American Movie 4K UHD (1999) (Sony Pictures Classics)

[RWZMJL]

The review doesn't even talk about the UHD master/encode, just complaining about the inherent properties of 16mm. Kauffman really should not be doing any reviews for movies shot on film. Every time it is like, "The 4K makes the grain more prominent." Well, no duh! More grain (and finer grain) is resolved because it was scanned at a higher resolution, pretty obvious! And it's the intent of the filmmakers for the grain to be present.

And yellow grain, which he points out specifically, is also normal and just an inherent property of the negative. I've shot about 15k feet of s16 in the past two years (new refrigerated Vision3, processed at Kodak NY), and I've seen plenty of yellow grain.

Are we reviewing the incredibly subjective elements of the negative itself, or are we reviewing the actual UHD release? Because I think we should stick to the latter, but the reviews on this site often go to the former. And it's pretty obvious from the screencaps that the UHD is far superior to the blu-ray. The only reason I'm complaining is because these tendencies result in studios and boutique labels not releasing supposedly "lo-fi" (his words, not mine) movies on the newest formats. It also encourages things like DNR.