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Dennis Burger

Inside the Secret Cinema: The Automation

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Inside the Secret Cinema | The Automation

Inside the Secret Cinema | The Automation

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A combination of ingenious automation and good old-fashioned button-pushing was deployed to ensure this private theater’s ease of use

by Dennis Burger
September 7, 2022

What’s most fascinating about this delightful little hideaway home cinema is that it underlines the distinction between wowing people with experiences and attempting to wow them with the technology. Equippd resisted the temptation to automate everything, opting instead to create a system that reflects how the family actually uses the theater. 

The screen, projector, and movie player would all seem like perfect candidates for full-on automation. The proportions of the Screen Research projection screen, for instance, can be adjusted to create either a standard (16:9) or widescreen (2.35:1) aspect ratio, while the Sony projector has lens memory and can shift between these screen formats. Meanwhile, the Kaleidescape movie player is capable of sending commands to both the screen and projector to switch between screen shapes. But Equippd co-founder Matthew McCourt and his team opted for a more hands-on approach—buttons on the Control 4 control system that allow users to manually switch between the two ratios. 

Why not simply let the Kaleidescape handle the job? “The main content sources for the theater aside from the Kaleidescape are things like the Sky Q, Apple TV, and a games console in a concealed pullout drawer hidden in the wall,” McCourt says. “The reason we didn’t use any auto screen adjustments is, for most sources they would have to select it manually anyway, and if certain sources are doing it automatically and other sources are doing it manually, it’s more confusing. So we just taught them once how to do it with two buttons.” 

There are automated events tied to the entertainment system, though. When the family navigates to the Control 4 home screen, some of the lights brighten gently and the LEDs in the coffers shift to red. But when sources like Apple TV or Sky Q are selected, the lights automatically dim gently. “They’re triggering these events with their activities rather than allowing the device to dictate lighting changes based on content,” McCourt said.

Maybe the most intriguing use of automation, though, are the routines that come into play whenever someone first enters the room and after the last person has left. The first person to open the custom entry door triggers a wakeup routine—lights slowly coming on to a comfortable level, shades lowering, the projector firing up, the Control 4 homepage popping up on the screen. 

It all starts with contact closures on the door. Think of them like magnetic switches. If someone opens the closures when no one else is in the room, they send a signal to the Lutron Homeworks QS system tasked with handling the overall room automation, which in turn informs the Control 4 system responsible for the home theater devices, and the two work together to wake up all of the necessary electronics. 

But how does the system know whether anyone is still in the theater? If you have much experience with occupancy sensors, you know they’re great at picking up when someone walks into or through an area but aren’t always great at continuing to monitor whether people are sitting quietly on a sofa, say, watching a film. To make that all work, McCourt and his crew used a combination of passive infrared and microwave sensors. “We’ve tested it with people sitting very still for hours, hardly moving at all, and we really do get a true representation of whether that room is occupied or not. So, under those circumstances, people can come and go as they please without affecting the lights or the shades. It’s only when you enter an empty room that the magic happens.”

And while the family can easily press a single button to turn the room off and return it to its ready state, they can also just walk away and shut the door behind them, secure in the knowledge that the Lutron and Control 4 systems will take care of turning everything off. “The owners literally can just leave the lights on or shades shut, and 15 minutes after they leave—boom! Shades come up, lights are off, and the room is rolled back into a sort of ready state.”

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.

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Video Game Review: Marvel’s Spider-Man

Marvel's Spider-Man

video game review | Marvel’s Spider-Man

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This video game manifestation of Spidey not only makes for an intensely cinematic experience but packs an emotional wallop that tops the various movies 

by Dennis Burger
November 7, 2019

It may seem odd to shine a spotlight on a game that was released more than a year ago, but while Marvel’s Spider-Man was released for PlayStation 4 back in September 2018, I found myself in the middle of a long hiatus from console gaming to focus on some more strategic PC games that had been piling up in my Steam library. What drew me back was an unused PlayStation Network gift card my dad had given me for my birthday, as well as the relatively new release of the Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition, which hit store shelves this autumn.

For those who aren’t deeply embedded in video-gaming culture, “Game of the Year Edition” is common vernacular for a soft relaunch of a popular game that generally includes all the little add-ons that have been released since, bundled with the original title, for one lower price. In the case of Spider-Man, that includes three mini sequels, collectively dubbed Spider-Man: The City that Never Sleeps, which sold for $9.99 a pop in the months following the main release. Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition collects the original game and its followups on one disc (or in one download) for $35.

You may also be wondering why we’re covering a video game on a site that typically focuses on luxury home cinema. There’s a good reason for that, which has nothing to do with my long delay in finally picking it up and playing it. Marvel’s Spider-Man is one of the most cinematic games I’ve played in ages, both in its gameplay and its AV presentation. But not in the most intuitive of ways.

At its heart, Spider-Man is what’s known as an open-world game, the world in this case being a slightly scaled-down and very Marvel-specific version of Manhattan circa 2014 (when development of the game began). This playground in and of itself is a technological wonder, not only in its relatively faithful recreation of Times Square, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, etc., but also in the way it captures the feeling of moving through the city from district to district, squinting at the sunlight gleaming off buildings in the daytime and the stunning array of neon, halogen, and LED lights piercing what little darkness exists in the shadows at night. The way the game uses its deep shadows and intense highlights to convey the Manhattanhenge effect is among the best applications of HDR I’ve seen to date. 

All of this could be written off as mere eye candy, but it’s more than that. The game’s developers, Insomniac Games, spent so much time working on the web-swinging mechanic—making sure webs would only attach to buildings or flagpoles or what have you rather than clinging to empty air as in past Spidey games and also making sure the parabolic physics of such swinging felt genuine—that if there weren’t some verisimilitude to the look of the city itself, the illusion of Tarzaning through its vertical landscapes would be broken.  

It isn’t just graphics and physics that drive the experience, though. The sound also elevates the AV presentation of the game, with a rich real-time uncompressed 7.1 soundscape and cinematic score that whips and whirs around you as you swing through the city or walk its streets, or even poke around in the science lab where Peter Parker works when the red-and-blue pajamas come off. (By the way, not that this really affects the gameplay, but you’re far from limited to the default two-toned onesie, as one of the game’s most compelling Easter-egg hunts is an ongoing search for the badges and components that allow you to craft or unlock all manner of other Spidey-suits.)

Of course, whooshing around from skyscraper to skyscraper or tinkering with circuit boards in the lab isn’t all there is to do here. There’s an overarching story—based not on any of the previous versions of the Spider-Man mythos but rather a new amalgamation that draws elements from the best that movies and cartoons and comics have to offer—and you’re drawn to new story beats by way of police-scanner alerts or cellphone calls from allies and loved ones. 

It’s a more emotionally engaging story than that of any Spider-Man film to date, in part due to its complex ethical and moral themes but also due to its length. If you don’t stop to thwart muggers or terrorists or take perfectly framed photos of Manhattan’s numerous landmarks, you could probably burn through the main storyline in 20 or 25 hours. 

That’s certainly enough time to become attached to characters and invested in relationships but it would also be completely contrary to the point of the game. The beauty of Marvel’s Spider-Man is the freedom it gives you to explore this world and its original storyline at your own pace. 

As I approached the end of the main quest, my wife and I sat on our sofa—me an active participant in this interactive storytelling-and-exploration experience; her a very willing passive viewer—and openly wept at the poignant and impactful emotional resolution of it all. It’s that engaging. 

Of course, having the Game of the Year Edition meant I still had three more intertwining stories to explore, more petty crimes to deal with between the Church of the Intercession and Battery Park, and more time to rummage around in its sewers and abandoned subways. And while feeling a little tacked on at first, this trilogy of mini sequels eventually evolves into yet another web of intrigue that picks up on threads only hinted at in the main storyline. It may lack some of the personal emotional resonance of the main game but it does amp the moral complexity up to new levels. 

Whether you merely play through the primary questline of Marvel’s Spider-Man or pick every achievement and side quest clean, as I’ve done, you owe it to yourself to play it on the best AV system in the house. And yes, that even includes an Atmos system. 

I know I’ve grumped in the past about not being the biggest fan of object-based surround sound with movies but the 7.1 soundtrack of Spider-Man upmixed into Atmos opens the landscape of Manhattan up in tangible ways. Hearing the roll of thunder and crack of lightning over and around you simply brings this sprawling environment to life. 

If you do play the game through a reference-quality sound system, make sure to dip into the audio settings and make one essential tweak. Change the default sound mode from Home Theater, which is really intended more for soundbars and smaller sound systems, to Maximum, which is mixed for “premium home theater systems or studio playback.” 

Little touches like that prove at least some game developers realize the home cinema potential of their efforts, even if the AV industry continues to treat video games like mere children’s entertainment. 

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 |  One of the most cinematic games to date, with the intense HDR highlights helping to enhance the effect of web-slinging your way through Manhattan

SOUND | The rich real-time uncompressed 7.1 soundscape and cinematic score whips and whirs around you as you make your way through the city

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Review: The Sandman

The Sandman (2022)

review | The Sandman

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This Netflix series honors its supposedly unfilmable source material by conjuring up a convincingly otherworldly fantasy realm

by Dennis Burger
August 23, 2022

I missed the boat on Netflix’ adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman the first time around. Not that I didn’t watch it. I did. It’s just that by the time I finished savoring the 10 episodes initially released in early August, the conversation had moved on. The nerdier corners of the internet collectively lost their minds for like two days, mostly out of sheer shock at the fact that this supposedly unfilmable work of illustrated literature managed to make the leap to the small screen with almost all of its heart and soul (even if not quite all its depth) intact. By the end of that weekend, the conversation was dead. The internet had moved on. All good geeks had binged all ten episodes and given their collective thumbs up or down to every aspect of the adaptation, and there was nothing left to be said.

Until, that is, Netflix sneakily announced and released a bonus episode, two weeks after the first season concluded. And all of a sudden this wonderful meditation on the complexities of human nature, the importance of dreams, the power of hope, and our mothlike fascination with the flame of duality and binary thinking is relevant again, if only for a few days. 

This deeply mythological fantasy series follows the story of Morpheus, aka Dream of the Endless—the lord of dreams and stories—who breaks free from a century of captivity and then strives to reclaim and rebuild his realm in order to save humanity, as well as to undo the damage done by his absence. That description alone will create impressions that don’t match up with the reality of this adaption or its source material. It’s simultaneously sillier and more substantial than anything the uninitiated might be imagining. It’s a serious story about serious subject matter than never takes itself at all seriously. 

To wit: It contains a pitch-perfect adaptation of “The Sound of Her Wings,” perhaps the most poignant story Gaiman has ever written. It is, without question, the story that got me through the loss of my mother nearly two decades ago with my sanity intact, as it forced me to reconsider my attitudes toward death. On the other hand, the show features Patton Oswalt as a talking Raven named Matthew and Mark Hamill as a walking pumpkin named Mervyn. 

It’s also a beautiful series to behold, especially in Dolby Vision, but as with everything else about this show and its inspiration, the imagery is a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. The dynamic range is pushed to extremes in all the right places, with the intense eye-reactive brightness and impossibly deep shadows often working to sell the believability of environments that are so divorced from waking reality that they almost look cartoonish. 

One visual element that I adore but which has been a source of outrage among the pixel-counting crowd, is  that The Sandman was shot in a rather unconventional way. To my eye, it looks like it was shot with vintage anamorphic lenses but on modern digital cameras. Whatever the reason, despite being framed at around 2.4:1, the picture looks like it was stretched to that height from 2.55:1. 

The stretched-thin composition gives the imagery an otherworldly quality that works to the benefit of the material, especially in making Tom Sturridge—who plays Dream of the Endless so convincingly that it’s sometimes easy to forget he’s a human being—look more like the original illustrations of the character by Sam Kieth and Dave McKean. 

The sound, meanwhile—dominated by long stretches of hushed and brooding dialogue—nonetheless makes wonderful use of Dolby Atmos to build otherworldly environments, enhance the action, or just creep you the heck out or lift your spirits at exactly the right times. YouTuber Object Demo has done a wonderful job of illustrating just how active the Atmos mix is even in one-on-one character exchanges. Normally I would recoil at such busy overhead channels, but in the case of this series, it works with the material rather than against it. There’s also enough gob-smacking deep, body-rumbling bass to test the rigidity of your walls. But through it all, dialogue remains utterly clear and discernible.

One more thing worth noting about the show, independent of its presentation: If the first episode doesn’t land with you, give the second one a chance—and perhaps the third, but definitely the sixth. Much like the original books, each episode carves out its own territory, explores its own themes, digs deep for its own meaning. There’s a through-line, to be sure—several in fact—but although each episode is pretty tonally and thematically consistent, there’s a good bit of variation between them.

The show really hits its stride after the introduction of Dream’s sister, Death, portrayed with the utmost compassion, empathy, and levity by The Good Place‘s Kirby Howell-Baptiste. Then again, the best chapters of the original books always revolved around Death, so this is no great surprise. Howell-Baptiste is, without question, the last actor in the world I would have cast in the role but I would have been wrong. Of all the Endless portrayed in the series thus far, hers is the performance that makes you most believe you’re looking at the anthropomorphic embodiment of a force of nature.  

At any rate, if you’ve already burned through the 10 episodes of The Sandman originally released as Season 1, don’t overlook the new bonus episode, which adapts two stories from the early days of the printed series. The animated “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” in particular is a good indication of how Netflix might adapt some of the material from the graphic novels that might otherwise be difficult to adapt to live action. 

If you haven’t seen any of the show, now’s the perfect time to dip in. But don’t feel the need burn through all 11 episodes in a sitting. Sit with it, reflect on it, let it sink in. This series deserves your attention, but it deserves to be savored like a multi-course dinner, not scarfed down like a cheap bag of Taco Bell. 

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 dynamic range of the Dolby Vision presentation is pushed to extremes in all the right places, with the intense eye-reactive brightness and impossibly deep shadows often working to sell the believability of the otherworldly environments

SOUND | The sound makes wonderful use of Atmos to build those environments, enhance the action, or just creep you the heck out or lift your spirits at exactly the right times

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Video Game Review: The Last of Us

Last of Us (2020)

video game review | The Last of Us, Pt. II

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This game’s story is so compelling it can match any TV series or movie, making it a must-see for gamers and causal viewers alike

by Dennis Burger
July 26, 2020

I’m starting to feel like I’ll never finish playing The Last of Us Part II. And it’s all my wife’s fault. Mind you, this isn’t your stereotypical story about a man’s nerdy hobby and his other half’s nagging insistence that he put down the controller and help out around the house. We are not that kind of couple. No, the problem is that my wife has become as obsessed as I am with the game’s gripping story and incredible visuals, and since she has no desire to play it herself (“too many buttons”), she won’t let me play unless she’s around to watch.

It’s funny, all this fuss, especially given that I had no intention of playing this game to begin with. The original game, released in 2013 at the end of the PlayStation 3’s life cycle, was one of the most compelling single-player video games ever created. It was a simple tale, a sort of post-pandemic, American-horror-story riff on Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub, released years before The Mandalorian would bring that classic Shogun epic swinging back into the pop culture consciousness. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the original The Last of Us was such a perfectly told tale that creating a follow-up seemed as sacrilegious to me as making a sequel to Citizen Kane. 

But I got The Last of Us Part II for Father’s Day and figured “What the hell?” Even if it lived up to all my fears, it couldn’t spoil my appreciation for the original. It turns out, though—despite what you may have heard from the nerd-rage circles of the internet, where legitimate creative expression is met with ire and only repetitive and pre-chewed fan service is allowed—The Last of Us Part II is not only a brilliant sequel, it may well be the single most compelling and challenging work of art released this year in any medium.

And that’s the problem. My wife occasionally watched me play the first Last of Us, and she had a pretty good handle on the story despite experiencing it only in snippets. But she can’t take her eyes off of Part II, and now my play time is dictated by her viewing schedule. 

That’s why I’m only 35 hours or so into the story a month after the game’s release. From what I’ve seen so far, though, this new game is a revenge tale that’s ultimately about the futility of revenge—reminiscent of the very best samurai flicks. It’s a necessarily violent (at times) narrative about the personal cost of violence. It’s a non-linear storytelling experience that not only forces to see, but also to experience—to feel—the conflicting emotions and motivations of the various major players—each the antagonist of the other. It is, in a sense, a narrative extrapolation of the famous MLK quote: “The reason I can’t follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everybody blind.” What’s more, it proves that in such a contest, no one agrees who took the first eye.

Add to that some of the most impressive HDR visuals you’ve ever seen on any screen and a dynamic surround sound mix so convincing that it has at times made us think there was a real storm brewing in the distance outside, and it’s understandable that my wife treats The Last of Us Part II more like a movie or TV show than a vicarious gaming experience. (Indeed, she almost seems to forget there’s an interactive element at all except during those times when I need to use the PS4 controller to strum a guitar in the occasional musical mini-game interlude.)

The point of all this is not that you shouldn’t play The Last of Us Part II if you’re not a gamer. The point is, if you have a gamer in your household and you’ve relegated them to the basement or bedroom, invite them into the home theater or media room. Let them play on the best AV system in the house. That’s the environment for which today’s cinematic single-player games are designed. 

Let’s face it: some of us are already starting to get a little starved for new content to watch, and that problem is only going to get worse as more film releases are delayed or taken off the release schedule altogether. With a new generation of video game consoles slated for release this Christmas, though—and with any number of new story-driven games waiting in the wings—you may just find that your spouse’s or kid’s next favorite game may become your new favorite home cinema viewing experience. 

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 |  Some of the most impressive HDR visuals you’ve ever seen on any screen, from a movie, series, or game 

SOUND | The dynamic surround mix is so convincing you’ll think there’s a real storm brewing in the distance outside

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Video Game Review: Stray

Stray (2022)

video game review | Stray

This home cinema-friendly game goes decidedly against the grain, using deep-bass purring instead of mayhem to give your subwoofers a workout

by Dennis Burger
August 12, 2022

From time to time, a video game comes along that reaffirms the validity of the medium and forces a conversation about whether interactive fiction should be seen as art. Off the top of my head, a non-comprehensive list of a few such landmark games would have to include Super Metroid; PaRappa the Rapper; Papers, Please; Minecraft; Disco Elysium; and The Last of Us and its sequel. 

It’s a bit too early to say whether Stray will join that pantheon, but it might. Not because of its graphics or sound or even because of its gameplay. Those help, but what really makes Stray such a wonderful experience is that it uses all the hooks, tropes, and trappings of video games to say something fundamental about the nature of life that’s wholly antithetical to everything we think of as inherent to gaming. 

You wouldn’t necessarily pick up on that from the premise. You play as a cat—not a cartoon or anthropomorphic cat, but a bog-standard Felis catus whose only skills are meowing, jumping, and scratching things, who roams the surface of a post-apocalyptic world with his family. One day, though, he falls into the sewers and ends up in a dystopian subterranean cityscape highly reminiscent of the Kowloon Walled City by way of the Los Angeles seen in Blade Runner.  That plants Stray firmly within a tradition of fiction that employs architectural stratification as a metaphor for social stratification—everything from Metropolis to Star Wars: The Clone Wars to the theme song for The Jeffersons—with the major difference that in the world of this game, there’s no society left. At least not an obvious one. 

It’s obvious from the giddy-up, though, that the goal is to return to the surface to be with your feline family. The curious thing is that neither the game nor the world in which it’s set puts a ton of pressure on you to do so at any appreciable pace. In fact, aside from obvious action set pieces, it’s exactly the opposite. At odd intervals it encourages you to scratch out on a spot on a rug, curl up, and nap. And it doesn’t do so by saving your progress or refueling your energy or any of the normal sort of video game rewards. It’s a nap for the sake of a nap. The camera pulls back, the sound effects get a little more diffuse, and if your subwoofers can handle truly subsonic bass, you’ll feel as much as hear the purring of your little feline character as he drifts into a slumber. The whole audiovisual experience of it all is your reward, and there’s something refreshing about that. If anything, it feels sort of like those “lo-fi beats” screensavers that captivate people for hours on end on Twitch and YouTube. 

It’s just one of any number of ways the game encourages you to live in the moment, to be present, to experience the fleeting now of it all. Another way it accomplishes this is by surrounding you with a world that feels legitimately, chaotically real. Built, sure, but by a gaggle of architects who never met, not a solitary game-world designer. There are alleyways and rooms and ledges and awnings to be explored that serve no purpose other than to delight the explorer’s heart. Dead-ends that would feel like punishment for bad navigational choices in any other game feel instead like unexpected rewards: “If not for that wrong turn or that missed jump, I wouldn’t have ended up seeing this!” That’s a neat trick. It’s the exact opposite of the theme-park mentality that has driven even supposedly open-world games for years.

But, getting back to the graphics and sound: Both make this whole virtual reality a little less virtual and a lot more real. The lighting—a lot of which comes from screens and neon lights—not only serves as the occasional subtle beacon when it’s time to stop clawing at sofas and make your way to another part of the world, but also helps set the overall mood. 

The audio, meanwhile, isn’t mixed in Dolby Atmos but you’d never know that if I didn’t tell you. It upmixes gorgeously into the immersive format, mostly because the sound is already frighteningly immersive even in 5.1. Close your eyes and you can sense where you are in this dilapidated subterranean cityscape. You can hear the dripping of water from the storm sewers, the hum of electric lighting, the pitter-pat of your character’s claws as they skitter across surfaces ranging from steel to cement, reverberating off the walls around you to create the sort of believably subtle sonic textures we rarely experience in Hollywood movies, much less video games—much less super-low-budget indie video games. The air in your room takes on the quality of the environments you explore rather than merely slinging sound effects at your head. It’s the most convincing sound experience I’ve had in my media room since I can’t remember when.

Perhaps more than anything, what sets Stray apart is its rebellious hopefulness. It’s a defiantly uplifting story about stopping to smell the roses even when there are no roses to be smelled. It’s about the importance of fellowship, the power of cooperation, and the joy of swatting things off tables and shelves for no reason whatsoever. It’s a powerful exercise in empathy, an ode to individuality, a meditation on community, and simply one of the most heartwarming tales I’ve experienced in any medium in quite some time. 

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 |  Hyper-detailed environments and deliciously specular lighting effects help make the world of the game feel convincingly real

SOUND | The audio isn’t in Atmos but does up-mix gorgeously into the immersive format—mostly because the sound is already deeply immersive even in 5.1

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Idea Book: Private Cinema Seating

Idea Book |
Private Cinema Seating

Higher-end seating for entertainment spaces is almost infinitely customizable, offering options well beyond the typical overstuffed recliner

by Dennis Burger
July 31, 2022

Think of your typical home cinema seating solution and you’re probably conjuring something like a bog-standard black recliner with beefy armrests and built-in cupholders, maybe joined arm-to-arm with others of its kind to form a row. To be fair, that is the standard, but it doesn’t have to be. All good seating solutions should have a few things in common: They should be comfortable, but not too comfortable. You should be able to sit through the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring without squirming but you should also be able to enjoy a film without falling asleep. Good seating should also fit the design of your private cinema, whether that be an homage to the classic studio movie houses or a sleeker modern design. Thankfully, there’s near infinite variation in the available seating that meets those criteria, and although the selection here is far from comprehensive, it should give you a good taste of what’s possible.

Salamander Designs Matteo

If your heart is set on a home theater recliner that looks like a home theater recliner—just more sculpted, more refined, leaner, less boxy—the Matteo is a great choice, whether you need single seats, a curved row of four with arms between each seat, a straight row of six with arms between every other seat, or any number of other combinations. One thing that sets Salamander apart from many home cinema furniture makers is if none of its numerous fabric or leather finishes fits your environment, you can provide your own custom upholstery material and have a truly one-of-a-kind seat. 

Elite HTS Cuddle Couch

It certainly isn’t the right seating solution for every home cinema or media room, but if “stream and chill” is the vibe you’re going for or if supreme comfort is your first priority, this highly customizable option from Elite HTS certainly fits the bill. Both the upper and lower sections of the Cuddle Couch can be specified in your choice of 26 colors across two material types—extremely soft Cine Suede and, our preference, super durable, buttery, and breathable synthetic Silk Leather—giving you plenty of options for making it your own.  

Cineak Gramercy

Designed to be something of a study in contrasts in and of itself, the Gramercy manages to be simultaneously cushy and contemporary, casual and elegant. It also isn’t obvious at first glance that this highly customizable model is a recliner, but it is. Headrests and leg support appear out of nowhere at the push of a button—or without any button pressing if you have a Kaleidescape system, which can be programmed to adjust the seating automatically as soon as a film starts. Numerous addons such as side tables, inlay trays, and per-seat lighting make the personalization options near infinite. 

Valencia Tuscany Ultimate Luxury Edition

Its name may be a bit on-the-nose, but this upscale version of Valencia’s popular Tuscany recliner certainly earns all the superlatives thanks to its upgraded materials—specifically the best-quality semi-aniline Italian Nappa leather—and advanced technology, such as motorized control of the head rest. Inspired by the interior aesthetic of a Rolls Royce, the Tuscany Ultimate boasts perforated French diamond stitching, customizable lighting accents, and concealed arm rest console storage lined with Parisian velour and fitted with a soft-open strut mechanism.

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.

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Private Cinema Seating

Higher-end seating for entertainment spaces is almost infinitely customizable, offering options well beyond the typical overstuffed recliner

by Dennis Burger
July 31, 2022

Think of your typical home cinema seating solution and you’re probably conjuring something like a bog-standard black recliner with beefy armrests and built-in cupholders, maybe joined arm-to-arm with others of its kind to form a row. To be fair, that is the standard, but it doesn’t have to be. All good seating solutions should have a few things in common: They should be comfortable, but not too comfortable. You should be able to sit through the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring without squirming but you should also be able to enjoy a film without falling asleep. Good seating should also fit the design of your private cinema, whether that be an homage to the classic studio movie houses or a sleeker modern design. Thankfully, there’s near infinite variation in the available seating that meets those criteria, and although the selection here is far from comprehensive, it should give you a good taste of what’s possible. 

Fortress Odéon

Designed by Sheba Kwan—co-founder of the award-winning interior design and consulting firm Red Theory—the Odéon is available in single-recliner configurations, long attached rows, and even chaise longue–style sofas. But across all variations, one thing remains consistent—those delightful floating arms, which give this otherwise sturdy design something of a light and delicate quality. Like all Fortress recliners, this one also offers two levels of recline—a “viewing position” that merely raises the foot rest and a “full recline” that only requires five extra inches of clearance behind the seat.

AcousticSmart Aria

Part of AcousticSmart’s lifestyle European collection, it really only takes two words to capture the essence of the Aria: “soft comfort.” But that barely scratches the surface. Aria’s cushions are available in custom widths from 23 to 30 inches, and all seats feature dual motorized recline operation and a zero-clearance design that means you can put them right up against a wall or bar counter if need be. The head and foot rests also work completely independently, if you’d like to recline without blocking the sound from the speakers in the back of your room.

Cinematech Estrella

One of the most popular designs from a company that has been building home cinema seating since before most people had heard of home cinemas, the Estrella motorized sectional is a wonderful example of just how customizable this category can be. Say you want a full-blown recliner experience but your partner wants a chaise longue with a motorized headrest—that’s something you can have built. Unlike many home cinema seating solutions, the Estrella also works well without armrests between every seat, although you can still have them if you want them.

Acoustic Innovations Humphrey

For the Madmen-obsessed executive who has everything except the perfect private cinema recliner, the Humphrey is a mashup made in old-school boardroom heaven. At a glance, it evokes martinis, single-breasted continental suits, and skinny ties, and it’s almost surprising Acoustic Innovations doesn’t offer it with an optional ashtray. There are the expected tray tables and cupholders, though, in addition to in-arm USB chargers, heat and massage functionality, D-Box motion controls, and tactile transducers that make the bass in your home cinema felt as much as heard.

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.

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Review: Incredibles 2

Incredibles 2 (2018)

review | Incredibles 2

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Fourteen years after the first film, this sequel picks up where the original left off without skipping a beat

by Dennis Burger
November 6, 2018

Incredibles 2 shouldn’t work—at least not as well as it does. It’s been 14 years since the original film, after all, and the world—our world, the real one without superheroes—has changed. A lot—socially, politically, cinematically. So, to pick up this sequel right after the end of the original film seems a myopic decision. One can’t help but wonder, as the film opens on the familiar closing scenes of its forebear, if Incredibles 2 will ever rise above the level of nostalgic romp. 

Thankfully those apprehensions are unfounded. Perhaps it’s due to the retro-futuristic tone, style, and aesthetic of the Incredibles universe but somehow the film manages to catch up with a decade-and-a-half worth of sociopolitical progress and regression while managing to feel like a fluid and organic extension of the original. And it does so while somehow managing to be less preachy and more nuanced.

Another reason Incredibles 2 feels like something of a risky move is that it has the courage to be a lot of films at once. It’s an unabashed superhero flick, sure. It’s also a girl-power anthem and a slapstick masterpiece rolled up into one, with a side helping of commentary on all forms of media (new, social, and mainstream). There’s teenage romance, there’s thrilling action, there are poop jokes and technological warnings that are about as subtle as a 1958 Pontiac Parisienne. There’s also an epic (and epically hilarious) battle between a trash panda and an infant, for goodness’ sake. But somehow this mélange of themes, tones, and styles coalesces into something that works wonderfully and cohesively.

If there’s one criticism to be leveled, it’s that from 30,000 feet its main plot is sort of just a gender-inversion of the original film’s main storyline. In many ways, that works to its advantage, though. It gives the longtime fan something to latch onto—a sense of comforting familiarity that in many ways makes the narrative and thematic departures hit home with a little more oomph. 

More than anything, though, the themes of Incredibles 2 build on those of the original in a seemingly seamless way. Whereas the first film dealt largely with issues of individuality, the sequel in many ways wraps its arms around the internal struggle between defining ourselves as individuals and accepting that who we are as people is often a function of who we are to the other people in our lives, especially when viewed through the lens of the family.

That isn’t really any sort of insightful observation on my part; it mainly comes from the film’s exceptional collection of bonus features. If you saw Incredibles 2 in cinemas and thought you were done with it, you owe it to yourself to explore the shockingly revelatory and honest supplemental material. If you’re on Kaleidescape, that means downloading the Blu-ray-quality version of the film as well as the 4K HDR, since the extras are limited to the former.

It’s well worth downloading both, though. The Kaleidescape HDR version sets itself apart from the other home-video releases thanks to unique color grading that focuses less on the absolute blacks and eye-reactive highlights and more on the subtlety and richness of shadows that simply look more cinematic to my eyes. Kaleidescape’s TrueHD Atmos soundtrack (otherwise found only on the UHD Blu-ray release) also has a leg up on the Dolby Digital+ soundtrack found on the streaming versions. Not necessarily in the booming bass of big action sequences (of which there are many, with oodles of sonic impact, something Disney hasn’t always gotten right as of late), but more in the subtle details that deliver ambience and atmospherics. And above all else, Incredibles 2 is nothing if not atmospheric. 

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 HDR version sets itself apart from the other home-video releases thanks to unique color grading that focuses less on the absolute blacks and eye-reactive highlights and more on the subtlety and richness of shadows 

SOUND | The TrueHD Atmos soundtrack delivers plenty of sonic impact during the big action sequences as well as all the detail of the more subtle atmospheric cues

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Review: Brian and Charles

Brian and Charles (2022)

review | Brian and Charles

Quirky, sweet, and utterly devoid of cynicism, this British film about a man and his robot definitely goes against the current comedic grain

by Dennis Burger
July 12, 2022

Brian and Charles—a new feature-length adaptation of the 2017 short film by the same name—is a delightfully quirky little parable that’s refreshing in its lack of concern for being everything to everyone. It obviously wasn’t focus-tested to see how it would play in, say, China—or the US, for that matter. 

It leans heavily on jokes whose impact require you to know the difference between a Victoria sponge and a blancmange, and it’s mostly about a lonely Welshman who builds a cabbage-obsessed A.I. companion out of a washing machine and a mannequin head he pulled out of the trash. If you’re in for that sort of thing, the film is now available on select digital platforms as a theater-at-home release, in addition to currently making the rounds in the art-house circuit in the Colonies and playing in mainstream cinemas in the UK. 

This is one of those rare films you can gauge your ultimate reaction to with a quick look at the trailer. If the teaser does it for you, you’ll dig the film despite its faults. If it rubs you the wrong way, there’s nothing in the film’s 91-minute runtime that’ll change your mind. 

I fall into the former camp, but I do somewhat take issue with the fact that the filmmakers seemed to have gotten bored with the mockumentary conceit about 20 minutes in. Somewhere around that point, the folks behind the camera stop talking back, the fourth wall is all troweled up, and that whole silly trope is abandoned until the very last scene. 

Otherwise, Brian and Charles is sweet and wholesome and a wholly pleasant diversion that expands on the themes of the original short film in some interesting ways. It definitely maintains the vibe of the original, though, which exists on a spectrum spanning from Nick Park at one extreme to Neill Blomkamp at the other, although it hews far closer to the former than the latter. (If you must quantify it, on a ruler with Park at 0 and Blomkamp at 12, Brian and Charles would be, like, a 2.)

If you’re going to rent or buy the film while it’s still in cinemas, by the way, do be careful about the platform you opt for. On iTunes, Amazon, and a few other services, Brian and Charles is only available in HD. Vudu and Kaleidescape seem to have the exclusive rights to presenting it in UHD HDR, at least for the moment.

I bought it on Vudu, and although I can’t claim that the extra resolution of UHD adds much to the experience—the film was shot in 2.8K, after all—the HDR10 grade does occasionally add something meaningful. Not consistently, mind you—it’s a rather gray film, dominated by gray skies and gorgeous gray Welsh landscapes, and even the occasional splash of color in the environment seems to be fighting a losing battle. But four or five times, the enhanced dynamic range of HDR10 is employed to, for example, enhance the effect of a rare sunny day, or add some sparkle to a fireworks display, or make you feel the intensity of a bonfire. 

In short, HDR is used the way a seasoned writer uses exclamation marks—almost never, always intentionally, and with the understanding that overuse will diminish the effect. But it does add something to the experience, so opt for it if you can. 

The 5.1 mix (presented on Vudu in Dolby Digital Plus, although Kaleidescape has it in DTS-HD Master Audio) is exactly what the soundtrack for a film like this should be. Dialogue is the focus—so much so that you’d almost expect to be surprised by anything other than music leaking into the front left and right speakers, much less the surrounds. There isn’t much going on in those speakers, but when the mix does expand out from the center, it does so gracefully and effectively, and there isn’t much more to say about it than that. Dialogue intelligibility is aces, which can’t be taken for granted given the film’s apparent low budget and the thick rural accents employed throughout.

In the end, Brian and Charles is a weird and awkward and often uncomfortable comedy, and perhaps its most salient (and controversial) characteristic is its utter lack of cynicism. Most people will find that fact alone off-putting. But if you’re up for it, and you don’t mind its structural quirks, it’s such a sweet little romp. And I think we could all use a bit more of that right now.

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 extra resolution of UHD doesn’t add much to the experience of the film but the HDR10 grade does occasionally add something meaningful 

SOUND | This is a dialogue-driven center channel-heavy mix but when it does expand out from the center, it does so gracefully and effectively

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Review: Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey (2019)

review | Downton Abbey

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The popular PBS series translates well to the bigger screen in this stunning 4K HDR transfer

by Dennis Burger
November 27, 2019

Home cinema fans are increasingly being presented with something of a dilemma: Buy into the digital home video release of a film a few weeks early and miss out on some enticing bonus features or wait  and buy the full-fledged disc release, complete with all of the supplemental trappings but yet another damned box to clog our shelves. 

In the case of Downton Abbey—the big-screen continuation of the smash-hit ITV/PBS soap opera about the decline of the aristocracy in post-Edwardian England—the calculus gets a little more complicated. While it’s true the disc slated for release on December 17 promises to deliver all manner of goodies—from cast interviews to documentaries to deleted scenes to an audio commentary by director Michael Engler—that release will be limited to Blu-ray quality at best. The Kaleidescape release, like all the other digital releases aside from iTunes, presents the film completely devoid of extras, but does come home by way of a 4K HDR transfer.

So, do you go for the best presentation of the film now or do you wait for a lesser presentation that’s backed up by some significant behind-the-scenes insight? (Or, for you Apple TV owners, do you opt for the feature-packed download?) 

I can’t answer that question for you, but what I can say is that Kaleidescape’s presentation of this delightful little film is simply stunning. I saw Downton Abbey twice in local cinemas, both times in BigD (a competitor of sorts to IMAX that focuses more on wide-aspect-ratio films) and neither of those experiences came close to the sheer visual splendor of the Kaleidescape download.

That is largely due to the fantastic (although subtle) use of high dynamic range, which gives the image more pop, depth, and sparkle when such is called for. The cinematography of Downton Abbey was always one of its most undeniable strengths on the small screen, and this big-screen continuation doesn’t stray far from the style of the series. But Kaleidescape’s presentation does make me wish someone would go back and do an HDR grade for all six seasons. 

One substantial way the look of the film differs from the series, aside from the HDR, is its aspect ratio. While the show was framed for 16:9 TVs, the film is presented in 2.39:1, and this does make a substantial difference in how things are framed. Wider, longer shots of the estate and the adjacent village plant Downton Abbey more firmly in its geographical surroundings. Dinners, of which there are of course plenty, also feel quite different in the movie as compared with the series. With a wider canvas to play with, cinematographer Ben Smithard manages to make each table feel like a continent instead of a collection of loosely interconnected islands. 

I can’t say for certain whether this transfer was taken from a 4K digital intermediate, but I have to imagine it was, as it wants for nothing in terms of detail. I can, on the other hand, say for certain that it was shot digitally on Sony Venice cameras, which are capable of capturing images at up to 6K resolution in 2.39:1. Forget the pixel count, though. What matters is that Downton looks better than ever here, in terms of sharpness, shadow detail, depth of field, contrast, and color. The largely brown-and-grey palette, punctuated by golds, reds, oranges, and lavenders throughout, is delivered with all the lushness and warmth it deserves, and skin tones are spot on.

It should come as no surprise that the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is a largely front-focused affair, although it does lean on the surround channels a good bit to accentuate John Lunn’s iconic and familiar score. Aside from that, the surround soundstage does come into play occasionally to accentuate ambience, be it the chirping of birds or the exuberant crowds at the royal parade; but by and large you won’t be pulling this one out to blow anyone’s hair back or shake their britches legs. For the most part, this is a dialogue-and-music-driven mix, and the lossless 5.1 track renders it with wonderful clarity and richness. 

It should probably go without saying that the Downton Abbey film is primarily aimed at those who are already smitten with the characters and locations (which are, in some respects, characters in and of themselves). In many ways, it feels like a Christmas special for a seventh season that never existed. (For the uninitiated: Each season for Downton Abbey since Season Two was bookended by a made-for-TV movie with a bigger budget and longer running time, broadcast on Christmas Day in the U.K. and presented as a special season finale when each year’s crop of episodes was broadcast a few months later here in the Colonies.)

I can’t see the film through anything other than the eyes of a longtime devotee, but I have to imagine those who haven’t seen the series will be a little confused by stray references to characters who aren’t introduced and relationships that aren’t spelled out for new viewers. Of course, little of this is essential to understanding the plot of the film, which is pretty self-explanatory. The King and Queen are coming to Downton, and everyone is all aflutter. Who forgot to polish the silver? Who’s responsible for cooking the big dinner? Who’s going to be whose heir? What personal tragedy will befall poor Lady Edith this time?

The magic of Downton Abbey (as both a series and film) is that, like the best of the Merchant Ivory catalog it so evokes, it manages to make such low-stakes controversies seem like a Big Deal. And the details of the plot are, as always, secondary to the wonderful character interactions and performances, especially from Dame Maggie Smith, who seems bound and determined to make this, likely her last turn as the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the performance of her life. 

Thematically speaking, the screenplay by showrunner Julian Fellowes does tinker with the Downton formula a bit. The series has always ultimately been about the conflicting forces of progress and tradition, and that remains true here. As always, this struggle is presented without a thumb on the scales, and those two opposing points of view don’t split across upstairs/downstairs lines as you might expect. There are agents of progress both in service and in the aristocracy, and bastions of tradition above and below the main floor. What makes the movie a bit of cheeky fun is that Fellowes pushes many of the characters into positions of role reversal, with traditionalists defending a bit of change and change-seekers going to bat for the way things have always been done, right and proper. 

When you get right down to it, the Downton Abbey film feels like returning home for a big holiday dinner. If you’re part of the family, it can be a wonderful exercise that recharges the soul. If you’re new to the family, you can feel a little awkward and out of sorts. In this case, though, the family happens to be so delightful that many a newcomer (if they bother to watch this film at all) will be drawn in enough to explore the entire run of the show, if only to have a better understanding of the relationships at the heart of this wonderful little melodrama. 

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 is stunning due to the fantastic (although subtle) use of high dynamic range, which gives the images appropriate pop, depth, and sparkle

SOUND | The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is largely front focused, although it does lean on the surround channels to accentuate John Lunn’s iconic and familiar score

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Review: Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems (2020)

review | Uncut Gems

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Standout performances and obvious talent behind the camera add up to a film that’s ultimately just unpleasant to watch

by Dennis Burger
March 2, 2020

I can’t remember the last time any film left me feeling so conflicted as Benny and Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems; conflicted because, on the one hand, it’s as distinctive an artistic expression as I’ve seen on film in who knows how long—meticulously scripted, inventively shot, masterfully edited, with performances that are award-worthy down to the level of the most minor secondary roles. On the other hand, I can’t remember any film in recent memory that filled me with such anxiety as this one did, from the opening scene straight through to the closing credits.

 The film stars Adam Sandler, who turns in a pitch-perfect performance as Howard Ratner, a jewelry store proprietor and compulsive gambler who’s always one side-hustle away from either striking it rich or getting fitted for cement shoes. His fortunes seem to change when he comes into possession of a rare black opal that quickly becomes the obsession of basketball player Kevin Garnett (played equally effectively by basketball player Kevin Garnett). Rather than selling the stone to Garnett for a ridiculous sum of money, Ratner decides to scam him by way of an auction, and, well . . . so it goes for the rest of the film. 

In some ways, I suppose you could call Uncut Gems a morality play, but the morality espoused seems to be pure nihilism. There isn’t a sympathetic character in the film—no one to root for, no opportunity for a satisfying resolution that isn’t morally bankrupt. And I’m not saying that makes it a bad film; I’m merely saying it was one I couldn’t enjoy–which is a shame because the Safdies draw inspiration from some of my guilty pleasures, especially the late-’80s/early-’90s output of Michael Mann, whose style they manage to evoke without aping, both visually and aurally.

Shot on the same Kodak Vision3 500T 35mm film stock that gave Marriage Story its distinctively cinematic look, Uncut Gems is the perfect marriage of photochemical chaos and cutting-edge digital precision. It’s all unapologetically crushed blacks and cranked primary hues, and in one scene in particular—at a glitzy nightclub performance by The Weeknd—the 4K HDR presentation (sourced from a 4K digital intermediate) uses its enhanced dynamic range to effectively recreate the blacklight illumination and the DayGlo neon colors that result.

Even the soundtrack is a captivating mix of retro and bleeding edge, thanks in part to a score by Daniel Lopatin that breaks all the rules of both composition and mixing. The music at times evokes the Michael Mann aesthetic, with ’80s-tastic droning synths and a pulse-pounding tempo that pushes the visuals forward; at other times, it veers into Blade Runner territory, and at other times still ventures into what can only be described as artistic porn-music territory. 

The one consistent aspect of the soundtrack—and indeed the sound mix as a whole—is that supervising sound editor Warren Shaw acts as if he’s the first person to ever work in surround sound, much less Dolby Atmos. The mix exhibits a level of aggression I would normally find irritating and distracting, but here it simply works. Dialogue is forced into the left or right channels at times when it would traditionally be locked into the center. Score music often uses the surrounds as the primary channels instead of the fronts. If it weren’t all so skillfully mixed, it would come across as pure chaos, but I find myself loving it in spite of myself.

In the end, though, I have to put Uncut Gems into that growing pile of films I appreciate but just can’t enjoy. For all the visual and auditory allusions to Mann, the film ends up playing as more of a horror movie in which the lumbering antagonist isn’t a machete-wielding psychopath but rather karma itself. It could have just as easily been titled A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Person Has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week. 

And I’m not quite sure if the Safdies have created a window or a mirror. Am I supposed to feel any sympathy or empathy for Sandler’s awful character? If so, Uncut Gems fails in that respect, because I can’t. Am I supposed to root for his comeuppance? I hope not, because that feels just as gross. 

And yet, for all the anxiety, conflicted feelings, and desire to bleach my eyeballs after the credits rolled, I have to admit I was absolutely captivated by the sheer talent on the screen and behind the scenes. And I don’t really like the way that realization makes me feel about myself.  

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 perfect marriage of photochemical chaos and cutting-edge digital precision, Uncut Gems is all unapologetically crushed blacks and cranked primary hues

SOUND | The Atmos mix exhibits a level of aggression that would usually be irritating and distracting but here it simply works.

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