In anticipation of the 2012 Academy Awards, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is streeting the first-ever Blu-ray edition of All Quiet on the Western Front. A jewel of cinema's Golden Age and a two-time Academy Award-winner - Best Picture and Best Director - this World War I saga has lost little of its power to disquiet and horrify; one can feel its impact in so many subsequent anti-war pictures, from Paths of Glory through Saving Private Ryan.
As Jeffrey Kauffman wrote in his recent Blu-ray review, "What's especially impressive about this film is how it really doesn't feel all that dated...over and over again [it] delivers gut wrenching moments that bring the horrors of war fully home to the audience. While this shock value may indeed have been higher in the thirties, the fact that it still packs...a wallop after decades of audiences being exposed to everything from The Sands of Iwo Jima to The Longest Day to Patton to Apocalypse Now to Platoon speaks volumes about how profound an achievement All Quiet on the Western Front really is."
However, for every deserving film heralded at the Oscars, two or three slip through the cracks, and this week also finds two such releases. First off is director Steve James' acclaimed documentary The Interrupters. Best known for his 1994 basketball exploration Hoop Dreams, James' new film examines the Chicago-based CeaseFire organziation, which devotes itself to preventing street violence before it happens. In its depiction of three former gang members - Eddie Bocanegra, Ameena Matthews, and Ricardo Williams - who now act as "violence interrupters," the documentary finds the potential for hope and change in communities that often seem hopeless. The Interrupters is one of 2011's most powerful films, and like Hoop Dreams, the Academy did not nominate it for Best Full-Length Documentary.
The similarly neglected Take Shelter arrives on Blu-ray tomorrow as well. The sophomore feature from filmmaker Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories), this drama focuses on a loving family man (Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire) plagued by terrifying, apocalyptic visions. If Shotgun Stories suggested Nichols' ability for imbuing the commonplace with the heightened grandeur of grand tragedy, then Take Shelter sees that gift's full maturation - Shannon's lead performance evokes the gravity of nothing less than tortured Kings Lear and Oedipus.
Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review provides a succinct encapusulation of the work Shannon does. "He captures the difficult dichotomy of an external pain and an internal conflict with ease...a man whose emotional world is crumbling around him as he fights to prevent a similar collapse in the physical. He never quite seems certain whether he's sheltering his family or his ideas, building for purpose or for proof of his sanity or insanity, choosing to go ahead with the project out of desperation for an answer - any answer - rather than simply give in to what others would call a hereditary downward spiral into the fringes of humanity."
And then, there's The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1. This film also did not receive any awards attention, though it certainly does not fall into the "brilliant but overlooked" category that holds The Interrupters and Take Shelter. Still, by this point, it almost seems redundant to criticize the nature of this or any other entry in the Twilight movie franchise - the series' fans are so numerous that the Twilight brand all-but guarantees box-office success. It deserves mention simply as one of this week's highest profile Blu-ray releases.
To be fair, reviewer Martin Liebman refrained from completely eviscerating The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 in his Blu-ray review, noting that "Breaking Dawn works well enough because its story is interesting and leaves the audience wanting to see its resolution, [even if] that base strength comes at the expense of a whole lot of fumbled and jumbled pieces along the way."