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Review: In the Heights

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review | In the Heights

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s rookie musical gets a nice bump, thanks to Hamilton

by John Sciacca
updated October 5, 2023

While the story of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is in no way connected to Hamilton, you can’t help but feel the catchy beats, tempos, meter, breaks, and rat-a-tat-tat style that made Hamilton so groundbreaking were crafted and forged during his writing of In the Heights.

Miranda—likely recognizing he had aged out of playing the lead, Usnavi, but also realizing that attaching his name would give the film another level of cachet—takes on the small role of the Piragüero, a street snow-cone vendor. He doesn’t throw away his shot, making the most of his screen time.

During the lengthy opening number, “In The Heights,” Usnavi, who runs a small bodega that serves as a hub of the community, introduces us to most of the key players and tells us a bit about their story. A few big moments drive the story forward, such as several characters looking to move out of the Heights, a winning lottery ticket worth $96,000 sold at the bodega, and a blackout that shrouds the neighborhood in darkness—and heat—for a couple of days. While I was never bored—and really enjoyed many of the musical and dance numbers—at 2 hours and 22 minutes, there are slow parts and by the end it does start to feel a bit long.

Shot at 7K, the home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate, and the movie is really beautiful. Many of the scenes are shot on location in Brooklyn Heights, and the natural lighting gives the film a great look. Skin tones look natural, with loads of color and shadow detail, and a huge depth of focus.

Overall the film just looks clean, focused, and sharp throughout. The huge array of street dancers shown at the end of the opening number as well as in the community swimming pool after “96,000” are shown with great depth and clarity. Long shots showing buildings reveal tight, sharp lines of brick-and-mortar. Closeups also reveal all kinds of detail, such as in the opening number—as the camera moves through Usnavi’s store, we can clearly see every can, box, and label on the shelves. There are not a lot of effects shots, save for one big dance number (“When The Sun Goes Down”) on the side of a building. But two shots at the public swimming pool where Usnavi looks obviously green-screened in were mildly distracting.

HDR is used to pump up the brightness of neon signs/lights in store windows, and to give the night scenes more punch. In fact, the scene/song “Blackout” would be a great demo scene, with bright flashlights, candles, sparklers, and fireworks punctuating the night.

Even though it’s mixed and presented in Dolby Atmos, the soundtrack—at least as presented by HBO Max—doesn’t feature a lot of height information, and virtually nothing in the rear/surround back speakers, with just some music going to the side and front heights. The mix does give us some nice width and directionality across the front, letting characters and sounds move far off screen left/right as appropriate. There’s also plenty of detail to let us hear individual voices in the layered singing, letting you pick out a given singer in the sonic space. We also get some nice ambient sounds that gently fill and expand the room.

Sonically, the musical numbers are the big star here, and the instruments and vocals are given a lot of room across the front channels, with some space added in the front height and surround speakers. Many of the songs are upbeat and you can’t help but tap your toes.

If you liked Hamilton then I daresay you’ll enjoy In the Heights too since its DNA runs thick throughout. Asking it to convert everyone into a musical lover is a big ask, but there’s no disputing that it has loads of heart and looks terrific, and is certainly worth a night in your theater.

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

PICTURE | The natural lighting gives the film a great look. Skin tones look natural, with loads of color and shadow detail, and a huge depth of focus

SOUND | Even though it’s mixed and presented in Dolby Atmos, the soundtrack doesn’t feature a lot of height information, and virtually nothing in the rear/surround back speakers

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Review: All That Breathes

review | All That Breathes

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Eschewing conventional narrative and exposition, this Oscar-nominated Indian documentary encourages you to develop your own thoughts and feelings about the subject matter

by Dennis Burger
February 22, 2023

If you want to experience the concept of “show, don’t tell” embodied flawlessly in cinematic form, you owe it to yourself to check out Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes at your earliest convenience. Less a documentary—or indeed, a narrative—than a portrait that unfolds in four dimensions, the film opens with a slow panning sequence that establishes the rules straight away. It’s a shot of urban wildlife in the city of New Delhi—rats, specifically, scurrying around in a concrete jungle—devoid of narration or setup. It is, in a sense, pure cinematic experience—a combination of moving imagery and sound orchestrated to transport you elsewhere and make you feel whatever you’re going to feel without imposing its feelings on you.

Shortly thereafter, we’re introduced to Mohammad, Nadeem, and Salik, operators of a wildlife rescue focused on treating and rehabilitating black kites that fall from New Delhi’s toxic skies. What makes All That Breathes hit a bit differently is that it doesn’t explain who these men are or what they do. We discover the particulars of their lives organically, as they come up in conversation or in the course of their day-to-day lives. We witness phone conversations, only half of which can be heard. We’re privy to private discussions about the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the resulting government overreach without any mention of the Citizenship Amendment Act by name.

The filmmakers, in other words, don’t dot every “i” and cross every “t” because they don’t need to. You pick up from context what’s important—at least what’s important to the subjects of the film.

Scenes of family life and the work of the aptly named Wildlife Rescue are interspersed with a good number of the purely cinematic experiential sequences of the sort that open the film, all of which seem designed to make the viewer reflect on the way wildlife affects cities and cities affect wildlife and both affect humans. The beauty of it is, though, we’re not told how to interpret any of this. We don’t need to be. The images coming straight out of the camera are enough of a prompt.

Those images, by the way, were obviously captured at a higher resolution and with more dynamic range than we find in the HD presentation on HBO Max. The film was shot on a combination of Canon and Panasonic prosumer cameras, both of which record at 4K resolution with 10-bit dynamic range. And you can see the constraints of dynamic range at times, when highlights get blown out or shadows get a little muddied. All in all, though, the impeccably composed cinematography benefits from a bit of processing that seems to have muted contrasts a bit, and the footage is so mesmerizing that it transcends reproduction.

No such caveats are needed for the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack, which is an absolute master class in subtle but effective audio mixing. In fact, it upmixes perfectly into Atmos, if your surround processor is capable of such. Pans across the front soundstage are common, though inconspicuous enough that you might miss them. The surround channels are nearly constantly active but never distracting. Dialogue is beautifully rendered—although, it’s in Hindi, so intelligibility might not matter for those of us in the west who don’t speak the language. The baked-in subtitles are nicely done as well and seem better suited to viewing at cinematic proportions than the standard 55-inch TV on the other side of the room. That’s a nice but unexpected touch.

Overall, the only real complaint I have about All That Breathes is that it ends far too quickly. Granted, the 97-minute runtime already seems brisk on paper, but actually watching it, it doesn’t feel anywhere near that long. Some of that is due to the lack of a conventional narrative but a lot of it boils down to fantastic editing, compelling subjects, and mesmerizing cinematography. One simply hopes HBO eventually releases the thing in UHD/HDR so it can be experienced in its full splendor.

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 images were captured at a higher resolution and with more dynamic range than are found in the HD presentation on HBO Max. You can see the dynamic-range constraints when highlights are blown out or shadows get a little muddied

SOUND | The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack is a master class in subtle but effective audio mixing that upmixes perfectly into Atmos

Review: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

review | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

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

by John Sciacca
March 21, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Drive My Car

review | Drive My Car

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This Oscar-nominated Japanese film is aloof, detached, chilly, and pretentious—and more than worth it in the end

by Dennis Burger
March 23, 2022

I’ve rarely felt as conflicted as I do right now, standing in front of my keyboard, trying to collect my thoughts about Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car. The film is, at three hours long, an exercise in not only delayed gratification but also delayed insight. It moves at the pace of a pitch drop experiment, and by the time its opening credits rolled at somewhere around the 40-minute mark, after a long and borderline impenetrable prologue, I found myself tempted to walk away from it and not look back. Indeed, I might have done so had I not been tasked with reviewing it.

The story doesn’t really start to congeal until somewhere near the 90-minute mark, at which point it stingily begins to dole out keys to locks it’s been forcing the viewer to fiddle and fumble with in frustration to that point. By the third act, its various thematic threads start to come together to form an incredibly impactful and moving meditation on pain, grief, language, art, solipsism, forgiveness, and self-reflection. And there’s some part of me that wants to return to the beginning with insights gleaned from the ending. But I’m not sure I will, if only because Drive My Car asks—nay, demands—that you give it as much or more than it gives you in return.

The film follows a man’s attempts to stage a multi-lingual stage production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya two years after the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, while also being forced to submit to having a driver at the insistence of the theater. And while I appreciate the simplicity of its story, I think the bulk of my hesitance comes from the fact that for most of its runtime, it comes across as aloof, detached, chilly, and more than a little pretentious. Looking back on the work as a whole, that’s sort of a necessary conceit to make the journey work, but there’s simply no denying that from moment to moment, it can feel laborious.

And the look of the film does little to help you connect with its characters, environments, or quiet drama. Captured digitally in ArriRaw at 3.4K resolution and finished in a 2K digital intermediate, the imagery seems to have been processed to a degree after leaving the camera, although it’s not the typical film-look processing you might expect. Instead, it appears as if contrasts have been turned down and black levels elevated, which results in a flatness and apparent loss of saturation, all of which combines to give the picture a foggy quality.

As of this writing, Drive My Car is only available to view in the U.S. on HBO Max, which delivers a nearly perfect presentation in HD. Given the tonal flatness of the image and the overall lack of chromaticity—really, lead character Yūsuke Kafuku’s beloved red Saab and the occasional glare of brake lights contribute more color to the film than anything else—it’s hard to imagine the picture benefiting much for an HDR grade, and there are only two minor blink-and-you’ll-miss-them instances of aliasing in the background of the image that hint at the need for higher-than-HD resolution. But only briefly. Whether they’re a consequence of the down-sampled DI or HBO Max’s encoding of the master files, I have no way of knowing. But they’re so fleeting that it feels like nitpicking to bring them up.

The film makes its way to the streaming service with its original soundtrack intact—primarily Japanese with a heaping helping of Mandarin, Korean, and English thrown in—in Dolby Digital+ 5.1. Although the surround channels are rarely employed for anything other than music, it’s a nice front-heavy mix that does a wonderful job of capturing the ambience of its environments, as well as the occasional meteorological punctuation and the droning of wheels on asphalt. Dialogue clarity is top-notch and Eiko Ishibashi’s hauntingly beautiful score is delivered with excellent fidelity. If you hadn’t guessed already, it’s not exactly home cinema demo material but you could have just as easily gathered that from the trailer.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch Drive My Car. But nor can I heartily recommend that you do watch it. That would be like me telling you to go train for a marathon, assuming you’re physically capable. Would you find it rewarding in the end? Perhaps. Would you hate my guts for a solid 16 to 20 weeks in the leadup to the final event? Probably.

At least with Drive My Car, your loathing would last a few hours at most, although it might feel like much more than that. Ultimately, though, I think my biggest source of ambivalence is that I desperately long for more films of this sort to be made. I very much want it to succeed, because I borderline need more writers and directors to make slow, contemplative, introspective films, especially ones that pay such rewarding dividends in the end. I just wish this one were an hour shorter, a little less repetitive, a lot less austere, and had more faith in its audience to connect with its themes without belaboring them half to death. Looking back on the experience of the film as a whole, I have to say I appreciate the hell out of it. But I just can’t bring myself to love it.

PICTURE | HBO Max delivers a nearly perfect HD presentation with only two minor blink-and-you’ll-miss-them instances of aliasing in the background of the image

SOUND | The front-heavy Dolby Digital+ 5.1 mix does a wonderful job of capturing the ambience of the environments, exhibits top-notch dialogue clarity, and delivers the hauntingly beautiful score with excellent fidelity

Review: The Matrix Resurrections

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After almost two decades, the Matrix is back, with a lot of flash, a lot of action, but not anything really new to say

by John Sciacca
December 23, 2021

(I don’t normally include this at the beginning but with this film being so new, and so many people being interested in watching it, I want to assure you this review is spoiler free!)

If you’re going to reboot and revisit a beloved franchise 18 years after the previous installment, you likely have one of two reasons to do so. One, you’ve got something new to add to the story that would otherwise be incomplete without it. Two, you’re looking for a cash grab.

I’m a huge fan of the original Matrix trilogy. The first film was startlingly fresh and original, gamechanging, and even genre-defining. While the second and third films didn’t push the boundaries of originality in the same manner, they definitely helped to complete the story. So I went into the latest film in the franchise, The Matrix Resurrections (which opened on December 22 both in theaters and streaming on HBO Max) hopeful and excited but also
. . . cautious. (Interestingly, this is the final film to get the HBO Max day & date treatment in Warner Bros.’ “Project Popcorn” experiment.)

While the Wachowskis—Lana and Lilly—showed incredible innovation with The Matrix, their subsequent films—Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending—were all misses. While there were some amazing visuals (I can only imagine how Speed Racer would look in 4K HDR), the stories were plodding and just not interesting.

But this was The Matrix. And they were bringing back Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). And after 18 years surely they had time to work up a fantastic story and develop some next-generation effects techniques, and really push the story to the next level.

Right?

I’m just gonna say it—this latest entry into the franchise is a miss. It’s not a bad movie—in fact, there are some fun moments and a lot of nostalgic high points—it’s just that it isn’t a good movie. It offers nothing new and is basically just a retread of the first film, but lacking any of the originality, constantly trying to remind us just how Matrix-y it is and playing on our nostalgia by flashing up loads of flashback clips from the previous films.

As much grief as Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens got for being a retread of Episode IV—A New Hope, at least it introduced us to new members of the franchise that tried to carry the story forward. Resurrections really doesn’t do anything new for the Matrix short of essentially starting it over at Square One with a literal retelling of the first film’s opening and then ending on virtually the same beat as that film. It also spends several long minutes making sure you know just how meta, hip, and self-aware it is, with characters explaining why the first Matrix was so good, fresh, and original and what it was really a metaphor for.

Where the original trilogy grabbed you right from the beginning, I just kept waiting for this new film to get going and show me something—anything!—that was new. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to see Neo and Trinity back together (though we barely get to see much of Trinity really being Trinity); there were some nice call-backs to other characters; and Neil Patrick Harris is a cool addition as Neo’s—I mean Thomas Anderson’s—analyst. But it felt like just as the movie was about to get good, that’s when it ended.

As mentioned, I’m going to be really careful not to spoil anything here, as anyone wanting to see Resurrections should certainly have the right to go in fresh. So let’s just say years have passed since the events that concluded with The Matrix Revolutions. Thomas Anderson (Reeves) is an incredibly successful video-game designer famous for developing a trilogy of games about the Matrix. He regularly visits a coffeeshop where he waits to watch a woman named Tiffany (Moss) he is oddly drawn to, but never approaches. Anderson struggles with reality and frequently visits his analyst (Harris), who prescribes him blue pills that help him keep his dreams/nightmares at bay. He also tries to balance the work demands placed on him by his partner Smith (Jonathan Groff), who wants to develop a new Matrix game.

One thing you can’t say about Resurrections is that it doesn’t look good. Shot in a combination of 6K and 8K resolution, this transfer is taken from a true 4K digital intermediate and has a Dolby Vision HDR grade, resulting in terrific picture quality throughout. Only during one scene near the very beginning did I notice a bit of posterization when characters were in a dark area with some haze and bright flashlights. This probably had more to do with HBO’s streaming compression than any fault in the source material. For the remainder, images were incredibly clean and clear, with razor-sharp edges and loads of detail.

Closeups reveal the most detail, and you can really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the costume design. Notice the turquoise-blue collar stitching on one character’s suit or the individual swirling metallic spheres that comprise other characters. The special-effects work on things like the Sentinels has also progressed where they look more like machines than CGI, and that green tint/cast that overlayed the original films has been replaced with subtler, more suggestive lighting cues like neon lighting.

The Dolby Vision HDR grade is used to great effect to really pump the bright highlights and colors. Subtle things like the glinting reflection in a character’s eyes or the highlights from sweat glistening on sunlit faces have more pop, along with more overt things like spotlights, sparks, or blasts of electricity. I also noticed that scenes within The Construct are much cleaner now. Where they were riddled with bits of digital noise in the first film, here the all-white room is brighter, cleaner, and noise-free. Colors are also really saturated, with things like glowing neon lighting, fireballs, and explosions that are vibrant bright red-orange, or the glowing angry red lights of the alien machines, or the golden orange-bathed sunset scenes in San Francisco, or a room that glows with light from hundreds of candles. Near the finish is a large outdoor battle scene shot at night that just explodes with color and highlights.

Streaming audio can be a bit of a mixed bag, and while this was mostly good, I definitely felt it was missing the dynamics and punch compared to the disc or Kaleidescape-based Dolby TrueHD track. The dynamics were most lacking in gunfire, which just didn’t seem to have the same bang! Whether this was a limitation of the streaming or a choice made in the mix is a question we won’t be able to answer until Resurrections becomes available in a format that offers higher-resolution audio.

Even with that nit, there’s plenty in the Dolby Digital Plus Atmos track to make it entertaining. Vehicles flip up and overhead, objects fall out of the sky, helicopters swirl and hover, spent brass shell casings rain down from above, voices literally circle all around you or are placed high up in the room when appropriate, echoes help define the listening environment, and there are creaks and groans all around as an elevator descends. If you define the success of an Atmos mix on how much sound happens above you, then you’ll find Resurrections much to your delight. While the bullet cracks lacked dynamics, explosions had plenty of depth and authority, and your subs will definitely rattle the room and punch you in the chest when things blow up, concrete and stone shatters, columns collapse, and debris and destruction rains down around you.

The Matrix story was certainly complete without this latest entry but I don’t regret the nearly two and a half hours invested in watching. As Morpheus said more than 20 years ago, “No one can be told what the Matrix is . . .” Similarly, you should really check this out and make up your own mind about it. While it might not do anything to move the story forward, it was certainly great to see two beloved characters back on screen together; and for HBO Max owners, The Matrix Resurrections offers something visually dynamic and sonically exciting for your home theater. Take the Red Pill and give it a try. Maybe just wash it down with a nice glass of single-malt scotch.

PICTURE | The HBO Max presentation is from a 4K digital intermediate and has a Dolby Vision HDR grade, resulting in terrific picture quality throughout.

SOUND | The audio is definitely missing some dynamics and punch but there is plenty in the Dolby Digital Plus Atmos track to make it entertaining.

Review: Dune (2021)

review | Dune (2021)

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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.

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.

Review: King Richard

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Will Smith’s performance and actors who actually seem to know how to play tennis keep things interesting & believable in this story of the early years of Venus and Serena Williams

by John Sciacca
November 26, 2021

I’m a sucker for movies “based on a true story.” Usually these capture super-human achievements (like First Man or Midway) or unlikely events (like Ford v. Ferrari or The Social Network) or give us a glimpse into events we only knew a little about and want to learn more (like Richard Jewell or Just Mercy). Of course, the downside of these kinds of films is that Hollywood likes to tell a good story above all else, and these movies often become the definitive truth for the public, even when that truth has been manipulated, compressed, or let’s say “enhanced” for the sake of the story. For example, as I dug into the real stories behind movies like Bohemian Rhapsody or American Sniper, I learned that—as attorney Lionel Hutz famously said on The Simpson’s—“There’s the truth and ‘the truth’,” and just because it happens up on screen doesn’t mean it necessarily happened that way.

All of which is to say, I’m not sure exactly how accurate Warner Bros.’ new film King Richard is when it comes to telling the “true” story about the origins of tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams growing up, or the antics of their father Richard, but I will say it was an entertaining feel-good film with great performances all around that really gives you a sense of the obstacles these girls/women overcame and just how much raw talent they had. I also walked away thinking that if their father was even half the character as portrayed by Will Smith, then the girls’ talent was truly off-the-charts for any of the people to actually take a chance on them and be forced to put up with him.

The film focuses on a fairly narrow slice of the girls’ lives, covering just a few years from when they start their serious training up until Venus (Saniyya Sidney) turns pro and competes in her first tournament in 1994 at age 14. Similar to Rocky, for a movie based on two of the greatest female tennis players of all time, there actually isn’t a lot of tennis. We get some scenes with them practicing, trying out for coaches, training, and some moments from Venus’s junior tournaments, but it’s really not until the big final matches when Venus turns pro that we see a lot of court action. The movie concentrates more on Richard’s all-focused drive on getting them to the top and making them the best, and showing us the hardships they had to overcome—Serena (Demi Singleton) and Venus shared a room and even a bed with three other half-sisters in a small house in Compton, California.

I also don’t know if Sidney or Singleton have any actual tennis talent, but both sure look convincing on screen, which is what matters here. I was a golf professional in my previous career, and it is always a huge distraction in most golf films when it’s clear the actor couldn’t break 100 to save his life. Here, the girls’ mechanics are definitely believable, with strong, aggressive ground strokes and serves that look like the real deal. Even more impressive, Sidney is left-handed, but actually learned to play right for the film—though I do think the actors are physically smaller than the actual Williams sisters, who were imposing even at a young age.

Having read the Tiger Woods biography by Jeff Benedict, I saw quite a few parallels between the two stories. In both cases, you had less-privileged kids pushed to greatness by the drive and willpower of fathers who recognized their potential and wouldn’t take no for an answer. In this case, Richard had come up with his “plan” even before the girls were born, and he was laser-focused on sticking to it and making them the best, regardless of obstacles or setbacks.

We get a sense that young Venus and Serena enjoyed playing and practicing, but was that because it was just living up to the plan constantly being drilled into them, they were trying to please overbearing Richard, they recognized tennis as their way to a better life, or they actually loved playing? Another common thread between King Richard and Tiger’s story was that of dropping supporters/coaches once they had reached the end of their usefulness, with people used just as stepping-stones to get to the next level.

While the film is struggling at the box office, having brought in a worldwide gross of just $8.4 million to date against its $50 million budget, it’s available day & date on HBO Max in 4K HDR with Dolby Vision from a 4K digital intermediate and a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

The opening images are a bit soft and have a desaturated color palette that feels like we are stepping back in time, but with the clarity and cleanness that is the signature of digital over film. Closeups certainly deliver loads of detail, and when we come in tight on Smith’s face you can see all the fine lines, pores, and individual hairs in his beard, or see the texture in fabrics like tennis shirts and sweaters. You also get nice sharp, tight lines, such as when shooting through chain-link fences surrounding tennis courts or the brick-and-mortar at country club buildings. Some longer shots, such as the pans of crowds at the Bank of the West tournament, also deliver sharp focus and detail.

The Dolby Vision grade is fairly restrained but is used to create natural-looking images with lots of depth and shadow detail throughout, with some added highlights when called for. Some of the best-looking images are the outdoor, sunlit scenes on the courts, where the lens just soaks up all the natural light, and where we get some gleaming white tennis shirts and shorts. We also get some night scenes with neon lights, sirens, tennis court lights, and headlights that pop against the black.

With the vast majority of the movie being dialogue that moves the story forward, don’t expect too much from this Dolby Atmos mix, but it definitely keeps the voices in the center channel, where they are always clear and intelligible. The surrounds and height speakers are used to expand the music and score—this might be the first and only time you can hear Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” in Atmos—and we also get some nice atmospheric audio when appropriate, like the sounds of street traffic or the sounds of birds, bugs, and insects. Occasionally, we get some overhead channel activity from rain storms or the echo of PA announcements. We also get a nice, authoritative POP! when Venus is whacking the ball.

King Richard is an entertaining, well-made, and well-acted film, and with Rotten Tomatoes critics’ and audience scores of 91 and 98% respectively, it would not be a surprise to see Will Smith up for his third Best Actor nomination. Other than a few uses of the n-word, it is definitely family friendly, and kept my 15 year old—who has no interest in tennis—engaged. Streaming now on HBO Max, it is certainly worth giving a watch.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision grade is fairly restrained but is used to create natural-looking images with lots of depth and shadow detail throughout.

SOUND | Since the movie relies on dialogue to move the story forward, there’s not a lot going on in the Dolby Atmos mix, but it definitely keeps the voices in the center channel, where they are always clear and intelligible.

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