Of this week's vintage offerings, the most highly coveted may be the Blu-ray debut of Chinatown. It may have taken the Paramount Pictures' centennial to encourage this release, but Roman Polanski's classic noir is now available on the HD format. Thirty-eight years after its theatrical premiere, the film still maintains its power to entrap and disturb audiences, thanks to taut direction, Robert Towne's labyrinthine script, and Jack Nicholson's subtly controlled lead performance.
The picture is one of Hollywood's gems, and Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review confirms that fact, calling Chinatown "an all-time classic picture...The kind of movie that's representative of the reason why people love movies, an escapist experience grounded in realism but playing with a larger-than-life heartbeat that takes over its audience's very essence until the gritty, unflinchingly bold and dark finale."
Almost as anticipated is Twentieth Century Fox's Blu-ray edition of The Grapes of Wrath. Fans of the John Steinbeck novel from which screenwriter Nunnally Johnson based his adaptation have long found fault with the screen version; most notoriously, the movie alters Steinbeck's bleak conclusion in favor of a markedly more hopeful dénouement. However, as a piece of pure cinema, The Grapes of Wrath is an unqualified success. Director John Ford recreates Depression-era America with atmospheric dynamism, and he gets wonderful work from his actors, including Jane Darwell, John Carradine, and Henry Fonda.
Beginning this Tuesday, Online retailer Screen Archives will sell the Blu-ray exclusively. The film then expands its retail schedule everywhere on June 5th.
The spirit of John Ford (as well as Victor Fleming, David Lean, and David O. Selznick, among others) runs deep within Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-nominated War Horse. More than just an adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo novel, this WWI epic finds Spielberg paying homage to the filmmakers who shaped the grandly theatrical cinema of yesteryear.
War Horsehas polarized audiences and critics alike; the film is relentless in its melodramatic and visual excesses. Still, regardless of one's affinity for the material itself, the picture remains a fascinating exercise in Spielberg's body of work because it provides the clearest throughline between the director and his cinematic inspirations.
Finally, PBS' Great Expectations Blu-ray arrives this week. Directed by frequent Game of Thrones-episode helmer Brian Kirk and starring Ray Winstone and Gillian Anderson, this telefilm reimagines Charles Dickens' classic novel in an even more moody and forbidding light. Though Great Expectations first aired in the United Kingdom last year, PBS is making it available for U.S. viewers through concurrent means; Masterpiece Theater hosted the program Sunday night, with a Blu-ray release the following Tuesday.