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Review: White Noise

review | White Noise

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It’s nothing but a mystery why the critics are loving this irredeemable mess of a movie

by Dennis Burger
January 12, 2022

Not to go all Vanilla Ice on you here but when I see a problem, it’s my inclination to try and figure out how I would solve it. As such, when I see a truly awful film, my instinct is to brainstorm what went wrong and what could have been done to fix it. With Noah Baumbach’s White Noise¸ though, I simply have to throw my hands up and write it off as an irredeemable mess of a thing.

Some of that may be the fault of the book on which it’s based. I’m not sure, as I’ve never read it and I certainly have no reason to now. But there’s simply no denying that the bones of the story aren’t healthy. Its pace is off-putting, its structure is all out of proportion, and its ending doesn’t follow from its beginning. The fact of the matter, though, is that issues of form and narrative are just a tiny fraction of what’s wrong with this one.

A far bigger problem is that no one quite seems to know what movie they’re in. You can tell at times that actors deliver jokes they either don’t recognize as jokes or perhaps they’ve simply misunderstood (or been misinformed about) why they’re funny. Almost every single one of the adult leads delivers every line with an infuriating overwrought insincerity that holds the viewer at arm’s length for no good reason.

There are exceptions but they end up being just as frustrating in their incongruity. The fact of the matter is that the only actors who seem to understand the material and perform it appropriately are the children. And I spent a long time trying to decide whether to chalk this up to the fact that they’re better actors than Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle, or perhaps simply better cast in their roles. In the end, I decided I just don’t care.

Another possibility, of course, is that the young’uns are simply too unseasoned as performers to follow bad direction, which kinda makes the most sense to me, because everything else about the production points toward Baumbach having no clue what he was doing with this, reportedly one of Netflix’ most expensive original films to date.

I’ll say this, though: Every penny of the alleged $140-million-plus budget appears onscreen. White Noise is a gorgeous film, shot on a combination of 35mm and 65mm Kodak Vision3 stock and 6.5K Arriraw, and finished in a 4K DI. The imagery has a burnt, high-contrast look with rich saturated colors, and although there’s not a lot for the Dolby Vision high dynamic range to do in terms of shadow depth (of which there is very little), some nice specular highlights add to the depth of the image without getting out of control. It’s a bit soft overall but that works to give the production an appropriately vintage look.

The Atmos sound mix, too, is seriously well done on a technical and artistic level, with good but not overwhelming use of the surround soundfield and a focus on exceptional vocal intelligibility, which would be more appreciated if the oh-so-pretentious dialogue were worth listening to.

But it’s not. None of it. White Noise is such a fascinating dumpster fire of a motion picture that I’m almost inclined to encourage you to watch it, the way someone who has tasted something truly revolting wants you to take a bite too. You shouldn’t, though. The film isn’t half as smart as Baumbach thinks it is, and you’re nowhere near as stupid as he assumes you are.

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 imagery has a burnt, high-contrast look with rich saturated colors, and although there’s not a lot for the Dolby Vision high dynamic range to do in terms of shadow depth, some nice specular highlights add to the depth of the image

SOUND | The Atmos sound mix is well done on both a technical and artistic level, with good but not overwhelming use of the surround soundfield and a focus on exceptional vocal intelligibility

Review: The Banshees of Inisherin

review | The Banshees of Inisherin

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This modest Irish dramedy makes for compelling viewing, especially in an HDR presentation

by Dennis Burger
January 6, 2023

The Banshees of Inisherin will no doubt go down as one of the most divisive films of this awards season but likely not for the reasons you might suspect, mainly because I can’t imagine anyone outright hating it. It’s one of the most captivating films of the year. No scene—indeed, no frame—is wasted and its closing credits seem to nip at the heels of its opening imagery. Then again, if you said you found it ploddingly paced, I’d have a hard time arguing with you.

It’s also one of the year’s funniest, but if you never laughed once I couldn’t fault you. It’s a gorgeous work to behold, too, beautifully and deliberately composed, but if all your eyes see are the dour and dirty dinge of a rural Irish island in the 1920s, I can’t imagine even the film’s most ardent defenders giving you much grief for that. It isn’t a love-it-or-hate-it affair but rather a sort of love-it-or-meh-whatever. But I imagine the gulf between those two camps will be far wider than typically exists for movies of the sort that prompt screaming matches and flame wars in the darker alleyways of the internet.

And to be frank, I haven’t a clue how to help you sort yourself into one camp or the other before giving it a shot. It’s the kind of film that defies algorithms, largely because it can’t be pre-masticated into this-movie-meets-that-movie pabulum. The story, though, is simplicity incarnate: Grappling with the weight of his own eventual mortality, a musician named Colm (portrayed by Brendan Gleeson) decides that he no longer wishes to be friends with his longtime pub-pal Pádraic (Colin Farrell), not over any sort of disagreement or falling out but purely because he finds time spent with the dull farmer wasted. When Pádraic tries to reconcile or at least get to the bottom of his former friend’s mental state, Colm threatens to start lopping off his own fingers.

That’s it. That’s the plot. What makes it work, though—what makes it sustainable for two hours—is that writer/director Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) has found a way to combine a distinctively Irish form of ennui and humor with the sense of negative space and appreciation for the mundane you would expect from Miyazaki Hayao’s best films—which Miyazaki himself often describes as “ma.”

Banshees is also the rare allegorical tale that doesn’t feel the need to whap you over the head with its meaning at every turn. It respects the intelligence of its audience enough to pick up what it’s laying down, even when it’s laying down a lot. It is, most blatantly, an allegory for the Irish Civil War that’s constantly raging concurrently just across the channel on the mainland but also for arms races in general and struggles with mental health. It’s as much about a man’s relationship with his pet miniature donkey as it is about the tortured soul of an artist. In the end, one of the most fascinating things about the film is how much it manages to be about despite how little happens.

Given how uncertain I am about how anyone might receive The Banshees of Inisherin, once I finished watching it on Kaleidescape my first instinct was to suggest streaming it for free on HBO Max, where it’s currently available in HD. That was largely a consequence of the fact that the film’s UHD/HDR presentation seemed mostly unnecessary to me. Aside from a handful of bright sunlight skies that are just this side of eye-reactive, I didn’t see much benefit of the higher resolution and especially not the HDR10 grading. A few minutes spent comparing the HDR10 version to the HD version also available on Kaleidescape, as well as the HD stream on HBO Max, disabused me of that notion quickly.

This is one of the most subtly effective HDR presentations I’ve seen in quite some time, not because it boosts the brightness or deepens the shadows, but more because it gives the value scale more room to breathe across the board. In HD, so many of the highlights are clipped that you lose depth, not only in the sky but also in the streaks of sun reflecting off the water surrounding the fictional island of Inisherin. The HD presentation feels flat, dull, processed, whereas the UHD/HDR10 download from Kaleidescape brims with effortless dimensionality.

The film’s palette, too, gets a huge-but-not-obvious boost from the HDR10 grade. That makes sense given that it was shot digitally in Arriraw at 4.5K, but even armed with that knowledge, the differences between the SDR and HDR presentations are staggering in a way you wouldn’t appreciate if all you’ve seen is the latter. Colors aren’t simply richer and more saturated; at times, they’re more subdued, more pastel. Greens that tend toward Crayola in the HD presentation benefit from a low-key injection of warmth and nuance in UHD/HDR. Skin tones are less patchy. Painted windowsills not only read as more obviously painted but also more weatherworn. The whole world of The Banshees of Inisherin simply gets an infusion of verisimilitude by way of HDR that is as lovely as it is subliminal.

Kaleidescape also delivers the film with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, which really only crawls out of its center-speaker shell occasionally to add some space to the music and the occasional atmospheric sound effect or the rare exchange of distant gunfire. For viewers who aren’t Irish, I would imagine the most appreciated thing about the mix is that dialogue is kept clean and clear and always perfectly intelligible, which is no mean feat.

The download comes with a handful of extras, the most noteworthy of which is the 18-minute Creating The Banshees of Inisherin, a brief but insightful behind-the-scenes featurette that puts the film in the context of McDonagh’s other work, specifically his plays The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which formed the first two parts of a loose and unofficial trilogy that concludes (for now) with this film. There are also five deleted scenes adding up to just under as many minutes, each of which represents a lovely little character moment in itself but all of which would have been a little redundant or on-the-nose in the context of the finished film.

You can probably skip the deleted scenes unless you’re fascinated by the structure of film and want to get some insight into McDonagh’s editing choices. You can even skip the making-of doc if you’re not a prior fan of the filmmaker. But if you’re at all interested in The Banshees of Inisherin, I’d encourage you not to merely stream it on HBO Max or whatever service is serving it up by the time you read this. This one legitimately loses something in HD and especially in 8-bit dynamic range. It deserves better. I cannot tell you whether it will resonate with you, of course, but for now it’s my second favorite film of 2022.

PICTURE | Kaleidescape’s subtly effective HDR presentation gives the movie an infusion of verisimilitude that is as lovely as it is subliminal

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track really only crawls out of its center-speaker shell occasionally to add some space to the music and the occasional atmospheric sound effect

Review: Tár

review | Tár

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What could have been an intriguing look at the ability of anonymous accusers to wrongfully topple the powerful collapses under its own pretentiousness

by Michael Gaughn
January 6, 2023

Tár can be a maddening film to watch—which makes it an even more maddening film to review. It ticks off all the trendy boxes, not just weighing in on gender politics and the blind destructive power of the howling virtual mob but also adopts a chill, distant, elliptical style that constantly holds the characters at arm’s length. Most troubling of all, it dips into the au courant fantasy realm by having certain key actions hinge on the implausible. It’s hard to take the film’s take on the contemporary world seriously or care a fig about any of its characters when it’s so willing to conveniently veer away from any kind of convincing reality.

This was unabashedly created as a vehicle for Cate Blanchett and will likely pave her way to another Oscar nomination. But I’d be interested to know what the Academy would base that decision on. Since her performance is more a series of stylized poses and largely the product of the editing suite, it would seem just as appropriate to nominate all the people who propped her up.

Which triggers a brief digression. The movie opens with the closing credits, exhaustively listing in tiny type every minion who worked on this effort. It should not take that many people to make a movie, especially an independent-y art film. Those teeming hordes seem to be more about safety in numbers than about the hands necessary to craft something of merit, and what I guess was meant to be a magnanimous gesture only helps to explain why most movies now feel more manufactured than created.

But to get to the nub of the thing: It’s not possible to understand what’s going on with Tár until a second viewing. And since I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, I hope you’ll take what I have to say here on faith. The film all but completely unravels on that second pass because you’re now aware of all the little tricks that diverted your attention the first time around. Once the stylistic frosting melts away, you begin to see that the cake is just a straight-from-the-box “powerful woman undone” melodrama from the 1940s cribbed from the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford playbook (think Mildred Pierce)—all of which had antecedents in the “women’s wrongs” literature of the 1850s.

It’s amazing how political positions and attitudes can change but we always express them through the same handful of narrative conventions. Which brings up another dilemma: There are only so many plots, so many genres, and they all have a history—often a long one—that lends them their resonance. Adopting them without acknowledging where their power is derived from can’t help but make hash out of contemporary “let’s just make up our beliefs as we go along” soap boxing because the medium ends up completely contradicting and undermining the message—which is as it should be, and a small glimmer of hope in a self-infatuated world.

To bolster my case: Even at two hours and almost 40 minutes, Blanchett’s character becomes unhinged far too easily and quickly to be believable—that is, if you use reality as a yardstick for her deterioration. But in a ‘40s melodrama, that timing (proportionally speaking) and over-the-top level of craziness would be just about right. And outright silly bits like her charging the podium during a performance and slugging the conductor or vomiting because the number “5” manifests itself in a massage parlor is the stuff of potboilers, not sensitive character studies. (About that run time: This film could have easily shed an hour and lost nothing, which would have brought it much closer to the 90-minute ballpark of the sturm und drang weepies it springs from—but that would have revealed its hand.)

I’m not saying it’s not possible to enjoy Tár, at least on that first viewing. Just know that it’s not at all what it seems to be, not because of any cunning on the filmmakers’ part but because they either didn’t know or didn’t want to acknowledge what they were dealing with.

Because the film’s tableaux-like approach doesn’t allow for coherent performances, it’s hard to single out actors, but Nina Hoss is, at a minimum, intriguing as Blanchett’s concertmaster/lover/conscience/enabler. And while the camera is clearly enraptured with Sophie Kauer as a rising young cellist, it’s frustrating she wasn’t given enough to do so we could know if she has any extraordinary chops as an actor.

I also have to point out that while Blanchett is sometimes convincing as somebody presenting herself as a conductor, she couldn’t be more unconvincing when she actually tries to conduct. She just lacks the ability, which few possess, to surrender her entire body and being to the music. It was a huge strategic mistake to show a brief clip near the end of Leonard Bernstein at the podium since his movements, from the very first seconds, make clear what a conductor is and what Blanchett isn’t.

Not that there aren’t enough rubs here to go around but maybe the biggest is that Tár comes damn close to being a reference-quality HDR presentation. But I would feel guilty recommending it as such knowing anyone would have to sit through the film itself. Much of the imagery is quietly beautiful, even if it’s almost always too full of itself and pretty much all veneer. And the transfer handles it deftly, accurately rendering the nuances of the muted palette and conveying it all with an at times startling sharpness without veering into the clinical digital look of a lot of recent films. This is the best case I’ve come across of HDR displaying its supple versatility without succumbing to the temptation to show off.

A lot of the same could be said for the sound, which is well recorded and mixed without, for the most part, drawing attention to itself. You don’t get any complete musical performances, just snippets, but what’s here is rendered with a realistic sense of presence—but without any of what can only be described as the analog warmth many people associate with the best classical music recordings. For a film that fetishizes vinyl, adding just a touch of coloration might not have been sonically accurate but would have heightened the music’s emotional impact considerably.

This is a talky movie, with lots of voices in a variety of accents, mostly speaking in subdued tones, and all of that is conveyed cleanly enough. The use of ambient sound and of effects is well presented and treated with restraint, with a few exceptions. One instance of an offscreen knock at the door is so realistic it becomes one of those “made you look” moments where you have to admire the sound designer’s acumen at the same time you can’t help but get annoyed at being yanked out of the film.

It would be remiss of me to not mention that it’s not all that farfetched to see parallels between the Blanchett character’s woes here and the protracted hounding of Woody Allen, whose Blue Jasmine got Blanchett a Best Actress Oscar a decade ago. There are undeniable parallels between Tár and Jasmine, pointed by a scene near the end of the former where Blanchett retreats to her humble beginnings in the New York boroughs and her working-class brother dismissively greets her with, “Hi, Linda—sorry, Lydia,” eerily similar to Andrew Dice Clay’s line in Jasmine—“Janine or Jasmine, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days”—which then triggers the collapse of that character’s world. If I could credit the filmmakers with sufficient subtlety, I would say they were turning the tables on gender posturing to deliberately trouble the cocksure MeToo take on the world. If nothing else, they seem to be putting forward a “character is your digital destiny” argument that is, sadly, true enough, with the consequences all too often tragic.

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 | Tár comes close to being reference-quality, with the transfer accurately rendering the nuances of the film’s muted palette and conveying it all with an at times startling sharpness without veering into the clinical digital look of a lot of recent films

SOUND | The audio is well recorded and mixed without, for the most part, drawing attention to itself. The orchestral snippets are rendered with a realistic sense of presence, while ambience and effects are well presented and treated with restraint.

Review: Glass Onion

review | Glass Onion

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The highly anticipated Knives Out sequel is lighter & breezier than the original but still a solid whodunnit, excellently presented on Netflix

by Roger Kanno
December 30, 2022

Master detective Benoit Blanc is back. But this time, he is on Netflix in Rian Johnson’s followup to 2019’s hugely successful and entertaining murder-mystery Knives Out. Netflix, who outbid the other major streaming services for the rights to two sequels, released the first of them, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, for a limited, week-long run in theaters on November 23 that grossed a reported $13.28 million. With a remarkably lucrative but very short release, some have questioned the financial strategy of such an abbreviated theatrical run and the missed opportunity for a beleaguered movie-theater industry that relies on big releases to fill seats that would otherwise remain empty.

Nevertheless, Netflix is a streaming service, and the December 23 streaming release of Glass Onion was one of the most anticipated releases of the year on any service, and it certainly does not disappoint. Knives Out is set to become a major movie franchise, but other than protagonist, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), none of the characters from the original film appear in this sequel with its completely self-contained story.

Like its predecessor, Glass Onion does feature a packed lineup of stars including Edward Norton as tech-billionaire Miles Bron and the leader of a group of friends played by the likes of Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., and Kathryn Hahn. Johnson’s intelligent script gives plenty of material for the actors to sink their teeth into and they relish in their colorful roles. His direction is also adept, providing once again a snappy and compelling whodunnit in grand style. The many plot twists and turns unravel the complex mystery with flashbacks and rapid-fire edits that will keep most viewers guessing until the very end. There are also many delightful cameos to look out for from Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Sondheim, Serena Williams, and Angela Lansbury among others, including Noah Segan, who appeared in the first film but appears quite comically as a different character this time around.

Glass Onion is set on a fictitious Greek Island with many of the scenes bathed in plenty of natural sunlight. Colors are not overly saturated, and at times the bright lighting might seem to slightly wash out tones, but the Dolby Vision color grade is actually organic and realistic. The picture is also quite detailed but has a touch of pleasing softness that is carried over from the film-like quality of the original movie even though both were shot digitally by cinematographer, Steve Yedlin. The slightly ruddy complexion and many lines and pores on Blanc’s face look perfectly natural as does his blue-and-white-striped two-piece linen swimsuit with its dimpled texture and some very slight wrinkling. The blue-dyed fabric appears lighter in color when in sunlight but takes on a realistically darker hue when in the shade, as does the slightly off-white stripes of the fabric. The carefully controlled lighting of interior shots provides even more detail and exhibits fantastically deep, gorgeous blacks and richer colors than exterior shots. Inside the observatory room of Bron’s Glass Onion mansion, the nighttime sky in the background is inky black while Bron’s and Blanc’s faces are bathed in convincing shadows from the interior lighting as they move about the room. The lighting highlights really pop and the composition of the scene with its contrasting shadow and light is beautiful to behold.

As with the cinematography, the sound design is not overtly attention-grabbing but is the perfect accompaniment to the onscreen action. The Dolby Atmos mix provides a near constant sense of envelopment from the surround and height channels that effectively enhances the film’s atmosphere. When called upon, the spatial capabilities of the object-oriented mix are well utilized as when Blanc sets off the garden’s smoke alarm. As he walks along the paths, the sounds of chirping birds, gurgling water, and rustling leaves are diffuse and enveloping, but as the smoke from his cigar sets off the warning system, three different alarms and a vocal warning emanate distinctly from various locations and heights within the soundstage.

Nathan Johnson’s score also sounds excellent in Atmos and is used effectively to heighten the suspense as well as provide some more playful passages during lighter moments. The soundtrack also includes well-mixed pop songs. The Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” is placed primarily at the front of the room but the other channels are used effectively to expand the soundfield with a sense of height and depth and to place voices and Foley from the scene coherently within the complex mix.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is lighter and breezier than the original film but with a similarly clever and intricate plot. It also features first-rate sound and picture quality, making it one of the premier streaming releases of the year.

Roger Kanno began his life-long interest in home cinema almost three decades ago with a collection of LaserDiscs and a Dolby Surround Pro Logic system. Since then, he has seen a lot of movies in his home theater but has an equal fascination with high-end stereo music systems. Roger writes for both Sound & Vision and the SoundStage! Network.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision color grade is organic and realistic with a pleasing film-like quality, even though the movie was shot digitally. The carefully controlled lighting of interior shots provides plenty of detail and exhibits fantastically deep, gorgeous blacks.

SOUND | The sound design is the perfect accompaniment to the onscreen action, with the Atmos mix providing a nearly constant sense of envelopment from the surround and height channels that effectively enhances the film’s atmosphere

Review: God’s Crooked Lines

review | God’s Crooked Lines

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The English version of this Spanish psychological thriller would be far more compelling if the dubbing wasn’t so bad

by Dennis Burger
December 28, 2022

It was my intent to begin by saying that God’s Crooked Lines (aka Los renglones torcidos de Dios) feels a bit like two separate decks of cards shuffled together by a seasoned croupier, but that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. In its original language, yes, that still feels true. Switch over to the laughably awful English dub available on Netflix, though, and it feels more like someone threw an Uno deck into a half-packed Cards Against Humanity box and gave it a perfunctory shake. So, in a sense, you have four movies in one here, although it’s really only worth watching in the original Spanish. If you’re allergic to subtitles, give this one a hard pass.

The reason that matters here even more than with most films is that God’s Crooked Lines largely lives or dies by its performances. It’s an interesting narrative, mind you, with gripping twists and turns, and one that blurs the lines between genres and serves as a textbook on the distinctions between tension and suspense—but it’s nearly impossible to invest in that narrative when the voices coming out of the characters’ mouths don’t seem like they could possibly have emanated from those characters’ bodies.

As for what the film is about, it’s tempting to describe it in reference to other films. It comes across at times as a cross between Gaslight and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with the subtlest hints of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari thrown in for seasoning. More plainly, it’s the story of a woman who enters a psychiatric hospital under the pretense of solving a crime and her conflicts with the asylum director, the only authority who doesn’t buy her story.

I won’t say much more than that about the plot because it’s the sort of film that leaves the viewer guessing about what is real and what isn’t, who the reliable narrator is, if there is one, and even the order in which narrative events unfold at times. Frankly, it should be an exhausting film, especially given its 155-minute runtime. But it never crumbles under its own narrative weight and zips right by, largely due to the performances, especially those of Bárbara Lennie and Eduard Fernández, both of whom are hypnotic in every frame they occupy.

It’s also such a visually fascinating film that the eye cannot help but remain engaged. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about the way in which it was shot given that IMDb and the film’s closing credits both lack technical specifications but it was obviously shot digitally despite a rather filmic look. It some respects, it evokes the character of a less-contrasty Kodachrome, a film stock no commercial motion picture was ever shot on to my knowledge. What’s curious, though, is that much of the tonal and chromatic character of the imagery seems to come from the lenses, not any sort of film-look post-processing. If there was much of the latter, it was done with a careful hand. But given that I don’t know what the negative format was nor what lenses might have been used (aside from the fact that they’re obviously anamorphic), I’m left with little but speculation.

We can agree on this, though: Netflix’ video presentation is flawless. The Dolby Vision grading doesn’t feature intense specular highlights and it’s never eye-reactive, but it does seem to enhance shadow detail. There were times when I was shocked the relatively high-efficiency HEVC encode was able to keep up with the combination of difficult-to-encode elements—one scene involving a raging fire at night during a thunderstorm comes to mind as particularly impressive demo material that has every right to look a mess but doesn’t. The UHD resolution is also employed to good effect to enhance the textures of the architecture and clothing and natural environments around the hospital.

The Dolby Atmos presentation is also equally engaging although perhaps not as consistent. From time to time, it does get a little too aggressive with the surround effects, and the overhead channels can, on rare occasions, distract from the onscreen drama.

More often than not, though, the mix serves to enhance the ambiance of the environments, such as with the hum of the hospital’s fluorescent lamps, and to heighten the psychological drama, such as when Alicia/Alice enters her own mind palace to try to unravel the mysteries of her past and present circumstances. There’s a wonderful dreamlike quality to the mix in those scenes that works to their advantage.

Again, though, when it comes to the execrable English dub, take everything I said in the preceding paragraph and defenestrate it. The poorly cast and inappropriately performed voiceover work piddles all over everything good about the mix.

It’s really a shame such a worthwhile film wasn’t given a better dub for those who don’t enjoy subtitles. And that’s not to say God’s Crooked Lines is perfect or even the best mystery film of December 2022. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of Oriol Paulo’s best previous effort, 2016’s The Invisible Guest, largely as a result of the somewhat cluttered and disjointed climax and a few narrative threads that could have stood to be tightened up in one final pass at the script. If you’re a fan of psychological thrillers, though, don’t be scared off by the fact that this one doesn’t quite stick the landing. Far more about it works than doesn’t.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision grading in Netflix’ flawless video presentation doesn’t feature intense specular highlights and is never eye-reactive but does seem to enhance shadow detail, while the UHD resolution is employed to good effect to enhance textures

SOUND | The Atmos presentation is equally engaging though not as consistent, occasionally getting a little too aggressive with the surround effects, which can cause the overhead channels to distract from the onscreen drama

Review: Anatomy of a Murder

review | Anatomy of a Murder

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Held together by Jimmy Stewart’s career-defining performance, this epic-length courtroom drama looks exceptionally good in the 4K HDR

by Michael Gaughn
December 23, 2022

The second American Renaissance (c. 1955 to 1962) spawned a whole slew of mainstream iconoclasts. Coltrane, Mingus, and Monk in jazz, Weegee in photography, Warhol in art, Glenn Gould in classical music, Lenny Bruce in comedy, Ginsberg in poetry, and Aldrich, Kubrick, and Sirk in the movies all stand at the beginning of the long and fecund list that sums up the tenor of that time, an era that coughed up more cultural radicals than any other.

Director Otto Preminger was a provocateur, a bad boy, but he was never an iconoclast. He very much wanted to be seen as being a member of that club but his interest in transgression didn’t run deep. He was mainly interested in breaking taboos as a way to grab headlines and fill theater seats. At the end of the day, he was a guy who made the occasional intriguing film but was essentially a workmanlike director with a penchant for publicity.

All of which makes it curious that his Anatomy of a Murder has just received a 4K HDR release. I could name a couple hundred movies that deserved that attention long before Anatomy. The way titles are chosen for 4K is so random it almost feels like it’s being done by lottery.

To be clear, I actually like Anatomy of a Murder. I’ve liked it ever since I was a kid and sneaked downstairs late at night to watch it once everyone else in the family was asleep. And it always held my attention, even at its almost three-hour run time and arbitrarily broken up by a seemingly endless number of commercials. It’s a talky film, a courtroom drama that takes almost a whole hour to get to the courtroom, and yet somehow works, despite problems—partly because it was made at the right moment in time so that the whole of the culture helps prop it up, but mainly because of Jimmy Stewart.

To start with that propping up, Anatomy springs from the trend toward gritty documentary-style dramas that began with The Naked City in 1948 (which were themselves inspired by the Neo Realist films out of post-World War II Italy). That style really didn’t take root until the mid ‘50s, only to be erased by the emerging tumult of the early ‘60s, to then re-emerge, more heavily stylized, in the early ‘70s in movies like The French Connection, Taxi Driver, and urban exploitation films—only to be once again obliterated, likely forever, by the emergence of fantasy and blockbuster movies in the late ‘70s.

Anatomy has a down-at-the-heels look appropriate to a small industrial city in Michigan in the late ‘50s. Shot on location, nothing was done to spruce up the decay that had begun to envelop the country as the post-war boom began to fade. That tack can make many films of the era feel just tawdry and depressing but it works here because the actors bring a heightened enough presence to the action to offer sufficient relief from the gloom—though it has to be pointed out that they overdid it with Stewart’s house, which is so relentlessly filthy it’s hard to believe somebody like Stewart would ever live in a dump like that.

Casting was never Preminger’s strong suit, so what you get here is incredibly hit and miss. Arthur O’Connell and Eve Arden do what they can with the hoary clichés of the alcoholic, washed-up attorney eager for redemption and the wisecracking underpaid and unappreciated secretary. Joseph Welch does an outstanding turn as the crotchety but droll and benign judge. And Murray “Mayor Vaughn” Hamilton is estimable as ever in his patented role of arrogant and put-upon schlemiel. You can only feel sorry for Brooks West as the easily duped district attorney—the weakest link in the script and casting, who’s present just to be Stewart’s straw man. And while Lee Remick constantly grabs the camera’s attention, even in the crowded courtroom scenes, it all comes a cropper whenever she has to open her mouth and attempt to act.

Adding to the challenge is the use of locals as extras, who are fascinating to look at because they’re unvarnished reflections of the time. But the distance between them and that teeming gaggle of Hollywood actors is so extreme it almost topples the artifice by making clear the near infinite distance between those two worlds.

But, again, Anatomy is really all about Stewart, who was that rarity of being as much actor as star and throughout the ‘50s brought a maturity to his roles that audiences weren’t used to seeing from A-listers. His ability had always been evident—his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington takes Capra’s precious, flawed bromides to a level he was never able to achieve via other actors—but Stewart, by sublimating his experiences in World War II, heightened movie acting in a way that’s never fully been appreciated.

What he accomplished here is truly a feat—holding together an epic-length film that’s almost all dialogue by his performance alone. It’s especially fascinating to watch him take his evolved version of classic movie acting and use it to go toe to toe with Actors Studio types like George C. Scott and Ben Gazzara, who both, in their “we’re too good to be here” way, attempt to devour most of the scenery. There’s something about Stewart not only being able to single-handedly hold the picture together but dispatch these upstarts without breaking a sweat that’s both exhilarating and triumphant.

Anatomy of a Murder looks damn good in 4K HDR—especially for a production that deliberately didn’t have a lot of polish. While there’s the constant bugaboo of elements on either side of dissolves looking compromised—especially problematic here since Preminger tended to rely on longer takes—they’re never quite as awful as the similar elements in Creature from the Black Lagoon. Anatomy, for the most part, looks like film, making it easy to stay immersed in the movie. While it’s neither as faithful or compelling as the transfer for Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, nothing happens along the way to jolt you out of the experience. The quality of the transfer is especially evident in many of the medium and tighter shots, where you really couldn’t ask for anything more. The one significant nit is that the HDR grade does occasionally make shots look a little plasticy or video-like—a fleeting annoyance; nothing persistent.

The audio is for the most part clean and well balanced—although there’s a scene in Stewart’s house near the end that’s oddly several dB lower than everything around it. The only times the dynamic range really comes to the fore are when Duke Ellington’s band is strangely grafted into the movie, which sound fine but really don’t add anything to the overall impact. I do once again have to point out that this is yet another older film where the original mono mix is nowhere to be found. I don’t understand the point of getting the look of a movie within striking distance of how it was originally presented and then playing fast and loose with the audio.

This might be the simplest and most definitive conclusion I’ve ever written: Watch Anatomy of a Murder just to savor Jimmy Stewart at the peak of his powers. This a sly act of virtuosity done with modest, almost humble, bravura by a performer too often enjoyed but not appreciated, too often passed over as just a comfortable old shoe. There is everything to be learned about movies and movie acting by watching Stewart rise so far above both the material and its execution and do the impossible without ever once succumbing to the temptation to pat himself on the back.

PICTURE | Anatomy of a Murder looks damn good in 4K HDR, with the quality of the transfer especially evident in many of the medium and tighter shots

SOUND | The audio is for the most part clean and well balanced, although this is yet another release of an older film without the original mono mix

Review: The Fabelmans

review | The Fabelmans

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Steven Spielberg’s thinly disguised autobiography bombed at the box office but is worth a look in its home release

by John Sciacca
December 21, 2022

The body of films directed, produced, and/or written by Steven Spielberg includes some of the most well-known and beloved movies of our time, and any new Spielberg film typically garners loads of attention. Especially when that film is so well received by critics (91% Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (82% audience score) alike and has received five Golden Globe nominations including Best Motion Picture—Drama and Best Director, along with 11 nominations at the 28th Critics’ Choice Awards, including Best Picture.

Which is what makes the disastrous box-office performance of The Fabelmans all the more surprising. With an estimated budget of $40 million, it barely made $160,000 in its opening weekend (to be fair, it opened in a very limited release, debuting on just four screens in New York and LA), going on to gross a measly $8 million worldwide. Which means you likely didn’t see The Fabelmans, and if you’re a Spielberg fan, you’re kinda missing out.

While the film’s synopsis says this is “loosely based on Spielberg’s childhood,” an opening “names have been changed to protect the innocent” title card would be all that separates this from a film that could have just as easily been titled The Spielbergs. And while this movie written, directed, and produced by Spielberg is not an autobiography per se, it is so heavily based on and recreates events from his youth it probably holds more factual content than most actual biopics. Perhaps, though, a straight-up autobiography would have been too personal—or vain—for Spielberg, and as a filmmaker, it is a bit easier to distance himself from the events and remain behind the camera lens.

The two-hour 31-minute run-time can be a bit plodding. Don’t expect a lot of—or really any—action other than of the emotional kind. While I found the film interesting, scenes can drag a bit.

Ultimately, this is a coming-of-age story, watching Sammy Fabelman (played by Mateo Zoryan as a youth and Gabriel LaBelle as a teenager) grow and be shaped by his family while discovering his passion for filmmaking and working on improving his craft. Sammy is raised in a supportive home by his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), who was a concert pianist. She is artistic and ethereal and encourages Sammy’s filmmaking. Spielberg described his actual mother as being more of a big sister than a mother and a Peter Pan-type that never wanted to grow up, and Williams definitely captures that spirit. Sammy’s father, Burt (Paul Dano, miles away from his role as Riddler in The Batman), is an engineer whose successes at work result in career advancements that mean moves for the family. Equally important to the family dynamic is “best friend” Bennie played by Seth Rogan, who delivers a dramatic performance that reminded me a bit of his turn as Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs.

If the goal of this not-autobiography autobiography is to show us how Spielberg developed his love for movies and filmmaking, then mission accomplished. It opens with the family going to the cinema to see Sammy’s first movie, The Greatest Show on Earth. In it, a dramatic train wreck has such an impact on Sammy that he can only come to terms with it by filming and crashing a Lionel train set he received for Chanukah so he can watch it over and over. His staging and filming of the wreck (at least how it’s presented here) is reminiscent of the scene from Super 8, a film Spielberg executive produced. In fact, much of the way Spielberg works with friends and family to get his movies made has the same feel as Charles (Riley Griffiths) in Super 8.

The film’s length and pace give plenty of time to appreciate Sammy’s growing skills as a director, whether setting up shots, his eye for framing, or how he interacts and gives direction to actors. From his earliest home movies, Sammy starts making longer and more elaborate films from The Last Gunfight (the film Spielberg actually made to get his Boy Scout photography merit badge) to Escape to Nowhere, a 40-minute war movie that won First Prize in a statewide competition (you can view a couple minutes of the original Spielberg film here), to Firelight, a precursor to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

As is Spielberg’s preference, The Fabelmans is shot on actual 35mm film (16mm for some of the home movies) in a 1.85 aspect ratio, and the home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate. Don’t expect this to be a go-to movie to show off your theater. While there are certainly some closeups that reveal loads of detail, like the fine texture and pebbling on a leather varsity jacket, overall this has a softer film look, not the razor sharpness of modern digital films. Also, much of the color palette is full of muted earth tones, with lots of browns, beiges, and tans. We do get some nice highlights from the HDR grading, such as bright lights from film projectors, a car headlight dance, or worklights in garages, but overall the goal is to have a natural, lifelike presentation.

The Kaleidescape release features a DTS-HD Master 5.1-channel audio mix, which is fine for presenting the mostly dialogue-driven film. We do get a bit of scene-appropriate ambience, like the low buzz of fluorescent lights in a school hallway, rustling winds from a swirling tornado, outdoor sounds like wind and insects, passing of traffic, or the whirring click of a film projector spinning. The soundtrack, which often includes piano music in deference to Spielberg’s mother, Leah, is given some width across the front as well as mixed up to the ceiling to expand the soundstage. Your subs will be taking the night off for the most part, though they do come into play during the big train collision, which produces some nice, deep rumble.

If you’re a Spielberg fan, this is definitely a movie you’ll want to see, as it accurately depicts his early life and influences. One benefit of the film’s poor box-office performance is that it received a fast-track release to the home market. After getting a wide cinematic release on November 23, it was released to digital retailers like Kaleidescape on December 13, so you can appreciate it in the comfort of your own theater now.

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 | Shot on 35mm, some closeups reveal loads of detail, but overall The Fabelmans has a softer look instead of the razor sharpness of modern digital films

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master 5.1 mix is fine for presenting the mostly dialogue-driven film but there is a bit of scene-appropriate ambience

Review: Emancipation

review | Emancipation

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This historically based Will Smith vehicle about an escaped slave sacrifices some badly needed character development for action scenes and atmosphere

by Roger Kanno
December 20, 2022

Apple TV+ began streaming its latest high-profile feature film, Emancipation, from its own production company, Apple Original Films, on December 9th after a limited run in theaters the week prior. Starring Will Smith and directed by Antoine Fuqua, it tells the story of Peter, a former slave, and his harrowing escape from a Confederate prison work camp and his bid to reunite with his family. The film is loosely based on the true story of Gordon, who escaped from a Louisiana plantation and joined the Union army in 1863. A photo of Gordon’s heavily scarred back, taken when he arrived at a Union Army camp after his escape, became a symbol of the abolitionist movement during the Civil War.

Smith delivers a powerful performance as Peter, disappearing into the role and bringing a full range of emotions, from love to fear to anger, as well as an unyielding sense of conviction. Jim Fassel (Ben Foster), a slave hunter who tracks Peter relentlessly through the swamps of Louisiana is a less complex character study, but Foster brings an eerie and disturbingly quiet sense of menace to the screen that is unsettling. Smith and Foster are both exceptional in their performances but I can’t help but think there could have been more depth to their characters had they been given more of an opportunity to explore them. Charmaine Bingwa also deserves mention for her dignified portrayal of Peter’s wife, Dodienne, whose careful actions and peaceful wisdom speak volumes of her personal strength.

Bill Collage’s screenplay and Fuqua’s taut direction keep the action moving at a breakneck pace as Peter tries desperately to elude Fassel’s pursuit, providing plenty of suspenseful action. However, the film begins by establishing the horrific treatment of Peter and his family before transitioning somewhat unexpectedly to an action-packed account of Peter’s flight from Fassel. The storyline establishing Peter’s motivations continues to be explored with flashbacks and occasional scenes of his family interspersed during the chase, but seems tacked-on and doesn’t fully illuminate this critical aspect of the story.

The spacious music score composed by Marcelo Zarvos and presented in Dolby Atmos provides a brooding and atmospheric aural underpinning that is wonderfully open and involving. Ominous, resonant tones of strings inspired by Haitian and African rhythms are enhanced by equally menacing horns and percussion that emanate from deep within the wide front soundstage. The sounds of construction at the work camp and the echoing of far-off noises in the swamp are just as expansive as the music. While most of the film relies on the excellent orchestral score and subtle Foley effects, the final battle scene provides plenty of explosions, gunfire, and screams of soldiers that are mixed in an extremely enveloping manner, although the bass is not exceedingly deep, even from the retort of the massive Confederate cannons.

The highly stylized visuals are the result of Fuqua’s collaboration with Academy Award-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson. The Dolby Vision color grade is often nearly devoid of color and appears almost black and white in some instances. The lush backgrounds of the swamps are barely tinged with the faintest greens and browns, taking on a desolate look that mirrors the harshness of the film’s subject. While the mostly colorless imagery is quite barren, its stark minimalism is hauntingly beautiful. The picture remains sharp throughout, except for some occasional breakup and aliasing during scenes where the camera pans quickly through the swamp and there is a lot of foliage visible in the foreground.

I enjoyed the distinctive visuals and excellent sound design of Emancipation, which were well-served by a high-quality home theater system. Nonetheless, this important and historic story is handled clumsily and even some fine performances and technically proficient production can’t quite overcome the lack of narrative direction.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision color grade is often nearly devoid of color, appearing almost black & white in some instances, but while the mostly colorless imagery is quite barren, its stark minimalism is hauntingly beautiful

SOUND | While most of the film relies on the excellent orchestral score and subtle Foley effects, the final battle scene provides plenty of explosions, gunfire, and screams of soldiers that are mixed in an extremely enveloping manner, although the bass is not exceedingly deep

Review: Pulp Fiction

review | Pulp Fiction

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The Tarantino classic gets a 4K HDR upgrade that stays remarkably true to its elegantly gritty filmic look

by Dennis Burger
December 19, 2022

It’s funny how watching a beloved film with a critical eye rather than through a fan’s rose-tinted glasses will force you to articulate things you’ve always been perfectly happy to leave nebulous. I’ve frankly never given much thought to why Pulp Fiction is one of only three Tarantino films I genuinely adore. I’ve made vague allusions to the off-putting cruelty of Reservoir Dogs and Inglourious Basterds, the meandering self-indulgence of Jackie Brown, the unflinching sadism of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight—in short, I have excuses for why I’m bothered by the films of his that bother me, and I still haven’t entirely made my mind up about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But I’ve never even stopped to seriously consider why Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Death Proof resonate so hard with me.

I think I found a clue in the opening credits during this, what must have been my 50th viewing of Tarantino’s sophomore directorial effort: “Stories by Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary.” You don’t see a lot of ampersands in Tarantino’s opening or closing credits sequences, at least not as pertains to story or script. But it turns out the only films of his that truly work for me are, in some way or another, collaborative in their original conception.

It’s difficult to deny that Pulp Fiction holds a special spot in the filmmaker’s oeuvre, and that Avary’s contributions—primarily the story of boxer Butch Coolidge, played by Bruce Willis—give the narrative a little more heart and humanity than is typical of Tarantino’s work. But it’s also difficult to deny the quotability of nearly every line of dialogue, the effectiveness of the near-constant dark humor, nor the exceptional plotting and pacing, all of which QT deserves credit for.

I’m guessing at the mere mention of the name of the film, many cinephiles of a certain vintage can immediately recall its most salient elements. But Pulp Fiction is one of those rare modern films in which the individual parts and the sum thereof are of relatively equal merit. Its moments may be burned into your memory but how they unfold and entangle and interconnect from one to the next is the bulk of the reason for the enduring power of Pulp Fiction to surprise and delight nearly any time you watch it.

Mind you, that’s true of the film whether you watch it on Laserdisc, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or the new UHD/HDR release from, of all studios, Paramount, a fact that unnerved me when I realized it. The studio doesn’t have the most consistent track record when it comes to 4K remasters so there’s the obvious question of whether you’re going to end up with a Godfather or a Godfather Part II.

Thankfully, it’s the latter. Granted, the elements of Pulp Fiction are newer and have been much better preserved, but it looks like aside from recompositing some titles, the only thing the restorers and graders behind this new release did was scan the negative, set the peak brightness level at something resembling the intensity of projected film, and pat themselves on the back for a job not done.

Which is, exactly how it ought to be. Pulp Fiction in 4K positively brims with organic but exceedingly fine grain and the sort of gorgeous halation you get with 35mm film. The golden hues of its Eastman stock haven’t been diddled with a bit, most of the expanded dynamic range comes from the lower end of the value scale, and the color palette just has a weensy bit more room to breathe without bumping into the limits of the smaller gamut of older home video formats.

In short, this release just looks like film, and although Kaleidescape’s release is limited to HDR10, I’m not seeing anything here that would benefit from the dynamic metadata of the Dolby Vision version released on UHD Blu-ray and iTunes. What I am seeing is a wealth of textures and details that legitimately add to the experience of watching the film. It’s not razor-sharp and shouldn’t be—thank goodness no one saw fit to scrub and sharpen the film once it was scanned, and even the minor amount of edge enhancement found on the most recent Blu-ray seems to be missing—but it’s now easier to see little elements that have been obscured by previous home video releases. The tiny details to be found in Jack Rabbit Slim’s now read so clearly that Vince’s line, “It’s like a wax museum with a pulse,” lands so much harder because it feels so much truer. And it’s hard not to miss the grime on the walls of Butch’s grimy motel room now, nor the title of Modesty Blaise the first time we see Vince clutching it.

The enhanced and unfettered detail of this new scan also more clearly reveals the character of the medium at times. As Butch and Esmeralda Villalobos speed away from his final fight in the latter’s cab, you can see cinematographer Andrzej Sekula struggling to pull focus while trying to capture fast-moving action at night with an anamorphic lens. Later, you can more clearly see the artifacts of the split diopter as Butch runs around a corner to hide from a distant Marsellus Wallace and both have to remain in focus.

Far from distracting from the experience, though, these little quirks serve as a technical indicator of something Tarantino is constantly reminding us of with narrative and other cinematic techniques: There’s a reason this film wasn’t called Based on a True Story. This isn’t how real life works. This is pastiche. This is homage. And there’s something curious about the fact that a pristine scan of the original elements, which makes the imagery more three-dimensional and beautifully resolved than ever before, legitimately serves to subtly enhance and underscore the inherent and intentional tawdry artifice of it all.

The only thing I would change about the presentation is the audio. And no, I don’t want a new Dolby Atmos remix. But I do think Pulp Fiction would benefit from a new nearfield mix specifically for home cinema.

Kaleidescape’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track sounds identical to the one found on all of the film’s sundry Blu-ray releases, and it’s pretty great overall. It’s wonderfully dynamic and, due to QT’s disdain for ADR, all of the dialogue has a natural “in the room” quality I dig quite a bit. You’ll push your center speaker to its limits, and if your sound system is up to snuff, you’ll even notice some little character flaws like the saturation-verging-on-clipping of Sam Jackson’s voice as he forcefully yells his mangled Biblical mantra at the soon-to-be-ex-Brett.

The only problem with the sound is that the surround channels are mixed for a room that’s 50 feet wide or more, not 25 feet or less. They’re a bit too high in the mix and occasionally impose on not only dialogue but also the sense of scale. It’s not a major deal—it’s 95% of the way there as is. But a good nearfield re-recording mixer could have transformed this release from near-perfect to transcendental.

One other nit to pick is that Paramount is being precious with its bonus features again. The Kaleidescape release lacks all of the bonus goodies found on the new UHD Blu-ray, which to be fair were pulled from the original special edition DVD and a couple of subsequent Blu-ray releases. You can find most of them on YouTube, but it would be nice to have the deleted scenes and especially the retrospective feature Not the Usual Mindless Boring Getting to Know You Chit Chat collected with the film itself.

So if you own an older copy of the film that includes those supplements, perhaps hang onto it. But one way or another, if you’re a fan of Pulp Fiction, you need to see this new scan, and Kaleidescape’s download is an excellent way of acquiring it.

PICTURE | Pulp Fiction in 4K positively brims with organic but exceedingly fine grain and the sort of gorgeous halation you get with 35mm film. It also offers a wealth of textures and details that legitimately add to the experience of watching the film.

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is pretty great overall but the surround channels are mixed for a room that’s 50 feet wide or more, not 25 feet or less

Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

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Del Toro comes up with a compelling reimagining that exists in a universe miles apart from Disney’s animated and live-action takes on the children’s story

by Dennis Burger
December 12, 2022

It’s hard to think of two recent films so diametrically opposed as Guillermo del Toro’s new stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio and the soulless Disney+ “live action” remake of the 1940 animated classic. The latter constantly begs you to marvel at its technological prowess, although it’s hard to imagine anyone involved was proud of any other aspect of this pandering, phone-it-in cash-grab of a production. Del Toro’s Pinocchio, on the other hand—a re-imagining of the 1883 novel that has nothing to do with Disney’s take on the property—is a weird and wonderful, utterly soulful fantasy adventure and allegory that almost seems to have been made with no other audience in mind than del Toro himself.

Adapted by del Toro, along with co-writer Matthew Robbins and co-screenwriter Patrick McHale, the story unsurprisingly takes on shades of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but perhaps the biggest change to the source material is that the filmmakers have transposed the action to 1930s Fascist Italy for reasons that become clearer as the narrative progresses and the themes start to congeal.

If you’re looking for a faithful adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s serialized novel, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for light children’s entertainment, it’s not that, either. In a sense, it reads more like a spiritual sequel to Pan’s Labyrinth. That isn’t to say it isn’t child-friendly but rather that the children most likely to be drawn in by it are the ones who stay up late watching classic Universal monster movies under the blankets and always identified more with the monsters, or grownups who never let that strange child within them grow up completely. As I said, del Toro made this movie for him, not for you, and as the two hours of fantastical animation unfold on the screen, you can practically feel the passion he’s poured into this project for the past 14 or 15 years.

Granted, that does occasionally lead to a bit of indulgence. Ten or 15 minutes probably could have been cut from the script in the storyboarding stage to tighten things up, especially in the second act. And a couple of the songs do feel like padding. But any such grievances are long forgotten by the film’s end, when del Toro and his colleagues—including co-director Mark Gustafson—bring things to such a satisfying narrative, emotional, and thematic conclusion that you’ll likely find yourself grinning through sobs and tears.

No doubt, Netflix’ presentation helps sell the constructed reality. It does take the eyes and brain a scene or two to adjust to the fact that the film wasn’t animated on the ones, and some of the camerawork is so good as to be distracting—one simply doesn’t take that for granted in a stop-motion film—but by the time the somewhat Up-esque prologue has finished playing out, you’ll have bought into it all completely. Dolby Vision is used here not to dazzle you or stress-test your display but rather to replicate the quality of natural light, especially during golden-hour shots or in interiors punctuated by stray beams from the sun or the cool glow of the moon.

The film is so packed with texture that you’d expect there to be some aliasing or moiré here and there even with the 4K resolution, but you couldn’t ask for better in terms of detail or clarity. That’s especially important when it comes to appreciating the film’s incredible sets as well as some of the character design, which do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of unspoken storytelling—such as the differences in the quality of sculpting as you move from the left side of Pinocchio’s carved and chiseled pine head, which becomes sloppier and more unfinished as the drunken Geppetto slid closer to involuntary unconsciousness while working on him.

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack also does a magnificent job of enhancing immersion without devolving into spectacle, even during the most intense action set-pieces. There’s a lot of exceptionally delicate panning here, as voices move across the front soundstage instead of being locked into the center. If your sound system is up to snuff and properly calibrated, you might not even notice, but it goes a long way toward selling the illusion that this story is unfolding in a legitimately three-dimensional world.

What you will notice, though, is how the sound mixers use the surround soundfield to not only add ambiance but also draw a meaningful distinction between the material and the immaterial, especially with the voice of The Wood Sprite and her sister Death, both voiced by Tilda Swinton.

As the credits rolled and my wife and I tried to discreetly remove the tears from our cheeks and the snot from our noses, I’ll admit that for a brief moment I lamented that this was a Netflix production. It’s deserving of some curated bonus features and perhaps even an audio commentary. And while it doesn’t get the latter, it is accompanied by a half-hour making-of featurette called Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: Handcarved Cinema that starts, unfortunately, as the sort of puff-piece promotional EPK that’s far too common in the world of behind-the-scenes material, packed to the gills with superlatives and platitudes and nothing of substance. As the featurette unfolds, though, we get some deep insight into not only the long journey of adapting the story and designing the film but also the animation process itself. It’s pure gold for fans of stop-motion animation and not to be missed.

PICTURE | You couldn’t ask for better detail or clarity from the 4K resolution, and Dolby Vision is used not to dazzle you or stress-test your display but rather to replicate the quality of natural light

SOUND | The Atmos soundtrack does a magnificent job of enhancing immersion without devolving into spectacle, even during the most intense action set-pieces

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