Even though we (obviously) all love movies here at What Hi-Fi?, there is still quite the range of interests in our team, and nothing makes that more clear than when we discuss our favourite test discs.
Some of us immediately reach for a terrifying horror, whereas others prefer to ease themselves in with a wholesome period drama.
If you have ever been curious about exactly what films we use to test out the latest tech, then boy are you in for a treat.
This entry for ‘Now Showing’ really lays out our huge range of tastes of the table, so strap in for a melange of genres, time periods and hot-takes. Let's get cracking!
Barbarian
There are more than a few Shudder subscribers in the What Hi-Fi? team. So when a horror movie arrives with scenes so bad even we have a collective “sweet-zombie-jeebus” moment, it is either doing something very right, or very wrong.
Barbarian managed to do just that. The 2022 directorial debut from Zach Cregger tells the tale of a creepy Airbnb house in Detroit and has all the trappings of a classic horror.
Hammer Horror tongue-in-cheek elements, that are nicely played up by Justin Long (previously of Jeepers Creepers and Tusk horror fame)? Yep. Expert timing that leaves you in a constant state of dread? Check. Gore galore and a story where the big bad is way worse and creepier than anything you came up with in your head? You bet.
This, plus its stellar use of audio, which genuinely makes you feel slightly sick in certain scenes and “bump in the night” use of shadow to leave you constantly feeling threatened make it a fantastic title for fans of the genre.
If you are a fan of great films including Hereditary, Midsommar and Sinister, I’d strongly recommend giving it a watch.
Words by Alastair Stevenson
Little Women
What's that noise? Ah yes, it's the sound of your necks cracking from the tonal whiplash of this entry. But bear with me here, because this is a go-to for both testing and when I just want to watch a bloody good movie.
When I heard that Greta Gerwig (the director of Lady Bird and Barbie) was making an adaptation of one of my favourite books, I was the first in the queue to see Louisa May Alcott's novel brought to life for a new generation.
Luckily, it did not disappoint.
If you are unfamiliar, Little Women follows four sisters in the 1860s during the American Civil War. It charts their journeys from childhood to womanhood, from first loves to dealing with life-threatening illness.
The film has a timeless feel from the first frame with a limited colour palette of blues and pastel shades. Paired with a soundtrack that has the same nostalgic feel as the 2005 iteration of Pride And Prejudice, it is an ideal watch to see how a home cinema system handles more subtle audio and picture.
Words by Robyn Quick
Watch Little Women on Amazon Prime Video
Buy Little Women on Blu-ray at Amazon
Sinners
In my youth, I knew the ins and outs of more or less every movie long before it came out, having avidly devoured every trailer and every bit of news in the pages of Empire and Total Film.
Too many times, though, films that I was all hyped up for turned out to be a disappointment (or were spoiled by a review or the trailer itself), so these days I intentionally keep myself in the dark.
Even so, Sinners was a real surprise. It just sort of appeared out of nowhere and was then everywhere, and the very short clips that I couldn’t avoid looked very good indeed.
And then my movie-obsessed colleague Robyn Quick wrote this piece about their experience seeing the movie at the cinema and predicting how good it would be as a home cinema tester.
Well, Sinners is now available to watch at home – not on 4K Blu-ray, unfortunately, but as a premium rental or purchase through services such as Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and the Sky Store – and I can confirm that it is indeed an awesome film and an incredible tester.
I really don’t want to give anything away about the movie (that would be unfair given what I wrote above), but suffice to say it’s a terrific mix of action and horror with a smattering of comedy and some excellent gore.
It’s achingly cool, too, and the largely night-time setting gives your TV plenty of high-contrast imagery to deal with (it looks great on an OLED). But, as Robyn predicted, it’s the Dolby Atmos soundtrack that is most thrilling, particularly during the genre-melding, time-travelling, spirit-awakening musical number led by the excellent Miles Caton.
Words by Tom Parsons
Watch Sinners on Amazon Prime Video
To test out the latest TV and AV kit, we watch a whole lot of movies. There are tried and tested favourites that we come back to often, but we always try to mix it up with new entries.
We also know that you at home may well be on the hunt for some top-notch discs to put your home cinema system to the test. This is where 'Now Showing' comes in, as we give you a monthly run-down of what TV shows and movie we can't get out of our heads.
It could be a film that has an incredible score to challenge your TV's sound system, or a TV show with lots of dark scenes to see how nuanced a projector's picture can be.
As always, we want to hear from you as well! If there are any films you think would make a good test disc, drop them in the comments below.
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