What We Are Watching: Summer 2024

What a great little movie this is. I saw it in theaters back in the day and rushed to get the Blu-ray when it appeared in 2017. I thought the Blu-ray looked a little over-processed and hoped for better. Now we’ve got a 4K, Dolby Vision version freshly scanned from a first-class negative. The audio has been remastered into a Dolby Atmos track, but you wouldn’t really know it until the film’s amazing finale with room-shaking bass.

The film, one of Director Joe Dante’s best (Gremlins, Gremlins 2, The Howling, Innerspace) is a look back at the 60’s when in the middle of a cold war that threatened to heat up, kids were hiding under tables and adults were building fallout shelters or wishing they had one.

There are two stories here actually, high school kids living on a Florida Air Force base during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the visit to the town of monster movie impresario Lawrence Woolsey, played by John Goodman.

Woolsey is loosely based on Producer/Director William Castle, who brought us cheaply made movies like The Tingler and The House on Haunted Hill both starring Vincent Price. The movies made a fortune, partly because Castle films always had a gimmick, like wiring some of the theater seats to vibrate during intense moments or having a fake ghost float over the audience in the theater.

In Matinee, Woolsey is doing the same thing, promoting his film Mant, about irradiated ants who bite a man causing him to be half man and half ant – a “Mant’. It’s a kind of riff on Them, a giant ant movie from the 50’s.

The movie is generally light-hearted but also has wonderfully involving characters as is usual in a Dante film.

How does the film look?

In a word, terrific. The Blu-ray suffered from a lack of sharpness in places, likely due to over-aggressive noise reduction. This 4K remaster looks nearly perfect, with brilliant colors and the Dolby Vision pass makes for nice shadow detail and sparkling highlights.

How about the audio?

If you have the gear, opt for the Atmos track. The nuclear blast near the beginning of the film and the destruction of the theater really sound great. Room shaking. The 2.0 audio is fine, but of course lacks depth. The 5.1 mix which was on the 2018 Blu ray sounds OK, but again, that Atmos mix is the way to go.

Extras

Many of the extras come from the Shout 2017 Blu-ray release but leave out the Mant film which is seen in excerpts in the main movie.

New extras are a commentary track by critics Drew McWeeny and Eric Vespe and two new interviews, one with actress Kellie Martin and one with actor David Clennon who talk about working on the film.

Summing up

If you’ve seen Matinee, you’ll love seeing it again with this great transfer and improved audio. If you’ve never seen the movie, and have a good home theater setup, you’ll enjoy sharing this movie with friends and family.

Under the directorial eye of Roman Polanski, the film weaves a twisted, yet tightly paced film that slowly builds to a satisfying ending. Along the way, Jake almost loses his nose. As a bonus, the second installment, The Two Jakes, is also included in this box set, but on BD in 1080p. Still, it looks pretty good for a film from 1990. Together, it is an excellent set.

Chinatown is spotless in its 4K transfer and the sound is excellent. There is not a lot of surround or subwoofer action, but this genre lends to talking and listening. Dialog is always clear.

Brandon was accidentally killed on the set about 8 weeks before the filming finished. Like the movie set on Rust, a squib from a prop gun was lodged in the barrel in a previous scene, and when a blank was fired at Lee, it hit him in the abdomen, and he bled out before he arrived at the hospital.

Lee was on the cusp of breaking out in Hollywood when this tragedy took place. He took this role seriously, too. He lost weight for the part of being a musician, not a martial artist. He “unlearned” his skills because he knew a musician would not walk out of the grave doing martial arts. To prepare for rising from the grave, he packed himself in real ice, so that when he was wet and cold, he didn’t have to pretend to be. He was dedicated to his craft. What he could have become, we will never know. But we do have The Crow.

The picture is generally excellent with lots of fine detail seen. There is still some dark crush with some murkiness, but this is partly due to the dark nature of the story (mostly at night and in the rain). HDR makes fire and streetlights sparkle. Sound is punchy and dynamic when it must be. Gunshots and explosions sound real enough. Ambient sounds like rain and dripping water surround you.