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Review: Beetlejuice

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Beetlejuice

review | Beetlejuice

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This isn’t just a subtle improvement over previous home video incarnations but a massive leap that breathes new life into this tale of the dead

by Dennis Burger
September 8, 2020

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice probably doesn’t spring immediately to mind as a prime candidate for a 4K HDR remaster. That’s not to say anything about the quality of the film itself, of course. In fact, I would rank it as the second-best “goth” film of all time (right after Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, of course). It’s just never been a film that made for decent home theater demo material. The DVD release looked like a skit performed for public-access TV, and the Blu-ray—while a huge improvement—was still a blown-out, garish, overly saturated mess of a thing that could be categorized as “watchable” at best. 

That kind of thing sticks with you. For the past 32 years, the home video presentation of Beetlejuice has left a lasting impression in the mind of viewers of how this quirky and adorably dark film is supposed to look. My only hope here is that enough people give the UHD HDR release enough attention to undo some of the damage done by previous efforts.

You don’t really notice the advantages of the new HDR color grade at first, and I suspect that’s because the opening credits sequence—with its sweeping overhead view of the village of Winter River, CT, which morphs into a model thereof—seems to have been taken from a print, not the original film negative. So while you immediately get a sense of the enhanced resolution of this new restoration, the color palette is still a little limited and the overall quality of the image is ever-so-slightly dupe-y. As soon as the last title fades away, though, we quite obviously move to a scan of the original negative, and from here on out the image takes on all the qualities of beautifully restored (or perhaps lovingly preserved) 35mm film. 

Perhaps the most startling thing is how nuanced the colors are. Gone are the ridiculously ruddy skin tones and the Hulk-Smash green of the foliage (both outdoors and in the scale model of Winter River that dominates the plot of the film). Yes, as the lovely Geena Davis and a surprisingly sufferable Alec Baldwin make their trek into the idyllic little town toward the beginning, the image is still peppered with vibrant primary hues—the sign on the hardware store, the covered bridge where Davis and Baldwin’s characters lose their lives—but because of HDR10’s wider color gamut, the saturation of the overall image doesn’t have to be cranked to 11 to allow for such vivid chromaticity when and where it’s appropriate.

The second thing you notice is that there’s just so much detail in the image that has been lost in previous home video transfers, and not wholly as a function of resolution. Take the short scene in which the pushy real estate agent played by Annie McEnroe surprises Baldwin’s character at the window in a desperate push to talk him out of his home. Even on Blu-ray, the scenery behind her is a white-hot blur devoid of depth or detail, which makes sense given the 8-bit limitations of HD video. The choice had to be made whether to overexpose the world outside that window or underexpose the interior and risk losing Baldwin in the shadows. In this new 10-bit transfer, both interior and exterior are perfectly exposed. Baldwin exists in the shadows, yes, but doesn’t get lost in them, while the depth and detail of the foliage behind McEnroe still shines through. 

That’s one scene out of dozens I could point to in extolling the virtues of this UHD HDR restoration and its ability to breathe life into this tale of the dead. Other details that come to mind are the imperfections of Winona Ryder’s teenaged complexion and the fine filigree lace of Davis’s bridal gown, both of which are resolved beautifully. The film grain is also perfectly organic throughout—not too noisy, not too overbearing, but never artificially smoothed over.

But perhaps my favorite thing about this new transfer is the way it handles the scenes in the bureaucratic Neitherworld, which have always been the worst-looking aspect of the home video releases. Here, the HDR gets to flex its muscles with no concern for lifelike skin tones or believable greenery. Simply put, these sequences now glow and iridize like a fluorescent blacklight poster, which is how they’ve always looked in my memory of seeing the film far too many times to count on the big screen in the spring of ’88. 

As for the sound, I think it’s safe to say Beetlejuice didn’t sound as good on the mixing stage as it does here. Aside from a few cute and subtle exceptions, the new Dolby Atmos remix doesn’t get too carried away with repositioning sound elements or making the film sound like a modern blockbuster. And thank goodness it doesn’t included any re-recorded sound effects, as does the travesty of a remix included with the 4K HDR remaster of Hitchcock’s Psycho. The mix mostly serves to simply give more space to Danny Elfman’s delicious score and the wonderfully uplifting Harry Belafonte soundtrack. But it’s also apparent that there’s also been some equalization done to the audio, which has an enhanced richness and fidelity I don’t recall ever hearing before. And dialogue clarity is among the best of any home video release. Like, ever.

There’s nothing much by way of extras, aside from three episodes of the Beetlejuice Saturday-morning cartoon that ran from 1989 to 1991. These haven’t been restored and are horribly compressed, so they likely aren’t worth your time. The Kaleidescape download, unlike the recent UHD Blu-ray release, also includes an isolated music track—that is, a version of the film devoid of dialogue or sound effects. But it’s unfortunately married to the pan & scan standard-definition transfer of the film, so its value is debatable at best. 

But don’t let the lack of supplemental goodies bum you out. Beetlejuice is one of the worthiest UHD HDR remasters I’ve seen to date (almost on par with The Wizard of Oz), and the film itself is such a joyous (and ironic) celebration of life that it stands on its own.

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 | Maybe the most startling thing is how nuanced the colors are, followed closely by the realization there’s just so much detail in the image that has been lost in previous home video transfers.

SOUND | It’s safe to say Beetlejuice didn’t sound as good on the mixing stage as it does here, and the Atmos remix doesn’t get carried away with repositioning sound elements or making the film sound like a modern blockbuster.

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Review: Batman Returns

Batman Returns (1992)

review | Batman Returns

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The 4K HDR reissue really drives home how much better this sequel is than Tim Burton’s first stab at the Caped Crusader

by Dennis Burger
June 18, 2019

I’ve never been a big fan of shibboleths—those words or catch-phrases designed to set members of an in-group apart from outsiders. Especially in today’s geek culture, the use of such exclusionary memes seems divisive to me. But I’ll admit, I do have my own shorthand way of identifying my people: I simply work into casual conversation the observation that 1992’s Batman Returns is a better and more interesting film than the 1989 original. 

What I love most about this revelation is the looks I get in response. At one end of the spectrum you have the folks who gape at me as if I’ve just licked their nostrils. At the other end there’s a spark of realization, a look in the eye that says, “You get it!” 

What generally follows (with the latter folk, at least) is a lengthy discussion about why—why Batman Returns is everything Batman should have been, why it’s stood the test of time in a way the original hasn’t. Without hours to dig into all of it here, though, I’ll have to merely scratch the surface.

Simply put, whereas Batman—much as I love that film—is primarily a product, its weird and wonderful sequel is a genuine work of art, an aesthetic, thematic, and tonal expression that actually has something to say and stands up to legitimate re-interpretation as the years pass and the weirdness of our own world finally catches up in so many ways to the macabre and gothic political tale Tim Burton wove in this most anticipated of sequels. And surprisingly, very little of that has to do with the fact that Max Shreck—Returns’ primary villain and tertiary antagonist, played by Christopher Walken in all his scenery-chewing glory—is a nasty, narcissistic, big-city tycoon with underhanded political ambitions and a feint of concern for the common man.

In any other comic-book film, Walken really would have stolen the show. But the real standouts here are Danny DeVito as a deliciously disgusting re-interpretation of The Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer, who simply makes Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, her own. 

If I had to guess, I’d say one of the reasons why Batman Returns was written off as an inferior sequel in its day is the heavy emphasis on its villains—delightful as they are—to the exclusion of the titular hero, who almost shrinks into the background as a mysterious boogeyman. Or perhaps it’s simply that this film is so dramatically different from the one it follows, almost having more in common with Burton’s criminally underappreciated Edward Scissorhands, which he made in between his two Batman efforts. 

None of this is to say Batman Returns is perfect. Some of its dialogue falls flat, even if only by contrast with the sheer brilliance of other one-liners. And Keaton at times seems bored to be wearing the cape and cowl for a second time. But if, for whatever reason, you haven’t seen Batman Returns since its debut, you owe it another look, and there’s no better way to do so than the new UHD/HDR release on Kaleidescape. 

To say the film has never looked as striking as it does here would be a banal understatement. The improvements over previous home video releases simply can’t be summed up in a handful of paragraphs. The additional detail over the Blu-ray release from 2010 is jaw-dropping from beginning to end, but it’s the HDR grade that truly brings this film to life. 

Unlike Batman, which is a way more visually vibrant film than most people remember it being, Returns is genuinely stygian throughout, and the enhanced contrasts, shadow detail, and depth afforded by HDR give the streets of Gotham and the sewers beneath a depth and richness I don’t remember seeing even in the film’s original big-screen release. The new transfer also makes wonderful use of highlights, mostly to bring vivid clarity to the film’s diverse textures—especially in contrasting the dull, matte darkness of Batman’s costume against the gleaming, slick blackness of Catwoman’s getup. 

The enhanced dynamic range also elevates certain narrative elements, such as the scene in which Penguin crawls out of the sewers for the first time and is blinded by the strobing of camera flashes. Those bright flashes aren’t quite eye-reactive but they are stark enough to illuminate Penguin’s discomfort and give the viewer some small taste of his experience. 

I’ll admit, I was concerned going in that the HDR would do no favors to the numerous matte-painted cityscapes. But since the film is in many ways shot like a play whose audience is dragged from stage to stage at a frantic pace, the fact that you can now more easily see the seams in spots actually adds to the film’s charms in an appropriately weird way. Aside from a handful of optically composited effects, Batman Returns looks like it could have been shot yesterday—by a madman, to be sure (and certainly not funded by any major motion-picture studio outside of perhaps Netflix) but yesterday nonetheless.

As for the sound, unlike the UHD/HDR release of Batman, the new Dolby Atmos mix doesn’t introduce any re-recorded sound effects, largely because it doesn’t need to. The sound elements still hold up as shockingly modern and incredibly robust, and the Atmos mix simply draws atmospheric elements and bits of Danny Elfman’s iconic score into the height dimension. 

I have to say, if this is the direction Hollywood is heading with Atmos mixes, either new or re-mixed, I might have to rethink my curmudgeonly stance on the format. The new mix never whaps you over the head with kitschy audio grandstanding but is instead used largely to build the film’s environments, to give a distinct sonic signature to interiors like the Batcave and the Penguin’s underground lair. In other words, it draws you into and reinforces the onscreen action rather than distracting from it.

One other thing worth noting about the new Kaleidescape release of the film is that it’s the only digital release of the UHD/HDR remaster to include bonus features, aside from the iTunes download. Vudu, Amazon, and others have released movie-only versions that sell the film short, in my opinion. On Kaleidescape, you’ll also need to download the Blu-ray-quality version of the film to get the bonus goodies, and said bonus goodies are only available in standard-definition, since they were originally created for DVD but it’s worth the extra effort. The supplements are a continuation of those created for Batman and give a nice inside look at the making of the film, especially its effects, set designs, etc. 

I wish Burton’s commentary had also been attached to the UHD/HDR version since it’s a worthwhile listen, and having seen the film in all its 4K glory, it’s hard now to watch it in mere high-definition. But if nothing else, doing so gives one a greater appreciation of just how incredible the new restoration is. 

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

PICTURE | This film has never looked as striking as it does here. The improvements over previous home video releases is jaw-dropping from beginning to end, but it’s the HDR grade that truly brings it to life. 

SOUND | The Atmos mix never whaps you over the head with kitschy audio grandstanding but is instead used to build the film’s environments, drawing you into and reinforcing the onscreen action rather than distracting from it..

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Review: The Matrix Trilogy

The Matrix Triology

review | The Matrix Trilogy

The imminent arrival of the first Matrix film in 18 years makes this the perfect time to revisit the original trilogy

by John Sciacca
December 17, 2021

You might ask yourself why we’re reviewing The Matrix Trilogy a full three years after its 4K HDR disc release. The answer is simple—with the new The Matrix: Resurrections dropping next week both theatrically and on HBO Max, it seemed the perfect time to revisit this sci-fi classic. 

To be even more honest, it had been years since I’d watched this trilogy and I’d never sampled the 4K HDR release with the new Dolby Atmos audio soundtrack. I couldn’t even remember exactly how the story finished, so I decided to take the Red Pill and once again head down the rabbit hole with Neo, discover how these films hold up some 20 years later, and get ready for the exciting fourth chapter!

Released in 1999, it’s no understatement to say The Matrix was groundbreaking. Everything from the ad campaign (“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”), to the look and style, to the visual effects was intriguing and mind-blowing. I can remember turning to my wife in the theater just minutes into the movie and saying, “I’m not even sure what is happening but I am loving this movie!” I’m happy to say that feeling holds up and the films are still a blast to watch!

And while the innovative “bullet-time” effects have been widely copied since, and even showed up in commercials for a while, the effects are still amazing to watch and, bolstered by the new Dolby TrueHD Atmos mix, are more immersive and impactful than ever.

Ultimately, though, what makes The Matrix work and hold up so well it is that it is just so damn cool. The world is cool, the concept is cool, the style is cool. But most of all, the characters are cool. With lesser actors, some of the lines could have been laughable, but this cast committed to the Wachowskis’ vision, and they inhabit their roles and the world so well it’s easy to go along for the journey. Laurence Fishburne as the all-wise and believing prophet Morpheus walking around with arms folded behind his back in a leather duster and spouting things like, “My beliefs do not require them to [believe].” And Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, in her skintight, shiny black bodysuit, is never sexualized but rather an incredibly strong female lead every bit as vital to the story. Hugo Weaving as trilogy Big Bad Agent Smith brings gravitas to a character that is really just a computer security program. 

And then there’s Keanu Reeves as Neo. Of course, now, after three successful John Wick films, it’s easy to separate Reeves from his “whoa, dude!” past performances but in 1999 he wouldn’t have been an obvious choice for this role. Of course, it’s impossible today to think of Neo as anyone other than Reeves, and he plays the part with the perfect amount of curious/confused, “What the hell?!” that we as the audience are experiencing; and the underlying excitement of lines like, “I know kung-fu” after an entire day of having fighting skills uploaded into his brain come across as wide-eyed discovered excitement rather than silly. 

The first film, The Matrix, is still the best. It was a wholly original experience, and while the second and third films fleshed out the world—and completed the experience—the first one stands head and shoulders above the others. Though I actually enjoyed the third film, The Matrix Revolutions, this time more than I did on first viewing. (There is definitely something to be said for being able to view an entire story back-to-back-to-back instead of needing to wait years between releases.) 

The parts I remembered as being great from the second film, The Matrix Reloaded—namely the scenes with the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) and the amazing freeway chase rescuing The Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim) from The Twins (Adrian and Neil Rayment)—are still fantastic, while the bizarre and way too long club-rave scene in Zion still goes on far too long and The Architect’s (Helmut Bakaitis) convoluted speech with “ergo,“ “concordantly,” and “assiduously” is still a bit of a headscratcher but a very cool concept presented in a cool Matrix-y manner. 

The films all have different feels while still feeling and looking like parts of the same whole. The Matrix is more a think-piece divided into three distinct acts of Neo discovering the Matrix, learning his role, and becoming The One, and introduces the concept of this other world and what is possible when you become unplugged and learn how to control it. Reloaded builds out the mythology of who Neo is and what he can do and introduces the new threat replicating and emerging in the computer world, with Zion under imminent attack by the machines. And Revolutions is an all-out action assault as most of the characters are defending Zion while Neo and Trinity go off to confront the machines in Machine World. 

I also can’t recall a film prior to Reloaded that ended on such a drastic cliffhanger, literally just ending and setting up the opening for Revolutions. (Much the way The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 concluded years later.) 

All three movies were originally filmed on 35 mm stock, and these releases, taken from new, true 4K digital intermediates, look fantastic. The movies have the perfect balance between clarity, sharpness, and detail without scrubbing away noise into waxy softness. Only occasionally did I notice any grain/digital noise, usually in scenes with loads of all-white, like inside The Construct.

Edges are sharp and defined, and closeups have tons of detail. (I’d never noticed the pock marks on Reeves’ cheeks before—though certainly nothing to compare with Fishburne!). Whether it’s the texture aboard the interiors of the ships, or the construction of the human world of Zion, or the weaving of clothing in the “real world,” or the detail of the mechanized robots, or the stone and pebbled finish outside Neo’s office building, images are terrific-looking throughout.

You just get clean beautiful images that are the best these movies have ever looked, and the HDR grading makes this an entirely different visual experience. Blacks are deep, dark, and clean; colors are punchy, vibrant, and vivid; and bright highlights shine off the screen, especially in Resurrections during the final battle, which has plenty of eye-reactive lightning strikes. Right from the opening credits, the brilliant green text leaps off the screen, then there are plenty of highlights from lights aboard the ships or of autos, or brilliant orange-red flames or sparks of electricity. 

Sonically, the new Dolby TrueHD Atmos track is another massive improvement and launches this series into the hallways of legendary demo material that showcases some of the best of dialogue clarity; massive, tactile bass; subtle atmospherics; and fully overwhelming immersive audio.

Take a listen to subtler moments, such as aboard the crashed ship in Revolutions. You’ll hear creaks and groans; venting gasses; crackling sparks; buzzes, clicks, and hums; and sounds of dripping fluids. There are other moments with deep rumbles of rolling thunder where you can pick up the individual droplets of rain falling. They are subtle but literally all around you, truly the hallmark of what an immersive audio track should deliver.

Of course, the movies’ huge action moments deliver the goods, and each film has its own truly demo-worthy scene, from the lobby shootout in The Matrix and the freeway chase in Reloaded to the attack on the dock in Revolutions. The gunfire is big and explosive, with reports and ricochets that wreak havoc and destruction all around the room. You’ll hear things collapsing and crumbling overhead, feel the ripples as bullets streak through the room, hear the race of cars blasting alongside you as Trinity races in her Ducati, and hear Sentinels crawling all around, behind, and overhead in a truly 360-degree surround field. 

The Matrix Trilogy belongs in every collection, especially in 4K with the new Atmos audio mix. It is the epitome of exciting home theater viewing that is not only engaging but also highly entertaining. If you haven’t seen it recently, give it a rewatch so you’re caught up for Resurrections, the first new Matrix film in 18 years!

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 4K HDR transfers have the perfect balance between clarity, sharpness, and detail without scrubbing away noise into waxy softness.

SOUND | The new Dolby TrueHD Atmos mixes launch this series into the annals of legendary demo material, showcasing the best of dialogue clarity; massive, tactile bass; subtle atmospherics; and overwhelming immersive audio.

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Review: Vertigo

Vertigo (1958)

review | Vertigo

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The Robert Harris restoration of one of Hitchcock’s best translates beautifully into 4K HDR

by Michael Gaughn
October 29, 2020

Lazy commentators on Hitchcock will tell you Vertigo is his best film like that’s the beginning and end of the discussion. I’ll allow that it’s one of his best—it’s definitely his most psychologically probing and, in its strange way, intimate—but I would also argue that both Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt deserve to be placed on that same top tier.

What is inarguable is that this is by far the best of the first round of Hitchcock films to receive the 4K HDR treatment. Whereas the releases of Rear Window and The Birds are merciless in exposing the flaws in both the original productions and the current state of the film elements, Vertigo is practically seamless in its presentation, gliding from image to image without any jarring technical distractions (with one exception, which I’ll discuss below). If you’re a Hitchcock fan, this is the 4K title to start with.

But it’s not necessarily the best place to start if you’re new to Hitchcock. Vertigo lacks most of the puckish little gimmicks he used to lure in the masses and, if you take it on its own terms, it’s a pretty disturbing tale of a damaged and fundamentally weak man completely gutted by his belief in the cultural tropes of the saint and the whore. And it can get especially unnerving when you realize that that man isn’t really Jimmy Stewart—who delivers an amazingly fearless portrayal of a pathologically vulnerable ex-detective—but Hitchcock himself.

Also, Hitchcock takes his time with the pacing, which won’t sit well with the jolt-a-minute  immediate-gratification crowd. It’s a cliché to say Vertigo feels like a dream, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And there’s something about the tactile crispness of the images and the sumptuousness of the colors in this release that just enhances that impression. (But, ironically, given how nightmarish Hitchcock’s imagery can be, Vertigo notoriously contains one of the worst dream sequences ever.)

Seriously aiding that sense of being seduced into and then trapped within a dreamworld is Bernard Herrmann’s masterful score, probably his best. It’s something to be savored, and is especially well presented here, sounding both epic and intimate in its Wagnerian longing, with the orchestra not just some indiscriminate wash of sound but an assembly of individuals where you can feel the bows being drawn across the strings, the metallic resonance of the French horns, and the reedy, wooden resonance of the clarinets. For just one example among too many to name, watch the scenes of Stewart’s car drifting up and down the hills of San Francisco where the muted strings, like a siren’s call, subtly limn his character’s loosening grip on the objective world.

This is undoubtedly Robert Burks’ most accomplished work for Hitchcock, with one subtly, and sometimes strikingly, stunning image after another. Given that this is Hitchcock, there is some occasional overreaching, but you can’t really fault Burks for not being able to rise to an impossible challenge.

There’s one borderline moment where 4K HDR really comes through. The pivotal scene where Madeleine reborn emerges from the green mist in Judy’s shabby hotel room had always looked corny on previous home video releases, like she was stepping out of a time transporter in a ‘50s sci-fi film. But here, by hitting just the right note with the green tone—not just in this shot, but in the ones leading up to it—and by now being able to just see through the haze, you can experience for the first time outside of a movie theater exactly what Hitchcock was aiming for—and it works. It’s not just a clever effects shot but a deeply subjective portrayal of a man using another person to purge his demons and sensing himself on the verge of redemption.

Of course, a lot of the credit for the beauty of this 4K release goes to the 1996 restoration by Robert Harris and James Katz, who refurbished the film on 70mm to mimic its original VistaVision presentation. (I’m usually wary of extras, but it would have been useful if the Kaleidescape download had included something that put this somewhat controversial restoration in context since it’s so crucial to the film’s impact here.) 

There is one glaring flaw, which I feel obliged to point out because I can see it’s going to be an issue with 4K releases of older films until someone finds a fix. The photo-backdrop cityscapes out Barbara Bel Geddes’, and to a lesser degree, Stewart’s apartment windows are unconvincing, and look so flat and static that they run the risk of pulling you out of the film. But that’s just not how they looked when Vertigo was shown in theaters.

This is the subject of an ongoing conversation between Gerard Alessandrini and me, and something he broached in his “When Restorations Go Wrong, Pt. 1.” These backdrops don’t stick out now not because people were more gullible back in the day. (In some ways, Studio Era audiences were far more sophisticated than today’s adrenalin junkies.) The cinematographers and production designers knew what they were doing and factored in the impact of images projected on a movie theater screen when they created these sets. But they couldn’t have anticipated what modern technology would do to their efforts. It’s kind of like seeing La Gioconda for the first time and only noticing the cracks in the paint.

Vertigo ranks up with The Shining as the best 4K HDR release of a catalog title I’ve seen to date. You not only get the benefit of experiencing Hitchcock at his best—you get to experience what greater resolution and a wider color gamut can do to restore the impact of an older film. 

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 | Ranks up with The Shining as one of the best 4K HDR releases of a catalog title to date.

SOUND | Bernard Herrmann’s masterful score is something to be savored, and is especially well presented here. 

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Review: The Shining (1980)

The Shining (1980)

review | The Shining

The horror classic finally receives a transfer that matches—even beats—the experiencing of seeing it in a movie theater

by Michael Gaughn
October 7, 2020

The critics hated The Shining. Some of the more prominent, and dubious, ones put it on their “Worst of the Year” lists. Some pointed to the first Friday the 13th installment, released around the same time, as the future of horror and dismissed Kubrick’s effort as quaint and out of touch. Stephen King famously damned the film—then went on with his own adaptation to prove that he knows nothing about filmmaking.

The Shining has, of course, since become a classic. But films are usually deemed “classic” more for their ability to pander to mass taste than for any inherent worth. The more important question is: Is it Kubrick’s best film?

I’m not completely sure about that, but I would tend to argue yes. In The Shining, his technique is in perfect sync with his ambitions, his execution fully, inventively, and surprisingly realizes his themes, and he dives deep enough into the much-abused but still fecund roots of the culture and returns with enough gold to craft something that might still survive when almost every other movie has been forgotten. The Shining is so well done it makes even the best of Kubrick’s previous efforts seem a little callow.

There’s no point in hashing out its merits as a traditional horror movie. While he does deploy some conventional elements, Kubrick primarily pursues horror through other, more effective, means—by using the very nature of film technique to keep the audience uneasy and to pull them into the action against their will.

The most obvious instances are well known by now, the two most famous being seeing the hyper-realistic manifestation of the old woman rising out of the bathtub at the same time her cackling horror-movie double is already chasing Jack Nicholson from the room, and Nicholson asking Shelly Duvall “Which room was it?” only to have the film cut to a cold open of a Miami newscast. (Kubrick intentionally placed that cut at a reel change so the audience would think the projectionist had screwed up.)

Things like that and the infamous title cards makes you wonder “Is this supposed to be a joke?” while baffling you why it should be, which eventually induces a skittish sense of “I can’t trust anybody here.” Taking a puppet-master’s delight in messing with the audience, Kubrick’s cunning runs the gamut from puckish to perverse, dancing right up to the edge of sadistic. 

More relevant for our purposes is his astonishingly successful effort to transport the viewer into the film. It’s a cliché to say that The Overlook is a character in The Shining, but going there kind of misses the point. Kubrick took the strategies Roman Polanski used in Rosemary’s Baby to give The Black Bramford a palpable presence and seriously upped the ante by grafting them onto the medieval Art of Memory to achieve not just the sense of being lost in the film but trapped inside a labyrinthine hotel with a madman.

But anyone who’s only seen The Shining at less than 4K resolution—even on a cinematic home theater screen—has never had this experience—which means they’ve never really seen this film. All of which is a longwinded way of saying that Kaleidescape’s 4K HDR release is the first time anyone has had the chance to experience The Shining at home with the full impact Kubrick intended.

That impact hinges on a number of things, but primarily on accurately reproducing the naturalness of the artificially created outdoor light, matching the resolution of the original film print so all of the detail—especially in the landscape shots—is faithfully reproduced, and having enough resolution so the movie can be experienced from the proper viewing distance, without distractions.

That last point is the most key: Sit at the right distance, and you begin to experience The Overlook the way the characters do. You accurately feel the scale of both the large and smaller spaces and can mentally navigate the corridors the same way they do—even when they’re not around. After a while, you begin to have this sensation independently of the action on the screen. You feel haunted, in real-time—which is what makes the film uncanny and horrific in a way no other movie has been able to achieve.

None of that would be possible at home without this transfer, which is the most beautifully done, and faithful, 4K HDR translation I’ve seen of any movie. Nothing is overemphasized; all of it is in the service of the film.

And you can feel the full impact from the very first shot, where the faint ripples on the surface of the lake create the sense the small island is rushing toward you, and where the detail deep in the landscape makes the shot seem almost 3D—an effect maintained throughout the opening sequence, where the images have so much detail in the distance that they border on vertiginous. With HDR, the landscapes seem not just grand but crisp and cold and almost nasty.

This carries over to the interiors, where the ability to perceive even the smallest details reinforces the reality of The Overlook, adding to that sense of being trapped within it. I was especially awed by the wide shots of the gold ballroom, where you can clearly see the variations in the metallic surfaces and on the parquet walls way in the back of the room, and where all the lighting sources and reflections are properly balanced without being blown out. The movie hasn’t looked this good since the pristine prints from its initial release. 

The quality of the transfer is just as important in the many striking closeups, with their natural skin tones and often uncomfortable intimacy. Letting yourself get lost in those shots helps reinforce the sense of being a complicit member of the film’s highly dysfunctional family.

I really can’t fault the transfer for anything—except two somewhat inadvertent things. The HDR is so revealing that it gives away how Kubrick was able to achieve the seemingly impossible overhead shot of Wendy and Danny walking through the middle of an improbably elaborate version of the hedge maze. And Kubrick relied on the random variations of film grain and the motion of the film through the projector gate to sell the shot of Jack sitting frozen in the snow. Seen as it is here, with no film or grain movement, it’s all too obviously a photo still. 

I don’t mean to shortchange the film’s soundtrack, but the images are so beguiling that you have to force yourself to really focus on what’s going on there. First off, the music score is to be savored. Without question the most effective use of existing cues in any film ever, Kubrick so carefully wedded and molded its elements that most viewers probably assume it’s an original score.

As for chest-thumping explosions, window-rattling gunfire, and the other aesthetically dubious bombast we’ve come to expect from a contemporary surround mix, there’s none of that here. Kubrick was too much a master of his craft to resort to gratuitous jolts. Intent on keeping you inside the action, he wouldn’t have wanted viewers thinking about the potential seismic damage to their homes.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is as deft as the visual transfer, enhancing the atmospheric sense of inevitability without drawing attention to itself or doing anything that would make you wince. The best stuff is the most subtle—the contrasting sonic signatures of the hotel’s rooms, lobby, ballroom, and other spaces, and the first hints, and then rising presence, of the winter storm. It’s like a perverse twist on New Age pablum, using the sounds of nature to lull you into a nightmare.

I feel obligated to mention the extras while kind of dreading it. To save the best for first, there’s “The Making of The Shining,” a documentary by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian that Kubrick suppressed during his lifetime but couldn’t keep from popping up from time to time on YouTube and elsewhere. Because of his daughter’s unrivaled access and her skill, even at 17, as a filmmaker, it’s really the only portrait we have of Kubrick as a filmmaker. It’s also surprisingly revealing about Nicholson, Duvall, and Danny Lloyd, and the whole dynamic on the set. If you’re even casually interested in Kubrick or The Shining, it’s a must-see.

“Wendy Carlos, Composer,” available only on the DVD version, is mildly interesting for both the casually curious and for students of Carlos’ work. The audio commentary, also only available on the DVD download, is a very mixed bag. Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown has a decent number of insightful remarks about his work on The Shining, but Kubrick biographer John Baxter is nothing but a train wreck. You’d think a biographer would be strong on details, but he gets so much wrong you get the sense he’s just making it all up as he goes along. And his Felix the Cat recounting of the action while we’re watching it play out on the screen is so dumb and pointless it becomes funny after a while. It’s like he’s narrating the film for a group of incredibly gullible blind people.

“View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining” and “The Visions of Stanley Kubrick,” by the same team that perpetrated Full Metal Jacket’s “Between Good and Evil,” manage to neutralize the impact of any interesting comments by various actors, directors, studio executives, and authors through their appallingly inept editing of footage from the film. Like the Full Metal Jacket travesty, they’re a textbook example of what happens when you give people with no discernible taste or talent free rein to butcher brilliant material.

But don’t let any of that cause you to hesitate to download this film. This release of The Shining will quickly become the jewel of any serious film collection. But it’s not there to be revered but watched. This film’s impact hasn’t diminished a jot since the day of its release. And this 4K HDR version takes us all the way back to that first day without compromise. It’s kind of like the movie just keeps repeating itself in an infinite loop without ever aging. Right?

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 | Kaleidescape’s 4K HDR release is the first time anyone has had the chance to experience The Shining at home with the full impact Kubrick intended. It hasn’t looked this good since the pristine prints from its initial release.

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is as deft as the visual transfer, enhancing the atmospheric sense of inevitability without drawing attention to itself or doing anything that would make you wince.

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Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

review | 2001: A Space Odyssey

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As close as you’ll get to having the full experience of Kubrick’s space-travel epic without building a Cinerama at home

by Michael Gaughn
November 11, 2020

1968 (as I mentioned in my review of Rosemary’s Baby) was the year Hollywood, no longer able to lure people into theaters, blew everything up and started all over again. 2001: A Space Odyssey was the most radical product of that very radical year—not only because it flouted all the conventions of mainstream storytelling but because it went full-court Brecht to subvert the audience’s addiction to identifying with the protagonist, refused to use dialogue to Mickey Mouse viewers through the action, openly pissed on the convention of the traditional Hollywood music score, and stubbornly refused to be wedged it into any identifiable genre.

2001 is utterly sui generis—no film had looked anything like it before then; no film has looked anything like it since. It exists in its own, somewhat rarefied, universe.

Kubrick would never do anything that overtly adventurous again. Sure, Clockwork Orange was more outrageous but kind of in the same way as Dr. Strangelove; and “outrageous” isn’t the same thing as “adventurous.” 

But neither adventurousness nor outrageousness on their own, or even together, are enough to make a film great. (The path from 1968 to the present is littered with the corpses of films that managed to do both, but little else.) 2001 is great because it sets an impossibly high bar and almost achieves it. Adventurousness and outrageousness are symptomatic of that ambition, but neither is essential to realizing it. 

Which is why—to again return to an earlier review—I have to give The Shining the edge as Kubrick’s most accomplished work. Almost everything he does big and bold in 2001 he achieves quietly and more deftly in that later film. 2001 is the product of an artist so giddy he can’t help showing off; The Shining is the work of a master so confident in his abilities that he can just quietly drop clues and then wait as the rest of us scurry to catch up.

But why even go into all this? Because both 2001 and The Shining hinge on the experience of pulling you deep inside the film—not in a superficial, escapist way but so you begin to have the sensation of actually occupying the same physical space as the characters.

That the 4K HDR presentations of both films are reference-quality seriously ups the “you are there” ante—but with a crucial difference. And there’s the rub. The Shining is almost one-to-one true to the movie Kubrick created. When you watch it at home on a high-quality system, you’re seeing what he wanted you to see. 2001 in 4K HDR is just as extraordinary—but as a title card in the closing credits reminds you, this was originally a Cinerama presentation. And, unlike most of the other filmmakers who dabbled in Cinerama, Kubrick didn’t deploy it as a gimmick (Grand Prix, anyone?) but made it absolutely central to creating that sensation of taking an epic voyage into space.

So, is 2001, viewed in 4K HDR, in any meaningful way inferior to The Shining? On the technical level of the transfer, no, they’re both excellent—almost flawless. But since you can’t do Cinerama at home (at least not without a hell of a jerry-rigged setup that would have to verge on ludicrous), The Shining is truer to the original film.

All of the above is really just an exercise in praise by faint damning. The Kaleidescape download of 2001 is one of a handful of films so well served by the 4K HDR treatment that it has to be part of the foundation of any serious film collection. If there’s a single significant hiccup in this presentation, I didn’t see it.

To get lost in 2001 today, you have to get beyond ticking off what has and hasn’t come to pass and look past all that Swinging ‘60s clothing and furniture and get on the wavelength of the film Kubrick actually created, which exists in an elaborate and self-consistent world that merely uses the trappings of reality to achieve escape velocity.

The 4K resolution can’t reveal every detail of the original 70mm print, but it shows so much more than any previous home video incarnation that it’s shocking to realize to what extent Kubrick created outside his era, how unencumbered he was by the stylistic ticks of that time (or even of the future). On the level of film technique and film grammar, 2001 still holds.

What really takes the experience to a new, truer level is the HDR. Yes, many of the special effects now even more obviously look like still photos traveling across painted backgrounds. But shots of actual physical objects in motion, like the space station, the Discovery, and most of the extravehicular footage of the pod, are stunning. The brightness of objects in space is one of the things 2001 got basically right, and the HDR makes them look so crisp and cold they’re almost tactile.

Scenes to check out include the scientists walking down the ramp into the lunar excavation, where Kubrick shoots directly into a large worklight, with the light so intense you almost have to look away. The beginning of the final act, where the floating monolith guides Bowman into the Stargate, is especially compelling because of the convincing luminosity of Jupiter and its moons. And the virtual hotel room where Bowman goes through his transformation, which Kubrick created to mimic the look of early video, is more convincing with the white and other light tones pumped just enough to glow without becoming bloated or diffused.

As for the audio: Talking about the soundtrack of 2001 has always been kind of a ticklish business because this is essentially a silent movie. Kubrick rediscovered and then reinvented the core grammar of silent film, much of which had been glossed over and obliterated by the tyranny of the microphone during the Studio Era, and used it to not just drive this film but all of his subsequent efforts. It’s not that the audio is superfluous; it’s just not redundant with the visuals the way it had been since the introduction of sound—and continues to be.

(Curiously, another product of 1968—Blake Edwards’ The Party, which was much maligned at the time and is now revered—is also basically a silent film. Edwards, on a parallel track with Kubrick, dipped back into silent comedy to bring a sense of grace and redemption that had been missing from movie comedies since the Chaplin era.)

So, things like The Blue Danube, the heavy breathing, and the various warning sounds all sound perfectly fine. But this is a film of stripped-down and barren environments, without warfare or roaring engines, so there’s, thankfully, little audio-demo fodder to be found.

As for the extras—all I can say is “beware.” I’ve already sufficiently dumped on the team that created (although that seems far too kind a word) the promotional videos disguised as mini-docs included with Full Metal Jacket and The Shining. Their efforts here are equally awful. The other videos here are just as irritating and, for the most part, pointless. It would be great if somebody could unearth the Primer to2001” Keir Dullea hosted on CBS in the late ‘60s. It would make all these other efforts seem superfluous.

The trailer included here isn’t the one from its initial release or even its legendary initial re-release but a contemporary stab that feels like a cliché film-school exercise (people are going to look back 20 years from now at our addiction to dips to black and laugh their asses off) and indulges in exactly the kind of manipulative melodrama Kubrick despised. 

The only extra worth going out of your way for is the extended audio-only interview Jeremy Bernstein did with Kubrick in 1966. You get to hear the director walk through his whole career to that point, beginning as a failed high school student who became the youngest photographer ever at Look magazine and then went on to learn filmmaking, in a world without film schools, by making his own features. Not only is it better than anything any writer has ever done on Kubrick, it confirms, beyond a doubt, that Peter Sellers’ Quilty in Lolita is basically an extended Kubrick impression—which puts that deeply flawed film in a whole new light.

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 Kaleidescape download of 2001 is one of a handful of films so well served by the 4K HDR treatment that it has to be part of the foundation of any serious film collection.

SOUND | Things like The Blue Danube, the heavy breathing & the various warning sounds all sound perfectly fine, but this is a film of stripped-down and barren environments, without warfare or roaring engines, so there’s little audio-demo fodder to be found.

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Review: Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

review | Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings

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Disney’s reach-out to Asian audiences is entertaining enough but doesn’t quite click as either an MCU entry or an action film

by John Sciacca
November 13, 2021

November 12th was the second annual Disney+ Day, a time when Disney promotes its streaming service by unleashing a torrent of new content to subscribers. This year, beyond new titles, the studio also added IMAX Enhanced content to many existing Marvel titles. 

As per Disney’s site:

IMAX Enhanced content on Disney+ features an expanded aspect ratio of 1.9:1. This differs from most films where the picture appears wide but does not take up the full height of your screen.

IMAX’s expanded aspect ratio allows you to see up to 26% more of the original image and experience the full scale and scope of the picture from the comfort of your home or on the go. Some movies only have select sequences filmed in IMAX’s expanded aspect ratio.

For owners of 16:9 direct-view TVs or projection screens, which is a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, this means more of the screen is filled with picture instead of black bars (leaving roughly an inch of black above and below the image on my 65-inch Sony). Smartly, Disney also includes the film in its original 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio, which will be the preferred method for viewers with widescreen front-projection systems.

One of the biggest Disney Day releases was the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) entry, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This film is somewhat notable as Disney/Marvel’s first return to a post-pandemic exclusive cinematic release, without being simultaneously offered as a Disney+ Premier Access option. 

Along with being available for streaming on Disney+, it’s also offered via digital retailers like Kaleidescape. For the best experience, specifically with the enhanced, lossless Dolby TrueHD Atmos audio track, I downloaded and watched the Kaleidescape version.

I imagine there are two types of people who saw or are considering watching Shang-Chi—those who were avid comics readers familiar with the history of the character, and then the other 99% of the population that just wanted to see how this was going to fit into the fourth phase of the MCU—initially kicked off by the Disney+ series WandaVision and followed-up with Black Widow—and just wanted to see another big spectacle superhero film. 

I was firmly in the second camp, and went into this knowing absolutely nothing about Shang-Chi. I was at least interested in the casting of Simu Liu in the lead, as my wife and I are big fans of the Netflix series Kim’s Convenience, where he plays Jung. (Seems that Liu can’t break free from his ties to the auto industry, as he works at a rental car agency in Kim’s and as a valet in Shang-Chi . . .)

After the massive success of Black Panther, you can certainly argue Disney is trying to be more inclusive with its films, breaking away from the traditional white male superhero. This is the first Marvel film to feature an Asian director (Destin Daniel Cretton) and a predominantly Asian cast, and following on the live-action Mulan remake, and then the animated Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi completes the outreach cycle. 

Having said that, it didn’t feel like it is pandering or trying to shove culturally-appropriate images or messages down your throat, at least not to this outsider. The film feels organic in the way it presents things, whether it’s the family having breakfast, talking about the Asian culture’s emphasis on education or respect for family, or if the action is taking place in San Francisco—which has a large Asian population—or Macau. 

The film also does what it can to tie into the larger MCU, even though it really takes place outside any of the action we’re familiar with, and doesn’t feel too connected to that larger universe. The “blip”—where Thanos wiped out half of the population in a finger snap before Iron Man brought everyone back—is referenced, Dr. Strange’s companion/assistant Wong (Benedict Wong) has a small role, and we see the return of Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who was last seen as the faux baddie Mandarin in Iron Man 3, who also references his time in prison (covered in the Marvel short All Hail the King). And, of course, we have the now-obligatory Marvel mid- and end-credits scenes that really try to flesh out the franchise, as well as set up additional installments in the MCU. 

As an outsider to the story, the film’s opening minutes are a bit of an information dump where it attempts to bring you up to speed on the legend, history, and power of the Ten Rings and how they grant the wearer the strength of a god and endless life.  After centuries of living, toppling governments, and changing the course of history, Xu Wenwu (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) learns of Ta Lo, a hidden village with mythical creatures and ancient magic. While trying to gain access to Ta Lo through a magical forest, he falls in love with one of the city’s guardians, Ying Li (Fala Chen). They ultimately have a child, Shang-Chi (Liu), who has changed his name to Shaun and is now living in San Francisco where he works as a hotel valet with his friend Katy (Awkwafina).

One day while riding a city bus, Shaun is attacked by an unusual gang and despite putting up a heroic fight, the jade pendant given to him by his mother is ripped from his neck. He believes his sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) is also in danger, so he heads to Macau with Katy to find and protect her.

Throughout, we learn of Shang-Chi’s background, his training, the fate of his mother, and his and Xialing’s relationship with their father. Ultimately Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy are all reunited with Wenwu, who is still searching for Ta Lo, but feels he has finally learned the secret to discovering the hidden city’s location.

There is a lot of hand-to-hand martial arts-style fighting, but the varied locations and participants help keep it interesting and from seeming too repetitive. The choreography is also hyper-fast, kinetic, and pretty inventive. While there is some Wuxia-style fighting, it doesn’t lean too heavily on this or ever feel Crouching Tiger-esque, though it certainly leans heavily into its mythical creatures bent at the end. 

I’m an Awkwafina fan, but her wise-cracking sidekick role here, where she’s used to bring some comedic relief to almost all of her scenes, ran a little thin. In some ways, she felt a bit like her Sisu water dragon character brought-to-life in human form from Raya and the Last Dragon. 

Shot in Arri at 4.5K, this transfer is taken from a 2K digital intermediate, and it certainly looks clean, clear, sharp, and detailed throughout. There are some shots showing Wenwu and his Ten Rings army and the Tan Lo army wearing different uniforms, and the fine detail and texture in their armor is evident. Closeups also show loads of detail in other fabrics and garments, as well as extreme facial detail, letting you see the difference in skin texture and smoothness. While the most detail is in the tight shots, longer shots can hold their own as well. Notice the tight line structure in the tile, stone, and thatch building roofs, or the clarity of leaves in bamboo forest. 

The HDR grade gives the images plenty of shadow detail and a lifelike quality, but with plenty of pop and highlights when needed. Car headlights at night are appropriately bright as they pierce dark roadways, or the electric glow surrounding the rings and other weapons, or some fiery, golden lanterns set out to float. Notice early on the white-on-white detail in an outfit worn by Wenwu. Even though it’s very similar shades of the same color, we still get plenty of detail, texture, and pop instead of it just being a white smush. 

We also get plenty of color pop, whether it’s the bright, vibrant greens in the forest, the hot reds of the valet vest uniforms, or the gorgeous, varied colors of neon lights in nighttime Macau. There are also several scenes lit with beautiful warm golden lighting. Throughout, the film really just looks great, and is visually vibrant and engaging.

One of the real benefits of watching on Kaleidescape is the lossless Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack compared with the lossy version supplied to streaming providers. Disney has been slagged for many of its recent home soundtracks, and I found it a little lacking at first, especially on the low-end dynamics. But after bumping the volume by 5 dB over my typical listening level, it returned a lot of the impact, particularly with the bass, which developed some tactile moments with the increased levels. 

There are certainly some immersive elements but I found this to be a fairly front-centric mix, especially compared to a lot of modern titles. We do get some atmospheric moments like the sounds of swirling winds and leaves or noises inside clubs or traffic sounds. The mix kicks into higher gear during the many combat scenes, such as a spear-weapon that Xialing throws Scorpion-from-Mortal Kombat-style that whistles through the air and chunks into the side walls, Wenwu battling men around the room, the shouts and melee during training and combat, or a bus careening all over the room. 

I didn’t notice nearly as much height activity as expected from such a big action film. Music definitely uses the height speakers for a big expansive, room-filling mix, and there are other moments, like soul-eaters flying overhead, or a booming voice beyond an armored wall, or the creaking and groaning of bamboo moving in the forest, but this certainly wasn’t as dynamic as Black Widow. 

I’ll be honest—Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was just OK. It was fun to watch, looked great, the fight scenes were dynamic and visually interesting, and the actors—particularly Leung, who brings some real depth to the villain character—did a fine job, but the story itself felt a little thin. And, ultimately, it just didn’t feel like a Marvel movie. But with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92% and an Audience Score of 98%—the highest combined score of any film in the MCU—it seems like I’m in the minority here, and perhaps my opinion will change on future viewings. 

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 HDR grade gives the images plenty of shadow detail and a lifelike quality but with plenty of pop and highlights when needed.

SOUND | The Atmos mix certainly has some immersive elements but is fairly front-centric for a modern action film.

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Review: A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

review | A Clockwork Orange

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The stunning quality of this 4K transfer redeems Kubrick’s most notorious film, rekindling its initial excitement

by Michael Gaughn
October 1, 2021

It’s traditional to save comments about video quality until the two-thirds or three-quarter point of a review, but I have to cut right to the chase: This is a stunningly gorgeous transfer of a deliberately ugly film—the best I’ve seen Kubrick’s picaresque stroll through depravity look since I watched an archival print on a Moviola.

From its opening image on, Kubrick meant A Clockwork Orange to be the anti-2001. After doing a big-budget Cinerama epic full of elaborate sets and effects for MGM, he decided to go lean and mean with his first project for Warner Bros., opting for a minimal crew and existing locations, except for one simple small set. And he completely rethought his approach to cinematography, using Orange as a kind of laboratory to experiment with, and essentially reinvent, the whole aesthetic of commercial film.

Kubrick had been trying to recreate the look of practical lighting since his first efforts in the early ‘50s, and various directors—most notably Godard—had made great strides with that approach throughout the ’60s; but with Orange, Kubrick finally nailed it, coming up with a way of presenting and perceiving “natural” lighting that not only defined all of his films from then on but has been the go-to look of Hollywood filmmaking ever since—for better and, often, worse.

Clockwork Orange is deceptive—so much so that, even though I know it well, it misled me when I watched it in HD a few months ago on Netflix, where it looked like hell. All of that dimness and grime just made the subject matter that much more unpleasant, and I regretted I’d taken the time to check it out.

Seeing it in 4K HDR took me back to my early experiences with, and excitement for, the film. And that changed perception all hinged on seeing the cinematography done absolutely right. Kubrick was indisputably aiming for grunge—a goal he achieved in spades. But he did it with a subtle, and puckish, elegance and elan that makes the images not dispiriting but thrilling. Watch this film in anything other than 4K HDR and you’ll miss the twist the whole experience pivots on.

A couple of examples among an abundance: In earlier releases, the lettering could look painted onto the milk-bar walls; here, the letters stand out in distinct relief, enhancing the tactile sense of the environment. There are closeups and medium shots throughout that are literally breathtaking, but the closeup of Malcolm MacDowell as he dresses down his gang in the lobby of his sub-human apartment building is jawdropping in its clarity and immediacy. Yes, there are some soft frames here and there, but they most likely looked that way in the original footage. 

See this movie as just about the subject matter and you can be in for a miserable time. Just as important is getting on the wavelength of the astonishing creative energy Kubrick poured into the project. You can actually both sense and see him throwing out the remaining rules of the studio system and discovering filmmaking anew, and clearly enjoying every second of it. Orange is not his best film but it’s probably his most inventive, and seeing that unbridled virtuosity on display can make it a heady ride. 

Sure it’s dated as hell—any time you riff on the future, you’re going to date your film. But Kubrick showed he was aware of that by not really imagining a future, like he did in 2001, but by imagining an even more grotesque present—which is why Orange’s future has aged better than 2001’s. No point in presenting a lot of examples to back up my point—just look at the old women in the film walking around in purple wigs and then the old women in the present doing the same, and I’ll rest my case.

Probably the most ironic thing abut Clockwork Orange seen today is how wrong Kubrick got its crux, violence. For someone so deeply cynical, he assumed people in the future would still maintain some kind of essential repugnance toward violent acts. In other words, he saw some residual, positive value in a shared sense of decency. He couldn’t have been more blind to that vast act of social re-education and desensitization called the ‘80s, which replaced the deeper and more skeptical cynicism of the ‘60s with a far more facile “everything sucks” version that would just roll violence into the overarching oppressive apathy and see it deliberately deployed as yet another cultural wedge. This would all eventually mutate into the even more facile, and juvenile, current fascination with “dark.” Kubrick was often accused of presenting his characters as dehumanized—even he didn’t see how quickly we’d get to that point, let alone how enthusiastically we’d embrace it.

Orange can no longer shock—the pornographic, in all its forms, has since become commonplace, accepted, and encouraged—but it can still entertain. Malcolm MacDowell doesn’t have complete control over his performance but his sometimes reckless careening leads to some giddy highs. And Patrick Magee’s turn as the “writer of subversive literature” who becomes grotesquely unhinged from watching MacDowell’s rape of his wife is masterful—the kind of thing Sellers pulled off over and over in Strangelove but done here with a kind of dada collage feel that’s astonishing to watch. 

And it’s a thrill just to savor Kubrick’s mise en scene—how he found unsettling ways to convey essential moments of the film without once stumbling into the arbitrary wackiness and poor-man’s surrealism that marred—and sank—so many late ‘60s/early ‘70s movies. In none of his films was he ever more of a punk than he is here, and it’s a cause for celebration because it shows how deeply expressive and subversive commercial film can be—and has rarely been since.

As for the extras—sorry, I’d prefer to refrain from any comment here but they’re by the same inept team of ne’er-do-wells that’s plagued the other Kubrick releases, and the best word for their efforts—if I may call them such—is inexcusable. Criminally so.

From Strangelove in 1964 to The Shining in 1980, Kubrick produced a sui generis string of genius films, all clearly cut from the same cloth but all, in very fundamental ways, radically different. And along the way, he completely changed how movies are conceptualized, made, and perceived.  No one has ever equalled that accomplishment, and I think it’s safe to say no one ever will. The whole history of American film pivoted on Clockwork Orange. But forget all that—just cue it up in 4K and savor it as the dangerous act of pure film it very much is.    

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 | A stunningly gorgeous transfer of a deliberately ugly film.

SOUND | Nothing to say here, really, since even a stereo mix is a distortion of Kubrick’s original intentions.

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Review: Dune (2021)

Dune (2021)

review | Dune (2021)

This latest adaptation of the Frank Herbert classic easily eclipses all of the earlier attempts

by Dennis Burger
October 22, 2021

Let’s set aside for a moment the question of whether Denis Villeneuve’s Dune works as a partial adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel. With something in the neighborhood of 20 million copies sold, the book is one of the best-selling of its genre. But divide those sales figures by the world population and chances are very good most people who view the film will have never cracked the cover of this gargantuan doorstop of a tome. So a much more relevant question is whether or not Dune works as cinema on its own terms. 

And thankfully that ends up being the much easier question to answer. Yes—a thousand times, yes. As if he hadn’t proven it already with films like Arrival, Prisoners, and Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve demonstrates with Dune that he understands cinema as an art form in a way few other modern directors do. 

As with most of his work, Villeneuve straddles two worlds with Dune, keeping one foot firmly planted in the traditions of the past and one foot precariously placed in an uncharted future. By that I mean that despite looking very much like a 21st-century film, it doesn’t feel like one. There’s something quite old-fashioned about it, or perhaps “timeless” is the word I’m looking for. The allusions to Lawrence of Arabia are blatant—and fitting, given how much that film influenced Frank Herbert in the writing of Dune. But Villeneuve manages to draw inspiration without aping. He evokes the spirit, scope, and energy of David Lean’s classic without being beholden to its style. The style is entirely Villeneuve’s. 

Well, cinematographer Greig Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty, The Mandalorian) also deserves a lot of credit for the style. While I said that Dune looks like a 21st-century film, that’s not quite accurate. It simply looks like a film that couldn’t have been captured before the modern era of filmmaking. Ultimately, it looks unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And that may have something to do with the unusual postproduction process. The movie was shot on a mix of IMAX film and ArriRaw digital (the latter at 4.5K resolution), but before the footage was finished in a 4K DI, all of the digital imagery was printed to film stock then scanned back to into the computer. 

That gives the imagery a unique character, to say the least. It doesn’t look entirely analog but neither does it look wholly digital. It’s the best of both methods—which, again, reinforces the notion of Dune as the perfect marriage of tried-and-true past and untested, experimental future. 

That captivating aesthetic, combined with the sheer scale of the film and its reliance on capturing as much as possible in camera (to the point that, in promotional interviews, actor Timothée Chalamet claims to recall only seeing a green screen twice during production) adds up to a film that demands to be seen at scale, on the best screen you can reasonably access. In my case, that meant watching HBO Max’s stream in my own home cinema system since the nearest commercial cinema that can legitimately claim to deliver a better audiovisual experience is a three-hour drive away in Alpharetta, GA. 

Thankfully, shockingly, the HBO Max presentation is the very definition of reference-quality. I started my stream the minute the film was available, which struck me as a foolhardy choice the instant I hit Play, given how many millions of other people must have been sitting with their fingers on their remotes, waiting for it to be unlocked. But I never experienced any glitches due to server overload and I never spotted anything in the image that could be construed as an artifact of the high-efficiency encoding of the film.

Far from it. I would go so far as to say I’ve never experienced imagery this captivating, engaging, or dynamic in my media room. Part of that is due to the sumptuous detail, the gorgeous textures, the unparalleled set design, costumes, etc. But a lot of it has to be chalked up to the fact that Dune represents the most effective application of high dynamic range grading I’ve seen to date. 

HBO Max’s Dolby Vision presentation pushed my display to extremes I didn’t know it was capable of, extremes I can’t imagine being bested by anything other than perhaps a perfectly calibrated IMAX Laser setup—and I have my doubts about even that. Simply put, if displays had rights, Dune would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. 

But none of its visual extremes—scenes bathed in near-infinite shadows followed quickly by such dazzling brightness that your pupils will constrict to pinpoints—feels gratuitous. All are absolutely in service of the story and the environments in which it unfolds. 

Equally compelling is the Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which is likewise so dynamic that I pity the unfortunate souls who attempt to experience it through a soundbar or basic home theater speaker setup. If you’re an Atmos junkie who keeps a mental running tally of how frequently your surround and overhead speakers—and subwoofers—are pushed to their limits, you’re going to be in absolute aural heaven here. 

As I’ve stated many times within the pages of Cineluxe, I’m not one of those people. I find most Atmos sound mixes masochistic and overbearing, not to mention distracting. But for Dune, this approach simply works. That may be because the imagery is so captivating that no amount of offscreen audio could pull my attention away from the screen, but I also think it’s due to thoughtful mixing and a deep understanding of the relationship between picture and sound. Whatever the reason, it all simply works, and there’s not much else to say about the sound.

Well, there is one more thing, although I do run the risk of angering some readers here, especially fans of composer Hans Zimmer. I’ve rarely if ever understood the appeal of most of Zimmer’s work. I often find his compositions fatiguing, uninteresting, and so utterly and needlessly aggressive that I need to wipe the testosterone residue from my speakers after watching a film he’s scored. And make no mistake here: his score for Dune is bombastic at times, what with its heavy reliance on percussion and synths. 

But this is unquestionably his best score since 1994’s The Lion King, and it succeeds for most of the same reasons. Zimmer understood the assignment here, and his music works in conjunction with the visuals and the narrative in such a way that they’re inseparable. I’ve had the score on repeat throughout the writing of this review, simply because I cannot shake it. It haunts me. Its leitmotifs—both melodic and percussion—resonate with me in a way that few Zimmer scores ever have. And most tellingly, as I’m listening to it, I can close my eyes and see the accompanying moments from the film. And this is a film I’ve only seen once, mind you. That’s the mark of a great score. 

Put it all together, and I have next to nothing critical to say about Dune as a work of cinema in and of itself. There are a few edits in the first act that feel a bit choppy. By that I mean that even if you’re completely unfamiliar with the story you’ll no doubt sense that much of what was excised from the assembly cut to get the film down to a tight 2 hours and 38 minutes was removed from the first third. 

There’s also the fact that, while the bulk of the performances are truly world-class, Dave Bautista feels out of place here. I’m a fan of Bautista’s, but his portrayal of Rabban Harkonnen—the nephew of the baron who previously ruled the desert planet that gives Dune its name—feels one-note and over-the-top, at least when compared with the nuanced performances turned in by literally everyone else. Other than those quibbles, Dune is a monumental work of art in its own right.

But what about its effectiveness as an adaptation of the supposedly unfilmable novel? Well, it’s not perfect in that respect but it’s infinitely better than I could ever hoped for. Villeneuve—unlike David Lynch and John Harrison (who directed the 2000 mini-series)—has boiled the narrative down to its essence rather than haphazardly and erratically chopping the story into bit-sized pieces. He was able to distill that essence because he understands that essence. 

Dune works as a novel because of its complexity. In writing the book, Herbert explored the many ways in which ecology influences and drives every aspect of the human experience, from the personal to the familial to the societal, political, and religious institutions that shape our lives. It’s also a novel that takes place largely between the ears of its characters, something no film could successfully replicate (although, bless his heart, David Lynch tried and failed spectacularly to do so). 

With his film adaptation of the first two-thirds or thereabouts of the novel, Villeneuve had no choice but to tidy up some of its tangled narrative threads, and he made the wise choice to focus on the personal and familial above all else. The Dune geek in me laments the de-emphasis on the ecological and environmental. But the cinephile in me can’t imagine how he could have possibly explored that aspect of the novel entirely without turning his film into a never-ending barrage of exposition dumps. 

Then again, there’s a lot about this adaptation I never could have imagined before seeing it. There are aspects of the novel I never expected to see translated to the screen, much less this effectively or artfully. 

And the fact that Villeneuve managed to capture so much of the book’s essential fiber without creating a big pile of confusion for the uninitiated is a bit of a miracle. After the credits rolled, my wife—who has never read the novel and before now had no interest in doing so—turned to me and said, “I expected to be lost, but I never was. There’s so much more I want to know, so many questions I want answered. But in the moment, watching the film, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Well, except for the fact that I feel like there’s a reason why Duke Leto never married Lady Jessica and I wish the film had explored that.”

And in that respect, she’s absolutely correct. Armed with my deep knowledge of the book, I also feel like there are a couple other things the film could have conveyed better, such as the ritualistic obsession with moisture inherent to the culture of the Fremen—the nomadic natives of the planet Arrakis, aka “Dune.” But when I quizzed my wife about it, her response was, “No, I definitely picked up on that.” So, perhaps I’m wrong. 

At any rate, now that I’ve experienced the first part of Villeneuve’s intended two-part adaptation, I still have no clue how he’s going to successfully translate the rest of the book to the screen. The rest of the story takes a turn for the weird, to put it lightly. But even if Dune: Part Two ends up being a major flop (assuming it even gets made, although that seems likely), that won’t diminish my appreciation of this first part. 

The narrative may not be complete. As Zendaya’s character Chani cheekily teases just before the credits roll, “This is only the beginning.” But Dune nonetheless manages to feel like a complete story, with an ending that is both emotionally and thematically satisfying, while also pointing toward a much bigger and tantalizing future. 

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 HBO Max presentation is the very definition of reference-quality, with the most effective application of high dynamic range grading to date.

SOUND | The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is so dynamic that you can only pity the unfortunate souls who attempt to experience it through a soundbar or basic home theater speaker setup.

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Review: The Alpinist

The Alpinist (2021)

review | The Alpinist

What starts out as a documentary on a young mountain climber changes midstream into a meditation on the filmmaking process itself

by Dennis Burger
November 27, 2021

There is a well-known phenomenon in physics called the observer effect, a recognition of the fact that observing a thing fundamentally changes that thing—that by merely attempting to know more about something, you’re disturbing that something to the point where it’s no longer the thing you wished to know more about. And for the first half-hour or so of The Alpinist—a new documentary about mountain-climber Marc-André Leclerc—that’s all I could really think about. 

It’s just as easy to see, though, that Leclerc has absolutely no interest in being the subject of a documentary film. Not that he’s hostile to the filmmakers in any way. He’s a kind and gentle young man with an infectiously awkward charm. You just can’t help but get the sense that this intrinsically motivated iconoclast can’t understand why anyone would want to make a film about him. 

Right around that 30-minute mark, though, you forget about all that. It’s here that the filmmakers document Leclerc free-climbing the Stanley Headwall, a treacherous ascent that results in some of the most vertigo-inducing footage in the entire film. It’s a slow and, at first, frustrating scene. I could feel my pulse rising as Leclerc methodically tested the ice and rock in search of handholds and footholds as he hung precariously by his heels and fingertips over certain death. 

The odd thing, though, is that you’d expect the tension to ramp up as the scene goes on but exactly the opposite is true. Leclerc’s Zen mentality becomes infectious. The inner peace he attains during his mindful climb practically radiates from the screen. And in this moment, with no real commentary from the filmmakers, no voiceovers, no monologuing of any sort, you finally understand this introverted soul. It is without question the best example of “Show, don’t tell” I’ve seen in a documentary in quite some time.

And then shortly thereafter, Leclerc disappears. The mobile phone the filmmakers gave him (he’s never owned his own) starts rolling over to voicemail. And it isn’t long before they discover the alpinist decided to solo Mount Robson’s Emperor Face—making him the first in history to do so—without them. “It wouldn’t be a solo if someone is there,” he says, as he calls to kindly but unapologetically explain why he ghosted them. 

He then allows them to film a second “solo” ascent of Emperor Face, and here we get right to the point of what makes The Alpinist such a captivating and interesting documentary. Most filmmakers would have used that footage with no mention of the fact that it was a staged do-over. For Mortimer and Rosen, though, all of this becomes part of the honest account of their time with Marc-André. And it’s somewhere around this point when The Alpinist stops trying to be a film about Leclerc and transforms into a film about trying to make a film about him. 

From that point on, the filmmakers have to make do with whatever footage they can get, which includes what appears to be some cellphone footage self-shot by Leclerc of his dangerous winter ascent of Torre Egger, a peak in the Southern Patagonian ice field in South America that’s dangerous even in the summer months. As a result, The Alpinist doesn’t always look like a slick Hollywood production, and it makes sense that it was only released in HD. Watching Kaleidescape’s 1080p download, I might have seen one or two shots early on that could have benefited from high dynamic range and perhaps a bit of extra resolution. But such shots are by far the exception.  

Kaleidescape’s presentation does the film justice, though, delivering it without any artifacts that weren’t present in the source footage. It’s somewhat surprising that the professionally shot imagery made it through the production and compression pipeline without any banding, especially in some of the shots of open, impossibly blue skies, but such is the case. The Alpinist may be a hodgepodge of disparate sources but it’s a visually captivating film nonetheless, and one that deserves to be seen on the best screen in your home. 

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, meanwhile, won’t stress the dynamic capabilities of your audio system, but it always works in service of the film, with good atmospheric effects in the surround channels but with way more emphasis on a solid front soundstage and exceptional dialogue intelligibility, even in conditions you wouldn’t think would be conducive to such. 

Frankly, though, I don’t think many viewers will be focused on the audiovisual presentation, lest they go in expecting a documentary about mountain climbing, because The Alpinist isn’t that film. It starts off as a documentary about a baffling young man, then becomes a documentary about trying to document the life of that young man, and in the process, it becomes a film with a strong philosophical bent. I started it wondering why and how anyone could live like Leclerc—in a tent in the woods, an upgrade from his former residence in a stairwell, disconnected from modern conveniences—but by the end, I found myself envying his freedom and his mindful approach to lived experiences. The Alpinist may not be a neat and tidy film, and it breaks most of the rules of documentary filmmaking. But it is nevertheless—or perhaps as a result—one of the most moving and fascinating documentaries I’ve seen in ages. 

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 presentation does the film justice, delivering it without any artifacts that weren’t present in the source footage.

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack won’t stress the dynamic capabilities of your system but it always works in service of the film, with good atmospheric effects in the surround channels, a solid front soundstage, and exceptional dialogue intelligibility.

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