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Review: The Masque of the Red Death / The Raven

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The Masque of the Red Death / The Raven

review | The Masque of the Red Death / The Raven

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Two high-camp Corman/Price horror classics, with recent events adding a new layer of thrills to The Red Death

by Gerard Alessandrini
October 30, 2020

For special Halloween viewing, you can always depend on a Vincent Price/Roger Corman movie such as The Fall of the House of Usher, Tales of Terror, and The Pit and the Pendulum. They are dusted off every year for cable streaming and home video viewing. But this year, one Roger Corman film takes on an added dimension of horror. 

The Masque of the Red Death, loosely based on the short story by—who else—Edgar Allen Poe, has a special modern application in 2020. The film itself is a heightened and slightly campy tale of a pandemic plague that sweeps medieval Italy. The city-state is cruelly ruled by an egotistical Satan-worshipping prince. The bombastic and obnoxious ruler is played with wild abandon by Vincent Price. He is loud and vicious and will listen to nothing and no one. 

Recklessly deciding he knows best how to handle the “Red Death” plague, Vincent simply locks up his castle door and throws a big masked ball for his recklessly hedonistic upper-class friends. All must come in masked costume, but The Prince is convinced he needs no mask since the Devil himself will protect him and him alone from the gruesome pandemic. But (spoiler alert!) neither his power position or evil protector can keep him from catching The Red Death, and by the end of the movie not only does Vincent have blood poring out of his pores as he shrivels up and dies but so do all his upper-crust guests. By the end, only three people are left alive in the entire kingdom: An innocent young lover, a baby, and an old man.

Any other year, this over-the-top horror story might seem broadly campy, but in 2020, it is indeed as horrifying as Roger Corman may have intended it to be back in 1964. It may seem even more disturbing! 

Many now consider this the best of the Corman/Price/Poe movies. It’s more literate than most of its predecessors and with its devious “Little People,” animalistic partygoers, and deviant sexual innuendos, it is genuinely macabre. Add to the committed performances from Price and his fabulous leading lady Hazel Court, who always adds a good measure of superb British articulation and Hollywood glamour, and you have a horror movie that’s a cut above. The verbiage even has a touch of the tragic tone of a Shakespearean play. 

The production quality is also a cut above other Corman creations. It’s filmed in vivid Pathécolor with an intensely multi-colored production design (perhaps to make up for the fact it’s not in the lush and more subtle Technicolor). The set is also quite authentic-looking—supposedly because Red Death was filmed on leftover sets from the historical epic film Becket, also released in 1964. Corman must be given an “A” for effort and “A+” for inventiveness for bringing a good-looking production in under budget. However, it is still a budget horror film from the 1960s, and its pacing and lack of a great music score (Bernard Hermann was not in the budget) make it hard to take as an authentic film classic. 

Yet, all entertainment changes from year to year, and right now this spooky tale might just put you in a real Halloween mood. And, beware—when you watch it with friends, don’t be a fool like Vincent Price—wear your mask to the Masque.

While we are on the subject of Roger Corman and Vincent Price, let me recommend their 1963 entry, The Raven. This film had no intention to be authentically scary in any way. Peter Lorre plays the Raven in bird and human form in a highly comedic performance. And it has a fabulous supporting cast: Boris Karloff, a very sexy Hazel Court, and a very young Jack Nicholson—in tights, no less.

It’s all tongue-in-cheek and wryly funny. Again, the garish Pathécolor livens up the dreary plaster-of-Paris castle walls. There’s also a good amount of animated sorcerer’s magic rays to add to the fun. Unlike The Masque of the Red Death, this films survives solely as camp. But Halloween is also a time for kitschy fun and macabre frolic. 

As a nine-year-old boy, I loved the silly satirical suspense, and it had just enough scary moments to amuse but not disturb me. It even made me a fan of Edgar Allan Poe. Inspired by the film, I tried making a couple of Corman/Poe type “Grand Guignol” horror movies of my own with my Super 8 movie camera. 

But years later, I realized I must have loved Poe even more that I thought. When I grew up and moved to New York, my apartment on West 84th Street was built on the site where he wrote The Raven. In the 19th century, the address had been his family’s farm house! Now it’s “The Raven Court Apartments.” It still has a big black stone raven right outside. My apartment looked right over the statue. But just as Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “Quoth the Granite Raven ‘Nevermore.’”

Tony-winning director Gerard Alessandrini is the creator of the legendary review Forbidden Broadway and of the hit Hamilton parody Spamilton. His work also includes musical versions of Moon Over Parador and Madame X, voice work for Disney’s Aladdin and Pocahantas, and creating special material for performers like Carol Burnett, Bob Hope, and Barbra Streisand

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Review: Midsommar

Midsommar (2019)

review | Midsommar

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This arthouse horror film eschews jump scares and plot twists for atmosphere and style

by Dennis Burger
October 14, 2020

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

Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary, 2019’s Midsommar, keeps the horror-as-art train rolling, not simply due to its gorgeous cinematography, deep reliance on symbolism, or its 148-minute run time, but because it actually has something to say. While Peele used horror for the purposes of societal allegory in Get Out and Aster himself used it to explore familial angst in Hereditary, Midsommar broadens its reach to explore both cultural issues and deeply personal struggles. And it’s the constant tug-of-war between the individual on the one hand and the expectations of the herd on the other that give the film so much of its tension. 

That’s simply one element of what makes the film work, though. In telling the tale of a group of anthropology students (and the girlfriend of one of them, herself a psychology student) as they travel to Sweden to study and document the cultural traditions of an isolated Scandinavian commune, Aster uses personal relationships the way Kubrick used architecture in The Shining. In other words, if you’re paying attention, there’s an internal consistency to it all that’s nonetheless contradictory, which results in a foreboding sense of unease. 

That in itself wouldn’t be worthy of praise but it’s the way Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski convey the ties that bind (and the wedges that divide) the characters that makes Midsommar so fascinating. In one early scene, for example, the film uses mirrors brilliantly to convey a sense of othering. The characters viewed directly by the camera? They are the “Us.” Those that can only be seen in reflection? They fall (or move) into “Them” territory. And what’s fascinating here is that the film’s “Us” and “Them” are right opposite of the audience’s “Us” and “Them,” which further builds tension. 

What I appreciate most is that such compositional sleight of hand is almost always employed with such subtlety that it never comes across as a gimmick. Only one scene crosses the line into artsy-for-arty’s-sake territory, and it’s an establishing shot, demarking the transition from one culture into the other, so it’s easily forgiven. 

That scene is far from the only one that could be construed as cinema-for-cinema’s sake. So much of Midsommar is pure audiovisual experience—style as substance, if you will—intended to invoke feeling rather than trigger thought. Perhaps my favorite thing about the film is that it strikes such a perfect balance in alternating between storytelling and tone poetry that it’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime never becomes a slog. 

That’s aided by the fact that it never resorts to jump-scares or twists to keep you hanging on. It telegraphs exactly the direction in which it’s heading and then takes its time getting there, which only adds to the suspense and tension. 

The one big surprise—at least for me—is that Midsommar wasn’t shot on film, but rather captured in a combination of 8K and 4K, and finished in a 4K digital intermediate. Despite this, it boasts a very film-like aesthetic, although the palette is intentionally muted. And Kaleidescape’s 4K HDR presentation is wonderfully true to Midsommar‘s intended look, delivering it with exceptional detail. Far more importantly, the Kaleidescape download doesn’t muck up the background textures the way streaming providers do. Perhaps it’s a result of the resolution at which the movie was shot, but Apple TV’s stream in particular suffers from occasionally messy and noisy textures that serve as a bit of a distraction, whereas the Kaleidescape download maintains its composure from beginning to end, even when the film is at its densest, visually speaking. 

The high dynamic range does little to change the look of the film overall, largely due to that muted palette. When HDR does make itself known, it’s generally in the shadows, especially during those scenes in which a darkened interior is viewed from a sunlit exterior. HDR allows the viewer to see into those shadows without brightening the image as a whole. 

Kaleidescape’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is also true to the film’s theatrical audio mix. You may have seen Midsommar presented in Dolby Atmos on certain streaming platforms, but these Atmos tracks were created using Nugen Audio’s Halo upmixer software, based on the original 5.1. Given my druthers, I’ll take the original mix, thank you very much. It’s unusually aggressive, in a way I normally don’t love, but in this case it absolutely works. 

The soundtrack leans on the surround channels hard, often panning dialogue into them so fully that if your rear speakers aren’t up to the quality of the rest of your system, you’ll likely hear a shift in the quality of the sound. Even if your system is well-designed from front to back, it’s still a disorienting and frankly distracting effect. But that’s the point. The mix rarely goes whole-hog on the surrounds when there’s something crucial happening onscreen. And when it does, it’s because the film wants to you feel disoriented at that moment. 

The only thing missing from Kaleidescape’s download is Aster’s original 171-minute cut, which A24, the film’s distributor, made him trim down for wide theatrical release. Given that the cuts were made simply to cram more butts into seats and not due to content, it’s strange that A24 is so precious with the original edit. In the US, the only ways to see it are via Apple TV (it’s included as an iTunes Extra with the purchase of the film) and by way of an incredibly limited 4K Blu-ray release that’s already fetching six times its original asking price on the secondary market. 

What I wouldn’t give to view that cut of the film in the quality of Kaleidescape’s presentation. Despite its nearly three-hour length, the director’s cut is even better paced and frankly feels like a shorter film. But the improvements over the theatrical cut aren’t so substantial that I would choose Apple TV’s compromised stream over Kaleidescape’s pixel-perfect download.

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 | Kaleidescape’s 4K HDR presentation is wonderfully true to Midsommar‘s intended look, delivering it with exceptional detail

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is unusually aggressive but true to the film’s theatrical mix, leaning hard on the surrounds

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Review: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

review | The Nightmare Before Christmas

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This Tim Burton classic would seem like it would benefit from a 4K HDR upgrade but turns out to be almost flawless when seen in HD on Disney+

by Dennis Burger
December 22, 2020

In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that The Nightmare Before Christmas works at all. The film, after all, wasn’t really based on a story so much as it was cobbled together from some poetry and sketches and ideas from Tim Burton, who intended to turn it into a half-hour TV special à la Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or maybe a children’s book, or maybe something else altogether. There’s also the fact that the screenplay by Caroline Thompson ended up serving almost more as a skeleton for the film than an actual script, given that much of the final product was developed visually by director Henry Selick and was constantly in flux. 

If anyone deserves the utmost praise for the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas, it would be Danny Elfman, who worked with Burton to flesh out something resembling the major story beats then wrote the soundtrack that, in the end, actually serves as the story rather than merely as accompaniment. So much so that Chris Sarandon, who was cast in the role of the speaking voice of Jack Skellington was left with very little to do. Elfman ends up being the primary voice of Jack, the spirit of Jack, and the driving force for the film, while Selick filters Burton’s aesthetic through his own similar style and every other aspect of the production just gets dragged along for the ride.

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

Instead, Nightmare cuts to the heart of why this time of year has been the center of celebration for millennia, from Saturnalia to Yule to Hanukkah to Ayyappan to Calan Gaeaf to Yaldā Night to Christmas and so many other holy and secular holidays that I’m forgetting at the moment. It’s a recognition of the fact that this holiday season represents the return of the light after a period of encroaching darkness beginning around the harvest/Halloween/Samhain/Día de los Muertos. It goes straight to the cyclical and seasonal reasons for these festivals far too many of us have forgotten, living as we do indoors and disconnected from the earth. 

There’s also a thematic aspect of Nightmare that resonates outside of its connection to the holiday season, and it’s a theme few storytellers have explored so effectively. (Really, only Tolkien comes to mind, most notably with the story of Míriel from the Quenta Silmarillion and Morgoth’s Ring.) It’s the simple lesson that when we attempt to be who we are not, to defy our true nature, nothing good can possibly come of it. In attempting to assume the role of “Sandy Claws” merely as a means of rejecting or pacifying his own dissatisfaction with the doom and gloom of Halloween without truly understanding why or how people celebrate Christmas, Jack makes a mess of pretty much everything. And while the resolution of this story thread is all wrapped up a little too tidily, what more do you expect from a 76-minute cartoon? 

Any fan of the film probably already realizes all of the above, though, so why am I going on about it all? Because the original premise of this review fell out from under me. I had every intention of writing a scathing (and perhaps pleading) criticism about the fact that The Nightmare Before Christmas deserves a 4K HDR remaster more than just about any of the Disney animated films that have already received such. 

But when I sat down to watch the film again—mostly to take notes on all the scenes I thought would be improved by a modern home video transfer—I realized the current HD master (which has been with us since 2008) is pretty much flawless. Fans revolted when Disney dropped a 25th-anniversary re-release on the marketplace in 2018 with nothing more than a new singalong mode and a bit of extra bandwidth for the film itself. And I was right there, pitchfork raised alongside theirs.

But even the HD version of the film on Disney+ looks flawless. The limited color palette is presented perfectly. Blacks are richer than liquid gold and there’s nary a hint of crush to be found. Highlights don’t clip, midtones don’t seem in any way lacking in subtlety, and the level of detail is incredible. Simply put, all the shortcomings we now associate with HD video are pretty much nowhere to be seen. I think I’ve seen Nightmare on the big screen at least 10 times, and frankly even the Disney+ stream looks better than any of those commercial exhibitions, revealing fine textures and little visual Easter eggs I didn’t even notice in IMAX from the fourth row. 

Granted, the Disney+ version doesn’t include all the supplemental material that has appeared on various home video releases through the years. It does include several deleted scenes and storyboards, along with a few other goodies. But it lacks a couple of essential gems, namely the audio commentary by Selick, Burton, and Elfman, as well as Christopher Lee’s reading of Burton’s original “Nightmare Before Christmas” poem. You can find those on Kaleidescape, though, and they’re all worth a watch/listen.

More than anything, though, I wanted to point out that if you’ve been waiting on a UHD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, you should probably stop. If it were going to happen anytime soon, it would have been two years ago. Given Disney’s penchant for tying home video releases to anniversaries, our next shot at a remaster probably comes in 2023. And that’s too long to wait before diving into this charming little holiday gem again.

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 HD version on Disney+ looks flawless. The limited color palette is presented perfectly, with the blacks richer than liquid gold and with nary a hint of crush to be found.

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Review: It (2017)

It (2017)

review | It (2017)

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This adaptation of the Stephen King novel is a major reworking of the source material but that yields big dividends in its relevance, themes, and atmosphere 

by Dennis Burger
October 20, 2020

Had I known going in just how drastically Andy Muschietti restructured Stephen King’s It when adapting the 1,138-page novel into two movies, I probably never would have given it a chance. In case you’re not familiar with the book, it follows the adventures and tribulations of seven friends known collectively as “The Loser’s Club,” cutting back and forth between their adolescent and adult encounters with a shapeshifting, homicidal cosmic horror who takes the form of a clown known as Pennywise. 

The intercutting between the characters as adults and adolescents is crucial to the plot (not to mention the emotional impact) of the novel, so if you had told me ahead of time that Muschietti shuffled the story like a deck of cards, then laid out the events in chronological order, with the first movie focusing on the story of the Loser’s Club as kids and the second serving as a sequel focusing on their adult experiences, I would have explained to you (probably with as much condescension as I could humanly muster) that such an approach would miss the point of the book entirely.

And although that may be the case, what Muschietti has done is turn this story into two distinct stories, each with its own themes, and each of which—much to my pleasant surprise—works as its own self-contained experience, with a proper beginning, middle, and ending. 

The other big change Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman made to the source material was an update to the timeline. Rather than starting in 1957, as does the book, It moves the Loser’s Club’s youth to 1989, and also adds a couple of years to their ages. The former change not only allows the cinematic sequel to take place in the present day, but also allows Muschietti to rely on cultural references that will likely be a bit more familiar to modern audiences. The latter change keeps the film from veering too far into exploitative territory and also makes the story somewhat more believable. 

Muschietti and Dauberman also removed some of the cosmic/spiritual aspects of the story that strain credulity to its breaking point, and what we’re left with is a movie that, in many ways, sort of feels like a scary, R-rated riff on The Goonies. There are also shades of Stranger Things here and there (and not merely because Finn Wolfhard, that series’ star, plays a key role in the film). 

Despite the comparisons, It manages to carve out its own identity. A lot of the credit for that goes to Bill Skarsgård, whose performance as Pennywise is unforgettable. Rather than borrow anything from Tim Curry, who played the role first in ABC’s two-part miniseries adaptation from 1990, Skarsgård makes the character his own, bringing a wholly alien physicality to the performance that makes one thing abundantly clear from the giddy-up: This isn’t your garden-variety sewer-dwelling murder-clown we’re dealing with here.

The look of the film also contributes to the sort of distinctive and effective personality lacking in so many of today’s horror movies. Shot on ArriRaw in a combination of 2.8K and 3.4K, the movie has a rich and gorgeous palette that makes even its most pedestrian scenes visually engaging. What’s more, you’d never know from looking at the imagery’s crisp edges, luscious textures, and fine detail that it was finished in a 2K digital intermediate. It is further proof that this sort of thing just doesn’t matter as much as some people would have you believe. The important thing is that Kaleidescape’s download is above reproach in terms of definition and detail.

HDR is also put to good use, not only in delivering the movie’s rich colors but also in allowing a good bit of extra depth in the shadows. Make no mistake about it—It is an incredibly dark film—one that should be viewed in a completely light-controlled room. But even with the lights out, the Blu-ray release made portions so inscrutably dark that it was difficult to tell what was going on at all. The 4K HDR transfer rectifies that at least enough to make even the darkest scenes discernible. Long story short, it may come from a 2K DI, but the 4K HDR release of It—at least as presented by Kaleidescape—is amazing video demo material, and comes darn close to being a reference-quality transfer. 

The Dolby TrueHD Atmos is also everything you would expect the soundtrack for a movie like this to be. Directional sound effects are aggressive as hell, the bass is absolutely britches-leg-flapping, and the overall creepy ambiance of the movie is handled fantastically by the soundtrack. My only real beef is that voices occasionally get lost in the mix. Don’t blame your center speaker if you find some of the dialogue a bit unintelligible—instead blame the sound engineers. That said, this problem isn’t nearly so bad here as it has been in the past few Chris Nolan films.

As for the movie itself, my only real beef is that it feels a little short. An odd statement to make about a 135-minute horror flick, I know, but It is so packed with characters, most of whom have their own compelling individual storylines distinct from the group dynamic, that it just whizzes by. A few extra minutes’ worth of runtime would have allowed Muschietti to flesh out a couple of characters that seem underserved here. Stanley Uris, for example—played wonderfully by the young Wyatt Oleff—serves such a minor role in the overall story that he could have just as easily been written out of the screenplay and it hardly would have been the biggest departure from the novel. The relationship between Eddie Kaspbrak and his mother is also a bit undeveloped, leaving the resolution of their storyline feeling somewhat unsatisfying.

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

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 | Above reproach in terms of definition and detail, the Kaleidescape presentation of the 4K HDR release is amazing video demo material and comes darn close to being a reference-quality transfer

SOUND | Directional sound effects in the Atmos mix are aggressive as hell, the bass is absolutely pants-leg-flapping, and the overall creepy ambiance of the movie is handled fantastically

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Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

review | Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The first Body Snatchers movie and the precursor of the modern zombie film, the original still packs a bigger punch than any of its descendants

by Michael Gaughn
October 7, 2022

I create Top 10 lists but never as a permanent enshrinement of anything but more as a snapshot of how I value things at a certain moment in time. To believe you’ve permanently decided on the definitive of anything—let alone believe anything as fluid and zeitgeist-driven as movies can be correlated in any meaningful way—is pure hubris, and to etch your choices in stone is to essentially embalm, not appreciate, them, like pinning butterflies to a board. All of which is to say that I once had the original, 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers in my No. 1 slot. That troubled me a lot at the time but it also felt somehow right.

I don’t know if I would ever put it back at No. 1 but it still feels somehow right. If there’s an inherent value in a piece of pop cinema being able to both capture the angst of an era and use it as a springboard to perfectly project the trajectory of the culture, then Body Snatchers has that, and in spades. The film was too easily dismissed at the time and subsequently as an expression of Red Scare paranoia. It’s not. It’s a low-budget B-movie depiction of the loss of self, or soul—depending on how you want to parse that—uncannily prescient, and done with a power that lends it a continuing relevance it never would have achieved as an A-list project.

I can’t think of another movie that’s done a better job of portraying that fatal pivot in the culture, nor any that come close to it that approach the subject with as much restraint. That restraint compresses the film’s energy, allowing it to resonate just as strongly (more so?) 66 years on, eclipsing all the remakes, off-shoots, and imitators.

I’m not saying Body Snatchers is what would traditionally be considered a masterpiece, in the technical or even the cinematic sense. At the end of the day, it’s still a B movie, with all the basic flaws that come with pandering to that segment of the audience. But it captures something tremendously important, and captures it better than could have been done if it had been put in more accomplished hands. Its B-movie weaknesses are its virtues, forcing its makers to keep the action intimate and the practical effects modest. And the material seems to need the rough energy, the inherent luridness, that comes with aiming for the cheap seats. 

The wraparound—tacked on after the fact because the ending was considered too depressing—remains pointless. The film means nothing, packs no punch, if it’s not hopeless, and to enjoy it (in the troubling sense of the word) you have to edit those bookends out in your mind as you watch it. (But there is a certain giddy frisson to seeing the ubiquitous Whit Bissell, the embodiment of bland, benign mid-‘50s authority; Richard “The Dick Van Dyke Show” Deacon; and the hit man who tried to rub out Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross all being called up for active duty to do a couple of completely unnecessary scenes.)

The movie’s Santa Mira is a typical small American city the way Santa Rosa is in Shadow of a Doubt, but Body Snatchers doesn’t waste any time establishing that because, like in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, that almost mythic sense of place was so thoroughly understood, was such a shared and reassuring cultural reference point, that any kind of stage-setting would have been unnecessary and just slowed everything down. Unlike most horror movies and thrillers, Body Snatchers jumps right into laying down its “there’s something wrong here” vibe, which makes it infinitely creepier.

From that opening scene on, the film is breathless—but without once seeming to break a sweat. The mood deepens, the shadows thicken, and the thrills are placed as quietly and cunningly as the seed pods, building to an overwhelming sense of inevitability and dread. There’s no big rush to get to a big effect—the first developing pod doesn’t even appear until the halfway point—and yet no scene lingers. Each says exactly what it needs to say and moves on.

Body Snatchers is really a chamber drama with a perverse sense of humor and the occasional practical effect. Everything is grounded in basic human interaction and kept plausible for as long as possible. It never overreaches. For all the cheesy horror makeup and monster suits with zippers in ‘50s films, the effects here remain remarkably convincing, which has a lot to do with the film’s staying power. 

That’s not to say there aren’t problems—it’s a B movie, so it’s brimming with problems. Dana Wynter’s entrance is so badly handled it always gets a laugh, you have your pick of cringe-worthy lines, and poor Kevin McCarthy seems to be in over his head throughout. And then there’s the constant churning and over-insistence of the Carmen Dragon score. But the premise is so strong and the film clings to it so tenaciously and develops it so powerfully that the fumbles almost feel like grace notes.

The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers spawned the modern zombie movie—although not in the ways you’d think. The characters recoil upon discovering their pod doubles not because they’re alien but because they’re so much like themselves. Similarly, zombie movies aren’t about the undead being other—they’re one of us, just a too easily taken step away from who we are now. Depending on your angle of approach, Body Snatchers can induce an even bigger shudder today than it did in its time because it’s a pretty accurate depiction of who we once were and who we’ve, c. 1985, become.

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

PICTURE | The usual Amazon Prime spiel—watchable, with occasional standout moments, with little that could be called exceptional. But this was always meant to be a second-on-the-bill potboiler, never exquisite or pristine.

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Review: Hocus Pocus 2

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

review | Hocus Pocus 2

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A step up from the original, the sequel is still mainly a nostalgic sugar rush that could have been thought through a little better

by Dennis Burger
October 6, 2022

Whether or not Hocus Pocus 2 is a good movie is hardly even a coherent question. Of course it isn’t a good movie. The real question is whether or not you’ll like it, and I think the answer to that is simple. 

Are you an elder Millennial who developed a Pavlovian affection for the original through repeated exposure on The Disney Channel in the late 1990s, and you now want to try to beat a love for it into the heads of your children? Or are you in the grips of Stockholm Syndrome after being forced to become familiar with the 1993 cult classic just to understand half the memes in Memeville? If the answer to either of those questions is “yes,” I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get something out of this Disney+ original, which at times blurs the lines between sequel, reboot, and remake. 

It’s a better movie than the original—better acted, more artfully shot, with a more coherent script and more competent direction at the hands of Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses) but such praise is relative. This is still a glorified after-school special with a false edge, filled with out-of-touch musical numbers and lazy references to modern culture that will lose what chuckle-worthiness they have before the inevitable Hocus Pocus 3 comes out in a few years. 

The premise of the plot is also flawed from the foundation up. It all hinges up on the fact that the Sanderson Sisters—played once again by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker—can only be conjured during a full moon on Halloween, and by a virgin at that. The sequel makes it quite clear that the last time the witches rampaged through Salem was in 1993, and it’s now exactly 29 years later. 

In other words, the script goes out of its way to set this sequel in 2022. And yet there’s no full moon on Halloween this year—nowhere near it. There was one in 2020 but a big whole-town Halloween celebration wouldn’t have quite made sense that year. There’ll be another one in 2039, but that wouldn’t quite work for a story whose novelty hinges upon evil women from ye olde tymes being baffled by modern technology and customs. 

Could they have just dropped the full-moon requirement and glossed it over with some retroactive continuity? Sure, that would have been the easiest way to make sense of it all. But this movie doesn’t give a hoot whether it makes sense, nor whether you care if it makes sense. It’s here to give you a nostalgic sugar rush and create an alibi for you to foist your childhood pop-culture fetish on a new generation. (And trust me: As a Star Wars devotee, I feel your pain.) 

Given that, the movie’s Dolby Vision video presentation on Disney+ almost seems wasted. The enhanced resolution is a mixed blessing as on the one hand the 8K source imagery and 4K digital intermediate allow you to appreciate some of the surprisingly nice set designs and lighting. But on the other, that resolution makes some of the constraints of the relatively meager budget a bit too apparent, especially in the compositing of some of the digital effects. 

Still, there are some details I would expect HEVC to struggle with at any bitrate, streaming or not, such as a few swirly, sparkly, extremely specular magical effects that require higher frequencies to render, all laid atop rather dark backgrounds that lean harder on the lower-frequency corner of the discrete cosine transform table. Content that demands equal reliance on high and low frequencies simultaneously is always the toughest for any hybrid block-based codec to encode and decode, and I was frankly shocked by how well Disney+ handled it. I never saw it struggle.

The Dolby Digital+ Atmos mix is best described as “perfunctory,” and if for whatever reason you plan on watching this movie in your home cinema, just know that it’s mixed about 2.5 dB below reference levels, so go ahead and turn the volume up. 

Again, though, you’d probably be better off watching Disney+’s Dolby Vision remaster of the original instead if you need to scratch this itch. It may not be as good, but at least you’re already addicted to it—otherwise, why are you even reading this?

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 Dolby Vision presentation on Disney+ allows you to appreciate some of the surprisingly nice set designs and lighting, but the enhanced resolution makes some of the constraints of the relatively meager budget a bit too apparent

SOUND | The Dolby Digital+ Atmos mix is best described as “perfunctory”—it’s also mixed about 2.5 dB below reference level

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Review: Blonde

Blonde (2022)

review | Blonde

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This lurid take on Marilyn Monroe’s life sometimes hits the mark but just as often wallows in the muck

by Roger Kanno
October 5, 2022

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde received a standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 14. And while it has a striking visual style and a mesmerizing performance by Ana de Armas starring as Marilyn Monroe, this sensationalized depiction of the iconic film star’s life will not suit everyone’s tastes. Available on Netflix since September 30, it is the first film produced by the streamer to be given an NC-17 rating. It can be difficult to watch with many scenes depicting Monroe’s troubled life as she struggles to deal with the less desirable aspects of fame and the predatory people who surround her.

At times, it feels as though the film is exploiting her legacy more than it’s honoring her memory. However, Blonde does elicit a sense of admiration and sympathy for Monroe, even though it can be both voyeuristic and exploitative. There are a lot of seedy and sensationalistic events depicted whose veracity could be questioned, but whether they are accurate or not is less important than recognizing the toll fame extracted from the intelligent but naïve Norma Jeane Mortensen in her transformation into the screen icon Marilyn Monroe. Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody provide excellent supporting performances as the Ex-Athlete and the Playwright, but it is de Armas’ inspired performance that is the center of this film.

Dominik’s bold vision utilizes surreal, dreamlike imagery; slow-motion; closeups; and several different aspect ratios ranging from 1:1 to 2.39:1. Most of the film is composed at 1.37, like many of Monroe’s early films, but I found the constantly changing ratios to be distracting. The film also alternates between color and black & white with perplexing frequency. The color shots, especially those towards the beginning featuring a very young Norma Jeane and her mother are slightly washed-out with a yellow-sepia tinged character. This conveys the stark and unfulfilling nature of her austere childhood, and although later color scenes feature slightly more color saturation, they still retain a grim, subdued appearance. 

Dolby Vision color grading is used more effectively in scenes incorporating actual footage from Monroe’s films, with vibrant colors that really pop in contrast to Norma Jeane’s real life away from the Hollywood glitz. When the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is projected in a theater during a gala screening, de Armas is digitally composited into the scene and the gorgeous bright fuchsia of her dress contrasted by the rich, dark blacks of the men’s tuxedos and the blood-red backdrop is visually stunning. This is juxtaposed with the more muted colors in the wider shots of the theater and the audience members as Monroe exclaims, “That thing up on the screen, it isn’t me.”

Black & white scenes also occasionally exhibit a slightly washed-out quality, but dreamlike sequences such as the recreation of the subway-grate scene from The Seven Year Itch looked absolutely gorgeous. There were deep, inky  black backgrounds that beautifully framed Monroe’s bright white dress moving in slow motion with mesmerizing detail in the curves of its flowing fabric and the perfectly and crisply defined pleats.  

Audio is presented in Dolby Atmos and is quite good, with a wide stereo soundstage for music and effective use of all channels to provide a pleasing ambience. The surround and height channels are used occasionally for discrete Foley effects such as the screams of patients in the hallways of the state hospital where Norma Jeane visits her ailing mother. And when she and her mother flee a forest fire in her childhood, the crackling embers of the fire are all around them, but the overall effect, even with the atmospheric music, is not as enveloping and holographic as could be expected.

Writer and director Dominik’s liberal use of artistic license and unorthodox filmmaking techniques in telling the story of the legendary Marilyn Monroe is risky. As often as it works, there are equally as many times that it comes across as lurid and cringey. Blonde is sometimes beautiful to look at, with a heroic performance by de Armas, but its content is bleak and disturbing.

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 | Frequently alternating between color and black & white, the film mostly has a washed-out, subdued look, with Dolby Vision most effectively deployed in the scenes that use footage from Monroe’s actual movies

SOUND | The Atmos soundtrack is quite good, with a wide stereo soundstage for music and effective use of all channels to provide a pleasing ambience

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Review: 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys (1995)

review | 12 Monkeys

Terry Gilliam’s most successful attempt to work within the system, this apocalyptic thriller proved to be prescient—but not just for the expected reasons

by Michael Gaughn
October 3, 2022

Having had an affirmative experience getting reacquainted with Brazil after the rout of Baron Munchausen, I wanted to do some more digging around to try to figure out if Terry Gilliam was something of a one-hit wonder. I’d watched The Fisher King again a few months ago and, while some of it remains powerful, too much of it feels out of scale with the material. It’s a good movie—far better than most—but can’t even begin to compare with Brazil. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has its moments but is basically a rambling mess that gets squeezed much too thin. The bottom line seems to be that Gilliam without a solid script is mainly an occasionally compelling diversion.

The Peoples’ script for 12 Monkeys is way too full of itself but gets most of the structural stuff right enough to let Gilliam build something pretty substantial atop it. But his greatest achievement here—which definitely isn’t derived from the script—is the tone, the ability to give a presence to the impalpable. 12 Monkeys feels like an elegy—one that manages to be both moving and troubling without being either depressing or sentimental. As soon as we know almost every character we see on the screen is soon going to die, a consistent tenor takes hold that makes everything feel both tenuous and more vivid. 

And Gilliam establishes that tone—it can’t really be called a mood—so strongly that even his lapses and indulgences can’t queer it. The Britishisms and silly gags he was able to make work, to some degree, in Fisher King feel alien here and push you damn close to the point of “O, come on.” But the film’s portrayal of the end is so credible that it carries you over the errors in judgment.

And a lot of the credit for that—and I can’t believe I’m writing this given that I’m talking about Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt—goes to the acting. Bruce Willis is always Bruce Willis, or something less than that, but Gilliam gets him to stretch well beyond his persona and, by adeptly molding the individual moments of his performance, succeeds in piecing together a nuanced and forceful whole. Pitt, in probably his only convincing role, takes what can be seen as just goofing and makes it feel like that absurdity, in sum, is the character. Although his Jeffrey Goines is something of a red herring, it was crucial to the film to show that there’s a menacing chaos at the heart of all his acting out.

Why didn’t Madeleine Stowe ever have a career? Her performance, which is the film’s fulcrum and is subtly modulated but in a way that becomes powerful, should have led to her having her pick of standout roles. It could have been a personal thing or an industry thing or just a dearth of good enough parts, but it’s a tremendous mystery, and a huge loss. She brings much needed weight to the the film through her believable pivot from intelligent and perceptive but hopelessly smug to utterly lost and desperate to believe. 

Seen as a madcap stylist, a Goldbergian concoctor of cinematic gadgets, Gilliam has never received his due as an actor’s director. But his films, going back to Time Bandits, have been graced by exceptional performances, even when the material didn’t seem substantial enough to hold that kind of weight. 12 Monkeys is driven by the acting, not the style. 

My comments about the HD presentation on Prime (as a portal for Starz) are made knowing a 4K remaster was done this year and a new home release could be imminent. Parts of the film are in surprisingly bad shape for something from as recent as 1995, with the quality sometimes varying tremendously from shot to shot, especially near the beginning. While much of the movie holds up well watched on a big screen, those sudden soft or super contrasty moments can be jarring. 

As we’ve seen repeatedly, 4K is no panacea—it can even be an older film’s worst enemy. Depending on the elements they had to work with for the remaster, a new release could be a benison or could be uneven as hell. I’d be especially concerned it would accentuate the flaws in the decent enough but definitely now creaky CGI. That said, I’m keen to check out the 4K, if or when it comes.

Allow me to ruminate for a moment on my way out the door.

The intuitiveness of the mass consciousness can be startling. The dire events portrayed in this film, until then just the shouts of lone voices, weren’t even thinkable on the mass level until around 1995. It’s as if we were beginning to prepare ourselves for everything that’s transpired over the past few years, and for the worse to come. 

And, as often happens, the surface content of a film—or wave of films—also has a self-reflexive cinematic complement. By getting you to feel the death of the race in a way that gets into your bones, 12 Monkeys gets you to sense the death of emotion in movies as well. It’s hard to pin down exactly but there was a distinct moment when the movies (all entertainment, actually) crossed a rubicon from being grounded in humanity to deriving from a kind of unfeeling viciousness, when creativity devolved into facile cleverness, when it all shifted from grounded in emotion to cruel, abstract exercises in the coldly cerebral. 

That moment seems to be right around the time of 12 Monkeys’ release, with the solidifying of the Coens and the rise of Fincher, Jonze, the Andersons (Paul Thomas and Wes), Nolan, and others of their ilk. Their work resonates as long as you can view it with an arm’s-length detachment, don’t invest too much in it emotionally, and don’t bring your full being to bear. In other words, as long as you don’t allow yourself to feel. None of the above-mentioned could have summoned up any of the bittersweet sense of passing that pervades 12 Monkeys because none of them could have sensed it to begin with. 

12 Monkeys is the cry of the canary in the coal mine, the voice essential to survival we’ve since opted to drown out with the screeching din of an increasingly brutal culture. Given that we were just capable of hearing that warning at the time the movie came out, I have to wonder if it has any value as anything other than an evening’s amusement now.

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

PICTURE | While 12 Monkeys holds up well seen on a big screen, there’s a surprising amount of inconsistency between shots at times

SOUND | Dating from the early days of DTS surround, it can all get very ping-pongy but the material lends itself to that kind of treatment, for the most part

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Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

review | Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Diving into late-period Woody Allen is always a gamble but this lively Johansson/Bardem/Cruz vehicle remains a pretty sure bet

by Michael Gaughn
September 26, 2022

It’s not exactly news that the quality of Woody Allen’s work became incredibly uneven once he emerged from his succession of mid-period classics like Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Stardust Memories. For every Purple Rose of Cairo or Zelig there was a Shadows and Fog; for every Husbands and Wives, an Alice. And it only got more erratic as time went on, having to slog through films like Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, and Whatever Works to be able to pluck a Blue Jasmine from the heap. 

Not having seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona in a while and not sure what my impression was of it at the time, I was surprised by how strong it is—much more so than expected. More uneven than it needs to be, it’s still consistently engaging. It’s probably Allen’s loosest, most fluid and energetic film. And it still serves as viewer bait for Scarlett Johansson fans, dating from the era when she was allowed to do legitimate roles, before she succumbed to just being a prepackaged marketing commodity. 

VCB is Allen’s second-best late-period work after Blue Jasmine. (This will seem incredible to some but I’d put Café Society at No. 3.) Allen was so confident in his skill as a filmmaker by this point that he could just resonate with his material, knowing he’d find some deft and distinctive way to express it. Even at the early peak of his powers he was utterly incapable of making a film like this one, which makes his mid-period triumphs feel constipated by comparison. (To be fair, though, films like Vicky Cristina and Blue Jasmine just don’t have the repeat appeal of those earlier efforts.)

Allen takes a novelistic—or at least short-storyish—approach to the film—something he’s also done in movies like Manhattan and Café Society. But with Vicky Cristina he was so sure of himself that he could be far more improvisational without fear it would unravel in the editing, taking the literary and playing it off the cinematic and somehow getting them to coexist without having it feel like a forced marriage. 

The dabs and strokes and feints of the opening, where he sets the action in motion by making a series of suggestions—snatches of dialogue, telling images, evocative sounds, avoiding traditional linearity because he knows films always move forward so a story will arise no matter what—is bravura but completely on point and without being showy. As the film proceeds and Allen further plays around with these ideas, it’s as if the cinematic knows the literary is just there to lay the foundation for moments that are purely about an image, a movement, a sound, a dissolve, a cut, sometimes highlighting just one element, sometimes mixing and matching the emphases. The point, I suspect, is to keep any one character from being dominant and instead keep the focus on the shifting relationships between the characters and on the tentativeness of fleeting emotions. 

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is what Sweet and Lowdown should have been but Allen hadn’t yet broken far enough free of his mid-period technique to pull something like that off. It’s a serious mistake—one often committed—to try to attribute what’s best about Allen’s work to his cinematographer of the moment—here, Javier Aguirresarobe, whose images are undeniably both striking and restrained without indulging in romantic clichés—in other words, apt. Instead of taking the obvious approach, VCB makes place—the location, the geographic-cum-cultural-cum-psychological locus—the spring of the romance, and the mise en scène and montage are just extensions—expressions—of it. No further emphasis is needed. 

But this all arose from the efforts of both Allen and Aguirresarobe, not because Allen gave his DP free rein. Yes, he’s worked with masters like Willis, DiPalma, Nykvist, and (unfortunately) Storaro, but you’d have to be blind not to see that, no matter how strong the cinematographer’s style or big his personality, Allen has always been able to put it in the service of his material and that there’s a consistent look and feel to his movies no matter who’s manning the camera.

The material here is so fertile that it’s not seriously hampered by the mixed bag of the acting. Strongest is Javier Bardem. I’ve never been a fan, but Allen gives him a lot of room to run with his character, and Bardem takes advantage of every inch of it. Rebecca Hall’s mannered kvetching, and resemblance to a Modigliani, can get annoying, especially early on, but isn’t a dealbreaker and actually helps bolster the film’s payoff. Penelope Cruz comes across as a tad overwrought, sometimes hitting the mark, often flailing to define her character. Johansson is more a presence than an actor, of course, a walking encyclopedia of knowing looks who knows how to smolder her way through a scene but rarely helps to elevate the ensemble. 

But, again, VCB is less about individuals than the treacherously unstable ground of relationships, territory Allen captures incisively, and with surprisingly little sentiment. He doesn’t get enough credit for being the first American filmmaker to figure out how to show sex on screen in a natural, convincing, non-gratuitous way. His renderings of carnal encounters are so effortless we don’t realize how brilliant they are, even with more than a century of awkward, overweening, giggly, grotesque counterexamples to draw on.

Because of the whole evanescence of emotion thing, this film really didn’t need a traditional plot, and things get messy and awkward whenever one decides to rear its head. Needing something resembling an ending, Allen introduces some small-arms fire into the proceedings—but he’s always sucked at gunplay. The shotgun dispatching of Johansson in Match Point is one of the most inept, implausible, and unconvincing murders in all of cinema. Here, Cruz firing off rounds in the general direction of Bardem and Hall is a huge false note, a contrivance that sticks out as egregiously as it does because so much of what precedes it is so well done. Somehow, this misstep doesn’t damage the overall impact of the film, partly because Allen redeems himself a few moments later with a lingering silent closeup of Hall who—again, subtly—looks convincingly like a changed person.

I can’t abide lazy, unimaginative reviewers who write the same review over and over, just plugging in some new nouns each time (without varying the adjectives) as if every movie is just like every other and reviewing them is a robotic form of Mad Libs. That said, there’s not a lot new to say about Amazon’s presentation of relatively recent films, which tends to range from acceptable to occasionally extraordinary. This one falls somewhere in the middle, not harming Aguirresarobe’s work but not fully honoring it either. That will take a 4K transfer—but because this is an Allen film and there’s no justice in this world, I’m not holding my breath. 

The warmth of almost every frame is almost there. The subtly muted tones—a look digital has yet to achieve—are pleasing but not as beguiling as they should be. On the other hand, the soft-focus tracking shot of massive sparklers going off in front of a church—the kind of thing streaming consistently bungled just a couple of years ago—is surprisingly solid and clean. 

The phrase “a Woody Allen movie for people who don’t like Woody Allen movies” has always made me cringe—for a lot of reasons, but mainly because the two films most often mentioned in association with it—Midnight in Paris and Match Point—are among his worst. I guess it could be applied fruitfully, though, to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which definitely stands on its own. But to not have the context of the best of the rest of Allen’s body of work and to not know how it both syncs up with and veers away from all that is to be deprived of one of the richest parts of the experience. 

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

PICTURE | Not quite capturing the film’s overall warmth or subtly muted tones, Amazon’s presentation doesn’t harm Javier Aguirresarobe’s work but doesn’t fully honor it either

SOUND | It’s a Woody Allen movie, for chrissakes. You can clearly hear people talking and the music cues sound fine—in stereo.

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Review: Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

review | Thor: Love and Thunder

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Lots of humor, some character development, and Christian Bale as a new villain help keep this latest installment in the Thor saga engaging

by John Sciacca
September 12, 2022

With Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor (Chris Helmsworth) now has the most standalone films of any hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with four. Thor definitely took on a more humorous bent in the previous standalone film, Thor: Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi, who returns here as both writer and director, and to continue voicing Korg, the Kronan rock-man introduced in Ragnarok. With Ragnarok, Waititi interjected some humor to lighten the mood and bring more of Hemsworth’s personality to the role, and one of the criticisms of Love and Thunder is that the humor has gone too far, nearly becoming an outright slapstick comedy.

While the comedy is definitely still here and pretty pervasive, I feel like it just continues the evolution of Thor and calling it slapstick is overly harsh. While some things like the repeated gag of the giant screaming goats and the odd love triangle between Thor, his old weapon Mjölnir, and his new weapon Stormbreaker, might wear thin on some, they weren’t enough to ruin the film for me. The best touchstone would be how you felt about the humor in Ragnarok or how Thor related to Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) in Avengers: Endgame. If you enjoyed that, you’ll likely enjoy Love and Thunder.

To me, Thor’s comedy style is best summed up in these lines from a Love and Thunder deleted scene:

Star-Lord: “Remember when you told us that this was going to be a safe vacation? I said, ‘Are you certain?’ You said, ‘Oh, yeah. 100%.”
Thor: “Out of 1,000%.”

I loved the interplay between Thor and Star-Lord and wish there would have been more time to explore that relationship, and I thought it was great Matt Damon and Luke Hemsworth returned to reprise their rolls of Actor Loki and Thor from Ragnarok. 

One thing I did find an odd choice was the repeated use and references to the band Guns N’ Roses. It’s almost like Waititi was listening the GNR’s greatest hits on repeat while writing the movie and just fanboyed out. Four different GNR hits play over pivotal points and then again over the end credits, and another character says they have changed their name to Axl, “a singer from a popular band [he] heard on Earth,” along with having GNR posters in his room. Frankly, it’s a bizarre amount of product placement for a rock band in a superhero movie. 

The last time we saw Thor in Endgame, he was depressed over his failure with Thanos. He had been drinking and over-eating, and became what is referred to as “Fat Thor” by the fandom. At the film’s end, he turned rulership of New Asgard over to King Valykrie (Tessa Thompson) so he could head off and become part of the Guardians of the Galaxy crew and find himself again.

While Marvel has made the mid- and end-credits scenes an expectation among fans, Love and Thunder includes, I believe, the first pre-title scene in MCU history. Here we are introduced to Gorr (Christian Bale), a mortal being who has lost faith in the gods after his daughter, Love (India Rose Hemsworth), dies. Gorr takes possession of the god-killing Necrosword and with it he becomes the God Butcher, swearing to kill off all gods across the galaxy.

Thor has turned his dad bod back into a god bod, and he is still with the Guardians of the Galaxy (though far too briefly) before returning to New Asgard to help protect it against Gorr. There he’s reunited with his true love, Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who we last saw briefly in Endgame, and who is now battling stage-four cancer. Foster has also developed a special relationship with Mjölnir, the hammer wielded by Thor until it was shattered by his sister, Hela, in Ragnarok. 

While Bale/Gorr started off reminding me of a War boy from Mad Max: Fury Road, his practical makeup (apparently taking three and a half to four hours a day) and actual shaved head make for a creepy and compelling villain, and his intensity definitely elevates the stakes and counterbalances some of the humor. 

Shot at a 4.5K resolution, the home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate, and images looked sharp and clean. While the Kaleidescape download features a constant 2.39:1 aspect ratio that will be preferred by front-projection owners, the Disney+ stream offers the ability to watch in IMAX Enhanced, which features some scenes in 1.90:1. While these aspect-ratio switches aren’t as engaging as in Top Gun: Maverick, the expanded ratio did make the scenes in Omnipotence City a bit more engaging. 

In the opening, there is a stark contrast between the actors in the foreground and the deep sandy landscape behind them that has terrific depth. You can really appreciate the texture and detail in Bale’s makeup, letting you see the fine lines and pores in his head in closeups. You can also appreciate the design and opulence of Omnipotence City, where the gods live, and the incredible depth and scale of many shots there.

There are many instances where HDR helps to improve the picture quality. Whether it’s small effects like the crackling of electricity sparkling on Stormbreaker or Mjölnir or called down from the heavens, bright white lights gleaming in a dark sky, the flames burning in New Asgard, the glint of gold off of chest armor, or the rainbow-colored Bifrost Thor summons. There are also some vivid colors throughout, like the deeply saturated red of Thor’s cape, or the gleaming metallic blue of his armor, or some wonderful golden sunsets, and the blues and pinks of space clouds. 

But the film’s true HDR tour de force is near the end when the group arrives at the Shadow Realm. Here nearly all color is drained, and images take on an incredibly contrasty black & white effect, with deep inky blacks against vibrant whites and occasionally bright flashes of color. These scenes look fantastic and are truly reference-quality. 

One of the big reasons I opted for the Kaleidescape download over a Disney+ stream was for the Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack. While not as aggressive a mix as you might hope for a big-budget superhero film, it’s still pretty engaging, with loads of surround activity and plenty of overhead fill that helps to establish the sonic space. There are scenes where you’ll hear the hum of Mjölnir flying around the room, winds and sands swirling around, the boom and echo of voices in large halls, the creeping movements of the shadow monsters, thunder rolling across the skies, or Zeus’s (Russell Crowe) lightning bolt whizzing past and exploding.

There’s plenty of deep and authoritative bass, and here the Kaleidescape download far surpassed the Disney+ experience in weight, impact, and punch, delivering truly tactile low end. You really feel the bass kick in with the first big Guns N’ Roses track and then to further accentuate the big battles, hammer/sword strikes, and explosions.

Of course, stick around for a mid-credits scene that points towards Thor’s next adventure, as well as an end-credits scene that gives some closure for a couple of main characters. 

If you go into Thor: Love and Thunder predisposed to hating it and wanting to pick apart all the jokes and humor, you’ll probably find plenty of fodder. But go in expecting to have a good time, to be wowed by some beautiful and stunning visuals, and to enjoy some dynamically deep bass, then you probably will.

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 | The kind of clean, sharp images you’ve come expect from a 4K transfer, with HDR providing an able assist with highlights and vibrant colors, and in a striking black & white scene near the end 

SOUND | The Atmos mix isn’t as aggressive you’d expect from a superhero film but is still engaging, with lots of surround activity, overhead fill, and deep bass

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