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Kaleidescape

Review: West Side Story

review | West Side Story recent reviews Apple TV+ | CODA Google Play | Rifkin’s Festival Kaleidescape | Summer of Soul Apple TV+ | The Tragedy of Macbeth see more in Reviews Sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on Cineluxe Spielberg takes a stab at musicals with this Oscar-nominated revamping […]

Review: Scream (2022)

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Scream (2022)

review | Scream (2022)

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This franchise reboot ups the brutality and gore but fails to top the 1996 original

by John Sciacca
March 10, 2022

While Scream 2 came just a year after the original film debuted in 1996 and Scream 3 was released in 2000, there was an 11-year drought before Scream 4 came out in 2011, followed by another 11 years before this latest franchise entry. I rewatched the original Scream when it received a 4K HDR transfer for its 25th anniversary, and was impressed how well it held up. 

This latest Scream is the first film in the series not directed by franchise creator Wes Craven, who died in 2015. But it remains true to the spirit of the franchise and brings back key cast, including Randy Jackson returning to voice Ghostface, with some quick cameos and voiceovers from actors that have been in the earlier films. I did find the violence to be a bit more brutal and gorier, and the language to be a bit saltier, so definitely not suitable for younger viewers. (Common Sense Media rates it 16+)

Like all of the Scream films, the story is essentially the same: A killer dressed in a Ghostface mask is terrorizing people of Woodsboro, California who are somehow associated with the events from the first film, taunting them on the phone—often discussing horror-movie-related trivia—before attempting to stab them to death. They also do a nice job of updating the tech to keep it current, like having smart-home door locks. And as always, there are certain rules that must be followed to survive, including the most important one: The first victim always has a friend group the killer is part of. 

Many of the film’s subtle references are about Stab, the fictional film-within-the-film based on the events that have transpired in Woodsboro. Here, Stab superfans are really upset over how the series has gone off the rails with the latest release, Stab 8.  As one character tells us, we’re in the middle of a “requel”—not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel. The movie has to be new, but not too new, and it has to be part of an ongoing storyline, having new main characters but supported by and related to legacy characters. Also, “It always, always goes back to the original.”

In this vein, we have a new group of youngsters being terrorized,  but as the killings continue, the old gang returns to set things straight. Dewey Riley (David Arquette) still lives in town, but after being stabbed nine times, resulting in permanent nerve damage and a funny little limp, he’s retired from the force. His ex-wife Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) is off in New York hosting a TV morning show and still chasing fame. And Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is married and raising a child with no intentions of ever returning to Woodsboro. 

Shot in 3.4K, images are consistently clean. Edges have nice definition and you can see textural details like the fine lines in Dewey’s corduroy jacket. While closeups have plenty of detail, letting you easily appreciate the differences between the smooth, near-poreless complexions of the “new” cast and the fine lines around Sidney’s eyes and the weathering and wrinkles in Dewey’s face, images were never tack sharp like some digital productions and felt more film-like.

The HDR isn’t overdone but does provide a realistic image, with some extra brightness when needed for the occasional bright lights. Outdoor scenes look terrific with loads of natural lighting, and you can clearly see the difference between the exterior lighting and the stark fluorescent overheads inside a hospital or the bright sunlight pouring in through sheer blinds. Blacks are nice and clean and blood-reds are appropriately saturated.

Horror movies are often the perfect playground for creative and immersive Dolby Atmos mixes, and while this Scream’s Dolby TrueHD mix isn’t over the top, it gets the job done and has some nice moments that certainly add to the tension, such as jump-scare music and ill-timed phones ringing. Outdoor scenes have plenty of atmospherics in the form of whistling wind, traffic sounds, and birds chirping, with the interior of the hospital sounding completely different with people chattering, phones ringing, the buzz of lights, and elevators dinging. During one scene, rolling thunder travels through the room overhead, and notice the clear sound of Dewey’s spent brass falling on the ground, bouncing and rolling.

Deep bass is called on to punctuate certain moments, such as adding sonic weight to door locks clunking into place or the deep throaty engine roar of a big muscle car firing up, and then the throbbing rumble and growl of it idling. Gunshots also have nice sharp dynamics. 

Scream/Stab is a “meta-slasher whodunit” and it kept me guessing up till the end about who was behind the mask. While there’s enough new here to keep noobs entertained, you should at least watch the original as it is still the freshest and most original of the bunch and lays the foundation for this Scream. And with a Scream 6 already greenlit, now is a great time to revisit Woodsboro. Just remember . . . trust no one! 

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 | Closeups have plenty of detail, letting you easily appreciate the differences between the smooth complexions of the “new” cast and the fine lines around Sidney’s eyes and the weathering and wrinkles in Deputy Dewey’s face

SOUND | While the Dolby TrueHD Atmos mix isn’t over the top, it gets the job done and has some nice moments that certainly add to the tension, such as jump-scare music and ill-timed phones ringing

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Review: Scream (1996)

Scream (1996)

review | Scream (1996)

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Wes Craven shocked the slasher genre back to life with this meta-heavy horror classic

by John Sciacca
October 26, 2021

The teen-slasher genre had been stagnating in the ‘90s when along came Wes Craven of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street fame to totally upend and breathe new life into the genre with Scream. It’s hard to believe Scream is celebrating its 25th anniversary but the good news is that Paramount has given it a 4K HDR transfer. 

 While Scream certainly has its share of gore, it never feels like the focus of the story. Right from the get-go, it lets you know this was going to be a different horror-movie experience, and in the opening 12 minutes, it unsettled the audience by killing off its biggest star, Drew Barrymore. Of course, Craven just aped what Alfred Hitchcock famously did with Janet Leigh in Psycho. 

The script was also unique in just how self-aware the characters were. They not only love horror movies but the cast frequently name-checks other horror films. They also lay out—and then the film plays with—the classic slasher-film “rules” and clichés about who survives. And as the ultimate wink-nod to horror fans, Craven himself has a cameo as a striped-sweater-wearing school janitor who happens to be named Fred. Red herrings and misdirection abound throughout, and after the shock of Barrymore’s death, viewers knew anyone could be killed—all of which told moviegoers they were in for a new and different ride, and the traditional rules of the genre were out the window.

It was interesting to re-watch Scream knowing the outcome, much like people will go back through The Sixth Sense to see if M. Night Shyamalan made any continuity mistakes. Here, when you know what—and who—to look for, there are some subtle clues that tell you who the killer is that give the film another layer of enjoyment.

Originally shot on 35mm film, this transfer is from a 4K digital intermediate, and the clarity and detail show. Of course, as with many film-to-4K transfers, there are some moments of softness or uneven focus but these are likely in the original and the movie still has that organic film look. What I really appreciate with a well-done transfer is just how clean images look. Fortunately, much of Scream—particularly the opening—is filmed up close, letting you really see the texture and detail in the actors’ faces—the smooth skin and fine whiskers, Sidney’s freckles, and the detail in Barrymore’s sweater and the fine strands of her hair.  

Don’t expect a lot of eye-popping HDR but the grade definitely enhances the natural look of the film with nice deep blacks and shadow detail. Also, much of the second half is shot at night, and things like bright car headlights, police lights, fluorescent lighting, lightning strikes, and bright white T-shirts get some added pop, as do subtle things like the glints of highlights from droplets of sweat or tears on actors’ cheeks. I also noticed the subtle sparkle and flecks of silver in the killer’s black outfit. Nothing really pushes the bounds of HDR’s wider color gamut but we get some really nice and vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds in a sunset, along with the rich blue of Sidney’s denim, and of course the intense reds of blood.

The Kaleidescape download features a 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio mix. The dialogue is always presented nice and clear in the center channel. Sounds like ringing phones, ticking clocks, and creaking floors happen way off screen, expanding the width of your listening area. My processor’s DTS: Neural X upmixer was also able to extract some nice ambience from the mix. Small sounds like clocks and wind chimes, echoes, wind whistling through an HVAC register, or PA announcements fill the room and immerse you in what’s happening on screen. Parts of the score are also “lifted” up to the ceiling speakers to add a nice height layer. 

The mix isn’t super dynamic but it can deliver some strong, even tactile, bass, such as during a big lightning storm in the opening. And while there isn’t a lot of gunfire, the few instances are recorded loud and sharp and are definitely standout moments.  

While some of the dialogue between the “teenagers” (Campbell and McGowen were 23, and Ulrich and Matthew Lillard were both 26) is a little cringey, most of Scream holds up surprisingly well and it’s still a lot of fun to watch. The timing is also a bit serendipitous as rewatching this new transfer of the 1996 original will help set the mood for the Scream reboot  coming in January 2022, which brings back the big surviving three—Sidney, Gale Weathers, and Deputy Dewey—from the original film.

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 | As with many 35mm-film-to-4K transfers, there are some moments of softness or uneven focus, but these are likely in the original film, and Scream still has that organic film look.

SOUND | The 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio mix is certainly adequate for telling the story, and the most important element—the dialogue—is always presented nice and clear in the center channel

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Review: Licorice Pizza

Licorice Pizza (2021)

review | Licorice Pizza

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This Best Picture nominee deserved better than this compromised non-HDR 1080p home release

by Dennis Burger
March 4, 2022

Seriously, what the hell is going on with Hollywood these days, especially on the home video side? Of all the films I’ve seen in the past year, if any of them begs to have been released in UHD HDR, it is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza. Shot on a variety of Kodak Vision3 stocks, it was finished photochemically instead of in a digital intermediate, and even exists in the form of a 70mm blowup that saw some limited theatrical exhibition. 

It’s one of Anderson’s most visually captivating movies, and that’s saying a lot. It boasts an image that can only be described as a celebration of the classic cinema aesthetic, but for whatever reason, MGM has seen fit to dump the film to market on Blu-ray or in Blu-ray-equivalent resolution for its home video release.

I can understand not wanting to fork over the dough for UHD Blu-ray disc replication. There have been so many supply-chain issues with 4K discs in the past few years that it’s almost not worth the trouble anymore, for studios or consumers. But to limit digital retailers—including Kaleidescape—to a compromised 1080p SDR transfer is borderline criminal. And look, I don’t want to give the impression Licorice Pizza is a sacrosanct cinema masterpiece. It’s roughly on par with 2017’s Phantom Thread—a bit of a step down from 2007’s There Will Be Blood but a big step up from 2014’s Inherent Vice—if you’re looking to rank it within PTA’s most recent output. 

But so much of the film’s delightful look hinges on its delicious organic chaos, its unapologetic analog nature. So to limit it by squashing it to fit video standards from 16 years ago just doesn’t make a lick of sense. Even on Kaleidescape—which delivers a better-than-Blu-ray-quality download—you can at times see the image struggling against its constraints.

Not consistently, and not egregiously, but there are numerous instances throughout in which flesh tones lack that nuance, highlights are blown out, and detail is lost in the shadows. Put this transfer in front of me back in 2015 and I would have found it wholly acceptable. But I’ve been so spoiled by HDR and the way it unlocks the full color spectrum and tonal range of photochemical film negatives that I now find these limitations glaring and distracting. There are also one or two scenes in which I felt UHD’s enhanced resolution might have rendered the film grain a little more finely and a few long shots with more meaningful detail.

Should you use any of this as an excuse to skip Licorice Pizza? Of course you shouldn’t, especially if you’re a fan of Anderson’s work. It is in many ways indicative of his continued evolution as a filmmaker, especially in terms of the emphasis on artful composition over whiz-bang camera wizardry. 

As always, though, the heart of the story is character interaction, and it very much follows the PTA template of throwing two humans together, having them bounce off one another, and seeing what comes from that. It is, in other words, a further distillation of his “Just get two people talking” approach to story writing. 

Interestingly, though, while so many of the characters in his previous films could best be characterized by their almost pathological need to define themselves for others, that’s less the case here. One of the two main characters—Alana, played brilliantly by pop-rocker Alana Haim—at times grapples with others’ perceptions of her, but seems less inclined to paint a rose-colored picture of herself and force those around her to accept it than you might expect an Anderson character to do. In fact, she spends far more time looking for other people to define her or at least to affirm her own self-image. That’s part of why Licorice Pizza feels more consistently honest than many of the filmmaker’s previous efforts, but there’s also the fact that he doesn’t employ nearly as much visual/verbal misdirection here. 

Overall, it’s as meandering and unfocused an experience as you might expect but it’s worth the journey if only for Haim’s performance. She is an utterly effortless and hypnotic screen presence—the sort of actor who makes you forget she’s acting at all. I found myself shocked at times that co-stars the likes of Sean Penn and Tom Waits could come close to matching her natural energy. 

And you could say the same about her co-lead, Cooper Hoffman. Had he failed to rise to Haim’s level, nothing about the film would have worked. But he did, and it does. My only real beef with the substance of the film—aside from its somewhat messy structure—is that it seems like Anderson just had no clue how he wanted the story to end, and as such it ends . . . weirdly. It will, I imagine, be a divisive conclusion even among those who enjoy the rest of the film.

But as for the home video presentation? You’ll hear no such ambivalence from me. I’m pissed. The sound is good, mind you—a rather front-focused DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that would have worked just as well in 3.1 or stereo. But the important thing is that it does justice to the dialogue, the fantastic soundtrack music, and the fascinating score by Jonny Greenwood, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern film composers. 

The picture, though, is inexcusable. And I don’t blame Kaleidescape here—they delivered an unimpeachable encode based on the materials given to them. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of MGM. Will we see a bait-and-switch of the sort Universal pulled with Phantom Thread, which dropped in HD resolution only at first and was followed by a UHD release a month later? I can’t know, of course, but I hope so. At the very least, if the studio manages to get its act together with this one, the upgrade path will be easy for Kaleidescape owners.

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 does an excellent job with its better-than-Blu-ray-quality download, but you can see the image struggling at times against the constraints of the studio-supplied 1080p SDR transfer they had to work with

SOUND | The front-focused DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix would work just as well in 3.1 or stereo but does justice to the dialogue, the soundtrack music, and the Jonny Greenwood score

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Review: Belfast

Belfast (2021)

review | Belfast

This Best Picture nominee uses black & white to evoke the late ’60s but features a surprisingly active—and modern—Atmos mix

by Ryan Rutherford
February 23, 2022

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast (recipient of seven Oscar nominations) tells a semi-autobiographical tale of growing up in the turbulent Belfast of the late ‘60s. At its core it’s about a small community of people looking after one another and of one family’s struggle over whether to stay amid the violence around them or leave their home and extended family behind. 

Branagh’s had an up-and-down filmography from the start (I have a soft spot for Dead Again), but this is clearly among his strongest films. He garners fantastic performances from novices and veterans alike (the film has earned nominations for vets Judy Dench and Ciaran Hinds), yet centers the movie on the performance of young Jude Hill. It’s through his eyes that we see the neighborhood and the talks with family members and friends but also the several bursts of violence that propel the family into its dilemma. 

Belfast deserves the Oscar nods it’s received but I was surprised it wasn’t nominated for cinematography. The film is artfully shot in black & white by Branagh’s frequent collaborator Haris Zambarloukos, with unique splashes of color thrown in to remind the characters that there’s life beyond all the turmoil. Compared to the many weak movies of the past couple of years, this is clearly a quality effort by someone with a personal investment in seeing it made with care and an authentic eye.

Shot digitally, the 1.85:1 aspect-ratio picture is beautiful to behold. The movie opens with modern shots of Belfast awash in color and then goes to black & white as it transitions to 1969. Black levels are deep and unlike most similar period movies. The images have an artful gleam, with no artificial grain introduced to fake traditional film, and have a smooth look throughout, with extraordinary detail at all levels, from the sharpness of fabrics to the richness of textures.  

When the characters go to see a movie, we’re shown what they’re watching in vivid color, and it’s an interesting juxtaposition (if not a bit showy). The HDR10 image displays strong contrast, with almost every frame transitioning from deep black to bright highlights of sunlight beaming through windows. Torches and other lighting effects pop off the screen and blacks are rich with fantastic delineation and shadow detail. This is a top-level video presentation, and the encode enhances the black & white in the way HDR has always promised.   

Also nominated for Sound, Belfast doesn’t disappoint here, either. This film doesn’t have strong dynamics or the kind of bass that will challenge a system, but it does have such a wonderfully natural and room-filling Dolby Atmos track that it’s shocking at times. You wouldn’t expect this type of movie to have an active object-based surround track, but the filmmakers made it a priority to immerse you in the neighborhood’s goings-on, and at that it succeeds immensely. 

Dialogue is natural and well placed in the center, and Atmos effects are almost constant when characters venture out into the streets. Belfast sounds like a contemporary movie but its period bent makes the well-recorded effects and surround mix stick out from time to time. Helicopters swarm overhead in a warm and full-bodied effect, fires burn from surrounds, and explosions burst from the main channels in a very modern way, much like the Van Morrison soundtrack. 

The music is the weakest element here, and by foregoing his usual collaboration with Patrick Doyle, Branagh missed out on tying the score to the moment emotionally. The Morrison tracks burst out almost at random, taking me out of the movie. Aside from that one gripe, this is a strong soundtrack that further enhances being pulled into the characters’ world, taking me by surprise with its warmth and inventiveness.

Ryan Rutherford is a 20-year home theater sales & installation veteran who owns Northstar Audio Video in Altoona, Pa. In between designing & installing systems, he loves his time with his two children and beautiful wife while obsessing about how much better the next TV/receiver/speaker will perform in his home.

PICTURE | This is a top-level video presentation, and the encode enhances the black & white in the way HDR has always promised

SOUND | The film has such a wonderfully natural and room-filling Dolby Atmos track that it’s shocking at times

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Review: Summer of Soul

Summer of Soul (2021)

review | Summer of Soul

This documentary of a 1969 Harlem music festival is less about the performances and more about the culture & politics of the time

by Dennis Burger
February 11, 2022

To describe Summer of Soul ( . . . or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) as the best documentary I’ve seen in recent years would be a disservice to it and to you. It is, without question, one of the best films I’ve seen in ages, regardless of genre. It’s a masterclass in film editing, although it’s never ostentatious in its cutting. Its pacing is hypnotic, resembling the timing and tempo of an album more so than a film (and not for the reasons you might suspect given its subject matter). It manages to be shockingly comprehensive and broad without losing focus. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, going straight onto my exceedingly short list of truly perfect films. 

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know already that it’s a film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, held at Mt. Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). It has been described as the Black Woodstock, and although clips from the festival have surfaced from time to time—perhaps most notably in What Happened, Miss Simone?, one of the few legitimately good documentaries on Netflix not starring David Attenborough—no one could muster the will or the financial backing to do an entire film about it until Roots drummer and frontman Questlove took it on. 

While all of the above is a perfectly satisfactory summation of the heart of the film, it’s so much more than that. Summer of Soul is the most intersectional film I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. I hesitate to use that adjective and would have instead substituted literally any other descriptor that might have worked. But none does. Make no mistake about it, though: Despite being defiantly and unapologetically political, the film isn’t tainted by modern political biases. 

What do I mean by “intersectional”? In short, the main thing Questlove seems to be saying is, “You can’t understand X if you don’t understand Y,” and the variables he plugs into that equation range from the political and societal to the spiritual and secular, from fashion to art to civil rights to the heroin epidemic that ravaged Harlem at the time. As a Tolkien nerd, perhaps my favorite intersection Questlove plants a street sign into—before driving right on by, confidently and casually—is that you can’t understand shifts in culture without understanding shifts in language. And vice versa. 

It’s interesting that the film doesn’t dwell on this—or any point, for that matter. And I can’t know for sure if there simply wasn’t time to linger or if Questlove simply respects the intelligence of the audience too much to belabor anything (an all-too-rare treat these days), but it hardly matters. The thing is, while you’d think the breadth of topics would be too much for one film to chew on, Summer of Soul manages to be cohesive and focused largely due to its use of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival as its center of gravity. Literally everything ties back to it. 

In his audio commentary—available on Kaleidescape—Questlove discusses a much longer first cut that ran close to three and a half hours, and how it differed from the final edit. It seems clear that most of what got excised—aside from additional performances by Sly and the Family Stone and so many other acts on the verge of exploding into the public consciousness shortly thereafter—involved side journeys that got too far away from the festival itself in an attempt to provide an even larger, though less concise, historical context. 

Part of me wants to see that extended cut and part of me doesn’t because as both a historical document and a work of art, the 118-minute cut is not only a complete statement but also an incredibly tight and rhythmically fascinating jam, and it’s borderline impossible to imagine it being improved upon by additional material. 

Bottom line: I’m kicking myself for not watching Summer of Soul sooner. It was made as a Hulu exclusive and originally released last summer. And although I do subscribe to that service for reasons I don’t quite understand, I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch a proper film on it, as  its video quality is unacceptable in most cases. As it turns out, this isn’t a film where image quality makes much difference. The festival was shot on video and not well preserved, so it’s riddled with aliasing, moiré, clipping, chromatic aberrations, and mosquito noise, and no attempt has been made to clean it up à la Get Back. 

Because of that, Kaleidescape’s UHD presentation is practically indistinguishable from Hulu’s for large swaths of its runtime. Only the modern interview segments with attendees and performers reveal any meaningful differences in image quality, largely due to the fact that some lost high frequencies in the Hulu presentation result in a slight dulling of textures and some minor loss of the finest details, all of which Kaleidescape allows to shine. 

Kaleidescape also presents the film with a Dolby TrueHD Atmos soundtrack, which is a little baffling given that the 5.1 mix on Hulu was overkill to begin with. The audio is sourced from mics on the stage, of which there weren’t many, and although fidelity and tonal balance are surprisingly good, there just isn’t much going on in either the surrounds or—in the case of the Atmos track—the overhead channels. Thankfully, the Atmos mix does no harm to the experience, which was my biggest fear. It’s largely unnecessary, but at least it’s never gimmicky. 

But none of the above really matters in the moment. The material is so engaging that you quickly forget about the rawness of the footage or the limitations of the audio recordings. But it does raise a question: Why buy it on Kaleidescape instead of watching it for free on Hulu? 

It comes down to the aforementioned commentary track. This is a commentary for people who hate commentaries. It is, in effect, an alternate version of Summer of Soul, packed with historical perspective beyond the scope of what could be shown in the film, and crammed full of anecdotes that run the gamut from hilarious to elucidating. It feels like a two-hour hangout session with the smartest person you know, just without the laborious pedantry. 

One of my favorite bits involves Questlove describing his creative process, specifically all the little things he did to make Summer of Soul his own without inserting himself or his biases into the work. For one thing, he chose to start the film with a Stevie Wonder drum solo. For another, while he discusses his struggles with resisting the urge to cheat in the editing process, he does reveal some of his few sleights of hand, including the fact that he occasionally re-synced the sound with the footage because he couldn’t bear to see some of his black brothers and sisters clapping on the 1 and 3 instead of the 2 and 4—although he did leave in many instances of such because to remove them entirely would have been dishonest. 

In short, this is a version of the film you absolutely need to experience, and the Kaleidescape download is one of the few ways of doing so, outside of buying the Blu-ray. What’s more, the only extras included on the disc that aren’t available on Kaleidescape have long since been released to YouTube. 

Even if I can’t convince you to check out the commentary, you owe it to yourself to watch the film at your earliest convenience. Again, I’ve barely nicked the paint on this incredible experience, which centers on a wonderful but forgotten music festival but also touches on everything from the moon landing to the repercussions of the assassinations of MLK and JFK to the power of music and the purpose and nature of art. The fact that it does all of this elegantly and with a cohesive narrative thread is itself something of a minor miracle.

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 recent interview segments look fine but the music festival was shot on video in 1969, so it’s riddled with aliasing, moiré, clipping, chromatic aberrations, and mosquito noise. 

SOUND | The audio for the Atmos mix was sourced from mics on the festival stage, and although fidelity & tonal balance are surprisingly good, there isn’t much going on in either the surrounds or the overhead channels.

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Review: House of Gucci

House of Gucci (2021)

review | House of Gucci

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Ridley Scott serves up a stinkburger so bad it gives the impression it was directed by committee

by Dennis Burger
February 9, 2022

Let it be stated for the record that Ridley Scott has directed the worst movie I’ve suffered through since 1993’s Super Mario Bros. It’s simply undeniable—his name is right there in the credits. But had you removed that credit and tried to convince me House of Gucci was the product of 10 or 15 directors haphazardly chopping up the mess of a script and filming their scenes in isolation with no knowledge of what comes before or after, I might have been inclined to believe you. If you then told me they had slapped Scott’s name onto this lazily assembled dumpster fire out of spite, I’d have been convinced your theory was the only one that made any sense at all. Because even after he’s turned in so many atrocious films in recent years, it’s hard to believe a director with Scott’s experience could deliver a final product this unwatchable. 

The problems with this movie are many and I won’t even begin to try parsing them all, because who has time for that? But one of the biggest things working against it is the screenplay, which purports to be about the marriage of Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizio Gucci and the eventual assassination of the latter by the former. I barely know anything about the real-world events that inspired the film but I know enough to know screenwriters Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna couldn’t be bothered to get any of it right.

Mind you, that’s not always a bad thing. Spencer is evidence you can concoct a wholly fictional story about real-world personas and still create a gripping film. Johnston and Bentivegna did not. They apparently had no idea what they intended to convey in terms of meaning or narrative momentum, nor the passage of time. 

You could forgive some of that if the acting were better, but if you manage to pull a bad performance out of Adam Driver, you’ve done something horribly wrong. My first inclination was to say that Driver comes across as if he’s slogging through a bad SNL sketch, but I’ve seen him slog through some bad SNL sketches before. He was pretty good at it. 

Lady Gaga, meanwhile, seems to have been given the impression she landed the starring role in a trashy telenovela that would ultimately be dubbed in Russian; somebody forgot to tell Jeremy Irons that Rodolfo Gucci wasn’t an Englishman; Al Pacino, who plays Aldo Gucci, apparently intended to wander onto the set of the latest Scorsese gangster pic but took a left turn at Albuquerque; and a wholly unrecognizable Jared Leto . . . hell, I don’t even know where to begin with that one. I think maybe he was trying to audition for a sequel to the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. Had he looked straight into the camera and exclaimed, “Mamma mia! That’s a spicy-uh meat-uh-ball-uh,” I wouldn’t have batted an eye. If there hadn’t been a director present on set—if someone merely turned on a camera and walked out of the room, then prompted the actors to stroll by and deliver their lines based on their own instincts—I think every one of them would have turned in infinitely better performances than what we’ve ended up with.

The one person who seems to have understood the assignment is cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who shot the movie on an Arri Alexa Mini LF cameras, with Panavision 65 Vintage Series lenses for the most part. It’s a lovely image, captured at 4.5K and finished in a 4K DI, packed with pitch-perfect contrasts and oodles of detail. The color timing does seem a bit odd at times, occasionally exhibiting a sumptuously warm vintage-like patina while at other times seeming like you’re looking out a window, and there’s no real consistency to these shifts. Still, Kaleidescape’s UHD/HDR10 presentation is flawless, so much so that you might be inclined to load the movie up and let it play with the sound off while you’re doing anything more interesting. 

You won’t be missing much with the sound off. Despite having a Dolby TrueHD Atmos mix, the soundtrack is a cluttered and messy affair that almost seems like someone tried to cram as much into the front three channels as possible on a dare. As a result, dialogue intelligibility suffers at times. Not that it matters. Even the soundtrack music is a pile of anachronisms assembled so inartfully that it infuriated me, and I love a good anachronistic needle drop when done competently with a hint of intentionality. 

I guess what I’m saying is, you can safely avoid House of Gucci unless you simply loathe Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, or Jared Leto and want to see them humiliate themselves. If any other filmmaker turned in a movie this irredeemable, they would spend the rest of their career shooting commercials for local flea-market malls. 

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 UHD/HDR10 presentation is flawless—so much so that you might be inclined to load the movie up and let it play with the sound off

SOUND | The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is so cluttered and messy that it almost seems like someone tried to cram as much into the front three channels as possible on a dare

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Review: Free Guy

Free Guy (2021)

review | Free Guy

Ryan Reynolds indulges in his trademark snark as he makes his way to a video-game kind of freedom

by John Sciacca
September 29, 2021

Of all the post-pandemic film openings, the one that’s had me the most excited was Free Guy. (I’d be lying if I said The Matrix Resurrections wasn’t also at the top of that list!) Taking place in a fantasy video-game world where Ryan Reynolds can really lean into his Ryan-Reynolds-ness in a more family-friendly PG-13 way (think Deadpool-ish snark and humor with way less F-words), the movie looked like a perfect summertime film. 

But even though I’d been tracking Reynolds and his usual hilarious self-aware online and social advertising for the film, including this brilliant bit on Reynold’s YouTube channel titled “Deadpool and Korg React,” Free Guy wasn’t quite enough to draw me back to my local cineplex. The film took the recently-all-too-familiar torturous route to the big screen, planned for release on July 3, 2020, then moving to December, then May 2021, then finally settling on—and sticking with—an August 13 release. Fortunately, it had a fast-track to the home market, becoming available to digital retailers like Kaleidescape just 45 days after its theatrical release.

Interestingly, this is the one of the first 20th Century Fox releases following the company’s acquisition by Disney. IT currently isn’t available on Disney+—there is a link to it if you search on Google, but it takes you to an error page—so if you want to watch it now, Kaleidescape offers the highest-quality version available in full 4K HDR with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

Free Guy is one of those movies that has two different levels of appeal. For the hardcore gamer, there are tons of inside nods, winks, and cameos that will resonate as true and familiar, but having an understanding of gaming and open worlds isn’t necessary to enjoying the film and having a good time.

It also feels like a bit of a mash-up of other movies. This isn’t meant as a negative, just that as much as it is new, it also feels familiar and you can tell it borrows ideas and style from movies like The Lego Movie, Ready Player One, The Truman Show, The Matrix, and Live Die Repeat and videogames like Grand Theft Auto and Fortnite, but interspersed with Reynolds’ snarky humor and one liners such as compared with ice cream “coffee tastes like liquid suffering.” There are also some fun cameos—many you might not recognize until the credits—and a couple of really fun refs to the MCU. 

The film opens in Free City, an open-world game environment where sunglasses-people are heroes, or at least are human players acting like gods doing whatever they want, which is typically wreaking all manner of havoc on the city and any NPCs (non-playable characters) they encounter wandering around going through their programmed routines. 

One of the NPCs is Guy (Reynolds), a bank teller that wakes up every morning, says hello to his goldfish, gets the same scalding cup of medium coffee, cream, two sugars, and then heads in to work to be robbed over and over along with his best friend, a Kevin Hart-esque security guard named Buddy (Lil Rel Howery).

One day while headed home, Guy encounters Molotov Girl (Jodie Comer), a player whose real name is Millie. Hearing her humming a song awakens something in Guy, and the next time he’s robbed, instead of just lying down and taking it, Guy decides to grab the sunglasses from his robber. When he puts them on, his eyes are opened to the “real” world around him, and he sees things the way human gamers do. This gives him the power to be Free and the ability to break his routine and do whatever he wants, which is trying to track down Molotov Girl. During his exploits of trying to level up, he becomes a worldwide sensation known as “Blue Shirt Guy” due to his ever-present “skin” choice of light blue shirts and khaki pants. 

While this is all happening in the Free City game world, Millie is involved in a lawsuit with Soonami Games in the real world. She contends that head developer Antwan (Taika Waititi) stole the source code she and her partner Walter (Joe Keery) developed for another project known as “Free Life,” which would give NPCs far greater AI and the ability to grow and act like real people, and that the evidence lies hidden somewhere inside the game. The race is on for Millie to find the proof she needs before Antwan shuts down the Free City servers and switches over to his new game, Free City 2, which will erase all proof of Millie’s stolen IP, as well as wipe out Guy’s world and all of his friends. 

Shot in a variety of resolutions—2.8, 3.4, and 6.5K—this transfer is taken from 6.5K source material and finished at a 2K digital intermediate, not unusual for films with this much CGI work—and there is a ton of CGI, with virtually every image you see within the Free City world somehow digitally manipulated, altered, or enhanced.

Images are beautifully clean, clear, and noise-free. Some shots within Free City—specifically backgrounds where much of the CGI is happening—have occasional softness, almost appearing film-like but without any grain or noise. Closeups really shine with detail, letting you appreciate every line, whisker, and pore in actors’ faces. One scene has a closeup of Buddy’s security badge, and you can see every bump, line, and detail of its texture. Other shots—such as near the end where a crowd of NPCs gathers—just had incredible depth and full-field razor-sharp focus. 

There’s also a nice play between the visuals in the idyllic perfection of Free City and life in the real world. Free City is bright and vibrant—especially once Guy puts on his glasses—and really lets the wider color gamut strut its stuff with things like bright neon signs and lights, or the gleaming reds, yellows, oranges (and even pinks) of the near constant stable of exotic cars racing around the streets, whereas the real world is darker and more sterile. Visually, Free Guy is a treat to look at, with lots of varied environments inside the game—such as Molotov Girl’s base, or Revenjamin Buttons’ (Channing Tatum) lair, or the multi-player hang-out lounge—which all have totally unique looks to them keeping things visually interesting.

With such a fabricated fantasy environment as Free City, you’d expect an active and engaging Dolby Atmos mix, and it delivers. From the very opening, you get the sounds of things swooshing past and overhead, with tons of ambient street sounds—sirens, traffic, gun fire—that fill Free City. This is a place where tanks roll through the streets, helicopters swoop overhead to blow stuff up, and trains suddenly barrel across the street right in front of you, and the Atmos audio puts you right in the middle of it. 

There’s frequent activity in the height channels, and lots of demo-worthy material here to show off your system. During one scene, a game developer engages God-mode, and pillars, beams, and stairs appear and construct from all around and fall in from the ceiling; or there’s the sounds of characters walking around up overhead; and a scene reminiscent of the dream world collapsing in Inception, where buildings are crushing in and collapsing all around. Deep, authoritative bass is frequent, whether from the numerous gun shots—with pistol and shotgun-blast concussions you feel in your chest—explosions, crashes, or the randomly appearing freight train. 

Free Guy definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously and is just a load of fun to sit back and enjoy. Unless you belong to that sub-section that just hates Ryan Reynolds—and, come on, get over Green Lantern already!—this makes a great night at the movies, with a bunch of little Easter eggs that look great up on a large home-cinema screen and reward repeat viewing. 

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 |  Some of the shots within Free City have occasional softness, appearing almost film-like but without any grain or noise, but images are generally beautifully clean, clear, and free of noise

SOUND | With such a fabricated fantasy environment as Free City, you’d expect an active and engaging Dolby Atmos mix, and it delivers

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Review: Cruella

Cruella (2021)

review | Cruella

Disney does yet another live-action remake of an animated film, this time providing an origin story for Cruella de Vil 

by John Sciacca
June 28, 2021

Walt Disney Pictures has gotten into a bit of a rut with its live-action films, choosing to take the safer road of remaking classic animated titles like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan instead of trying to break new, original ground. With Cruella, we get an entirely new origin story of one of Disney’s classic villains, Cruella de Vil from 1961’s 101 Dalmatians.  

Even though I’m a fan of Emma Stone (who stars as both Estella and Cruella), I didn’t have especially high hopes for this film. I didn’t think much of the 1996 live adaptation of 101 Dalmatians starring Glenn Close (who serves as an executive producer on Cruella) and didn’t think de Vil’s backstory would be interesting enough to make for a compelling story, and would just end up diluting what was such an iconic character. Boy, was I wrong!

I enjoyed Cruella far more than expected. Here we learn what makes her tick, see where her sense of fashion and design came from, and discover what ultimately leads her to becoming the villain we all know from the original Disney animated film. And while she’s just a straight villain in Dalmatians—what could be more heinous than wanting to steal puppies to harvest their fur for coats?—here Cruella is an anti-hero living on the streets and fighting for her adopted family against domineering fashionista The Baroness (Emma Thompson), who holds the London fashion world in her fist along with a secret to Estella’s past. 

Beyond the writing and wonderful costumes and set dressing, much of the credit for the film being so entertaining goes to Stone, who is just so wickedly delightful and mischievous as Cruella. You can’t help but root for her even though you know where her path ultimately leads. The scenes featuring Stone and Thompson are also some of the best, and the idea of making Stone two characters with distinct looks and personalities allowed for the two to share more screen time. 

We learn early on that Estella loves fashion and design, but she also has a bit of a cruel streak, a personality her mother refers to as Cruella. To fit in—and stay out of trouble—Estella pushes her Cruella nature aside, dyes her hair red, and lives as a creative and eager-to-please girl hoping to start a new life in London. But when things become too much for her to handle, she turns to Cruella—the wild black-white-haired girl with a hard edge, sharp tongue, and cruel streak—to step in and take care of business.

Like every film released in the past year, Cruella had a twisty trail to market. Scheduled to be released theatrically on December 23, 2020, it was delayed to May 28, 2021, where it also simultaneously bowed as a Premier Access title on Disney+, maintaining the $29.99 pricing Disney has established. After less than a month in theaters, Cruella was released to digital retailers on June 25, including Kaleidescape, which offers the film in a full 4K HDR version with Dolby TrueHD Atmos audio.

While the filmmakers did loads to tie this prequel to the original animated title, they weren’t dogmatic about it, and they made changes (such as setting the film in the ‘70s) that helped modernize the story. Retained are Cruella’s friends/family/henchmen Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), and this pair provides most of the film’s comic relief (though I found the laughs to be more chuckles than guffaws, and some of the antics—such as chasing around a small dog dressed as a rat—will likely appeal more to youngsters.) Estella’s/Cruella’s relationship with Jasper also helps serve as a humanizing one, as we see him wanting to accept his friend but not always liking what that means, with Horace more content just trying to figure out, “What’s the angle?” to whatever scheme they were planning. 

There’s also a wonderful scene of Cruella maniacally driving a giant saloon through the streets, swerving back and forth crashing into things and hunching over the steering wheel with a crazed look that is a moment from the animated title brought perfectly to life. And absolutely stay through the first part of the end credits where the film really dovetails into the original.  

Fashion—specifically haute couture—plays a huge role, and the costume design and attention to detail is fantastic and easy to appreciate due to the video quality. The sheer number of costumes worn by Stone and Thompson—let alone the numerous additional designs made for fashion shows and worn by party-goers—is amazing, and will likely garner Cruella an Academy Award nomination. With the resolution and sharpness of the video, you can easily appreciate the layers, textures, and small details that went into the many costumes, easily noting the different fabric weights, fine stitching, and design. 

Shot on location throughout London, the film has an authentic feel. Whether it’s the set dressing of London streets, a near-perfect recreation of the famous Liberty department store, a variety of estates—principally Hellman Hall—or numerous visits to Regents Park, a making-of doc included with the Kaleidescape download shows the extent the filmmakers went to to cover every little detail, including many things that didn’t even appear on camera. All of this makes Cruella feel like a real world. There are many exterior scenes, which look terrific, especially shots of London at night—with the many lights, buildings, and shadows—looking especially good. 

The extended color gamut also lets things like the bright red of London’s buses, or the light show at Cruella’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” outdoor fashion show really pop. Beyond just giving great shadow detail and a more natural-looking image, there are some eye-reactive uses of HDR including headlights at night and the pop and flash of camera bulbs, some red-orange-white flames in a big fire, and the bright white sheens of satin material or the glossy highlights coming off black leather/vinyl. 

Sonically, the soundtrack is the big star. The film takes place in London in the 1970s, when the punk rock movement was starting to take hold, and features an extensive soundtrack of era-appropriate music, including The Doors, Queen, Blondie, The Clash, and the Rolling Stones. In fact, the music is like an extra character in the film, helping to establish the mood and emotion of nearly every scene, and gives it an edgier, punk vibe that fits Cruella and her fashion-design-sense to a T. Also, the music is given plenty of room to stretch its boundaries across the speakers and up into the height channels, giving it a ton of space and presence. The expansiveness and immersive music soundtrack throughout Cruella is a great sales pitch for Atmos music in general! Dialogue is clear and well presented in the center channel, with the exception of some of Cruella’s voiceover narration, which can be a bit forward sounding. 

This isn’t a dynamic surround soundtrack, with most of the audio kept across the front of the room, but it does a decent job of serving the story. We do get some establishing ambience in scenes, such as park and street noises—cars and people in the distance, the sound of water in fountains, or another scene in a jail has off-camera whistles, phones, chattering, and the jangle of keys to place you in the moment. During another big moment, a swarm of bugs come flying out and then travels overhead and around the room before exiting to all sides. I did notice on moment that highlighted more the subtle detail of the soundtrack, when  The Baroness is having lunch in a car and she throws her trash—including a metal fork—out the window, and you can hear the delicate sound of the fork hitting the road.

While the film is mostly family-friendly fare—not a single swear or sexual moment to be found!—it does carry a PG-13 rating mainly for some intense themes (it’s implied dogs are killed) and peril (one character is left in a burning room to die). At over two hours, this also might be a bit much for younger kids to take on, and it definitely features a story with depth and themes designed more to appeal to adults. 

Cruella is one of the most original live-action films to come out of Disney in recent years, and if it didn’t grab your attention in the theaters or on Disney+, now is the perfect opportunity to enjoy it in highest-resolution at home! 

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

PICTURE | Images are clean, sharp, and detailed. The filmmakers shy away from intense, tight, pore-revealing closeups of Emmas Stone & Thompson, but even still we are given loads of detail. 

SOUND | Sonically, the soundtrack is the big star, with an extensive selection of era-appropriate tracks, including The Doors, Queen, Blondie, The Clash, and the Rolling Stones

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Review: American Underdog

American Underdog (2021)

review | American Underdog

This true-life stock-clerk-to-Super-Bowl-MVP tale makes it to the home market just in time for this year’s Big Game

by John Sciacca
February 8, 2022

We’ve covered the spectrum of “based on true events” here recently—from the fantastical and fable-ized tale of Princess Diana’s final days in Spencer, to Ridley Scott’s over-the-top interpretation of family events that inspired the biographical crime drama House of Gucci, to Denzel Washington’s film of too-good-to-be-true soldier Charles King in A Journal for Jordan. The latest true story to get a  film makeover is American Underdog, which covers the life and unlikely rise to stardom of NFL quarterback Kurt Warner. Warner famously worked as a stocker at a grocery store prior to joining an Arena Football League team before being called up for tryouts to join the St. Louis Rams in 1999, where he led them in his rookie season to a 13-3 record and into Super Bowl XXXIV against the Tennessee Titans. 

While the film received generally positive reviews—78% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% Audience Score—it was released on Christmas Day 2021, where it had to compete with the juggernaut that was Spider-Man: No Way Home, as well as the release of The Matrix Resurrections and the animated sequel Sing 2, leading to pretty soft performance at the box office. Now Underdog is available for purchase through digital retailers such as Kaleidescape, which offers it in 4K HDR quality.

The film’s marketing implied it was going to be a “faith-based” story—“With the help of his family and his faith . . .”—which can be a bit polarizing for viewers. In reality, the aspect of Warner’s faith—and more so that of his girlfriend/wife Brenda—are pretty minor parts of the movie, and really shouldn’t be a factor swaying you one way or the other in your decision to watch.

While it will appeal to sports fan, with a fair bit of football action interspersed throughout, the film is definitely designed to have broader appeal. The story emphasizes Warner’s (Zachary Levi) struggles off the field as he tries to cope with life after football after graduating college and not being drafted to the pros, and managing a relationship with new girlfriend Brenda (Anna Paquin) and her two children, one of whom, Zack (Hayden Zaller), is blind. While football is the backdrop, the film’s heart is about perseverance, hard work, and believing in yourself and your abilities to accomplish a dream. I watched with my wife and daughter—neither of whom care about football—and the story was enough to keep them involved, though my wife did feel it was a little slow in the middle and a bit long overall.

Based on Warner’s book All Things Possible (he also gets a screenwriting credit here), the film starts with a young Warner watching Joe Montana lead the San Francisco 49ers to a victory—and earn an MVP title—in Super Bowl XIX, which causes Warner to make a commitment to one day become an MVP quarterback himself. He sets the stage of how difficult this dream is via a voiceover, saying that only 5% of players make it to college and then only 1% of those players make it to the pros. We then cut to Warner as a fifth-year senior as backup quarterback at the University of Northern Iowa, where seeing 40-plus-year-old Levi as a college senior was perhaps the film’s biggest stretch. The third act is interspersed with real footage of Warner playing, and while this can be a bit jarring from a picture- and sound-quality standpoint, it certainly lends another level of authenticity to the story. 

The 4K HDR video quality is mostly solid, with clean images; tight, sharp focus; and plenty of detail in closeups. My biggest complaint lies with the black levels, which are more often deep grey than true black. This is readily apparent during the opening credits when there is what should be a true black on screen but we get a dark grey instead—definitely noticeable in a light-controlled room watching on my OLED. This also flattens the depth of some of the dark or night scenes a bit. 

Otherwise, Underdog delivers the quality you’d expect from a modern 4K HDR title. Closeups reveal plenty of sharp detail, like the tight lines in the pattern of a flannel shirt, or the weave in a mesh-fabric football jersey, or the fine lines and wrinkles in faces. Bright outdoor scenes look great, whether it’s capturing a football practice or establishing shots as the camera pans in on a stadium.

Colors are bright and vibrant, like the green turf of the indoor Arena stadium, or the vivid yellows of the Packers helmets, or the deep, rich blues of the Rams uniforms. There are a few scenes inside of bars where overhead lights and neon signs are given plenty of room to shine with the HDR grade. 

One thing I did notice was a particular neon beer-bottle sign that exhibited some unusual and very noticeable black and blue circles and blobs. The sign is shown a few times and each time, it has obvious moving spots that aren’t visible in any other sign and which clearly aren’t part of its design. (You can see it, for instance, at the 26:54 and 1:39:13 marks.) It was distracting enough that I rewound the film to make sure it wasn’t some temporary glitch. Kaleidescape says these elements were present in the mezzanine source file provided to them by the studio, so it appears to be a gamut-clipping error captured in-camera and not part of the home transfer. 

Sonically, Underdog features a 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master track that isn’t overly dynamic, but does serves the story. Dialogue is delivered clean and intelligibly in the center channel, making it easy to understand all of the conversations. While there isn’t a ton of surround activity, the surround speakers—and height speakers if you’re using an upmixer—are used for some nice establishing atmosphere, with sounds of birds, wind, insects, traffic, and even planes far off in the distance that really help to open your listening space and establish the outdoor environment. There’s one scene where a blizzard blows through the town, and you can hear wind whipping through your listening space and lashing the walls around you, and the country music in the bar is also used to fill the room.

The audio’s intensity picks up when the action is on the football field and you hear the roars of the crowd all around you, other players yelling, and the crash and smash of bodies colliding. You also get a nice sense of the spatial and size difference between the crowds of the Arena games and the NFL.

As the title suggests, American Underdog is a feel-good story about a guy who follows his dream and succeeds in spite of all that life puts in his path. If you’re looking for a film to watch to get amped for the Big Game, you’d be hard-pressed to find one more apropos. With the Rams (now back in Los Angeles) playing the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI this Sunday, the timing of Underdog’s home release couldn’t be any better if it had been scripted by a Hollywood writer.

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

PICTURE | The 4K HDR video quality is mostly solid, with clean images; tight, sharp focus; and plenty of detail in closeups. But the black levels are often a deep grey instead of true black.

SOUND | The 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master Audio track isn’t overly dynamic but it serves the story well, delivering dialogue cleanly and intelligibly in the center channel

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