Dial M For Murder 3D Movie Review

It's common knowledge that there was a 3D Boom during the 50s. It's not as common knowledge that Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder was among the movies considered part of that boom. And to be honest, I don't blame people for not knowing that. As a thriller that deals more with the tension between scheming people, it flies in the face of popular Hollywood consensus that you need action to make a good 3D movie, as exemplified in quotes like this one by Carl Mazzocone:

"A lot of producers have exploited 3D unnecessarily to capture that extra little [sur]charge at the box office. Certain movies clearly should not be 3D. ... But, in a horror movie where there's action and you're trying to make it as frightening as possible, and of course you're wielding a three foot chainsaw, you have a situation where you can actually enhance the situation by making a 3D movie."

Now, I probably don't need to say more than "directed by Alfred Hitchcock" for you to know that this is a good film by Hollywood standards (or almost anyone's for that matter). He's one of the directors whose work was used as evidence to form auteur theory, after all. But then how do we account for this gross misstep in use of 3D, as per Hollywood convention? The answer is that Hollywood was wrong and Hitchcock was right. 3D works well (if somewhat unconventionally) in Dial M for Murder.

Before I continue, I should note that this review contains some spoilers. You have been warned.

I've written before about how 3D can be used to draw your attention to certain objects by placing them further in the foreground, thanks to the focus/convergence problem. In the introduction to the film, Hitchcock abuses this power. He uses it to draw your attention away from the people in the scene composition, and toward the plethora of things adorning Tony Wendice's home. It's an odd choice, since those things are not the subject of any of these shots, but mimics Tony's greed addled mindset at the time. Dial M for Murder gains most of its suspense from how unlikely it is for Tony's murder plot to succeed, so by using the 3D composition to throw the audience's attention about, whether it be on his accumulated possessions at the beginning, or the things and people set to unfurl his perfect murder plot as the film progresses, makes the audience absorbed in Tony's hatred (almost feeling he's justified), and then riddled with suspense he feels as the story progresses. It's a perfect and a very creative use of the focus/convergence "problem" that 3D video has, and carries the film well to its intended emotional effect.

The film defies 50's 3D film stereotypes in that it makes most of its use of 3D in positive space (going into the screen) rather than negative space (popping out of the screen). There are 3 exceptions to this rule, two of which carry an impactful emotional effect themselves. The one that doesn't is that all of the titles significantly protruded from the screen.

The second is depicted in the murder scene itself. Tony's wife, the victim, lies down on a desk, her neck constricted by her attacker. The camera is positioned such that her hand protrudes out toward the audience very deeply. To many audiences, the impulse here would be to grab her hand, which is an action akin to attempting to save her. It enhances the disgust the audience members feel with the murder's action. The third is when the police officer presents Tony with a key to his apartment. This key later becomes the means to unravelling his murder plot. Again, as this film is shot from Tony Wendice's point of view, this is insightful and emotionally compelling. At the time, it's obvious his story is being called into question, but the pop out again makes the audience feel compelled to reach out and grab the key. They feel the fear of abandoning logic, while knowing their raw emotion at that point forces them to defy it. Both scenes are beautiful depictions of Tony's conflicting emotions, each of which are lessened in the 2D version of the film.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this film in its 3D version. Hitchcock employs the format masterfully, in ways that greatly improve the film over its 2D release. The 3D Bluray has one scene missing the right frames, so it briefly displays in 2D, but other than that is a fantastic restoration of the original film as well (I wonder, though, why they didn't do a 3D conversion on that scene). If you have access to a 3D TV, and haven't already picked this up, you should definitely add it to your collection. I'm glad I did.

Man of Steel 3D Movie Review

I have a hard time thinking of things to post to this blog. It was originally conceived as a way to collect ideas about 3D film in general that I'd previously been posting to Facebook, which one of my Facebook friends suggested this might be better as a blog. There's only so much I can say about 3D generally though, and that's been starting to show with my utter lack of updates (and when I do update, although honest and not paid posts, sound like they are ads). Recently, though, I had the idea of posting reviews of 3D movies I've watched, but that seemed unnecessary as most of the 3D movies I've seen have been out a while already, and most people should know by now what they think of them. I recently managed to find time to see Man of Steel, however, and that's new enough that I figured I'd try and review how good it was as a 3D movie.

The movie itself doesn't depart dramatically from the normal Superman mythos. The narrative structure actually reminds me a lot of Batman Begins, in that the film constantly jumps back and forth between Superman's youth to provide context for how his origin as an Kryptonian alien shapes the hero he is in this grand battle in which he partakes. Exploring Superman in this light, as a Kryptonian sent to Earth, is an aspect of Superman's character that I've never really seen before. It's an impressive look that I suspect some people will find fascinating, especially those interested in the super hero myths as just that: myths.

They really sell Superman as a mythological, even god-like hero. From his origins on Krypton, where Jor-El is given a visual aesthetic that calls to mind the Roman culture (and the casting Russel Crowe as Jor-El brought to mind images of Maximus from Gladiator as well). Jor-El's confrontation with General Zod feels heavily Roman in style as well, lending a rugged and even god-like military masculinity to all of the Kryptonian interactions (in case the close up on Henry Cavill's abs during heavy lifting didn't do that well enough). Even the cinematography, which abandons panic-driven shaky cameras popular in most modern action scenes in favor of jerky, sweeping movements with each hit, causes this movie to bleed masculinity in ways that impressed me. Still, I never really connected that style with versions of the Superman character in previous iterations I've seen of the character, who always seemed more about a cool head giving him control rather than his raw power.

If I had a really major criticism of the film (other than that I didn't believe Lois Lane and Superman's chemistry for a second), it's that Superman is too out of control of the situations he's in. The film treats Superman's birth as the solution to Kryptonian society's obsessive desire to control the destinies of all Kryptonians. Yet Superman's actions always seem directed by his Kryptonian genesis. He even interprets the "S" on his chest under its Kryptonian meaning rather than the earthly interpretation for which it's colloquially known, and which someone raised on earth would be expected to use. My sister, who watched the film with me, also picked up on the inconsistency, and mockingly mimicked Jor-El saying, "You have the right to be who you want to be, now go do what I tell you!"

But of course, this review wouldn't be on this blog if Man of Steel weren't released in 3D, so with that frame in mind, the question is, "How does the 3D lend itself to this movie?" Unfortunately, it doesn't. While I have no technical qualms with the 3D conversion quality, and some of the individual scenes looked magnificent, the film was obviously shot with the intent that it be viewed in its 2D version, and those decisions made some of the stereo work unsalvageable. Handheld cameras used to make the scenes in Kansas, and other smaller towns in which Clark Kent finds himself, are difficult on the eyes, making this movie somewhat likely than others to induce headaches and nausea. Not only that, but there were constant over-the-shoulder shots that lacked any floating windows to ease the eyestrain caused by window violations. These and other extreme closeups resulted in numerous scenes that lacked any notable depth as well, nor did they exploit convergence tricks to do anything special with the stereo conversion for these extreme closeups directly.

I'm going to be honest here, I didn't like this movie. Most of the movie was admittedly very well done, but not to my tastes at all (I prefer my super heroes to be more human, and this one lays the Kryptonian heritage on too strong for me). It also doesn't help me like it that the 3D in this movie was something I can really point to as an example of what 3D looks like when it actually is a superfluous marketing gimmick. It added less to the film than it detracted from it, so I really suggest, unlike what I did, seeing the 2D version of this movie. It's a good movie, if somewhat niche, but only in 2D.

Go Read This Other Post

I just did a guest post on another blog. This is it. Go read that, please. It might as well be posted here.

The Hobbit In Review

Before I begin, I need to tell some stories about my life. It'll seem off topic at first, but they help me put what I noticed about The Hobbit in perspective. When I was 16, and learning to drive a car for the first time, my mother and I were driving on the highway for the first time: my first time driving over 40 mph. At one point, she had me turn right into what turned out to be a dead end (why there was a dead end so close to a traffic light on the highway, I'll never know). She claims she thought it was complete when she originally told me to turn that way, but I digress. The point is that we were sitting at a light, just watching for the light to turn so that we could re-enter the road. As we were watching, however, a truck took that very same turn way too fast. It rolled, scraping the side of the truck after landing in a magnificent crash, only coming to a stop after landing across 3 lanes of traffic. After watching this scene, it took me around 30 seconds to fully internalize the excitement of what I had witnessed, and realize that something abnormal had just happened.

The reason I say this is because when watching The Hobbit, I remember feeling that same feeling I felt in those two situations. I could tell I was watching an epic Orc battle, or an epic rock-flinging fight between Stone Giants, but when watching it in 48 fps it felt so real that until after they happened, just like the truck tipping in my real life, I had no real concept of how epic these scenes were. But there was something more life-like to how the images on the screen were moving. It was jarring, and I can see why people would mistake that feeling for things looking fake. But they don't. They look so real that you're forced to react to them differently, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

First off, HFR didn't make the costumes look any faker, nor did it make is possible to see Gandalf's contact lenses (I specifically looked at his eyes trying to see this because of that claim, and never noticed a thing). While it didn't make anything look faker, however, it did make them look anachronistic. Because the motion of the images was so lifelike, you feel like they should be following the rules of reality when they're far from doing so. Nobody seriously dresses like the Wizard Gandalf, and nobody has a kingdom of dwarves. But what you're seeing on the screen is what they would really look like if they did exist. You're being transported to middle earth, and it will take a little while (a few movies) for us to accept that such transportation is possible.

What HFR didn't do was make the CGI look fake. You have no idea how scary real Gollum, the Great Goblin, or the white Orc Azog look in 4K HFR 3D unless you go and see it yourself. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But it's not the jarring experience people are reporting. The thing is, with the exception of Gollum (whose scene critics are raving about), these CGI events were all war driven. But, this is one case where I theorize the lack of blur was actually a legitimately bad thing. Blur ads confusion to the scene as you're unable to completely make out what's happening. And that confusion makes the scene more terrifying, and therefore more exciting. In 48 fps, much of that sense of confusion was gone. It's possible that I'm extrapolating here from that same sense of reality disconnect from excitement that I was talking about from two paragraphs ago. But I have no idea how to experiment with a control against that, so I thought I'd just put that out there as another way HFR may have been affecting the scene.

The sense of speed-up that I was talking about before happened to me, but it also subsided no later than 30 minutes in. It wasn't a huge deal (and I'm sure I'll get used to it so it never happens if I see enough 48 fps viewings). There were others in my viewing group for whom the footage never slowed down, though. There were also some for whom it never once presented that problem. So it's impossible for me to predict how you will react to it.

But all in all, I think this is probably a very positive move. The movie felt so real! As James Cameron put it, "When you author and project a movie at 48 or 60, it becomes a different movie. The 3D shows you a window into reality; the higher frame rate takes the glass out of the window. In fact, it is just reality. It is really stunning," The glass he's referring to is that sense of separation, or the idea that you aren't really there. And that's completely true, and utterly amazing.

A lot of people would suggest that you see The Hobbit in 24 fps first and then see it in 48 fps so you can just see the new technology. I don't agree. I think you should just see the 48 fps, but only if you're looking to be completely immersed in middle earth. If you just want to experience the story without feeling what it would have been like to be there, I suggest finding a showing that's not labeled HFR. But I really hope the BluRay has an HFR copy for my own personal viewings.

Regarding the 3D, it's really good 3D, though not perfect (there were one or two instances of ghosting that I noticed, especially around subtitles and once when Bilbo stuck his sword out too far). It was used primarily as a means of bringing you into the world of The Hobbit. That's certainly not a bad thing, and the 3D is very easy on your eyes (backing up Peter Jackson's claims that 48 fps will improve the viewability of 3D). I do suggest seeing this film in 3D. While it doesn't reveal new meaning to the film, it adds a quality to the image that is very beautiful. 

The story itself is the same story from J.R.R. Tolkein's book. Jackson doesn't embellish much, often taking prose directly from the book and inserting it directly into the lines of the film. I hope I'm not insulting him if I say this is the nerdiest adaption of The Hobbit that there possibly could have been. What I mean by that is that he took samples from the Lord of the Rings footnotes and inserted them into the movie in places that they weren't in The Hobbit originally. It's still a faithful adaption, but it makes the film come across so much more prequel-ish than I was expecting. It also feels like it's telling the Hobbit more from Gandalf's perspective, with all the allusions to the events that would unfold in The Lord of the Rings that Tokein's appendixes describe to account for Gandalf's frequent absences from the Dwarves. The only complaint I have about their inclusion is that they clash with the intro showing the story being written from Bilbo's perspective. But I found them to be interesting and things that helped me get absorbed in the story a similar way to how HFR got be absorbed in the visuals. But it does take a certain kind of nerd to get that involved in a fantasy world, so I can understand it not appealing to everyone. I loved every minute of it.