I've Got A 4K Player And I'm Gonna Use It: A Probably One-Time-Only Consumer Guide

“Real talk:” Like so many of you, I had looked for­ward to the PlayStation 5 for sev­er­al months pri­or to its late fall release, and upon its late fall release, I fol­lowed a Twitter account that kept track of the stores that had it in stock (where it would stay in stock for nano­second), I kept open tabs at Target, Best Buy, B&H, and the Sony store, and then made it a point not to “drive myself mad” by refresh­ing those pages con­stantly. Concurrent to these efforts, I began look­ing into 4K Ultra Blu-rays, excited (well, mildly excited) about exper­i­en­cing this not-entirely-new high-definition format.

Another thing that happened in late fall is that our house­hold took deliv­ery of a cre­denza to hold our tele­vi­sion dis­play and elec­tron­ics play­back equip­ment. A really beau­ti­ful piece of fur­niture; all cred­it goes to My Lovely Wife Claire who com­mis­sioned it. Migrating some elec­tron­ics from the mediocre-man-cave-ready ver­tic­al unit that had been mine since before get­ting mar­ried, it occurred to me that my setup was mod­er­ately absurd. Of course I had my beloved OPPO machine, ostens­ibly an all-region play­er that was locked on Region B for reas­ons I needn’t go into here. This was , alas, start­ing to turn obsol­es­cent because cer­tain labels were mak­ing Blu-rays whose bitrate went bey­ond what the OPPO could actu­ally handle. This con­cern could be handled with a firm­ware update — were OPPO still a going con­cern that provided firm­ware updates for its hard­ware, which it’s not. In 2019 I got a super-cheap LG all-region play­er that was so small as to be prac­tic­ally port­able. I think for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to this house upstate that we and some friends were rent­ing for the Thanksgiving hol­i­day. So that played the high-bitrate Region Bs (the first was the Eureka/Masters of Cinema Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, a hand­some item indeed; and more often than not the discs from Powerhouse/Indicator have that maxed-out bitrate, even the Fu Manchu titles you’d think wouldn’t’ have enough inher­ent inform­a­tion to sup­port such a thing, ar ar ar). And it func­tioned as a prop­er region-free play­er all around. So why keep the OPPO? Sentimental value, per­haps (God I’m an idi­ot) but also it func­tioned as a Super Audio CD Player, which neither the LG nor the PS4 did. Nor, I under­stood, would the PS5. Yes, it would play 4K Ultra discs but the CD option was one and it was plain.

Now as we know, dur­ing the 2020 hol­i­day sea­son, and indeed this holds of today, a PS5 was almost impossible to get. So as I refreshed my Walmart and Target and Sony tabs, and looked at the beau­ti­ful new cre­denza and thought that des­pite its capa­cious­ness its look could bene­fit if every nook and cranny wasn’t sup­port­ing equip­ment, and I faced the fact that I had not actu­ally attached a VIDEO GAME CONTROLLER to the PS4 in elev­en years. So why was I buy­ing a PS5, or rather, not buy­ing a PS5 but driv­ing myself semi-nuts wait­ing to buy a PS5? 

So I went to B&H (the web­site, dummy), did a little research, and lo and behold, found a Sony UBP-X800E 4K play­er, mod­i­fied for all-region play­back. As America’s favor­ite club kid Stefon would say, this play­er has everything. Up-to-date all-region play­back at the push of a but­ton. 4K Ultra of course. A vari­ety of media serv­er options. Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube access built in. AND it plays back Super Audio CDs. God is good. I packed up the PS4, con­trol­ler, and the dozen games I had and shipped them to a favor­ite neph­ew (not so much for his enter­tain­ment as for that of his four kids [Jesus!]), put away the LG for Future Use While Traveling Maybe, and brought the OPPO to the elec­tron­ics grave­yard. And began to gorge on 4K phys­ic­al media. The below cap­sules chron­icle my earli­est explor­a­tions. Future phys­ic­al media Consumer Guides, if they hap­pen at all (I mean, I assume they will, but their fre­quency is par­tic­u­larly open to ques­tion these days) will incor­por­ate 4K discs and of course identi­fy them­selves. 4Ks are region-free by defin­i­tion, by the way. Fun. For the pur­poses of this exer­cise I’ve giv­en sep­ar­ate grades for movies and image.

EQUIPMENT: Sony UBP-X800E 4K Ultra BR play­er,  Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiv­er, bitchin’ speak­ers, a really nice credenza.

The Beastmaster (Vinegar Syndrome) 

Some of this looks incred­ibly close to what you might have seen in a theat­er, had you been lucky enough to see this in a theat­er back in 1982. Remember, des­pite this being “schlock,” it was lit and shot by John Alcott. He’s good. 10 minutes in and the action shots are incred­ible in tex­ture and dimen­sion­al­ity of image. The whole thing is lots of fun. Side note: Amazing that tal­ents like Don Coscarelli, who have a genu­ine feel for pulp (and abil­ity to trans­pose it to film) have to make their movies guer­illa style while Marvel/Disney hands fran­chise after fran­chise to fake human­ist comedi­ans with near-zero visu­al sense look­ing for a big pay­day. What a world.  Movie: A Image: A+

Beverly Hills Cop (Paramount)

Coming to America (Paramount)

Up until now I’ve nev­er seen either of these ostens­ible clas­sics in full. Not because I boy­cot­ted — I think Eddie Murphy is funny, and I like John Landis movies more than a per­son of my mor­al caliber really ought — but just because I nev­er got around to them. As Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On” played under the open­ing cred­its of Beverly Hills Cop, though, I got a bit of an idea why. Miss me with this Glenn Frey shit, dude. Especially with his white bread styl­ings play­ing over a mont­age of poor per­sons of col­or, as we pre­pare to meet the legendary Axel Foley. The movie is rel­at­ively smooth sail­ing after that, though. Based on mul­tiple glimpses of indi­vidu­al scenes on cable, I expec­ted Cop to be an over-lit day mare. Instead it looks like a pic­ture shot by Bruce Surtees, which it is. Yay! Not a bad movie, but it’s no 48 Hrs. “The super cop story…was work­ing” bit, with Murphy in his under­rated quiet mode, is par­tic­u­larly hil­ari­ous. As for Coming to America: Hey! The pro­duc­tion design­er Richard MacDonald did all those Losey movies too. Whoa. As for the rest of the movie, it gen­er­ally toggles between Comic Genius Operating On All Cylinders and Look Ma, No Story Editor! The image qual­ity is really great. It’s almost palp­able how badly the Waldorf needs a thor­ough sand­blast­ing in 1998.

Beverly Hills Cop: Movie: B- Image: A+

Coming to America: Movie: B Picture: A+

The Big Lebowski (Universal)

I always con­sidered the Blu-ray bet­ter than watch­able. It’s only when doing an A/B com­par­is­on of BR and 4K that you can under­stand why it’s rel­at­ively poor rep­res­ent­a­tion of the movie. On its own, the BR looks bright, clean, smooth, some­what digit­ized but not too creamy. The 4K is like the wind­shield has been squee­geed — bet­ter detail, less digit­al bright­ness in the interi­ors, a more  subtly var­ied col­or palette, reveal­ing the BR as WAY TOO creamy. 4K is def­in­itely the way to go here.

Movie and Image:  A+

 Blade (Warner)

Here’s anoth­er one I’ve nev­er seen before. I like the image. One thing 4K brings to the table is really great blacks, and you can sure bet on them here. Ar ar ar. Back in the day, one video night­mare was deep reds on a black field, but check out the open­ing titles here, they really work. Unfortunately the movie is kind of goofy, I found. Snipes man­ages to ham it up while main­tain­ing a stone face, and all the mar­tial arts moves are corny. I’ll see what Del Toro got up to with Blade II, but I’m not encour­aged. Also this movie dis­penses with Traci Lords too quickly. Phooey.

Movie: B-  Image: A

Collateral (Paramount)

Pretty remark­able look­ing. The L.A.-by-night-in-high-def look, a post­mod­ern noir idea for sure, is a gas. I didn’t really like it the first time I saw it, and I had to sit through a whole bunch of SHITTY SHOT-ON-DIGITAL MOVIES to really appre­ci­ate it. (Don’t ask me to list them. I saw a lot of them at Sundance I think.) The bleary semi-softness is the key —  it’s like the col­ors are still wet, and if you wiped your hand over the screen they’d come off on your palm. Mann and cine­ma­to­graph­ers Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron use this qual­ity for some start­ling effects, includ­ing the sil­very near-monochrome of the Metro Rail finale. More digit­al Mann on 4K, please. The movie’s sol­id, filled with bravura sequences and little funny touches that only hap­pen in Mann World, like when Barry Shabaka Henry’s char­ac­ter say­ing “You ain’t shit when you’re play­in’ next to Miles Davis” when just minutes before he was mim­ing play­ing to the ACTUAL RECORDING of Davis’s “Spanish Key.” And Cruise is great, and more likable here as a sociopath­ic assas­sin than he is in a movie con­sidered below.

Movie A- Image: A+

Crash (Arrow)

This is also a U.S. Criterion Blu-ray, with a superb pic­ture and some excel­lent extras, includ­ing a per­cept­ive Jessica Kiang essay and a Cronenberg com­ment­ary from the first DVD release a long time ago. The rather more elab­or­ate Arrow release is the same Peter Suschitzky-supervised and Cronenberg approved trans­fer. Only in 4K, its nat­ive res­ol­u­tion. So what’s the dif­fer­ence? Well the Arrow audio is a little louder as the default. It’s a visu­ally fas­cin­at­ing film, from the very begin­ning: the trav­el­ling shot into the air­plane hangar where Deborah Kara Unger’s char­ac­ter is hav­ing her assig­na­tion looks like it’s in black-and-white until the cam­era rises and there’s a red-striped plane in the frame. Watching the Criterion ver­sion, you will cer­tainly not feel deprived. But a 4K trans­fer in actu­al 4K is its own reward, and this edi­tion has that. It also has a 1971 short film by J.G. Ballard him­self, two excel­lent latter-day shorts from Cronenberg, and a whole book of essays and inter­views. It’s a lot and the movie war­rants it. So much so that if you can swing it, you ought to own both ver­sions. But if you have a 4K play­er, this one should be a pri­or­ity. And I under­stand the dearth of art films on 4K is for a reas­on — most investors in the hard­ware tend to be mavens of block­buster and/or genre stuff, which is cer­tainly reflec­ted in the nature of most of the titles con­sidered here.

Movie and Image: A+

Daughters of Darkness (Blue Underground)

Speaking of genre stuff, this moody, slinky 1971 film from the very (delight­fully) odd Harry Kümel is art-film adja­cent (the lead is a fab­ulously swan­ning Delphine Seyrig) is an erot­ic hor­ror jew­el for the whole fam­ily. The BR was good, but this has a def­in­ite boost in clar­ity — scenes bathed in a par­tic­u­lar col­or (the lav­ender in the open­ing train love­mak­ing sequence for instance) — are not over­whelmed by that col­or. Makes me drool at the pro­spect of 4K Bava, frankly. And again, what a faboo movie. How can you not love a pic­ture whose script fea­tures the phrase “sin­is­ter deser­ted caravanserai?” 

Movie and image: A+ 

Dawn of the Dead (Second Sight)

A supreme mas­ter­piece gets a supreme home video treat­ment. Three discs with three cuts of the 1978 Romero film, and CDs of the vari­ous soundtracks too, and a book of essays and inter­views.  The cuts are Romero’s U.S. the­at­ric­al, the “exten­ded cut” (not a director’s cut but a longer ver­sion that played at Cannes and was trimmed by the dir­ect­or for release),and co-producer Dario Argento’s European cut (called Zombi, which is why Lucio Fulci’s film was in some mar­kets called Zombi 2, or II, or what have you), which is short­er than the U.S. the­at­ric­al. My pre­ferred cut is Argento’s, largely because it has the most Goblin music. But also because it’s fleet and grisly without los­ing any of the points Romero was mak­ing. The exten­ded cut feels more like a “sequel” to Night of the Living Dead, because it’s score is com­pletely lib­rary music, like the score of Night was. It’s the power of sug­gest­ive asso­ci­ation so to speak. It’s also filled with bits, some of which don’t work all that well (for instance, the attemp­ted hijack­ing of the chop­per at the begin­ning). The the­at­ric­al cut mixes lib­rary and Goblin music and is the one you and I grew up with (I was still under 20 when it came out, totally counts). I watched all three over the course of a couple of weeks and didn’t feel at all put out or duti­ful, that must say some­thing. The new res­tor­a­tion is gor­geous, really puts across the thought­ful­ness Romero put into this col­or film. Scorsese tells a story of try­ing to rent a print of Powell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffmann way back in the day and find­ing out it was in Romero’s tem­por­ary pos­ses­sion. You can see that movie’s influ­ence in the open­ing TV stu­dio scenes if you look care­fully enough. Anyway. Essential.

Movie and image: A+

Flash Gordon (Arrow)

This mops up the floor with the Universal BR in terms of col­or value and detail. And the BR could not be called bad by any means. But it’s over 8 years old. Going back to the movie, which I some­times had a rather dis­missive atti­tude towards, I was delighted to see how much lov­ing Méliès trib­ute it con­tains, among oth­er things. And that, for all the Camp and faux-Camp ele­ments it con­tains, dir­ect­or Mike Hedges keeps a pretty straight, if you’ll par­don the expres­sion, face while sta­ging and shoot­ing some of the sus­pense set pieces, like Barin and Flash facing off in the hollow-stump ritu­al thingie. As oth­er review­ers have men­tioned, the mag­ni­fi­cent detail shows off some vis­ible matte lines, but vis­ible matte lines ain’t no crime. Movie A- image A+ 

Gremlins (Warner)

A real improve­ment from the Blu-ray, right off the bat. On the earli­er edi­tion, in the open­ing scenes, the flush­ness in Hoyt Axton’s face, for instance, had some­thing of a dupey look. The 4K smooths things out, gives the image a real boost in the “film look” depart­ment. Less of a “tele­cine” qual­ity, let’s say. It’s lower key but still vivid and col­or, with skin tones more real­ist­ic. Movie: A Image: A+

It’s A Wonderful Life (Paramount)

I was half expect­ing a cream-colored digit­al night­mare. This is not that…but it’s not ideal either. Not by a long shot. The ice sled­ding scene has this shine to it that’s a weird con­trast to the very sub­dued sepia-adjacent look of the phar­macy scene that fol­lows.  Most will find this accept­able. And that’s kind of exactly what it is — accept­able. A per­fectly pleas­ant image for people. The way the pic­ture will freeze when a shot holds on a sign, for the Bailey Savings and Loan for instance, is annoy­ing for me, because why do you need to use that kind of com­pres­sion for a 4K ren­der­ing any­way? But per­haps not annoy­ing for thee, fam­ily gathered around the home theat­er bois­ter­ously hav­ing pop­corn or what have you. The DVD that comes with the 4K disc is a col­or­ized ver­sion, which is low key taste­ful and com­pletely inapposite. 

Movie: A Image: B-

The New York Ripper (Blue Underground)

Zombi (Blue Underground)

House by the Cemetery (Blue Underground) 

Lucio Fulci con­cocted some of the ugli­est movies ever made — aes­thet­ic­ally, spir­itu­ally, epi­stem­ic­ally, you name the cat­egory, Fulci is ugly in that cat­egory. And it’s true that one can hit these marks while not meet­ing Benayoun’s bar for “authen­t­ic sad­ist­ic cinema.” But Fulci’s work does also meet that bar, and there’s noth­ing any­one can do about it. Fulci’s oeuvre is authen­t­ic sad­ist­ic cinema, and hence cinema sad­ists must reck­on with it. So here we are. The metic­u­lous folk of Blue Underground has 4K-ed three Fulci films so far and I thought I’d watch them in reverse order of repel­lence. Yep, I star­ted with 1982’s The New York  Ripper. Misogynist, quasi-pornographic, anti-sex, racist far­rago of gore and grot­esquer­ies, brim­ming with authen­t­ic Manhattan loc­a­tions of the sleazy and not sleazy kind. I first watched it on a VHS tape, panned and scanned and with an image qual­ity that seemed like it had been tele­cined from a print that had spent sev­er­al months sub­merged in the East River itself. It was appalling. The 2019 res­tor­a­tion, on the highest res home format ever…is stun­ning, and even yields some beau­ti­ful imagery, in the same way that space can be neg­at­ive. It is actu­ally impress­ive how much “ick” this movie packs into nearly every second.  Not a single char­ac­ter save for the slob cor­on­er is allowed a shred of dig­nity. 1979’s Zombi, by con­trast and des­pite its extreme gore, is slightly less “objec­tion­able” because it plays like what it is, a can-you-top-this genre exercise.

1981’s House by the Cemetery is pretty brisk and some­times genu­inely  atmo­spher­ic but also rev­els in “cheep­nis” (both the budget­ary and aes­thet­ic vari­et­ies; they’re not always mutu­ally exclus­ive). “It begins with a big gross out but it more restrained mov­ing for­ward,” I wrote in my early note, but actu­ally, no. It’s hella gross. And damn that is one creepy look­ing child act­or (Giovanni Frezza), or “Italian Terror Moppet” as per Armando Munoz. More than the oth­er two in notice­ab­il­ity, the House res­tor­a­tion has that TEAL col­or tem­per­at­ure that makes some mavens crazy. In this case it’s entirely appro­pri­ate to the con­tent, I’d say. So okay, Blue Underground. Bring on City of the Living Dead.  

The New York Ripper: Movie: D- Image: A+

Zombi: Movie: B Image A+

The House by the Cemetery: Movie: B Image A+ 

Prince of Darkness (Shout Factory)

They Live (Shout Factory)

Two Carpenters from the late 80s, both win­ners in their way, and both dif­fer­ent. Written by Carpenter under the pen name Martin Quatermass, Prince of Darkness def­in­itely bows to the adven­tures of Nigel Keane’s cranky prof — unknown evil slime in a church, whatta concept. This gives you high­er detail and black­er blacks than the BR. And because 4K gives you black­er blacks, this might throw of view­ers into think­ing cer­tain whites are less white, as in the white on black open­ing cred­its here. BUT check out the nun’s habit  in an early scene in the actu­al movie and you’ll see the true whites are indeed excel­lent. The light­ing feels subtler, and creepi­er. 1988’s subtle-as-a-flying-mallet soci­et­al par­able They Live is always a kick. The over­all  look is very B movie but a lot of the cine­mat­ic gram­mar is art film. The city­scapes are in very patient shots, logic­ally con­struc­ted, with a nearly Antonioniesque detach­ment. And yes, the Piper/Keith fight scene lasts well bey­ond five minutes. Cool double bill and excel­lent 4K values.

Prince of Darkness: Movie and image: A

They Live: Movie: A+ Image: A 

Rad (Vinegar Syndrome)

Hal Needham com­plet­ists got one step closer to heav­en with this spec­tac­u­lar present­a­tion of his 1986 BMX bik­ing epic. The storyline’s corny, albeit in a nice Rocky way, the act­or play­ing the teen hero tries to split the dif­fer­ence between Scott Baio and Ralph Macchio and often threatens to fall into the Baio abyss. But Lori Laughlin’s in it too! The bik­ing stuff is great though — what we ‘philes like to call “pure cinema.” The 4K pic­ture is remark­ably crisp and vivid, par­tic­u­larly in the out­door stunt scenes, which I guess kind of fig­ures. But the improved detail doesn’t flat­ter the flor­id skin tones of vet­er­ans Ray Walston and Jack Weston, Hollywood vets in unsym­path­et­ic sup­port roles. Ye Olde Talia Shire sup­port role, how­ever, is sym­path­et­ic, and she looks fine.

Movie: B+ Image: A+

Shutter Island (Warner)

4K here offers a con­ven­tion­al but grat­i­fy­ing boost. The image is a little dark­er, more noir; in some scenes it actu­ally looks like the col­or grad­ing itself has been slightly tweaked. Works like a charm or, giv­en the movie’s grim bear­ing, a curse.

Movie and image: A+

Spider Man Into The Multiverse Spiderverse (Sony)

Like the female date in the Ultra Downy TV ad, this looks amaz­ing. A feast of col­or and shade.  Also it actu­ally feels like some kind of fuck­ing com­ic book, which no live action com­ic book movie has come with­in swinging dis­tance of since Raimi was doing the Spider Man movies.

Movie and image: A+

Suspiria (Synapse)

Looking at the Synapse BR from 2017 it’s hard to ima­gine it look­ing any more vivid from the first two minutes on. But yeah, there we go. The col­ors are just as insanely vivid, but there’s an added sta­bil­ity and solid­ity that make them more seduct­ive. I remem­ber the very first days of DVD when I wrote about them for Première and talked about all the com­pres­sion anom­alies that could come up. Like in The Exorcist, one of the very early releases on DVD: the approach­ing lights of the sub­way train were less than con­vin­cing, kind of pixelated. And here, 25 years and two format upgrades later and every taxi head­light in that rainy air­port wait­ing area is per­fect.  Early into the format the anom­alies were all but unavoid­able, but as the tech advanced when you saw this sort of thing it more often than not was a sign of slop­pi­ness or cut­ting corners. The cur­rent tech­no­logy is clearly fab­ulous but I’m sure there are ways of screw­ing it up. The people who made this disc abso­lutely didn’t screw it up; they applied it to its lim­its and made an amaz­ing disc. 

Movie and image: A+ 

Tenet (Warner)

Pretty good pic­ture! It’s not THAT hard to fol­low, you just have to pay atten­tion. And I got the dia­logue just fine, except for the parts I wasn’t meant to. A little po-faced, but to those who bitched that it lacks the joie de vivre of a Bond movie, have you seen a Bond movie recently? Least John David Washington isn’t play­ing a guilt-ridden self-torturing alco­hol­ic. I thought the Branagh char­ac­ter was mis­cast (just because my famili­ar­ity with Branagh doing good act­ing with accents has been lean­ing toward mild con­tempt) and not ter­rific­ally writ­ten but over­all? A romp! And beau­ti­fully shot. And the disc looks (and sounds) remarkable.

Movie: A- Image: A+

Top Gun (Paramount)

I don’t want to sound like a weepy old bolshy but this war mon­ger­ing advert­ise­ment for the military-industrial com­plex is still a hor­rible movie about hor­rible people doing hor­rible things, and it rubs your face in that fact every minute. The crit­ic Esther Zuckerman called The Wolf of Wall Street “a Douchebag’s Handbook;” well, this was the 1985 Young Republican’s Handbook and it’s still in play, and it’s respons­ible for a lot more mater­i­al dam­age.  Sure, it is fast-moving and “exhil­ar­at­ingly” out­land­ish in its action. And Tom Cruise’s per­form­ance is superb; you really just want to strangle him in the first ten minutes. (Poor Kelly McGillis, play­ing a char­ac­ter who actu­ally wants to sleep with this sociopath.). Anyway, the 4K is a mild but notice­ably boost on the BR. And looks amazing.

Movie: Too gross to grade. Image: A+

Total Recall (Lionsgate)

As Robert Harris has poin­ted out this is a pretty janky-looking movie to begin with. Possibly by design, giv­en the prerog­at­ives of the fre­quently per­verse dir­ect­or. I mean, con­sider the idea of Mars in this movie being the sup­posed real world, but look­ing like a papi­er mâché futur­ist­ic Coney Island of the mind. It’s funny. And hon­estly I kind of love how it looks, it’s total B‑movie shit. Also: “Get your ass to Mars” is one of my favor­ite lines of movie dia­logue ever, the movie delights in fant­ast­ic gra­tu­it­ous touches like THE DEATH OF JONNY CAB, the bar-cum-sex club The Last Resort is the R‑rated Mos Eisely Cantina, etc., etc. I dunno, I think it’s just all kind of irresistible. 

Movie and Image: A

The Wizard of Oz (Warner)

The boost is slight but real. Watching the 4K ver­sion I really star­ted noti­cing how tech­nic­ally wonky it is, if you care about that sort of thing. This movie has more “bad cuts” than Goodfellas! Look at what hap­pens when she leaves the house and steps into Munchkinland, her arm pos­i­tion­ing is all over the place! But it’s The Wizard of Oz. So.

Movie and Image: A+