DC comics may be stumbling over their big screen incarnations of their iconic comic book superheroes but their far more modestly mounted the DC Universe Original Animated Movies are surprisingly good, especially given the limitations of their resources. These budget-minded direct-to-DVD films translate graphic novels and memorable comic-book runs into animated incarnations efficiently, at times stylishly and generally true to their source material.

 

"Batman: Year One" (Warner) is to date the best. It's also based on one of the best "Batman" stories of the past twenty years: Frank Miller's revision of the early days of Batman and Jim Gordon (before he became police commissioner), which was also a major influence on Christopher Nolan's live action "Batman" movies.

See a clip below, after the jump

 

Animation aside, this isn't a Batman cartoon. Like the comic, the story is told in slivers of action marked by the passing dates of the calendar and framed by the diary-like voice-overs of the parallel protagonists. Emmy winner Bryan Cranston (of "Breaking Bad") voices Gordon, the lone honest cop on the thoroughly corrupt Gotham City police force, and brings a world-weary, conflicted quality to the man risking not just his career but his family to follow his moral compass, which nonetheless spins askew under the pressure. Ben McKenzie, however, tries too hard to give Bruce Wayne/Batman, the fledgling hero learning his trade on the streets, a sense of gravitas through a pose of stoicism and ends up simply flat and one-dimensional. Eliza Dushku ("Dollhouse") comes in as colorful support as Selena Kyle, aka Catwoman, born out of the same struggle out of the Gotham cesspool.

 

For a story constructed out of choppy slices, this is probably the most unified of the DC animated features. The stripped-down art and composition suggests the graphic quality of David Mazzucheli's original art (though without the rich texture) and honors the parallel storytelling of the original work. It preserves the diary-like structure to build, piece by piece, a portrait of two heroes (and one aspiring villain) from revealing moments. While it never tips in to R-territory, these PG-13 productions are for the same audiences as Miller's graphic novels are. This is not the Cartoon Network.

 

 

"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (Disney) dredges up the waterlogged adventure franchise for yet another big-budget spectacle sustained only by Johnny Depp. Arrives on DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D editions, as well as digital download. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Cameron Diaz makes gives her all to be a really "Bad Teacher" (Sony) in this comedy about an opportunist killing time as a high school educator (or at least trying to pass as one) while searching for a rich husband. MSN film critic Glenn Kenny gives it a good grade: "A refreshingly raucous comedy that comes surprisingly close to completely living up to its lack of conviction, "Bad Teacher" does more than merely excel in the rude and crude departments." Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel co-star, but extra credit goes to the supporting cast, which includes Lucy Punch, John Michael Higgins and Phyllis Smith (of "The Office").

 

Both the original R-rated theatrical version and a longer (by five minutes) unrated edition arrive on DVD and Blu-ray, which also include two featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes. The Blu-ray also includes three bonus behind-the-scenes featurettes, an interactive "Yearbook" with outtakes and a gag reel.

 

Chris Weitz takes a stab at exploring the American Dream in "A Better Life" (Summit), starring Demian Bichir as an illegal Mexican immigrant who sacrifices all to give his son a shot at, as the title says, a better life. "The best reason to consider seeing "A Better Life" is the lead performance of Demián Bichir," argues Glenn Kenny, but he warns that the film is "too often compromised by the often insistent triteness of the story line and direction." Features commentary and deleted scenes.

 

Kevin Smith steps out of his comfort zone of wise-a** comedy with "Red State" (Lionsgate), a horror film with an ideological subtext and a metaphor made literal in the form a holier-than-though preacher who literally sacrifices the Godless heathens to appease his values. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott writes that "For all its boisterous profanity and splattery violence, the film is more of a weary sigh than a sputtering volley of indignation." Michael Angarano stars with John Goodman, Michael Parks, Melissa Leo and Stephen Root providing the (not always reliable) adult supervision. On DVD and Blu-ray, with a making-of featurette, a conversation with Michael Parks, deleted scenes and other supplements.

 

Disney Channel star Selena Gomez gets the royal treatment in the tweener romantic fantasy "Monte Carlo" (Fox), a "Princess and the Pauper" tale of an American girl mistaken for a British socialite. While he admits to its shortcomings and second-hand plot, MSN film critic James Rocchi says it just fine for its target audience: "A star kids have seen before, a plot they haven't, places they've only dreamed about with a few side trips into something like real feeling-- that's not a bad itinerary for a summer staycation of a PG movie made for preteen girls." Co-stars Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy and "Glee" star Cory Montieth. On DVD and Blu-ray, with featurettes and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray features a bonus digital copy and more featurettes.

 

"Page One: Inside the New York Times" (Magnolia), the acclaimed documentary made with unprecedented access in the fabled newsroom, is the top pick for a solid week of non-fiction films (see review here), which also includes "The Shock Doctrine" (Kim Stim/Zeitgeist) and "Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest" (Sony). Reviews of these films and more at the True Stories roundup here.

 

And it's another hefty week for cinema imports, toplined by "Aftershock" (China Lion), currently China's all-time biggest blockbuster. Reviewed on Videodrone here. Also debuting this week: Alex de la Iglesias' "The Last Circus" (Magnet), "The Robber" (Kino Lorber) from Austria, the French romantic comedy "The Names of Love" (Music Box) and Giuseppe Tornatore Italian epic "Baaria" (Image). More in the Foreign Affairs wrap-up here.

 

And the rest:

The lives of two immigrants struggling to get by in New York City cross in the indie drama "Prince of Broadway" (Flatiron). "It's an undeniably small yet almost indefinable film," writes Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, "warmhearted and bittersweet, laced with both humor and tough emotions." Includes commentary and a featurette.

 

The indie comedy "Turkey Bowl" (Tribeca) follows the annual touch football ritual of old college friends years into their friendship and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy star in the coffee shop romantic comedy "Café" (Maya).

 

The colorfully-named creative team The Vicious Brothers direct the indie-horror film "Grave Encounters" (Tribeca). "The Howling Reborn" (Anchor Bay) revives the old werewolf franchise about a hidden society of lycanthropes with new blood. "Freerunner" (Image), an action film built around the urban acrobatic sport of parkour, stars Sean Faris and Danny Dyer. "Sucker Punch (2009)" (Lionsgate), not to be confused with the Zach Snyder action fantasy, is a boxing revenge flick.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks for October 18

 

"Aftershock" (China Lion), currently the most popular domestic blockbuster in Chinese history, spins a family melodrama through two devastating earthquakes, opening with the 1976 earthquake that assaulted Tangshan, China and killed an estimated 240,000 in a city of around a million people. This is no disaster film, however. The spectacle is used to illustrate the scale of the event that shatters one family, and the "Sophie's Choice" decision by a hysterical, panicked mother that haunts the survivors over the decades. The shadow of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake not only hangs over the film, it bookends it in a respectful and touching way. No recreation here, simply a survey of the aftermath as those who survived 1976 return to help here. In between is a sprawling melodrama and an interesting survey of China during and after Mao.

 

A marriage of historical prestige picture and popular melodrama, "Aftershock" is a crowd pleaser with real-life resonance and no political subtext – kind of like China's version of "Titanic." It's full of the sentimentality that we tend to dismiss as hokey overkill, but director Feng Xiaogang uses it as a respectful way to explore loss and pay tribute to the lives lost and damaged in the two quakes. It didn't get the international acclaim or attention of the Chinese arthouse auteurs like Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou or Jia Zhangke but it sure brought in audiences in China, where it made $100 million.

 

Which makes it an interesting choice to launch China Lion, a DVD label releasing (in partnership with New Video) big, popular, star-powered productions from mainland China. In the coming months, this label will be releasing the kinds of Chinese imports that you may not have realized even played the U.S. because they skipped the arthouse and went directly to multiplexes in communities with large Chinese and Asian populations. Among the upcoming titles: a Chinese remake of "What Women Want" with Andy Lau and Gong Li. Seriously, did you even know it existed? In Chinese with English subtitles, no supplements.

 

Alex de la Iglesias' "The Last Circus" (Magnet) combines horror and satire in the perverse crucible of a dysfunctional circus and an obsessive love triangle to measure Franco's legacy in Spain. This insane clown showdown is "deranged and grotesque and spectacular" and a "near-masterpiece," according to Salon.com film critic Andrew O'Hehir. "[I]f you like your baroque sex and violence with a side dish of heavy-duty symbolism, and if the idea of an unholy collaboration between, say, Guillermo del Toro, Federico Fellini and William Castle appeals to you, then put "The Last Circus" on your must-see list right now." On DVD and Blu-ray, in Spanish with English subtitles, with "The Making of The Last Circus" and other behind-the-scenes featurettes.

 

The romance is a lot more buoyant and sexy in "The Names of Love" (Music Box), a cheerfully romantic comedy of opposites in love starring Jacques Gambin as a tightly-wound scientist and Sara Forstier as a young, free spirited liberal who sleeps with right-wing men who seduce them to her cause. "Forestier's performance is a tour de force of comic acting, maintaining astonishing alertness and energy from shot to shot and scene to scene," praises San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle, and indeed she won the Best Actress Cesar for her performance. In French with English subtitles. Supplements include "The Making of The Names of Love," deleted scenes and the bonus short "A Could Have Been a Hooker."

 

"The Robber" (Kino Lorber), from Austria, turns the true story of a world-class runner with a double life as a lone wolf bank robber (or is it the other way around?) into an austere, spare portrait of a largely impenetrable personality. Philadelphia Inquirer critic Steven Rea writes that the film is "Exhilarating and, ultimately, filled with a sense of existential dread." In German with subtitles, no supplements.

 

 

To make "Page One: Inside the New York Times" (Magnolia), filmmaker Andrew Rossi was given unprecedented access to the fabled newsroom to watch the men and women of America's "paper of record" at work. It was simply his good luck to observe the paper's difficult transition to a web-based news culture, a transition that its very survival counted on.

 

"Andrew Rossi's love letter to The Gray Lady, and old-style news reporting, is never fatuous or doting," assures MSN film critic Kathleen Murphy. ""Page One" can be as tense as any thriller, starring the journalistic equivalent of colorful private eyes, collaboratively sniffing out and debating complex truths." The colorful cast of this detective story includes executive editor Bill Keller, editor Bruce Headlam, reporter Brian Stelter and the eccentric David Carr: "the star of "Page One," all snap, crackle and unpredictable pop."

On DVD and Blu-ray, both featuring bonus scenes and extended interviews with Carl Bernstein, Emily Bell, Sarah Ellison and others, plus a Q&A with the filmmakers and featured subjects among the supplements.

 

Milestone revives the 1985 shot-in-video documentary "You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South" (Milestone), Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver's celebration of grass roots activism in the South (from civil rights to protecting the environment), is restored for a DVD debut. "A deserved Valentine to The Highlander Research and Education Center," is how DVD Savant Glenn Erickson describes the film. "Phenix and Selver's lively interviews introduce us to what can only be described as some fairly ordinary citizens empowered by their willingness to stand up for their beliefs." The DVD features cut scenes, bonus interviews and excerpt from "Bill Moyers Journal" featuring an interview with Myles Horton, longtime leader of The Highlander.

Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross team up for "The Shock Doctrine" (Kim Stim/Zeitgeist), an adaptation of Naomi Kline book about the insidious concept of "disaster capitalism" and its practice over the past four decades.

 

Michael Rapaport makes his directing debut with "Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest" (Sony), his profile of the influential hip-hop band on the occasion of their reunion ten years after breaking up. On DVD and Blu-ray, with director commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes.

 

Movies and TV:

William Shatner interviews the actors who played starship captains in the "Start Trek" franchise for "The Captains" (eOne). Chris Pine, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew and Scott Bakula compare notes with the original Captain Kirk. Features a bonus featurette.

 

 "More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead" (CAV) presents itself as "the definitive "Return of the Living Dead" documentary." At over two hours long, it should be, and the disc includes an additional two hours of supplements, including an archival interview with director Dan O'Bannon and featurettes on the two "Return of the Living Dead" sequels.

 

Sports:

"Fire in Babylon" (Tribeca) is the story of West Indian cricket team and its ascension to the top of the sport once dominated by Britain. "Boys of Summer" (Tribeca) tackles another underdog: a boys baseball team from the Caribbean island of Curacao and their road to Little League World Series championship.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks for October 18

 

"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: 40th Anniversary Blu-ray+DVD Ultimate Collector's Edition" (Warner) - Recently, while visiting with friends one night, the adults decided to put on a DVD to keep the kids entertained while we visited. "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" started up and within minutes we realized out mistake, but it was too late. We were just as caught up in the film as the kids were.

 

See an MSN exclusive clip from the new edition below

 

Because "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" is that rare breed: an imaginative live-action kid's film that engages and delights adults. For all the wonder of a film, with its bouncy, silly songs, art design in candy colors, and mix of innocence and strangeness, there is also an edge to Gene Wilder's simultaneously weird and warm eccentricities, like a mix of storybook fantasy and Grimm Fairy tale updated to the industrial world of the twentieth century. The pure imagination of the world inside the factory is an escape from the dreary reality of soot-covered town, and by extension the taste of a Wonka bar is a little piece of paradise.

 

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have tried their hand at adapting Roald Dahl's classic fantasy but even Burton's madcap imagination can't match the perfect balance that director Mel Stuart (a major documentarian of the sixties and seventies) and Dahl (who adapts his own book) bring to the production, and Depp fails to bring the mix of mystery and magic and dark and light of Wilder's knowing incarnation.

 

"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: 40th Anniversary Blu-ray+DVD Ultimate Collector's Edition" (Warner) is the biggest release of this evergreen yet. Which is not to say there is a lot of new supplements to this box. The new interview featurette with director Mel Stuart isn't very long (about 12 minute) but it is quite lovingly made and features new interview snippets with his children (who had bit parts in the movie) and two of grown child actors from the film. (See an exclusive clip from this new featurette below, after the jump.)

 

The newly-discovered archival featurette "A World of Pure Imagination" is about the same length. This extended promotional piece includes some priceless behind-the-scenes footage, including composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse performing bits from the score and an interview with Roald Dahl along with a peak at his home and family.

 

 

"V: The Complete Second Season" (Warner) -  Talk about hedging your bets. When ABC launched the remake of "V," the hit sci-fi mini-series turned short-lived traditional series of the eighties, it opened with a half-season and followed it with an even shorter second season. Maybe they were trying to recapture that mini-series zeitgeist. Maybe they looked to the cable model of shorter, more focused seasons. Or maybe it was just the price tag of this visually lavish show. Whatever the reason, they tried for an event and ended up with a show that ultimately lasted 23 episodes.

 

Quick recap: The aliens arrive, hovering over the planet in a couple of dozen ships spread over the major cities of the globe, promising benevolence while plotting to conquer the planet. Elizabeth Mitchell ("Lost") leads the human resistance against the insidious PR campaign waged by ruthless Visitor queen mother Morena Baccarin ("Firefly") and the players line up accordingly behind these warrior women. Conspiracies, rebels, traitors, family crisis and melodramatic complications, not to mention secret experiments on human subjects and lots of things blowing up, follow, all unleashed at a furious pace.

 

As even the most ardent fans will agree, "V" was never a particularly smart show. Certainly not "Battlestar Galactica" smart. It had plenty of plot twists and double lives and contrived conflicts that could always be leveraged for a little extra dramatic mileage (especially between parents and their rebelling children), but mainly it was a dire big-budget TV action spectacle with a science fiction backdrop. It made a point of proving it with every episode.

 

Frankly that's what I liked about it. It was a big B-movie serial with a network TV budget and actors who brought gravitas and grit (or at the very least commitment) to pulp fiction roles. The second season simply upped the ante by expanding the human resistance while contriving (and I use the word purposefully) situations that isolate practically every major character within their own conflicts, compromises and personal agendas.

 

As I try to satisfy my sci-fi TV jones with "Terra Nova," I miss "V"'s commitment to delivering a war of the worlds with conspiracies, double agents, revolutionary cells and aliens hiding their lizard identities and master race endgame under human skin and feigned compassion. Great? No, but in its own humorless, way-too-serious way, it delivered invasion spectacle and conspiracy drama with all the pulp satisfaction of a cheesy space opera. "We are of peace. Always."

 

As befitting a such with this kind of tech credentials, the second season arrives on Blu-ray as well as DVD with its limited run of ten episodes, along with deleted scenes for most episodes and two featurettes. The 21-minute "A Visual Masterpiece for the Small Screen" may overstate the case but otherwise it's an interesting look at the visual effects and the show's extensive use of green screen. "The Arc of the Story: Mining the Human Emotion" is a 25-minute piece on direction of season two, with interviews apparently conducted before the show's cancellation.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks for October 18

 

"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (Disney) is proof that even in this era of franchise films, CGI effects and $200 million budgets, star power counts. In the diminishing returns of this waterlogged series of films based on a theme park attraction, it's Johnny Depp and his surefooted portrayal of punch-drunk pirate knave Captain Jack Sparrow that keeps the course.

 

Much of the original crew jumped ship before this installment and Gore Verbinski surrenders the helm to director Rob Marshall, who stages slapstick like dance choreography and action like a theme park ride. Which I guess is appropriate, but about as engaging as the soggy romantic stand-ins for Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom: Sam Claflin, as a missionary of a sailor, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, as a captured mermaid (in this film, they are more ferocious mythological harpies than Disney damsels), are young and pretty but hardly make an impression. Geoffrey Rush tries to single-handedly make up for them with his trademark scenery chewing bluster (which, in this case, is welcome) and Ian McShane spins his dark charm as Blackbeard, while Penélope Cruz brings the hot sauce as the tempestuous love interest for Jack while they search for the Fountain of Youth. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, that's the goal this time. Like it matters.

 

"It does, I have to admit, tend to bog down in the seemingly infinite twists and bits of business leading up to the climax, and movie-overfed-critic​ types are likely to fondly recall the better movies, including "I Walked With a Zombie" and "The Princess Bride," that this draws inspiration from," confesses MSN film critic Glenn Kenny, who gives the film more of a pass than I do. "(T)he "Pirates" movies have, from the beginning, tended to be bloated, overdetermined, noisy and nonsensical…. But I myself think that kind of misses the point. For as logy and simultaneously action-packed and incoherent the "Pirates" movies are as cinematic stories, they are in fact very effective and welcome movie environments."

 

Then again, Kenny saw the film in the theater in 3D, where the big screen spectacle and crazy details are better able to distract from the lack of story or logic or character. Shrink it down to home theater, even on a generous screen, and the environment just becomes a backdrop, and an awfully busy one at that.

 

 

New Releases:

"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (Disney) dredges up the waterlogged adventure franchise for yet another big-budget spectacle that equates furious action and visual momentum for plot and story. Only Johnny Depp keeps this foundering film afloat, but it was a box-office hit and there's at least one more in the offing. Arrives on DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D editions, as well as digital download. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Cameron Diaz makes for a really "Bad Teacher" (Sony), which MSN critic Glenn Kenny praises as a "refreshingly raucous comedy." Selena Gomez gets the royal treatment in the tweener romantic fantasy "Monte Carlo" (Fox), with Leighton Meester.

 

Chris Weitz takes  a stab at exploring the American Dream in "A Better Life" (Summit) while "Red State" (Lionsgate), a horror film billed as "an unlikely film from *that* Kevin Smith," makes the culture wars literal.

 

"Page One: Inside the New York Times" (Magnolia), the acclaimed documentary made with unprecedented access in the fabled newsroom, is the top pick for a solid week of non-fiction films. Among the other titles are "The Shock Doctrine" (Kim Stim/Zeitgeist), Michael Winterbottom's film of the Naomi Kline book, and "Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest" (Sony). The True Stories round-up is here.

 

And it's another hefty week for cinema imports. "Aftershock" (China Lion), currently China's all-time biggest blockbuster, spins a family melodrama through two devastating earthquakes. Alex de la Iglesias' "The Last Circus" (Magnet) combines horror and satire to measure Franco's legacy in Spain. "The Robber" (Kino Lorber), from Austria, is based on the true story of a world class runner with a criminal double life. "The Names of Love" (Music Box) from France, meanwhile, is a cheerfully romantic comedy of opposites in love. Giuseppe Tornatore directs the family epic "Baaria" (Image). Complete Foreign Affairs round-up is here.

 

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

 

TV on DVD:

"V: The Complete Second Season" (Warner) brings the 21st century reboot of the eighties invasion series to with an abbreviated ten-episode season and conspiracy just beginning, but the spectacle is sure impressive. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher" (BBC) offers a portrait of the Prime Minister through three BBC productions made between 2002 and 2009, with Thatcher played by three different actresses: Andrea Riseborough, Patricia Hodge and Lindsay Duncan.

 

"Gigolos: The First Season" (CBS) is just one of the many cable reality shows this week. Poppy Montgomery is the former schoolteacher turned pop-culture wizard in the new TV movie "Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story" (Lifetime).

 

For animation fans there's the debut of the Nickelodeon series "CatDog: Season One, Part One" (Shout! Factory), "Star Wars – The Clone Wars: The Complete Season Three" (Warner) and a new edition of "Robotech: The Complete Series" (A&E).

 

The TV gift sets are starting to roll out with new editions of "Little House on the Prairie: The Complete 9 Season Set" (Lionsgate) and "America: The Story of Us – Collector's Edition" (History), which comes with book.

Flip through the TV on DVD Channel Guide here

 

Cool, Classic and Cult:

"Batman: Year One" (Warner), based on the Frank Miller-scripted graphic novel about the early years of Batman and Jim Gordon (before he was Commissioner) in the cesspool of a corrupt Gotham City, is to date the best of the DC Universe Original Animated features. A must for Batman and graphic novel fans, and it features a bonus "Catwoman" short. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Kaneto Shindo's "Kuroneko" (Criterion), one of the great ghost stories of Japanese cinema, debuts on DVD and Blu-ray, while "Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys: Eclipse Series 29" (Criterion) boxes up two crazy comedies, one concert film and a collection of music videos from this amazing collaboration. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South" (Milestone), the 1985 documentary of grass roots activism in the south, is restored for a DVD debut. Less political are two pop culture documentaries: "The Captains" (eOne), directed by William Shatner and featuring all the captains of the "Star Trek" franchise, and "More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead" (CAV) about Dan O'Bannon's lively sequel.

 

"Trancers: The Ultimate Deth Collection" (Flatiron) features all five films in the early direct-to-video sci-fi crime franchise and "Captain America (1979) / Captain America II: Death Too Soon" (Shout! Factory) is a TV-movie double feature with Reb Brown as a poor substitute for the patriotic hero.

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: 40th Anniversary Blu-ray+DVD Ultimate Collector's Edition" (Warner) is quite the deluxe edition of the fantasy classic. Some of the extras are silly little gewgaws but there is also a bonus disc of all-new supplements and an accompanying book (not a booklet but a full-sized production) by the director. And, of course, the movie on DVD and Blu-ray. That's the real golden ticket. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"The Crow" (Lionsgate), a perennial cult favorite among the dark comic-book movies, finally arrives on Blu-ray after (and only months after the inferior sequel was released). Also debuting on Blu-ray this week: the muscular World War II mission thriller "The Guns of Navarone" (Sony) with Gregory Peck, Martin Scorsese's remake of "Cape Fear (1991)" (Universal) with Nick Nolte and Robert DeNiro and Federico Fellini's "I Clowns" (Raro Video), which marks the first American Blu-ray release from Italy's Raro Video.

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

The complete calendar of releases this week is after the jump: