image quality of a film that went out of its way to not look very good? To reference my earlier thought, there’s that beauty that comes from aping the styles of the present, which rarely ages well, and then there’s the beauty that comes from staying true to the demands of the material, even if it takes you to deeply unpleasant places. The Long Goodbye is gorgeous exactly because it’s lurid, and because it’s as lurid in the heart of the Malibu Colony as it is in a decrepit city jail. While there’s plenty of Southern California sunshine in evidence, it’s always accurately shown as monotonous or piercing, never pleasant.

This Blu-ray-quality download does a pretty good job of honoring what Altman and Zsigmond wrought, and you can’t help but recoil in horror at the thought of some culturally myopic tech team scrubbing it free of grain and trying to expand its dynamic range. Still, matching its original resolution would likely yield huge improvements, and a deft touch with an appreciation for grunge could conjure up something amazing. 

In a similar vein, should an upgrade some day come, someone should post a sign reading “Hands Off the Soundtrack” on the mixing-room door. This film would not benefit from a surround mix—stereo suits it just fine.

The Long Goodbye is the kind of art that appears when you just don’t care at all but can’t help but care a lot. It feeds from a wellspring of paradox and, while it wraps things up, it never really resolves a thing. There are no reliable guideposts. Nothing triumphs; nothing is vanquished. That constant troubling creates an energy that keeps Altman’s film vital and relevant, and impossible to dismiss as simply smart-ass. The result is nothing but a mess, but a strangely elegant one that somehow rings very true. 

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

PICTURE | This Blu-ray-quality download does a pretty good job of honoring what Robert Altman and Vilmos Zsigmond wrought. Still, matching its original resolution would likely yield huge improvements, and a deft touch with an appreciation for grunge could conjure up something amazing.

SOUND | Should an upgrade some day come, someone should post a sign reading “Hands Off the Soundtrack” on the mixing-room door. This film would not benefit from a surround mix—stereo suits it just fine.

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Review: Ran

Ran (1985)

review | Ran

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4K brings subtle improvements to the presentation of Kurosawa’s late-period riff on King Lear

by Dennis Burger
July 29, 2021

Discussing Akira Kurosawa’s Ran publicly is a strange feeling for me, so my apologies if I seem a bit more awkward than usual here. This film has always been a private indulgence for me, a secret pleasure. When new people come into my life, I might sit them down and make them watch Amélie, or Almost Famous, or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, or The Conformist. But never, ever Ran.

Part of that boils down to being protective of it. You tell me you don’t like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Searchers or Tokyo Story? It’s all good. Different strokes and all that. Sit next to me in the dark and watch Ran, though, and if you come out of the experience feeling anything less than reverence, I’m probably never inviting you over for movie night ever again. 

At least, I assume that would be the case. I’ve never even shared the experience with my wife, simply out of fear that she would take custody of Bruno in the divorce.  

Part of that forced isolation while viewing Ran, though, comes down to the recognition that this isn’t an easy film to watch. It’s exhausting, though not in the ways we would normally hang that adjective on a work of cinema. It’s methodically, deliberately exhausting. That fatigue is an essential element of the film. 

It’s also, at times, a brutal film, both emotionally and physically. And although the violence is mostly cartoonish, with its cheap blood-squirting effects and its overwrought death scenes, it hits me harder in this film than almost any other. The carnage may look fake, but it feels real. 

That makes it a questionable choice for a feel-good get-together with friends. All that said, this is a film I think needs to be in the collection of any serious cinephile, for more than one reason. Firstly, it’s Akira Kurosawa’s last truly great film. (Madadayo is very good, but falls just shy of greatness). Seen from a more charitable perspective, though, it’s incredible that the auteur managed to make such a vibrant work at the age of 75. 

Kurosawa’s age definitely shows in the film, but not in its production. Ran—which, by the way, translates roughly into something like chaos, discord, turmoil, turbulence—is in many ways the filmmaker’s grandest statement on human nature. It has been described as a beautifully nihilistic work but I think that’s far too reductive. With this film, as with many of his best works, Kurosawa shines an unflinching light on human nature and the most ignoble tendencies of man. But describing the film as nihilistic assumes Kurosawa saw in us no capacity to rebel against our basest instincts, to rise above. Ran is a warning, a parable, a lesson from which to learn. He shows us humanity at its worst to inspire us to be better.

It’s also reductive to simply write Ran off as an adaptation of King Lear, as so many have done. Kurosawa didn’t recognize the parallels between the story he wanted to tell and the Bard’s famous play until late in the scripting process. Lear certainly influenced Ran in ways, some subconscious, but to pretend the latter is a direct adaption of the former—the way Throne of Blood (1957) very deliberately transposed the plot of The Scottish Play in space and time—would hang some additional baggage on the movie that it was never designed to carry. 

Chances are good, though, that if you have any interest in purchasing this new 4K HDR release, you couldn’t care less about what I think of the film. You may even think the above opinions are daft. That’s fine.

What I think we’ll agree on, though, is that this is the best-looking home video release of Ran to date. Just don’t go in expecting monumental improvements over the excellent StudioCanal Blu-ray from 2016, which was taken from the 4K restoration used for here. 

In my “4K HDR Wish List” from February, I said that I thought Ran, of all Kurosawa’s films, would “benefit most from the enhanced resolution and especially the expanded color gamut of 4K HDR. Watching the Blu-ray release, you can tell there’s ten pounds of color here crammed into an eight-pound bag.”

Well, I was wrong on both counts. There are, at best, a handful of scenes where the benefits of UHD resolution can be seen, and the colors are just as muted, just as reserved, just as measured as was seen on the Blu-ray. This new restoration was overseen and approved by cinematographer Shôji Ueda, so it’s safe to assume it’s true to the original vision for the film. But, as it turns out, 8-bit 1080p video was more than sufficient to unlock most of the detail and almost all of the colors found on the original camera negative.

There are some improvements in contrasts, which contribute to an image with more depth and nuance. Am I saying you shouldn’t upgrade to the 4K HDR version? Of course not. Why wouldn’t you want to own the best presentation of the film seen to date? Just go in knowing the improvements are incremental at best. There are also a few noticeable instances of edge-enhancement and grain that look more digital than organic but that was true of the 2016 Blu-ray as well and can’t be pinned on Kaleidescape’s otherwise unimpeachable presentation of this somewhat flawed but still much appreciated remaster. 

The only options for audio on Kaleidescape are the original Japanese in stereo or remixed DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. I don’t care how much of a purist you are—opt for the latter. It’s a textbook example of how films of this vintage and importance should be remixed. It’s largely a three-channel affair, with surrounds mostly used to add ambience and space to the mix. But dialogue sounds fantastic and is always utterly intelligible, locked firmly as it is in the center channel. 

I do have a slight beef with the English subtitles, which can’t be turned off or modified in any form. The problem is that they’re mostly white, with but one pixel of black surrounding each letter to give it some contrast. For the bulk of the film, that’s perfectly fine. But in shots that are brightly lit, in which the lower portion of the image is mostly gray or white or very light tan, the subtitles get a bit lost in the image. 

Other than that, the only major flaw with the Kaleidescape release is that Lionsgate, which is distributing this new 4K HDR release in the U.S., seems to have once again given Apple the exclusive on bonus features. That means iTunes is your only option if you want to enjoy the incredible feature-length documentary AK, short of buying the disc. That said, the Kaleidescape 4K HDR release is surprisingly cheap—just $14.99. So if you have that option, grab it. 

But if you have the 2016 Blu-ray already and you’re not obsessed with very minor, momentary, sporadic improvements in picture quality that you’d probably only notice in a direct A/B comparison, you can probably safely stick with the disc you already own.

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 | This is the best-looking home video release of Ran to date, but don’t go in expecting monumental improvements over the excellent StudioCanal Blu-ray from 2016.

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is a textbook example of how films of this vintage and importance should be remixed.

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Review: Don’t Look Up

Don't Look Up (2021)

review | Don’t Look Up

This Adam McKay end-of-the-world black comedy comes up short but features standout performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence

by Dennis Burger
December 28, 2021

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Adam McKay’s new apocalyptic black comedy/satire is that it legitimately cuts straight to the heart of why our political systems, news media, and culture are so dysfunctional. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, given that McKay did the same for our financial systems with The Big Short, but it still stupefies me when anyone in Hollywood turns in a legitimate critique of our power structures and institutions without devolving into “our team good/their team bad” rhetoric. 

As such, Don’t Look Up will probably either infuriate or disgust anyone with super strong partisan leanings because in creating a hypothetical disaster scenario—newly discovered comet is plummeting toward earth and will result in an extinction-level event in six months—and imagining how our leaders and news media and indeed we ourselves would react, McKay doesn’t lay the blame of the hilariously awful response at the feet of one political party or media outlet. Indeed, one of the film’s neatest tricks is that it frames our political maladies as a wholly bipartisan issue without resorting to both-sides whataboutism. 

Much of that has to do with the fact that the story was co-developed with David Sirota, one of the most prescient and poignant—not to mention reviled—political commentators and journalists working today. You can see Sirota’s fingerprints on a lot of the story beats, from the way President Orlean (Meryl Streep) reacts to the news of impending doom by speculating about how it will affect the midterms to the rank superficiality of the media’s response (embodied brilliantly by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry). 

The film is also bolstered by pitch-perfect performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the astronomers who discover the comet and attempt to warn the world. Both are so believable as real human beings that it’s sometimes easy to forget all of their previous roles. 

For everything it has going for it, though—and all of the above just scratches the surface of the genius of the script and many of the performances—Don’t Look Up is unfortunately hobbled by some major structural problems that keep it from being anywhere near as impactful as it could have been. 

Its biggest sin is egregiously overstaying its welcome at 2 hours and 18 minutes. There’s a really tight and biting 90-minute black comedy to be found somewhere within the raw materials scripted and shot for the film, and McKay simply couldn’t find it. You can feel him trying his hardest, but the editing is a mess. If you have anything resembling an editor’s bent, there’ll be times when you find yourself yelling at the screen, “Why was this scene necessary?” and other times when you can feel the absence of essential connective tissue, resulting in blatant plot holes and non sequiturs. 

For all the brilliant performances, there are also roles that feel woefully miscast. Hard as it is for me to type these words, Meryl Streep just has no clue what movie she’s in. And the ever-brilliant Mark Rylance—who plays this film’s eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire—is uncharacteristically bad, which I’m choosing to blame on McKay’s direction, not Rylance’s instincts. 

Make no mistake about it: There’s more about Don’t Look Up that works than doesn’t. Stack up a list of pluses and minuses and the former would dwarf the latter. But given that its flubs are rooted in the fundamentals of filmmaking, it can be a frustrating to watch, no matter how worthy of your time it may be.

Maybe you can take solace in the fact that it’s a beautiful film to behold, but perhaps not in the ways you might expect. Don’t Look Up was originally intended as a Paramount theatrical release but eventually ended up as a Netflix exclusive. It was shot on 35mm—with a mix of flat and anamorphic lenses—and finished in a 4K digital intermediate before, as best I can figure, being printed back out to a 35mm negative. 

As such, it has a wonderfully organic look, with plenty of light grain and that gorgeous analog halation that’s still nearly impossible to recreate in the digital domain without significant processing. The color palette is also delicious, and Netflix’ Dolby Vision presentation captures all of the above beautifully, with only a few brief instances of moiré indicating that the encode might have benefited from a handful of momentary bursts of higher bitrate of the sort you normally see on Disney+ and Apple TV+. 

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack, meanwhile, is nice and dynamic but rarely too aggressive. The most important thing is that dialogue is rendered with tip-top intelligibility, but when there’s the rare need for some more adventurous mixing, the soundtrack rises to the occasion.

I’m glad we don’t do star ratings or thumbs-up/thumbs-down assessments at Cineluxe because I would be crippled with analysis paralysis in attempting to encapsulate the merits and demerits of Don’t Look Up. It’s simultaneously one of the year’s best films and one of its worst. It’s as fascinating as it is frustrating. It tries to be Network, Dr. Strangelove, and Veep all at the same time but more often than not, those allusions simply serve to remind you it’s not quite as good as the works that inspired it.

Seriously, though, watch it for DiCaprio’s and Lawrence’s performances, if nothing else.

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 | The film has a wonderfully organic look, with plenty of light grain and that gorgeous analog halation that’s still nearly impossible to recreate in the digital domain without significant processing.

SOUND | The Atmos soundtrack is nice and dynamic but rarely too aggressive, with the dialogue rendered with tip-top intelligibility.

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Review: Encanto

Encanto (2021)

review | Encanto

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Disney’s latest  is a tale of magic filled with beautiful, vibrant tropical colors that burst off the screen

by John Sciacca
December 27, 2021

I’m totally biased when it comes to Disney Animation. I have two daughters, and when Disney or Pixar releases a film, we’re going to watch it. That doesn’t mean I think they’re all great—it just means they don’t need to do a lot of marketing to get me on board. 

When there’s a movie all four of us can sit down, enjoy, and experience together, that’s saying something. (My five-and-a-half year old, Audrey, was very apprehensive about watching, though. The commercial has a “yellow three-headed dragon monster”—it’s actually Cerberus—that scared her, so she thought the movie was going to be about that. After lots of coaxing—and a nearby blanket she could quickly duck under if things got too scary—she decided she could be brave enough to give it a try.) So literally the moment I saw Encanto was available to watch on Disney+—in 4K with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio—I texted my wife and let her know we had our Friday night plans nailed down.

I was already all-in on watching the film, but what really had me interested was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s involvement, as he wrote eight original songs for Encanto (his second Disney Animation collaboration after writing songs for Moana). After Hamilton and In the Heights, Miranda has won me over with his catchy rapid-fire lyrics and layered, reference-dropping song-telling style. 

The film follows the Madrigal family, which lives in Columbia in an “Encanto”—a charmed or enchanted place—where a magical candle creates a sentient “Casita” (which means “little house”) for the family to live in, and a village grows around the house. As each member of the family reaches a certain age, a new magical door appears on the Casita, and when they open it, they’re gifted certain super-human abilities—super strength, super hearing, ability to heal, ability to grow flowers, etc.—which they use to help the villagers and continue the magic of the family. When it’s time to receive her gift, young Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) goes to open her door but it disappears, leaving her the only family who doesn’t have a gift, making her the odd one out, with her sisters, the perfect “golden child” Isabela (Diane Guerrero) and super-strong Luisa (Jessica Darrow). 

On the night the next Madrigal member, Antonio (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), is to receive his gift, Mirabel has a vision of the Casita crumbling and the candle’s flame being extinguished. When matriarch Abuela Alma (Maria Cecilia Botero) arrives and sees the Casita undamaged, she doesn’t believe Mirabel, causing Mirabel to investigate. She then stumbles across Uncle Bruno (John Lequizamo)—whose gift is having visions of the future—who has exiled himself from the community and whose name no one wants to utter (summed up in the very catchy song, “We don’t talk about Bruno-no-no-no”). When actual cracks start appearing in the Casita—and between family members—Mirabel knows she must do something to save the miracle, the family, and the village. 

Like any great piece of writing, Encanto touches on lots of issues and has different layers that will resonate with people in different ways, not just the usual this joke is for adults and this one is for kids. Whether you were the “golden child” and had to live up to the pressure of being perfect or were the family’s backbone everyone relied on or the outcast that seemingly didn’t fit in, Encanto has bits, moments, and characters that will ring true. 

There is the very obvious message of fitting in and finding your own talents and embracing your gifts and strengths whatever they are, and not judging your worth based on others. Also, not everyone’s life is as perfect as it may seem, and we all have our own struggles and pressures even when everything might look perfect on the outside (something that will hopefully resonate with all the young girls infected with the toxic Instagram culture). And ultimately, even though no family is perfect, we need to do our best to love them.

As mentioned, the Disney+ presentation is in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR. Taken from a true 4K digital intermediate, it looks gorgeous. Computer animation certainly lends itself to HDR and to delivering bright, vibrant, beautiful images, and Encanto has tropical colors that just burst off the screen. 

One of the things that really struck me was the fire effect, specifically around the candle that plays an important role in the film. There are a lot of scenes where you’re able to look at the candle flame, and the animation of the dance and flicker, the lighting, glowing effect, and shadows cast from the candle are just beautiful. The light slowly fading to different shades from the candle can be really tricky for a display, and there were a couple of moments where I noticed a bit of banding, but this might have been an animation style choice and not a streaming-video artifact. But, the lighting work in Encanto is just stunning.

Of course, with animation, the artists carefully scrutinize every frame, so focus is always perfect, with images always sharp and clear. They also pay close attention to every visual detail such as the small frays in rope, stitches in fabric, the texture of stone or tile, and literally individual grains of sand. Beyond the vibrant and lush tropical colors, the family’s doors as they gain their powers have inscriptions that glow a brilliant shade of gold that highlights the strength of the Dolby Vision HDR. (And did Bruno’s red chair remind anyone else of Morpheus’s chair from The Matrix . . ?) 

I wouldn’t call Encanto’s Dolby Atmos sound mix overly active but there are some nice moments of ambience that help to place us in the action, such as birds chirping or flying overhead, the sounds of bugs or wind, and then tile and stone cracking and shattering that spreads and expands up into the canopy of the ceiling and out into the room. The audio also opens up the listening environment with some cavernous echoes when appropriate, being drenched in a pouring rainstorm, or the spreading boom of thunder.  

The music is the sonic star of the Dolby Atmos soundtrack, and the songs are definitely catchy, with our family singing some of them even a couple of days later. The mix gives the voices space to spread across the front of the room and even up into the ceiling. You can better appreciate the layering during the ensemble numbers, though some of the rapid-fire lyrics (particularly in the opening song “The Family Madrigal”) can be a bit tricky to catch on the first go-round.

Your subwoofers don’t get called on a lot but they do fill in some deep percussion from the songs (particularly during Luisa’s “Surface Pressure”) and give some serious, tactile low end when things come crashing to the ground. 

With so many families gathered for the holidays, Encanto offers a wonderful opportunity to round everyone up in your home theater and share an experience. With a message that speaks to the strength of family, gorgeous images that will highlight your video display, and a catchy soundtrack, Encanto offers tantos razones to give it a watch. 

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 | Computer animation lends itself to HDR and to delivering bright, vibrant, beautiful images, and Encanto has tropical colors that burst off the screen.

SOUND | The music is the sonic star of the Atmos soundtrack, and the mix gives the voices space to spread across the front of the room and even up into the ceiling.

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Review: Onward

Onward (2020)

review | Onward

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This offering follows the Pixar formula, transcending its RPG roots to appeal to a wide and diverse audience

by John Sciacca
March 22, 2020

Onward is set in the fantasy world of New Mushroomton, a world that was once filled with adventure and wonder and magic. But magic wasnt easy to master and over time it faded away, and now itls a forgotten skill replaced by technology. I mean, why struggle learning to cast a light spell or rely on a wizard when now everyone can just walk over and flip a switch?

This setting is one of the first unique things for Pixar, in that the film takes place in an entirely fantastical world. Every other Pixar film has been set to some degree in the real world.” Whether it is the distant future of Wall-E, the underground insect world of A Bugs Life, inside Rileys head in Inside Out, or the alternate reality of The Good Dinosaur, the studio’s world building had so far been based on our world. (Even Monstropolis from Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University is tied to our world, as the monsters cross over into our side of the closet door.) 

Onward also features some deep ties to fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, with tons of references overt and subtle that fans of these games will pick up and love, specifically one gelatinous monster that even passing D&D fans will be familiar with. The movie’s substitute for these is Quests of Yore, A historically based role-playing scenario.”

In a way, it reminded me of a Weird” Al Yankovic song like All About the Pentiums.” You can enjoy the song on the surface for what it is but the deeper you are into geek culture, the more youll appreciate its brilliance on different layers. Pixar is known for littering Easter eggs throughout its films, and Onward features more references and hidden jokes than perhaps any other, and the home release allows you to pause and analyze scenes to loot-hunt these treasures at your leisure.

Whether it is The Lion King, Bambi, Frozen, Finding Nemo, or numerous other films, a common theme among Disney heroes is having lost a parent, often in some tragic manner. But  no film tackles this subject head-on quite like Onward, where the movies entire plot revolves around the opportunity to bring back a lost parent, to spend one last day with him. Also, for the first time we hear Disney characters not only talking about the pain and loss of losing a parent but of the emotions of having to deal with a parent that is sick and dying. Heavy stuff for a kids” movie.

The film focuses on elven brothers Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley Lightfoot (Chris Pratt) some 16 years after their father has died. On Ians 16th birthday, their mom, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), unveils a present their father left behind for when both boys were older than 16. Inside the present are a wizards staff, a rare Phoenix Gem, and instructions for casting a visitation spell” that will allow the father to return for one single day to see how the boys have grown. Of course, things go awry when casting the spell, and dad only returns from the waist down before the Phoenix Gem—an assist element required for casting powerful magic—is destroyed. 

This sets up the campaign quest, as the brothers—and the lower-half of dad—head off in Barleys sweet van, Guinevere, fueled by an appropriately epic mixtape, of course, to follow clues left behind from the magic of old to discover another Phoenix Gem and finish casting the spell before the sun sets and dad is lost forever. 

Pixar inhabits this fantasy world with all manner of creatures including gnomes, pixies, mermaids, unicorns, centaurs, cyclops, and goblins, which keeps scenes visually entertaining. And in keeping with the RPG rules, different character classes have different abilities; and it is the shy and awkward Ian (whose name might be a subtle nod to Sir Ian McKellen, who played a certain wizard named Gandalf the Grey in a few Tolkien films) who develops the ability to use the wizards staff to cast spells rather than his RPG-obsessed, living the longest gap year ever,” non-starter brother, Barley, perpetually wearing a jean vest emblazoned with patches and buttons of Metal-like band names and a 20-sided die, like so many of the kids I went to high-school with in the 80s. 

And like any epic quest, the story begins in an all-too common starting point: The Tavern. From Chaucers Tale to Hobbitons Green Dragon Inn to numerous D&D campaigns, the Tavern is often the place where parties gather to palaver prior to beginning a campaign. In this case, the Tavern is run by a Manticore (Octavia Spencer), a mythical creature with a vaguely humanoid head, the body of a lion, and the wings of a dragon, whose long tail ends in a cluster of deadly spikes,” according to D&D rules. With magic gone, our Manticore has lost its bite, and the tavern is now more a family-friendly TGI Fridays affair. But it serves as the launching point for the brothersadventure—as well as a way for the Manticore to do some self-discovery—and provides the first clue to tracking down the Gem. 

This review is of the HD version, which looks fantastic in its own right but definitely left me eager to see this visual glory once again in higher resolution and with the added color and punch of HDR when the 4K HDR release becomes available.

As literally every pixel shown on screen is rendered in computer, we get an amazing level of detail, especially in closeups. Literally every strand of hair or fur is visible in perfect detail, as are things like the grain in desks or the stones in walls. Other things have a photo-realistic quality, such as slices of bread, vehicles, or wet roads. Pixar continues upping the ante in computer visuals and Onward picks up where the gorgeous Toy Story 4 left off. Lighting effects are dazzling, whether it is fire, sparkling magic, or light streaming in through windows. Dark spaces like caves or night scenes make for especially vibrant eye candy.  

As is the case with every Disney release I’m aware of, the digital HD version—and Blu-ray disc on release—doesnt contain the object-based Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which is reserved for the premium 4K content. Instead, Onwards HD version has a 7.1-channel DTS-HD Master audio soundtrack. 

While I cant wait to audition the Atmos track when the 4K version drops, this mix offers plenty to enjoy. There are strong panning and surround effects tracking the onscreen action, especially during the driving scenes on the expressway and the final challenge quest in the tunnels, where multiple objects whiz past your head. Even with the 7.1-channel mix, my processors upmixer smartly put sounds up into the ceiling, such as a dragons tail swiping overhead or fire breathing across the room. Outdoor scenes feature tons of ambient sounds to place you in the action, and bass is deep and authoritative. I find dialogue to be slightly forward with DTS mixes but had no difficulty understanding all the lines.

Of course, the brilliance of Pixar is in making movies that appeal to a broad range of viewers, and not just for that small subset of hardcore fans of a specific genre or RPG subculture. Unlike any other studio, the studio has a knack for writing stories and jokes that play across multiple levels. Kids appreciate the top-level humor, with other jokes and references for adults, and deeper meanings and storytelling themes that parents recognize. 

Ultimately, Onward is Pixar doing what it does best, which is creating movies about deep relationships and going right for the feels at the end. Whether youre a beginning Level 1 Crafty Rogue or a veteran Level 20 Wizard, there’s plenty in Onward to engage and entertain families of all ages. 

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 | As literally every pixel shown on screen is rendered in computer, you get an amazing level of detail, especially in closeups, and even in the HD version reviewed here.

SOUND | The 7.1-channel mix here offers plenty to enjoy, with strong panning and surround effects tracking the onscreen action and outdoor scenes featuring tons of ambient sounds to place you in the story.

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Review: Soul

Soul (2020)

review | Soul

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The most adult Pixar film to date avoids getting bogged by its weighty themes, maintaining a childlike sense of wonder

by John Sciacca
December 26, 2020

Disney’s gift to families arrived on Disney+ yesterday in the form of Pixar’s 23rd feature-length film, Soul, which is arguably the largest title to debut on the streaming service without requiring the purchased premium access of the recent live-action Mulan remake. (Onward had a brief theatrical release before being moved to the streaming site.)

Soul tackles Pixar’s biggest, most complex, and heady adult ideas and themes to date. While other Pixar films have dealt with the death of a main character (notably the loss of a parent in Onward), here we get a version of both the afterlife and pre-existence—and I’d say despite the pleasing visuals (especially in the vibrant and colorful Great Before) and big-eyed cuteness of the ever-smiling new souls, it isn’t really a children’s movie at all. But the genius of Pixar films has always been that they are able to entertain and appeal to viewers across large age groups, and the jokes and themes here are certainly geared toward an older audience, such as what some of those sign-spinners are really up to, what happens to hedge-fund managers, and why the Knicks keep losing. Jazz—or “black improvisation music” as Joe Gardner’s (Jamie Foxx) father calls it—also plays a prominent role throughout the film, a musical genre that isn’t typically kid-friendly, and it also features “real,” poignant adult conversations between characters, such as the chat Joe has with his longtime barber Dez (Donnell Rawlings). 

You could consider Soul the final (?) film in director Pete Docter’s reverse life-cycle trilogy, which began with 2009’s Up, which focused on a person nearing the end of his life, followed by 2015’s Inside Out, which put us in the mind of a pre-teenager figuring out her emotions. With Soul, we actually roll back to pre-existence, discovering how people get their unique personality traits and find that “spark” that motivates them.

The movie begins with Joe, a part-time middle-school band instructor, getting hired on full-time at the school. While his mother, Libba (Phylicia Rashad), is thrilled at the prospect of him having a steady paycheck, insurance, and security instead of his gigging lifestyle, Joe feels it’s turning his back on his dream of being a jazz musician. When one of his old students, Curley (Questlove), calls him to see if he’s available to audition to play piano with the Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) Quartet that evening, Joe nails the try out and leaves on Cloud Nine, oblivious to everything going on around him. This leads to him walking into an open manhole, and, well, coming around as a soul ascending towards the great white light of the Great Beyond. But Joe isn’t willing to accept that he has died on the night of his big break, so he fights to get back to his body on earth. 

And that is just the first 11 minutes of the movie. From there we transition to the Great Before—rebranded as the You Seminar—where mentors work with new souls that are given unique and individual personalities to prepare them for life on Earth. (One soul proclaims, “I’m a manipulative megalomaniac who’s intensely opportunistic.”)  Another group of souls is sent to become self-absorbed, causing one of the counselors to say, “We really should stop sending so many people through that pavilion.” 

The final step in a soul receiving its full personality—and getting its Earth pass—is for it to find its “spark,” or that thing that drives them. Joe is assigned to Mentor 22 (Tina Fey), who has been stuck as a new soul for years with no desire to go to Earth, having broken previous mentors such as Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and Mohammed Ali. 

With the help of Moonwind (Graham Norton), an astral traveler who sails about The Zone, a place between the spiritual and physical, in a tie-dye-sailed ship listening to Bob Dylan and helping lost souls find their way, 22 and Joe make it back to Earth, but not exactly in the way the Joe is hoping. I thought the film was going to take a Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin All of Me turn but it doesn’t. Without spoiling, I’ll say Joe comes back in a way where he can still communicate with 22 but with no one else.

The movie has three distinct animation styles defining the Great Beyond, the Great Before, and life on Earth. The Beyond is rendered in very contrasty black and white with just the color of the souls headed towards the light (a scene that reminded me of Carousel from Logan’s Run, whether intentional or not), whereas the Great Before is vibrant, filled with glowing blue, pink, and purple pastels and almost neon-tube drawings with things glowing bright around outlined edges. Earth is hyper-realistic. with a more muted, natural color scheme. 

Image quality is fantastic and reference-quality, making Soul beautiful and just pleasing to look at. While the Great Before has colors that leap off the screen (especially in Dolby Vision), it’s the scenes on Earth that really show off Pixar’s animation prowess, with fine micro details visible in literally anything you choose to focus on. The texture, layering, and fading colors in street graffiti, the floor of the barbershop and look of Dez’s shoes, the distress in iron railings, the sweat that appears on musicians’ faces after a long gig, the variety of people walking around the streets of New York, or the reflection off a glossy piano lid revealing the workings inside. Remembering that every . . . single . . . pixel of detail, every micro imperfection, every scratch and nick, every reflection, every subtle lighting effect have all been painstakingly created by choice takes appreciation to the next level.

You can also really appreciate the choices the Pixar artists make in how they animate different things. While they’ve settled on the look of people, other items like buildings, backgrounds, and furniture get near-photo-realistic detail. Other things like photos of jazz greats in a stairwell, or the stage at the club, land somewhere in between. 

As mentioned, jazz is a prominent, recurring theme throughout the film, and the Dolby Atmos audio does a great job presenting it, especially when Joe is really grooving and in-the-zone, where music swirls overhead and around the room. Voices in the Great Before are echoey, while the street sounds and cacophony of New York sound appropriately overwhelming. There are also plenty of nice subtle moments throughout, such as the flatter, low-roof sound of music in the Half Note, the clack of tracks aboard the subway, or the buzz overhead as Joe stands under a neon light. Most important, dialogue is always clear and perfectly intelligible. 

Soul is a deep story that actually takes a bit of unpacking, and it looks so good you’ll likely want to revisit it, where you’ll likely discover plenty of new things to appreciate. Finding out what things make a life and learning to enjoy the simple pleasures and experiences it has to offer is the real heart of Soul, and this is another win for Pixar.

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 | Image quality is fantastic and reference-quality, making Soul beautiful and just pleasing to look at.

SOUND | The Atmos audio does a great job presenting the jazz soundtrack, especially when the lead character is really grooving and in-the-zone, where music swirls overhead and around the room. 

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Review: Psycho

Psycho (1960)

review | Psycho

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Seeing this film in 4K not only underlines how much Hitchcock reinvented himself here but how much he changed filmmaking forever

by Michael Gaughn
September 11, 2020

This was supposed to be a review of Rear Window. But I had such a strong reaction to watching Psycho in 4K that Hitchcock’s lurid horror classic quickly pushed its way to the front of the reviewing queue. 

More has probably been written about Hitchcock than any other filmmaker, most of it boxing him in so tightly that he’s ended up as badly embalmed as Norman Bates’ mother. So I’m going to try to avoid retreading any of that ground here. My comments will be mainly about why you should care about Psycho in 2020—and why you should care about it in 4K.

First off, there’s Anthony Perkins. Sure, people have praised his performance before but I didn’t realize until this most recent viewing exactly how groundbreaking it was and how much it still reverberates today. Hitchcock was notorious for putting blinders on his performers, so while there are some exceptional breakout performances in his films (I’m thinking of Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train in particular), they’re rare, and tend to happen not because the actor was given extraordinary latitude but because he figured out how to roll within Hitchcock’s often stifling restrictions.

Perkins turns that straitjacket into a virtue, offering the most direct, nuanced, and startling performance in any Hitchcock film. (His bursting in on Vera Miles at the end always seems so comical because he has kept Norman on a such a believably tight leash until then.) There are many things in Psycho that are unique for a Hitchcock film (I’ll get to that in a minute) but this is the most unusual. As soon as Perkins says his first lines to Janet Leigh, Psycho pivots from a traditional studio-era production into the cinematic unknown.

And then there’s the enduring influence of his performance, which has become the standard for any actor attempting to explore the extreme edges of dissociation. It’s hard to watch his Norman Bates and not see De Niro’s Travis Bickle—or even Rupert Pupkin. To watch Perkins in this film is to watch him actively and radically reinvent film acting—all while under his director’s unblinking gaze.

But Hitchcock ventured into all kinds of new territory in Psycho, and it’s fascinating to watch him try to reinvent himself as he grapples with the collapse of the studio system and the realization of how tightly he was bound to it. The tragic thing about Psycho was that he found it impossible to build on his many innovations here, instead retreating to what he already knew, which is why all of his later films feel half-baked and carry the fetid reek of nostalgia.

A lot has been made about Hitchcock using a TV crew to shoot the film but that kind of misses the point. Psycho, on the moviemaking level, is mainly about Hitchcock grappling with his increasing bitterness, cynicism, disorientation, and misogyny in a world where he could feel his influence as a filmmaker and a personality waning, and figuring out what the hell to make of his unmistakable attraction to La Nouvelle Vague, a movement that worshipped his work but couldn’t have been further removed from his Hollywood-machine style of filmmaking.

Any talk of Hitchcock’s misogyny in the age of the New Puritanism is guaranteed to fall on deaf ears—but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. His take on women was far more deft and complex than he’s usually given credit for (consider, for instance, that the two most assertive and courageous characters in Rear Window are Thelma Ritter and Grace Kelly, and how Eva Marie Saint makes Cary Grant look like a dope in North by Northwest). Yes, the sense of personal aggression in his handling of the Marion Crane character is troubling, but the film hinges on being able to see her through Norman’s eyes from the second he first encounters her in the rain at the Bates motel.

That’s one of the more New Wave elements in this very New Wave-y film, that not only is Marion not very likable—nobody in this film is, which is what forces you to gravitate toward Norman and feel some uncomfortably complex emotions about him as it all plays out.

As for the shock factor—it’s there, but not in the broad strokes that enticed and repelled audiences at the time. Probably the two most disturbing images now are Janet Leigh staring out at the audience with her face flattened against the bathroom floor and Perkins mounting Martin Balsam, butcher knife aloft, while Balsam lies on his back squealing like a stuck pig.

What’s more disturbing are the droller, more perverse touches, like forcing the audience to suffer John Gavin through the whole second half of the film, and the justly infamous penultimate scene where the smug psychiatrist explains all. But it’s worth enduring that to get to the brilliant Godardian shot of Norman in confinement, leading to him giving the camera what would become the patented Kubrick crazy stare, with that almost subliminal superimposition of Mother’s rotting face.

What 4K brings to all this is distressing—as in, you can see all the little nicks and scuff marks and tears and stains that evoke the shabby decay of the Bates Motel. It’s hard to emphasize how much this heightens the experience of the film. Given Hitchcock’s horror of any kind of filth, the idea of a place—and a mind—than rundown was probably truly terrifying for him, and it takes all the clarity of UHD resolution to faithfully convey that.

Strangely, capturing the full impact of 35mm film makes the subtle verbal duel between Perkins and Balsam that begins in the motel office and continues out on the walkway far more intense than it felt in earlier home video incarnations. This is another scene where Hitchcock went well outside his comfort zone, not only in the way he allowed the actors to fence, but in the way he turned it into a duel of acting styles that had until then had been foreign to his work. This scene had always felt kind of flat seen anywhere other than in a movie theater, until now. 

But 4K both giveth and taketh away. This transfer does its best with some occasionally bad elements, the worst instance probably being a POV shot through Marion’s windshield at the 24:11 mark where the resolution and image enhancement create a giant swarm of digital gnats that make it feel like you’re watching the opening to Men in Black.

Also, without getting pulled into any sweeping generalizations, it needs to be pointed out that while the HDR version bests the UHD version, the differences are so subtle they’ll probably only register with hyper-critical viewers. Spot-checking scenes with a lot of gradation, like Marion and Norman in the lobby parlor (Chapter 8) or Norman burying evidence in the swamp (Chapter 12), showed only the slightest difference between versions.

But it’s hard to emphasize how much 4K does to revive Psycho and make it feel vital, instead of like some vaguely appreciated but permanently filed-away relic. And experiencing it in either UHD or HDR brings a new respect for its mostly restrained black & white cinematography. Color would have been too distracting, visually drowning out the impact of the film’s brutally pared-down main elements. And we can only shudder at the thought of 4K colorization. 

As for the sound, you’re probably best off experiencing Psycho with the DTS HD Master Audio stereo track. The Master Audio 5.1 mix doesn’t make the film more engaging, just different. That’s not to say someone someday couldn’t do a compelling Dolby Atmos remix but they would have to be an absolute virtuoso to make their efforts dovetail with Hitchcock’s aesthetic.

And let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking score, which is well served by both mixes. I had never really appreciated until I heard it here just how much Herrmann relied on the primal physicality of the bows scraping across the strings and the rough resonance of the string instruments’ body cavities—the cellos and basses in particular. Sure, that impression had always been there, on the verge of recognition, but this time that naked musical aggression seemed far more crucial to the impact of the music than the notes themselves. 

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.

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

PICTURE | What 4K brings to this film is distressing—as in, you can see all the little nicks and scuff marks and tears and stains that evoke the shabby decay of the Bates Motel.

SOUND | You’re probably best off experiencing Psycho with the DTS HD Master Audio stereo track. The 5.1 mix doesn’t make the film more engaging, just different. 

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