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Review: Ambulance

review | Ambulance

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Nobody should be surprised this Michael Bay actioner is just one long chase scene, nor that it makes for great demo fodder

by John Sciacca
May 4, 2022

When a movie poster has “A MICHAEL BAY Film” emblazoned above the tile, you have a pretty good idea what to expect. The guy behind five Transformers films, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, both Bad Boys, The Rock and so many more isn’t exactly known for subtlety. Michael Bay likes to watch things explode. And if you appreciate that, Ambulance delivers a pretty exciting, non-stop action ride.

There’s something about the cover art that reminds me of the TV series Miami Vice. Maybe it’s the cool chrome color palette, or the framing of the shot, or maybe there’s no connection at all. In fact, when I first saw the trailer, I actually thought this was from director Michael Mann, who directed the film version of Miami Vice as well as another of my favorite heist dramas, Heat.

They set off the LA in “Ambulance” to let you know that’s where the film is set. But this is actually a remake of the 2005 Danish film Ambulancen, written and directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen, which has a very similar plot, though tweaked for modern technology and the greatly increased budget a Bay film demands.

If you’ve seen Heat—and if you haven’t, please do so immediately!—then Ambulance is a bit like Breedan (Dennis Haysbert) being pulled in for that last job, but instead of getting killed almost immediately, he gets stuck with totally crazy Waingro (Kevin Gage) as they shoot from the hip (quite literally sometimes) and try to escape and get away with the big score.

For a film with a 136-minute run time, Bay doesn’t spend much time on backstory, and once the story starts moving, it moves fast and doesn’t stop. Instead, he has characters share bits of information along the way, letting us stitch the important bits together before jumping straight into the action. We learn Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is back from the war in the Middle East and his wife needs an experimental surgery that is going to cost a bundle. He asks his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for a loan, but Danny is about to execute a major bank heist and could use Will on his crew. Danny’s father also has a history of violent heists mixed with crazy.

When the heist goes wrong, a cop is shot. An ambulance is dispatched to work on the officer, and Will and Danny see this as their getaway. They steal the ambulance with EMT Cam (Eiza Gonzalez)—who has a reputation for being able to keep any patient alive long enough to make it to the hospital—and bleeding-out Officer Zach (Jackson White) on board.

With $16 million in stolen loot in the ambulance, what seems like the entirety of the LAPD vehicle and air division converge on the vehicle in a chase through the streets of LA as Danny tries to think his way out of things.

Danny knows if the ambulance is stopped—or if the cop on board dies—they’re done, so the movie has a bit of a Speed–like quality, where things are constantly on the move and there is this back-and-forth move/countermove between the police trying to stop the moving vehicle and Danny and Will figuring their way out.

If you start asking questions like, “Why didn’t they just shoot the engine block with that Barrett 50-cal?” or “Why didn’t they shoot out the tires or lay down a tack strip?” then you’re thinking too much. Instead, sit back and enjoy the carefully orchestrated vehicle mayhem and shootout main course that Bay has set for you. As one character astutely observes, “It’s a very expensive car chase right now.”

As much action as Bay packs in, Ambulance starts to feel long and a bit repetitive. Even though they try to throw in some unique uses of tech, some cool helicopter flying, some fancy driving, and lots of crazy camera angles, zooms, pans, and drone camera shots, after a while you just become a bit shellshocked and numb to what is essentially just a long chase sequence. Also, that they shoehorned in a completely pointless scene to show that FBI Agent Clark (Keir O’Donnell) is gay just feels like an egregious case of “box checking.”

Shot on Red at 6K and 8K, the home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate, and it clearly looks it. Images are super clean, tack-sharp, and highly detailed. Similar to the cover art, the opening scenes have a stylized chrome blue-grey look almost like some kind of Instagram filter has been applied. The clarity and resolution are readily visible in closeups that show the finest details and textures in clothing, stone walls, actors’ faces, or the tight mesh-knit on a ball cap. In one scene where Cam leans over and her long hair dangles in the sunlight, individual strands are sharp and visible.

With a lot of the filming taking place in the back of the ambulance or inside darkened environments like warehouses or garages, the HDR grade gives the film nice deep blacks and lifelike shadow detail, with black levels that are truly black and noise-free. There are also some really vibrant and saturated reds, as well as the near-constant bright flashing police lights, or the perpetual golden-hour LA skies.

The big star is Ambulance’s soundtrack, which is presented in a fantastically immersive Dolby TrueHD Atmos format via the Kaleidescape download. While there are tons of the gee-whiz overhead and surround effects, what I really noticed was the terrific audio tracking as sounds moved around, off screen, or overhead. If the camera moves and an object—say, a cutting tool in a garage—travels up into the corner of the screen, the audio clearly follows it there. Traffic that drives by travels well left or right of the screen and passes away, or clearly travels from the front of the room into the back; a baby crying sounds like it’s off in another room; a garage door slides up to the top of the room and then rolls back overhead.

Then there are all the little ambient sounds and atmospherics like rattles of equipment and jingling sounds inside the ambulance that fill practically every scene, or helicopters passing by and zooming overhead. The Ambulance mix is definitely one that will be enhanced by listening on larger Atmos audio systems, as sounds will more smoothly pan and move around the room.

There are a couple of big shootouts, and gunfire is loud and dynamic, with weapons having clearly different and varied sound based on type, whether pistol, rifle, or shotgun. The gun battles have people shooting and bullets striking all around the room, and the soundtrack delivers deep and fundamental low-bass energy. The soundtrack also boasts what must be the loudest and most immersive presentation of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” ever featured anywhere.

If there’s any downfall to the audio, it’s that some dialogue can be a bit difficult to understand or hear, either drowned out by some of the bombast or just recorded too low on set.

Ultimately, Ambulance is a forgettable movie, and certainly not even ranking amongst Bay’s “best” work. However, it’s action-packed, fast-paced, and just interesting enough to hold your attention. The big treat here is the Atmos soundtrack, which delivers the goods on all counts, and makes for a lot of fun in a well-appointed home theater.

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

PICTURE | Images are super clean, tack-sharp, and highly detailed, and the HDR grade provides nice deep blacks and lifelike shadow detail, with black levels that are truly black and noise-free

SOUND | The big star here is the fantastically immersive Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack, which features terrific audio tracking as sounds move around, off screen, or overhead

Review: Singin’ in the Rain

review | Singin’ in the Rain

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This most classic of classic musicals bucks the recent trend and actually proves to be well served by its 4K incarnation

by Michael Gaughn
May 3, 2022

I’m a sucker for films about process. It’s one of the reasons why most fantasy films do nothing for me—when you’re in a universe where anything can happen and where credible cause and effect no longer pertains, yes, everything is possible but nothing is interesting. Showing process makes characters meaningful within a fictional world—it gives them a reason to be. The more convincing the process is, the more convincing the world portrayed becomes, and the more compelling the characters.

And process isn’t genre specific. It can range from heist films like The Asphalt Jungle to a financial-meltdown flick like The Big Short to engineering the end of the world in Dr. Strangelove. And then there’s the whole subgenre of show-biz process. A sitcom like The Dick Van Dyke Show still holds up because its backstage world is self-consistent; the characters’ wisecracks ring true because they’re comedy writers.

Most musicals bore me because they tend to veer too much toward fantasy, leaving credibility behind. But there’s a sub-subgenre of show-biz-process musicals that tend to be more substantial than the rest, that give you something to chew on besides production numbers. And I don’t think it’s pure coincidence that the two best musicals ever—The Band Wagon and Singin’ in the Rain—both spring from the process mold.

I have to give the edge to The Band Wagon because basing it in Broadway culture, as opposed to Singin’ in the Rain’s more superficial world of Hollywood, lends it a more satisfying depth. Also, the dilemma of Fred Astaire’s character—cast back into a theatrical milieu that’s completely changed around him, trying to not just hold his own but transcend it—is more compelling than Gene Kelly’s need for a little bit of emotional propping up.

All of that said, Singin’ in the Rain still plays as well now as it did when it was released in 1952. And, yes, much of that has to do with the production numbers, which were the primary draw then and remain so now. But its longevity, and its energy, and its continued relevance owe just as much to its faithful, if arch, portrayal of Hollywood during its disorienting 1920s transition to sound. And for that we can thank the brilliant, slyly witty writing team responsible for so much other meaningful fluff, Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who also penned The Band Wagon, by the way).

One more thing before I get to the transfer: Process films lend themselves particularly well to satire (again, Strangelove), and Comden and Green, with their spot-on portrayals of show-biz worlds, were always able to lace their confections with a little dollop of well-placed acid—which also has a lot to do with their efforts’ relevance and longevity.

As for this presentation: Singin’ in the Rain is a legitimate classic (it’s kind of surprising how many illegitimate classics there are out there—products more of the zeitgeist and misplaced affection than of talent and craft), and truly classic films haven’t been faring too well lately in 4K HDR (witness Citizen Kane and The Godfather). So I was a little trepidatious about approaching this release, especially since the original negative isn’t around anymore to work from, which can be a warning of a bumpy ride ahead.

But, while it might not reach reference-level quality, Singin’ in the Rain is a pleasure to watch in 4K HDR. The experience is, for the most part, visually consistent, and the inconsistencies that do exist aren’t likely—with one particularly egregious exception—to pull you out of the film. The colors are sumptuous and vivid without lapsing into garish (which has been a problem with earlier home video releases of this film). In fact, the HDR grading lends them just enough subtlety to make the more visually heightened moments (like the deliberately gaudy montage of first stabs at musicals that leads up to “Beautiful Girl”) look appropriately exaggerated but never cartoony.

The truly problematic spots seemed to be confined mainly to moments on either side of optical dissolves. For instance, the color palette collapses completely at the end of “Moses Supposes,” making Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor look like they’re suffering from some kind of vitamin deficiency. The particularly egregious moment mentioned above falls in the middle of the big “Broadway Melody” number as Kelly fantasizes about Cyd Charisse after she walks into a casino. There’s a long (almost one-minute) take after the dissolve as Kelly begins to dance with her, and the resolution is so jarringly low that it induced a DVD flashback. This is likely a product of the elements they had to work with, but the shot goes on for so long that you just can’t brush it off.

One last thing to gnaw on about the image transfer: I know this has become a critical saw, but HDR makes some of the shots stunning—for instance, all of the lighted signage in “Broadway Melody” and the medium shots of Jean Hagen and Debbie Reynolds as they stand on either side of the curtain at the film’s finale. This comes mainly from having plenty of highlights to accentuate within the shots. Here’s my query: Doesn’t the ability to do this throw off the visual balance of the film? What about all the other footage (the bulk of the movie) that doesn’t lend itself to creating a 3D-ish effect? I loved seeing the shots mentioned above looking so vivid, but it seems to me more to the point to stay true to the look the filmmakers intended. Something tells me we’ll look back at this first round of releases of old films in 4K HDR and find a lot of it gimmicky.

As for the audio: It’s surprisingly dynamic and palatable. But, as much as I know it pains some people to hear this, I have to say it again: This film was originally mixed in mono so it should be listened to in mono, no matter how deep your addiction to all those other speakers in your room. We can’t claim to care about the filmmakers’ intent, and support a booming market of director’s cuts, etc., and then just pick and choose which aspects of that we’re actually going to honor, based on our proclivities. (Sadly, as with The Godfather, the original mono isn’t an option with the 4K HDR version. You have to descend all the way to the lowly DVD-quality download to have that experience.)

But to boil all of this down to its essence: Singin’ in the Rain is well worth seeking out in 4K HDR because it still holds its own as both a musical and a classic film and provides a visual and aural treat despite a few unavoidable hiccups along the way.

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 | It might not reach reference-level quality, but Singin’ in the Rain is a pleasure to watch in 4K HDR. The inconsistencies that do exist are, with one exception, unlikely to pull you out of the film.

SOUND | The audio is surprisingly dynamic and palatable but, unfortunately—and inexcusably—there’s no option here for listening to the original mono mix

Second Thoughts: Licorice Pizza

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The differences between the original 1080p and new 4K HDR release are subtle but cumulatively add up to a far richer experience

by Dennis Burger
April 30, 2022

What is the opposite of Death by a Thousand Tiny Cuts? It’s not a rhetorical question. I need to find a pithy idiom that fits such a description before I can fully wrap my brain around the differences between the 1080p release of Licorice Pizza and the new 4K HDR release that followed a month later on Kaleidescape (although not on disc—the 4K version is exclusive to the digital domain, it seems).

In my original review, I said, “Of all the films I’ve seen in the past year, if any of them begs to have been released in UHD/HDR,” it’s this one. I also said you could “at times see the image struggling against” the limited resolution and squidged color palette of last generation’s home video standards. I complained of flesh tones that lacked nuance, highlights that were clipped, and detail that was lost in the shadows.

Now that my Kaleidescape download has been upgraded to 4K HDR, though, and I’ve had the opportunity to compare the full-resolution, full-gamut release to the scaled-down Blu-ray equivalent, I have to say I have a newfound appreciation for whoever oversaw the film’s high-definition down-sampling. The differences between the two are subtler than I might have expected in isolation but they add up to an experience that is cumulatively borderline transformative.

There are, it must be said, a handful of scenes in which the 4K resolution and HDR grading make all the difference in the world. The early scene in which Gary (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother sit in a brightly lit diner discussing his upcoming trip to New York stands out. In 1080p, without the benefit of HDR, the light pouring through the windows is blown out, obliterating a lot of the detail in the various goings-on outside the diner.

There’s also a scene late in the film in which Alana (Alana Haim) sits on a curb in darkness watching Gary and his friends horse-play around a broken-down delivery truck. In 4K, the shots of Alana have been brought way down in overall brightness to properly reflect the time of day, but given the expanded dynamic range, we can still see details in the shadows that would have been lost had the 1080p transfer been brought down to this same overall level of darkness.

Aside from such obvious standouts, comparing scenes between versions is a meditation on subtleties. Skin tones are a little less patchy and a little more balanced. Textures pop just a bit more. There’s significantly more consistency in the luminance from scene to scene. But frankly, the differences are often so finespun that less-attentive viewers might miss them altogether.

I’m here to argue that those differences still matter. Perhaps you could claim that the limited color gamut and resolution of 1080p was able to capture, say, 90 percent of the meaningful chroma and luminance information locked in the original film negative. (Remember, there was no digital intermediate for this one.) But in the moment, even if you’re not consciously aware of it, your eye and your brain register those limitations—those distractions—without really putting in context how close to the target they got.

So, yeah. Let’s call it “Revitalization by a thousand tiny boo-boo kisses.” By the time those tiny improvements are summed, you’re left with a film that’s much less distracting to watch, whose remaining imperfections were baked in the moment light passed through the lens and exposed a frame of 35mm film. Frankly, I don’t think your average videophile would fully appreciate the benefit. But for cinephiles, these differences matter. Watching the film in 4K HDR—once I got through with the academic exercise of quantifying the improvements—I found I was able to give myself over to Licorice Pizza fully in a way I don’t think would have ever been possible in 1080p. And I legitimately enjoyed it more this time around.

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.

original review

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Review: Uncharted

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Based on—and feeling a lot like—a video game, this movie features plenty of big action scenes but not a lot of character development

by John Sciacca
May 1, 2022

At CES this year, Sony brought Tom Holland—best known for playing Peter Parker in the recent Spider-Man MCU series—to its press event to discuss his upcoming role as treasure hunter Nathan Drake. Holland shared that he started playing the Uncharted game series in his trailer in between shoots on the Spider-Man: Homecoming movie. As a Sony production, Holland said PlayStations and Sony displays were readily available for crew entertainment during downtime. Before debuting the film’s major aerial action sequence, Holland also expressed that Uncharted was the most physically demanding shoot he’d ever been involved with and featured the hardest action sequences.

The Uncharted game series launched in 2007 on PlayStation 3 with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Since then, there have been several sequels and expansions to the series, including the latest, Legacy of Thieves Collection, for the PlayStation 5 console. While I think I might have played some of the first game, I honestly can’t remember.

Would I have viewed the film differently if I’d been a big fan of the gaming series? Maybe; maybe not. Loving Mortal Kombat only seems to open me to being disappointed in the film versions. Regardless, my take on this movie comes without any of the baggage—good or bad—associated with the game franchise, and fortunately you don’t need any knowledge of the game to follow the story (though there is one Easter egg where Nolan North, who voices the Nathan Drake character in the games, has a cameo and engages with Holland on a beach.)

While working as a bartender in New York, Nathan is approached by seasoned treasure hunter Sully (Mark Wahlberg) to recover the massive treasure, estimated to be worth billions, from the lost Magellan expedition. Sully knew Nathan’s long-lost brother Sam, and thinks he might have some clue about the missing treasure.

In the vein of The Da Vinci Code, Tomb Raider, and National Treasure, Uncharted is a buddy story about unlocking clues that lead to exotic locations, to find the next clue, that all ultimately leads to the treasure, all while staying just ahead of a group of bad guys also intent on seeking the loot. And if you’ve watched the trailers, you’ve essentially seen the big pieces of the film.

Like a video game, Uncharted is essentially “cut scenes” that move the story along until you get to the next big action moment, and fortunately these big moments are pretty epic, entertaining, and exciting, and seem a way of showcasing Holland as a verifiable action star who demonstrates far more physicality and Parkour-style action here than when wearing the Spidey mask. Again, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll be familiar with the airplane “escape,” the hanging lights at the auction house, and the flying ships. They try to create some relationships between the characters—especially Nathan and Sully, and also frenemy Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali)—but they really aren’t that interesting, and while the jokes and quips might work in video-game dialogue, they mostly fall short here.

Sony has repeatedly proven it knows how to deliver good-looking 4K HDR video, and fortunately Uncharted delivers on this tradition. Shot on Arri at 3.4K, there’s no information about the resolution of the digital intermediate, but images are consistently clean and sharp. While not resolving the finest details of some modern transfers, there is still plenty to appreciate in closeups, such as the rough texture of stone and rock walls, the fine stitching in a jeans jacket, or the detail in the bars of gold. Exterior scenes in Spain have beautiful white buildings with sharp, well-defined edges and terracotta roof tiles in tight, clear rows.

The HDR grade delivers both bright, punchy highlights and very natural and deep shadows during low-light scenes, producing very lifelike images. Long establishing night shots of cities always look great in 4K HDR, and New York is on full and gorgeous display here. Exteriors of the bar where Nathan works also have loads of lights at different levels, and a bar backlit through rows of liquor bottles also looks great. One scene in a cathedral is bathed in the warm and golden glow of candlelight, while another in a club is lit by garish red-orange lighting, and there are bright specular highlights of light shining off gleaming gold.

Another scene has characters in a really dark area where Nathan lights a torch that has a bright flame. This is a bitrate torture test that can be a problem for streaming, but here it delivers a really clean image that doesn’t exhibit any banding or blocking from the varying shades of light and dark, demonstrating the strength and quality of the Kaleidescape transfer.

You’d expect an action film like Uncharted to have a fun and immersive audio mix, and the Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack delivers. There are ambient street sounds in New York like honking, cars driving, and sirens, and the score is mixed up into the height channels to create a more expansive mix. There are also the sounds of wind whipping and rushing by during the big plane scene (along with screams as people fly off and out into the corners of your room), the groaning and creaking of the old wooden ships, and the sounds of big twin-rotored helicopters lumbering and flying overhead. During one “trap,” characters are submerged in water, and your room is flooded with the sounds of rising water and the bubbling up overhead. During another there are the clear sounds of a bad guy’s boots stomping around on the ceiling overhead. Bass is also solid, deep, and weighty, delivering a tactile experience you’ll feel as much as hear.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer, who also helmed the hilarious and creative take on zombie films with Zombieland, I hoped for a bit more originality here, or maybe something that pushed the boundaries of the typical game-franchise crossover. Uncharted isn’t a bad film; it just isn’t especially good either and offers little new or of substance. It’s like a meal at a fast-food restaurant—it might sate your hunger but doesn’t leave you satisfied.

About halfway into watching this movie, my daughter, Lauryn, turned to my wife and I and said, “Well, it was based on a video game . . .” And that pretty much sums up Uncharted and where you should set your expectations going in. If you’re so inclined, there are two mid-credits scenes that certainly point the way toward more Uncharted adventures, so maybe our heroes will have a chance to find more stable footing going forward.

PICTURE | While not resolving the finest details of some modern transfers, there’s still plenty to appreciate in closeups, and the HDR grade delivers both bright, punchy highlights and natural and deep shadows during low-light scenes, producing very lifelike images

SOUND | You expect an action film like this to have a fun and immersive audio mix, and the Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack delivers

Review: Air Force One

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This visually burnished 4K release features a phenomenal new Atmos mix

by John Sciacca
August 10, 2019

Here we are with another classic Sony Pictures Home Entertainment film getting the 20-year-plus 4K HDR makeover—and I’ll admit, I’m a big fan of Air Force One. Sony has given it a full 4K HDR restoration from the original 35mm print, along with retooling the soundtrack for a dynamic new Dolby Atmos mix. While it was released on 4K Blu-ray disc last November, the new 4K HDR version recently arrived at the Kaleidescape Store.

It’s hard to think of another actor who would have been better suited to play President James Marshall than Harrison Ford, and the film largely succeeds because of his likability and believability, essentially being the type of commander-in-chief everyone could get behind. When the film came out in 1997, we were already well familiar with Ford in the role of leading-man action star from such films as the original Star Wars trilogy, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Fugitive, and Blade Runner. Ford had also taken over the mantle of portraying Tom Clancy’s character Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Clancy fans will know that as Ryan’s story arc progresses, he eventually moves up the ranks to become President of the United States, so in some ways you could consider AF1 a not-so-distant relative to the Clancy stories.

Besides his physicality, Ford was the right age to still be believable as someone capable of holding his own in a scuffle, and had the gravitas to pull off the role of commander-in-chief in the non-fight scenes. He is also backed by a strong supporting cast that includes William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Glenn Close, and Gary Oldman as ultra-loyalist Russian baddy, Ivan Korshunov.

The film opens with special forces parachuting into a compound to capture Kazakhstan dictator General Alexander Radek (Jürgen Prochnow) in a nighttime raid, and then cuts to a banquet in Moscow where President Marshall declares the US’s new “zero-tolerance” policy toward terrorism. He and his family (and the presidential entourage) then board Air Force One to return to the States, but during the flight, a group of terrorists loyal to Radek and led by Korshunov take over the plane, killing many of the Secret Service detail aboard. Instead of escaping the plane in a specially designed pod, President Marshall stays aboard trying to use his ex-military skills to save the hostages and retake the plane.

This all happens in roughly the first 20 minutes, leaving a lot of time to build drama and play out the cat-and-mouse hunt aboard the plane as well as the political turmoil back in Washington as the assembled cabinet tries to come to terms with the fact that the President is possibly dead along with having a hijacked AF1 full of high-value passengers quickly flying its way back toward enemy territory.

Video quality is greatly improved throughout, with sharp and defined edges. Closeups especially benefit from the restoration, clearly revealing more details, such as individual strands of hair. Overall the film has a nice layer of cleanness to the print, making this the best AF1 has looked by far.

There was definitely a regrading of the color for this release, which is especially noticeable in the opening scenes. In the Blu-ray version, the sky is a dusky blueish purple, with some shots looking very bright—not a time when you’d do an airborne assault on a compound. In the new HDR version, the sky is much darker, with the action clearly taking place at night, making it more believable.

While they didn’t push the HDR grading too aggressively, it’s used to nice effect overall, resulting in images having greater depth and pop than the Blu-ray version. Many scenes benefit from the added pop of brightness and expanded white level and shadow detail. Notice the detail in the parachute canopy compared to how blown out the white levels are in the Blu-ray version, or the detail in the shadow’s under AF1 and around the MOCKBA sign. You also get far more impact from the displays and sensors in the plane’s communications room, the bright lights around Moscow at night, and the jet’s afterburners. And when a big KC-10 tanker explodes, the flames have bright, vivid red-orange colors.

But a 20-plus-year-old film will never look as sharp and clean as a modern digital image, and there is some noise and excessive grain, especially in dark night scenes like the opening parachute attack. Also, some of the visual effects look truly dated and are almost laughable by current standards—for example, as the staffers escape by parachute and the big tumbling crash at the end.

As nice as the video transfer is, the new Dolby Atmos soundmix is the real gem here. They clearly took every opportunity to have fun with the mix, and the results are phenomenal. Years ago—in 1999, I believe—I attended a CEDIA Expo where many manufacturers were using the airplane takeover scene from AF1 as a demo. That meant I got to experience the same scene on many systems, giving me a real sense of how it sounded. Polk Audio and Cinepro built a system designed to deliver realistic, lifelike audio levels, with every speaker having a minimum of 1,000 watts of power sent to it. I can remember watching that demo, and even though I’d seen it multiple times already, hearing Korshunov rack the slide on his weapon sounded like he was right next to you, and when he fired the first shot, everyone in the room jumped. The dynamics were so insane, you felt like a gun had gone off right next to you.

This new Dolby Atmos mix gets you back to that experience. You can hear the difference right from the beginning as the title score swells over the opening credits with far more space and width to the presentation. The score is also gently mixed into the front height speakers to expand the soundstage. The opening commando raid also reveals that this is going to be a fun mix, with shouts, echoes, and gunshots filling the room along with fairly serious LFE engagement from your subwoofer.

The sound mixer also uses the speakers to put you into different acoustic environments, such as the President’s opening speech in the Moscow banquet hall, which has tons of ambience and reverb to accurately place you in that space, and the subtle ambient sounds aboard AF1.

Probably nothing benefits from the improved audio more than the F-15 fighter jets scrambled to protect/escort AF1, which sound absolutely awesome whenever they’re on screen, with their engine sounds mixed highly and realistically. The jets go ripping through the room, tearing over head and to the front of the room with deep bass you feel in your chest from their afterburners.

Air Force One is just a fun popcorn movie that holds up incredibly well 20 years later, and it makes for a terrific evening in your home theater.

PICTURE | The HDR grading isn’t pushed too aggressively but is used to nice effect overall, resulting in images having greater depth and pop than the Blu-ray version.

SOUND | The new Dolby Atmos mix is the real gem here. Every opportunity was taken to have fun with the mix, with phenomenal results.

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Jan de Bont’s Die-Hard-on-wheels still holds up as a solid actioner after almost 30 years

by John Sciacca
May 5, 2021

There are two movies I can say literally changed my life without any hyperbole. The first was Speed. (The second was Heat, but that story will have to wait for another day, and another review . . .) In 1994, my friend Travis’s dad purchased a modest home theater system from a big-box store. As I recall, it was a JBL package actually comprised of two systems—one called Music that included two speakers and a subwoofer, and one called Movies that included a center channel and rear speakers. Once the system was installed, Travis invited me and another friend, Pierre, over to see a movie. Pierre’s dad happened to own a LaserDisc player and had just purchased Speed on LaserDisc, so that seemed like the perfect actioner for three guys to watch.

While I’d certainly seen the Dolby Surround logo plastered on TV shows at the time touting the new-ish home technology (I remember it being prominently displayed during The Simpsons intro), I had never actually experienced a home surround system of any kind. And even though it was “just” four-channel Dolby Pro-Logic, I was blown away. From the opening moments of the film, hearing the elevator cables snap and spring behind me with sounds spread across the front of the room and explosions that seemed to have real depth, I couldn’t believe you could actually have a movie-like surround experience in your own home. I was enthralled with the movie and couldn’t believe how much the audio elevated it.

I left Travis’s house a total home theater convert, knowing I needed something like that of my own. This set me on a journey down the rabbit hole of researching all the different technologies then available (this was right on the cusp of Dolby Digital—or AC-3, as it was known then—being launched on the home market), that ultimately led me to determine I no longer wanted to continue my career as a golf professional but wanted to become a custom installer and install systems like this for a living. Pretty powerful for a movie that doesn’t even last two hours that I watched heavily letterboxed on a 32-inch tube TV!

As you can imagine, I have a pretty big soft spot in my heart for Speed, so I was thrilled when I saw that 20th Century Fox was giving it a new 4K UltraHD transfer with HDR grading. Was I mildly disappointed that they chose not to do a new Dolby Atmos immersive audio mix for the movie, rather than stick with the same 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio that was used on the original Blu-ray? Sure. But I was really impressed with how dynamic and aggressive this mix was, especially when run through a modern theater processor utilizing an upmixer like Dolby Surround or DTS-Neural.

Any time you revisit a beloved film years later, it’s always a bit of a concern that things won’t hold up. Will the effects be dated and unbelievable? Will dialogue be cheesy? Will plot points that were credible 20-plus years ago now have gaping holes in them? Happily, Speed still totally holds up, being just as entertaining and engaging now as ever.

At the time, Keanu Reeves’ career was certainly on the rise, following major roles in Bill & Ted’s, Point Break, and Dracula. But he wasn’t the action hero we know today from the Matrix and John Wick films, and his role as dauntless SWAT officer Jack Traven definitely had audiences looking at him in a new light that didn’t include any surfer-dude lingo. Even less known was Sandra Bullock, and it’s safe to say her role as sudden hero Annie in Speed turbocharged her career. (Though she does seem remarkably bubbly and cute for someone thrust into the situation of driving a bus to keep people alive that could be blown up at literally any second . . .) The film is also anchored by solid performances from Dennis Hopper as baddie Howard Payne, Joe Morton as police Captain McMahon, and Jeff Daniels as Keanu’s partner, Harry. This is also the directorial debut of Jan de Bont, though he had cut his chops as cinematographer on action films like Die Hard, Black Rain, The Hunt for Red October, and Lethal Weapon 3, where he developed an eye for pacing and framing.

While it has been called Die Hard-on-a-bus due to its near relentless action, Traven having to overcome one formidable hurdle after another, and Payne always anticipating one step ahead (and, of course, de Bont’s association with Die Hard), the film is different in that it takes its time to get to know the characters around the action, making you more involved in the story. It also jumps straight into the story and action, with none of the lengthy build-up found in Die Hard.

After officer Traven and his partner Harry foil a bomber’s attempt at ransoming hostages trapped in an elevator, Payne detonates a bomb on a city bus to get Traven’s attention. He then informs Traven that he has planted another bomb on a different bus that will explode if the bus slows below 50 MPH—or if anyone attempts to leave the bus. Traven must find a way to keep the bus’s speed above 50 MPH in LA traffic until Payne can work out his ransom demands of $3.7 million from the city, all while Harry attempts to uncover and track down the bomber.

Originally filmed in 35mm, this transfer is taken from a new 4K digital intermediate. While there is a bit of grain visible in some of the outdoor sky scenes or bright lights, it was never objectionable. Images are mostly clean and detailed, retaining a film-like look without having detail scrubbed away or looking soft. I did notice that some shots—such as early scenes inside the elevator car—have some focus or softness issues, but this is likely due to the original production.

While you can’t expect the tack-sharp look of a modern digital production, what you do notice is the clarity and sharpness throughout, especially during closeups. There are scenes that cut between Payne watching TV broadcasts and closeups of him, and the difference in resolution and detail is startling. Later scenes where they are on the bus at the airport look especially terrific. Beyond revealing all of the lines, wrinkles, and whiskers in actors’ faces, you see detail like the winding in the strands of the elevator cabling, the sheen and texture of metal, and the fabric detail. One early scene of Harry is so sharp, you can clearly make out the different texture in the fake sweat used on his face. Longer shots—such as aerial shots when the camera pulls way back to reveal the bus amidst freeway traffic—also don’t have the overall sharp focus of modern cameras, but still look far better than any of the prior releases.

The wider color gamut helps things like explosions to really pop with bright red-orange fireballs. We also get some vivid color from red traffic safety cones, orange-white road signs, and yellow painting in the subway. Black levels are sufficiently deep and clean, with a couple of scenes showing police uniforms that actually appeared a bit too dark, not revealing any detail. Bright lighting like fluorescents in the elevator shaft and in the subway have a lot of pop. Overall, color and images look very natural.

While Speed didn’t receive a new sound mix, it is surprisingly effective and aggressive, especially when played through a modern AV processor. The opening scene that captured my attention on first viewing all those years ago is still audibly dynamic, now with the twang and tension of elevator cables happening overhead as well as behind, giving much greater sense of height to the space. The sound designers really leaned into every opportunity to create an exciting mix, with the sounds of the bus smashing into objects off to the side, water from smashed barrels splashing up overhead, traffic and siren sounds all around, or falling debris from explosions. Helicopters pass around the room and up overhead, and the subway finale has lots of sounds streaking up the sides of the room as well as atmospherics up on the ceiling.

Bass can be deep and dynamic when called on, such as the elevator smashing into the lobby, or a variety of explosions. Dialogue is anchored to the center channel, and remains clear and intelligible throughout.

With most of the film’s visual effects being practical, they definitely still hold up. And, yes, that includes the bus jump and the fact that they did actually blow up that plane. (The subway scene at the finale shows its age a bit, and with the enhanced resolution the model work is more noticeable.) Speed remains a ton of fun to watch, and if you haven’t seen it—or just haven’t watched in a while—this new 4K HDR transfer looks and sounds terrific and makes for a great night at the movies!

PICTURE | Images are mostly clean and detailed, retaining a film-like look without having detail scrubbed away or looking soft

SOUND | While “only” 5.1, the DTS-HD Master audio mix is surprisingly effective and aggressive, especially when played through a modern AV processor

Review: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

review | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

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Darker in tone, theme, and style than the Whedon version, Snyder’s cut makes for a more satisfying take on the film

by John Sciacca
March 21, 2021

While it’s probably possible to talk about Zack Snyder’s Justice League (aka “The Snyder Cut”) released last week on HBO Max on its own without discussing all of the baggage that comes with it, some context seems appropriate to establish why and how this all came to be.

First, we need to travel back to 2017. Snyder had completed the first of two DC films for Warner Bros., Man of Steel (2013) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), which were going to establish and launch the DC Extended Universe, setting it up to stand against the tide of Marvel heroes. As Snyder was deep in the process of completing his followup film, Justice League, tragedy struck his family when 20-year-old daughter, Autumn, took her own life. Understandably, Snyder and his wife Deborah (who was working as producer on the film) felt unable to continue with the demands of production and battling with the studio to get the film completed on his terms, and decided to step away to focus on their family.

Warner, with millions already invested and most of Snyder’s filming complete, brought in Joss Whedon to direct and bring the film across the finish line. Many had complained that Snyder’s vision for the DCEU was too dark (Batman v Superman had a critics’ score of just 29%), and that Whedon’s more light-hearted approach combined with his prior success working on two Avengers films (The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron) was the right tone to help get the DCEU back on track.

Whedon took over the reins, rewriting, reshooting, and editing the film, injecting some humor to lighten the dark tone as well as making major trims to meet Warner’s alleged mandate of hitting a two-hour runtime—frankly an overly ambitious goal in a film planning on introducing three major new characters that would help carry the film and drive the DCEU forward, resurrecting another, setting up a new franchise Big Bad, and then having this newly assembled team save the world.

The result was 2017’s Justice League, a film Snyder says his wife and executive producer Christopher Nolan told him never to see as it “would break his heart,” and one that seemed to disappoint more people than it pleased. (Though it must be pointed out that both its critics’ and audience ratings were higher than Snyder’s BvS.)

Over the years, rumors started circulating that Snyder had all of the footage he shot during his time in the director’s seat and he had assembled a rough cut he’d shown to some friends and insiders, and that this true vision of Justice League was a film that righted all wrongs.

Fans glommed onto this and started a #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement filled with the usual social-media fervor, including toxic and hateful rhetoric and cyberbullying on Twitter and Reddit and at least one death threat. Even members of the Justice League cast and crew started showing support for the release of Snyder’s version, and the movement continued to grow.

A lot of hate was spewed at Whedon, who—at least as far as I can tell—handled it all like a silent professional. Also, it’s important to remember that he never asked for any of this. He wasn’t clamoring to take the film away from Snyder—he was brought in at the 11th hour to save a major project. This is kind of like a pinch hitter being brought in to replace an injured player who is then told by the manager he has to bunt, and then being crucified for not living up to the crowd’s expectations.

At any other time, this likely would have never gone anywhere, but then Warner launched HBO Max. Hungry to gobble up subscribers with unique and desirable content—and with a huge legion of rabid fans out there clamoring for it—Warner gave Snyder the go-ahead—and budget—to finish his version, announcing that it would stream exclusively on the new platform.

Whether you want to compare this to negotiating with terrorists or not, it actually makes a lot of sense from Warner’s perspective. This groundswell of fan support created a ton of social-media buzz and free advertising the studio literally couldn’t have purchased. At a time when much of Hollywood was shut down, it also fast-tracked a marquee title exclusively available on its streaming service, with less than a year passing between the announcement and the film’s availability. While the estimated $70 million required to finish the special effects and do some reshoots might sound like a lot—especially on top of the estimated $300 million Warner had already sunk into the film—it certainly isn’t unheard of for a tentpole title. (You might recall Disney paid $75 million for the worldwide rights to Hamilton, and Apple paid $70 million for Tom Hanks’ film Greyhound.) It also brings a ton of interest back to the DC universe, with multiple new films in the pipeline, and likely considering any additional monies spent on the Snyder Cut as investments in future properties. So . . . that kind of sets the stage for Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

After all the protests and demands and waiting, is this 4-hour-and-2-minute film a better experience that’s worth your time? Yes. I can’t think that too many people would prefer Whedon’s JL to Snyder’s, as the ZSJL is just a far more complete and finished experience. (And currently stands with a critics’ score of 74% and Audience Score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.)

But, it’s also a totally unfair comparison. The ZSJL cut we have here would never have seen an actual release. It isn’t enough of a film to be split into two-parts à la the final Avengers films, and even if it had been allowed to be released at an extended 3 hour run time, that would have required an hour of trimming from what we have here.

Honestly, much of the film and overall experience feels overly indulgent. This isn’t to say it isn’t mostly entertaining, it just feels like . . . a journey. And sometimes a long one at that. Here, Snyder is free to do whatever he wants without the limits of time nor benefit of any outside input of test screenings to see ways to improve (reminding me a bit of George Lucas surrounding himself with “Yes!” men when working on the Star Wars prequel trilogies).

Beyond the runtime, we have Snyder’s decision to release the film in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with a title card reading, “This film is presented in a 4:3 format to preserve the integrity of Zack Snyder’s creative vision” appearing just before it begins. Sure, this might play great—and larger—on a giant commercial IMAX screen. which is Snyder’s ultimate goal, but for the 99.9% of HBO Max viewers who will be watching this on a 16:9 screen (let alone a 2.35:1 screen without the benefit of masking!) this “huge” movie feels smaller.

At least Snyder pulled back from one of his original goals, to release the film in black & white. (He says “the ultimate version is the black-and-white IMAX version of the movie.”) Also, it feels like he was reaching for an edgier R rating for some reason, throwing in three completely arbitrary and out-of-place-feeling F-words to force the MPAA’s hand. Sigh . . .

At times, the movie feels like a kitchen-sink approach, lacking editorial restraint. Scenes like the singing after we see Aquaman entering the water or the ballad played over the lengthy slow-motion of The Flash saving future girlfriend Iris West just feel drawn out.

Even though Snyder has said he wouldn’t use a single frame of footage he hadn’t shot, fundamentally the ZSJL is much the same film as Whedon’s 2017 movie, and watching it doesn’t feel like a wholly new experience so much as a fuller experience—kind of like skimming the Cliffs Notes of War and Peace versus sitting down and pondering every word. The film still has Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Batman (Ben Affleck) looking to locate and unite the same band of heroes: Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Once joined, the newly formed League fights alien-baddy Steppenwolf (a CGI character voiced by Ciaran Hinds), trying to keep him from collecting three otherworldly Mother Boxes he plans to join into a planet-killing unity. After claiming the Boxes from the Amazons and Atlanteans, the League uses the box entrusted to humans centuries before to bring Superman (Henry Cavill) back to help in their fight—a showdown against Steppenwolf and his horde of Parademons in an abandoned nuclear reactor in Russia.

Much of the order of the film is the same and all the big fights and encounters remain. The tone is just darker and heavier throughout, with virtually all of the levity and quips gone. You get a sense of the difference in tone and narrative structure from the very opening. Where JL 2017 opened with (a heavily CGI de-mustached) Superman talking about hope and pondering his favorite thing about Earth after doing some Superman rescue, ZSJL opens with Superman being killed (from the end of BvS), his death screams echoing around the globe and causing the Mother Boxes to awaken, thus announcing their presence to Steppenwolf.

Everything is just way more developed, with characters getting far more fleshed-out backstories, particularly pre-Cyborg Victor Stone. (One thing that isn’t “developed” is Whedon’s random Russian family stuck in a house near the power plant. That foolish little subplot has been excised.) We also get a much deeper look into Aquaman’s Atlantis. Relationships make more sense because they have two more hours to be explored and expanded, and the team coming together feels more authentic because it isn’t just thrown together over a matter of minutes.

Battles are also longer, more intense, and more violent, with action shown from different angles and perspectives. In Whedon’s JL, Steppenwolf seems virtually unstoppable as he just rolls through the heroes claiming the boxes, only to ultimately be saved as Superman appears at the 11th hour to save the day. In the ZSJL we get a sense the band of heroes could defeat Steppenwolf even without Supe, and his conquests are much harder fought along the way. Another big change—though not fundamentally affecting the film, although it would have guided the DCEU going forward had Snyder’s vision prevailed—is that Steppenwolf (who also has a completely different look here) is not the Big Bad but rather just a servant of ultimate baddy, Darkseid (another CGI character, voiced by Ray Porter), who would have been akin to Marvel’s Thanos.

We have to assume that with all the trouble—and expense—Warner has gone to to give Snyder this mulligan, everything we see is exactly the way he wanted, which makes it interesting that Snyder chose to divide the experience into chapters, with six parts followed by an epilogue:

Part 1: Don’t Count on it, Batman
Part 2: The Age of Heroes
Part 3: Beloved Mother, Beloved Son
Part 4: Change Machine
Part 5: All the King’s Men
Part 6: Something Darker
Epilogue: A Father Twice Over

While it makes for convenient stopping points when watching (the end of Part 3 is almost a perfect halfway point) and seems ready-made for episodic streaming, these part breaks within the film don’t seem to serve any other purpose other than introducing what’s coming, and actually take you out of the moment a bit.

Visually, you get used to the 4:3 aspect ratio fairly quickly (especially if you have some screen masking), with the more vertical presentation making our standing heroes appear taller. In practical terms, this took my 115-inch 2.35:1 screen (92-inch 16:9) down to a 75-inch 4:3 experience, which certainly was a bit less cinematic. The HBO Max plus presentation is in 4K HDR, including Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

Shot on 35mm film and taken from a 4K digital intermedia, image quality is clean, though I never felt it was bristling with sharpness and detail. In fact, in between Parts 3 and 4, we watched the first episode of Falcon and Winter Soldier on Disney+, and that looked sharper and more detailed. I was never taken by the micro detail in fabric or razor sharpness in a scene—in fact, some shots were noticeably softer than others. It certainly didn’t have the visual pop of other IMAX films, such as Mission: Impossible—Fallout. Whether this a case of the limitation of HBO Max’s streaming bandwidth or the source material is difficult to say.

As mentioned, this is a dark film in tone, theme, and visual style. Much of it takes place either at night or in some darkened interior. Even the daylight scenes—such as between Clark and Lois Lane (Amy Adams)—outside in a cornfield are shot at near dusk. Blacks are nice, clean, and deep, and we get a lot of visual pop courtesy of HDR. Things like lights streaming in through windows, computer screens, and headlights all have a realistic look. We also get some nice punchy colors in the form of things like Cyborg’s glowing red eye, Amazonian’s golden outfit, and roaring flames. While I wouldn’t call the streaming experience reference-quality video, it certainly goes beyond merely watchable, and makes me look forward to a second viewing in full-resolution video quality from Kaleidescape.

The film has a pretty aggressive Dolby Atmos mix, with lots of atmospherics that appropriately fill the room. Whether it’s sirens, alarms, machinery, echoes, birds, wind, or motor sounds, interior spaces are rich with different audio cues to place you in the space. The battles also make good use of all speakers, throwing action into all corners of the room.

Even viewing at reference volume level, the mix was missing some of the low-end dynamics I would have expected. Again, I can’t say this is due to the mix itself (unlikely), the limitation of streaming via HBO Max (definitely a factor), or the audio output of my Apple 4KTV (also suspect). While bass wasn’t non-existent, it never had the wallop you’d expect from a big-budget superhero film, and it wasn’t until the climax with the Mother Boxes where I felt like bass was reaching a tactile level I could feel in my seat. Again, it makes me look forward to a second viewing on Kaleidescape in a lossless, Dolby TrueHD Atmos audio mix.

Now that it’s finally here, you have to ask whether the film was worthy of the social movement that helped bring it about and make it a reality. I’d say, no. However, I’d also certainly concede it’s the better Justice League film, offering a far richer viewing experience that is definitely more in line in with the style and tone of Snyder’s two DC films that preceded it and giving us a glimpse into where he thought the DCEU would head. And if completing it and bringing it to the public brought Snyder and his family any personal closure from their tragedy, then that’s another positive. Among movie fans—especially the superhero-loving kind—Zack Snyder’s Justice League is going to be a watercooler topic for some time, and it will be interesting to see what—if any—lasting impact it will have on Warner’s plans for the DCEU.

PICTURE | Image quality is clean, though lacking in sharpness and detail

SOUND | The Dolby Atmos mix is pretty aggressive, with lots of atmospherics that appropriately fill the room

Review: The Batman

review | The Batman

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Batman goes decidedly noir is this latest franchise reboot, which makes for a better experience at home than at a theater

by John Sciacca
April 20, 2022

While carrying the mantle “Highest Grossing Film of 2022” might not have the same cachet in a post-pandemic world, The Batman has earned an impressive $751 million at the global box office and received very favorable reviews from both critics and fans alike.

Like many of you, I don’t find myself heading out to the commercial cinema too often any longer. Beyond the expense and the hassle, I just find myself constantly disappointed with the cinematic experience compared to my home theater. (To be fair, I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and our commercial-cinema experience sets a pretty low bar. If I was fortunate enough to live near a Dolby Cinema, I’d go to a lot more showings).

But, The Batman was one of those films that managed to get me off my couch—especially after a good friend went on opening night and then gushed it was the best Batman movie ever. And, yes, that included Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Skeptical, I had to go and see for myself.

Besides rebooting the franchise—and pulling this Batman and Gotham out of the nascent DC Cinematic Universe—The Batman gives us a new man-behind-the-mask in the form of Robert Pattinson. Much like the actor portraying James Bond, fans have developed an affinity for their favorite Batman—I’ll freely admit to being in the Christian Bale camp here—and it seems like fans were a bit polarized by Ben Affleck’s portrayal, though it could have just been that the two Affleck Batman films—Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League*—were more to blame than the actor himself.

Either way, Pattinson, best known for his portrayal of dreamy vampire Edward in the Twilight franchise—wasn’t immediately a choice embraced by fans. For me, playing Batman is the easy part—your face is hidden behind a mask, you growl out your lines, and you just need the physicality to carry the suit and the utility belt full of weapons. It’s the Bruce Wayne bit that’s tough. You have to be believable—and likable!—as the billionaire playboy who somehow finds a way to manage a whole “day job” life against all of Batman’s clandestine nighttime activities. And it was Pattinson’s role as Neil in Nolan’s Tenet that convinced me he could pull off the Wayne role and showed that his Batman was one to take seriously.

This is certainly a different feeling Batman film. And, frankly, as a reboot that’s exactly what it should be. It feels more like a slow-burning noir detective story set in a David Fincher-esque Seven world rather than a traditional Batman movie. It’s darker—both visually and in tone—and heavier than the Nolan films, and feels even more firmly rooted in reality. There is far less reliance on gadgets—with no character analogous to Lucius Fox of the Wayne Enterprises’ Applied Sciences Division—and actually far less Bruce Wayne altogether. There are no high-society parties or any of the other typical Wayne trappings we’ve come to expect. When we do see Wayne, it is often as a brooding, angst-filled, mascara-smeared man-boy with long hair hanging down in front of his face, feeling more like The Cure’s Robert Smith than Gotham’s Golden Son.

The film opens in Gotham City on Halloween night, and someone calling themselves The Riddler (Paul Dano) commits a high-profile murder, drawing Batman into the investigation. At this point, Wayne has been Batman for just two years and he is still feeling his way.

You can’t fault any of the performances as everyone seems believable and committed to their role, and the film features many A-list actors, including a totally unrecognizable Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin, Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and John Torturro as crime boss Carmine Falcone.

Shot on Arri at 4.5K, this transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate. Without question, I enjoyed watching The Batman more at home than I did in the theater. As mentioned, this is a dark film—Gotham seems to have about one hour of daylight per day, and is shrouded in perpetual overcast skies and rain unless characters are standing on top of a building bathed in brief moments of golden light during the rare sunset—and unless viewed in a flagship commercial environment, the home experience will likely look better with far more contrast. Because darkness (and black level) is such an element throughout, a properly calibrated display is crucial for the best experience. Viewed on a Sony OLED, there are several scenes that cut to total darkness where you have pitch-black letterbox bars above and below, and the set should deliver inky blacks that truly immerse you in the action.

While images are always clean and clear, they rarely looked tack-sharp. Undoubtedly some of this was the filming style, lens choice, or maybe even effects added in post, but the movie often looks like it was shot using an iPhone’s Portrait Mode, where the main character is clear and in focus, and everything at the sides and edges is blurred, and there are very few closeups that really jump out with great detail or resolution. Sure, you have moments when things look truly 4K—an outdoor scene at a funeral memorial has some of the sharpest, tightest focus in the film—but for the most part images look a bit flat without a ton of depth. After finishing The Batman, we flipped over and watched some scenes from the latest Bond, No Time to Die, and the sharpness uptick was unmistakable.

Being such a dark film, the HDR grade definitely improves images, giving nice, deep blacks with plenty of detail, along with delivering plenty of bright highlights from spotlights, streetlights, headlights, flashlights, or light pouring in through windows. Gotham’s downtown is filled with brightly lit buildings, video displays, and numerous neon signs that look great. Reds also benefit from the expanded color gamut, and brake lights, flares, fireballs from explosions, and pulsing lights in a club all look vibrant and deep.

The biggest disappointment in seeing The Batman in a commercial cinema was the audio. Scenes I knew should have tons more volume and impact were just anemic. Fortunately, the Dolby TrueHD Atmos presentation from the Kaleidescape download restores all the dynamics I knew were there, delivering an exciting and immersive audio experience.

Audio is used to subtly immerse you in the scenes or establish the sense of space in an environment. From the opening, we hear the Riddler’s breathing from within his masked face wide and out into the room, and then the choral voices singing “Ave Maria” fill the room with space. During some scenes you’ll hear the drips of rain falling outside, or hear the echoes of voices, the flutter of bats flying, and drips in the Bat Cave (really more a basement than a cave . . .).

It seems no modern Dolby Atmos soundtrack is complete without either overhead thunder cracks or a helicopter flying over, and The Batman checks both these boxes. Gunshots are also loud and dynamic, and during a couple of scenes—particularly one shootout with fully automatic weapons—you can hear the sound of gunfire erupting all around the room, with bullets striking walls and ceiling.

Bass is also weighty and tactile, such as the massive roar and rumble as Gotham’s above-ground trains thunder by, or when a car smashes into a building, or the blasting audio and driving bass at the Penguin’s club.

One of the film’s marquee demo moments—bookmarked by Kaleidescape as “In Vengeful Pursuit”—introduces the Batmobile, which is a hopped-up, heavily Bat-ified American muscle car. The car is like a separate character, and the deep and throaty engine roar and rumble energizes the room with what feels like 1,000 horsepower. When Batman steps on the gas, you can feel the acceleration, along with every gear change, collision, and tire-shredding turn as he pursues through traffic, with vehicles blasting past—in the opposite direction!—on both sides and the sounds of horns blaring and cars swirling and spinning out of control. This scene is tailor-made for giving demos and I can only imagine how it would be enhanced with D-Box motion seating.

At nearly three hours, the pacing is slow, and there are often long periods between the next “event,” making it feel long at times. Even when it feels the film is wrapping up, there is another 30 minutes! And watching it a second time, it had the feel of a Director’s Cut, where additional, not totally relevant but still interesting scenes are reinserted or just lengthened to further flesh out a scene or character, and that some nips and trims would make for a tighter, more engaging experience.

While I would disagree with my friend—I don’t think this is the best Batman movie ever—it’s still engaging and entertaining, and director Matt Reeves gives us an interesting new take on the Dark Knight that certainly looks and sounds better when screened at home.

* There was so much hoopla around the massive recut and reshot Zack Snyder’s Justice League that it practically needs to be considered as a third film on its own.

PICTURE | Being such a dark film, the HDR grade definitely improves images, giving nice, deep blacks with plenty of detail, along with delivering plenty of bright highlights

SOUND | Kaleidescape’s Dolby TrueHD Atmos presentation delivers an exciting and immersive audio experience, with weighty and tactile bass

Review: Pachinko

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This dramatic series about four generations of a Korean family gets off to a strong start on Apple TV+

by Roger Kanno
April 18, 2022

Based on the novel of the same name by Min Jin Lee, Pachinko is a limited-run series on Apple TV+. It began streaming on March 25 with three initial episodes and with additional installments dropping weekly for a total of eight episodes. Spanning four generations, it tells the tale of a Korean woman, Kim Sunja, who grows up in Japanese-occupied Korea and later moves to Osaka where her son finds success as a pachinko-parlor operator, and of her grandson, Solomon, who becomes an Ivy League-educated investment banker based in New York.

As with many Apple TV+ projects, Pachinko benefits from high production values, and the series starts off strongly with a great visual style and an engaging audio presentation. Early in the first episode, a very young Sunja and her father chase dragonflies through a beautiful meadow bathed in early morning sunlight. The reflections of light off the tall grass and Sunja’s perfectly smooth complexion contrasted by her long, jet-black hair and with her father’s darker, rougher complexion are all captured perfectly in Dolby Vision HDR and backed by the lilting strings and playful piano of Nico Muhly’s gorgeous orchestral score mirroring the pastoral scenes.

The colors are slightly cool and on the pale side, but the lighting is sumptuously natural, with just a touch of softness that’s film-like and pleasing, especially when compared to the ultra high contrast and oversaturated colors of many video productions these days. This bucolic setting transitions to the infectiously catchy opening credits featuring the ’60s Grass Roots hit “Let’s Live for Today” as the main characters dance joyously in slow motion against the tacky backdrop of a pachinko parlor. The scene then shifts to a jetliner touching down with some serious bass as the wonderfully mixed “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads fills the front soundstage as Solomon returns to Osaka. There he visits his father at the pachinko parlor, where the sounds of clinking metal balls and chatty patrons emanate distinctly from all channels.

Pachinko is a serious drama with serious themes and is often dialogue-centric, so not every scene is filled with such auditory complexity, but the sound design can be extremely creative. This artistry is mirrored in the cinematography, where something as mundane as cooking rice takes on a deeper and more poetic meaning as the camera lovingly lingers over the grains of rice as they’re carefully washed, the cloudy water is rinsed away, and the pot is readied for steaming as Mulhy’s score effectively accompanies the onscreen action, but this time incorporating a beautifully mournful choral lament.

As beautiful as Pachinko is to look at, and as immersive as the audio can be, the narrative is equally as engaging. It’s a complex story about colonialism, family values, and relationships spanning many generations, told mostly through the eyes of Sunja, played by Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, as she reflects on her life through a series of flashbacks.

Youn once again stands out amongst a strong cast as she did in Minari, proving that her Oscar or the many other accolades she has received were not a one-off. The other actors are also all excellent, with wonderfully nuanced performances that bring the absorbing adapted screenplay to life. Then there’s the manner in which the dialogue switches between the Korean and Japanese languages that is both telling and symbolic as the characters face prejudice and intolerance even as they find success away from their homeland. And if you don’t recognize the difference between the Korean and Japanese dialogue, the subtitles are colored-coded to indicate which language is being spoken.

The novel is split into three time periods, with the TV adaptation moving back and forth between the eras, which isn’t faithful to the original story but works in the television medium. It remains to be seen how much of the novel’s plot will be uncovered by the end of the eighth and final episode of the first season of Pachinko. However, the show is reportedly intended to run for four seasons to tell the entire story of the multiple generations of characters, even though plans have yet to be released for additional seasons. Judging by the quality of what I have seen thus far, I sincerely hope Apple TV+ decides to renew Pachinko.

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 series’ look is film-like and pleasing, especially when compared to the ultra high contrast and oversaturated colors of many recent video productions

SOUND | Since this is a dialogue-centric drama, not every scene is filled with auditory complexity, but the Atmos mix is often extremely creative

Review: Minari

review | Minari

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A deceptively simple story that could have easily wandered off into cliché, masterfully told

by Dennis Burger
March 22, 2021

There’s a certain frustrating injustice in the fact that Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari came out in 2020. While this gorgeous slice-of-life drama is being hailed as one of the year’s best films, that recognition carries with it some tallest-kid-in-kindergarten connotations. The truth is that Minari would be a triumph of cinema in any year, but to be plucked from the dustbin and heralded as such this year almost seems like a consolation prize.

I’ll admit that I have some significant bias as far as this film is concerned so maybe take my adulation with a grain of salt. I’m a sucker for a simple story. Writing complicated tales is easy—you string together a bunch of “what had happened was”es, cut between disparate narrative threads when one has gone on too long, throw as much as you can at the wall, and hope enough of it sticks to be honed in the editing. Writing a simple story is significantly more difficult, and writing one that holds together narratively and thematically is an admirable accomplishment.

Minari is the simplest of tales, and a familiar one at that: A family, facing unendurable financial hardship and lack of opportunity, moves to a strange new place in search of a better life. Familiar though that plot kernel may be, Chung tells it in the most unexpected ways, never going for the obvious twists or beholden to the traditional three-act narrative structure.

A lot of what you’ll get out of the film depends upon what you bring into it because Chung’s thumb never rests too heavily on the scales. Speaking purely for myself—a Caucasian southern man whose familial roots grow in rural soil very similar to the setting of Minari—I was drawn almost as much to the setting as I was to the human drama of it all. I’ll admit, though, that I tensed up the first time a white southerner appeared onscreen. You almost can’t help but expect the residents of rural Arkansas to be portrayed as caricatures, as overtly racist and malicious bumpkins. They aren’t, though. They’re portrayed as ignorant to be sure but the exact sort of ignorance that feels 100% authentic to the film’s setting, the sort of ignorance that I’m met with at every big family gathering. This is simply one of the most accurate portraits of the rural south in the 1980s I’ve ever seen.

The story that unfolds against that backdrop is one of duty—to one’s parents, children, partner, and oneself. And most of the drama comes from trying to find the right balance between those interdependent dials. Duty to his parents is largely to blame for the financial struggles Jacob Yi (played to perfection by Steven Yeun) and his family suffer in California. Duty to their children is what forces Jacob and his wife Monica (played to equal perfection by Han Ye-ri) to the Ozark Plateau. Frustration with this tug of war and a disproportionate attempt to be dutiful to himself contributes to Jacob’s Sisyphean struggles in his new home, both within his family and on the land he obsessively farms.

The farm serves as an unnamed character in the film. It embodies the tension at the center of the struggle between an untenable past and an uncertain future. Those two forces receive their embodiment in the forms of David—Jacob and Monica’s ill son—and Soon-ja, Monica’s mother, who comes to live with the family to care for her grandchildren while their parents work at a nearby hatchery, and who plants the perennial herb that gives the film its name and so much of its meaning.

David and Soon-ja not only serve as the heart of the film, they also serve as its funny bone, adding much-needed levity exactly when it’s needed most. As with the rural whites, it would have been all too easy to paint both characters with too broad a brush, but Chung packs each with the sort of contradictions essential to any human. In the case of David, that’s not all that surprising, since the boy serves as the writer/director’s proxy. But Soon-ja must have been a much trickier character to write, no matter how much real-life inspiration Chung had for her. She represents tradition, but she’s an idiosyncratic, eccentric force of nature who defies tradition at every turn. That Chung didn’t chisel off her rough edges to force her into the symbolic mold she fills in the film is a credit to his skills as a writer and his faith in the audience. Individually, David and Soon-ja are fascinating (and indeed somewhat tragic) characters. Together, they’re absolutely hilarious—the sort of duo that Taika Waititi would write if he made dramas instead of comedies.

But don’t dwell too much on that comparison. I’ve simply been so primed by a culture that’s obsessed with every new thing being categorized as “this meets that” that I found myself drawing that parallel before I could catch myself. If forced to draw deeper parallels of the same sort, I would call this film “Waititi meets Faulkner meets Sinclair.” But that’s hardly fair. Minari is boldly, unapologetically its own thing.

It’s also beautiful to behold. The film is currently available on PVOD, or “Theater at Home,” as described by Vudu, where I rented it. Vudu presents Minari in Dolby Vision with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, both of which serve the material well. Although shot digitally, the cinematography has a very organic look that’s vaguely reminiscent of Kodachrome stock. It’s incredibly contrasty, with inky shadows and dazzling highlights; but its most prominent aspect is the richness and warmth of the colors, all of which are captured beautifully by the transfer.

Despite the 2K digital intermediate, there’s a wealth of detail, in everything from the tattered interior of the Yi family’s mobile home to the chaotic kaleidoscope of patterns caused by overlapping layers of flora blowing in the breeze. If the film’s presentation proves anything, it’s that lenses are more essential to the final look of a cinematic work than are capture resolution (3.2K in this case) or the pixel-count of the DI.

Interestingly, when I switched between my Roku Ultra and my Apple TV 4K purely for the sake of thorough comparison, the latter didn’t hold up quite as well. The Vudu stream was marred to a degree by some banding, digital noise, and lack of definition on the Apple hardware that was nowhere to be seen on the Roku.

Minari doesn’t seem like the sort of film that would benefit from an Atmos mix, but does it ever. It’s another case where, if Atmos were handled this gracefully by every sound mixer, I would be a bigger fan of the format. The extra channels are used in this case to construct the film’s world in three dimensions. Heck, if you took away the dialogue and music, it seems like 90% of what would be left would be the chirping of crickets and tree frogs and—to borrow a beautiful turn of phrase from Randy Newman—the song that the trees sing when the wind blows. Once you get over the novelty of sounds coming from overhead, the film’s mix just sounds authentic, like strolling through the wild acreage of my dad’s property with my ears attuned to the aural landscape.

And in a way, that’s an apt metaphor for the film itself as a whole. It’s obviously contrived—every story is—but give yourself to it and there’s nearly nothing about Minari that feels contrived. It’s as honest and unforced a work of cinema as I’ve experienced in ages. Its show-don’t-tell approach to grappling with the struggles of the working poor and the realities of cultural assimilation, combined with its pitch-perfect performances and effortless artistry, make it an absolute must-see.

PICTURE | Although shot digitally, the cinematography has a very organic look, vaguely reminiscent of Kodachrome stock, that’s beautiful to behold

SOUND | This doesn’t seem like the kind of film that would benefit from an Atmos mix, but the extra channels are artfully used to construct the film’s world in three dimensions

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