Films about newspapers, like the papers themselves, are a dying breed. If they have to go out of fashion, they are going out on a high note with Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s Oscar winning film about the investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests within the Archdiocese of Boston and the cover-up by the Church that leads all the way to the Vatican.

In the style of 1976’s All the President’s Men, the film is not about the crimes themselves, but about the investigation into them by a relentless team of reporters and their editors at the Boston Globe.

McCarthy is first and foremost an actor, second a writer and only third a director. That’s why he doesn’t seem to get the credit he deserves for his direction. Awards voters, for the most part, look first to the directors whose films contain the most visually dazzling eye-popping moments. That’s not McCarthy, whose previous films include actors’ showcases The Station Agent, The Visitor and Win Win. He writes for actors, giving them terrific parts to play and the space to play them in. His camera is set squarely on them and only incidentally on their surroundings.

Spotlight, even more than McCarthy’s previous efforts, is a sterling showcase for actors, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James, Staley Tucci, Jamey Sheridan, Neal Huff, Billy Crudup, Paul Guilfoyle and Len Cariou among them.

If you want to see a film that deals more directly with the subject matter, look no further than the Emmy-nominated 2005 Showtime movie Our Fathers with devastating performances by Christopher Plummer (as Cardinal Law), Ted Danson, Brian Dennehy, Ellen Burstyn, and Daniel Baldwin and Chris Bauer as two of the survivors.

Spotlight is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Our Fathers is available on standard DVD only.

Presently available only as a British import, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years is a different kind of ghost story. It’s about the memory of a long-dead, recently discovered, perfectly preserved body of a young woman who died in a lake in 1962. The body is discovered just as her lover at the time (Tom Courtenay) and the wife he met several years later (Charlotte Rampling) are about to celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Rampling is annoyed but supports Courtenay as he goes into a deep funk over his long lost love. When he snaps out of it to sing and dance along with the Platters to their rendition of Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” at the anniversary party she had been looking forward to but he hadn’t, her disgust comes to the fore on the final warbling of “now laughing friends deride tears I cannot hide”. It reaches its climax with “when a lovely flame dies” followed by a dismissive gesture of utter finality on “smoke gets in your eyes”. In the Q&A that is presented as a supplement, Haigh says he wrote it in such a way as to leave the interpretation of the ending up to the audience but he thinks she will leave him, at least for a while. Rampling says she definitely will and Courtenay says she’ll be back. You can draw your own conclusion when you see it for yourself.

45 Years is presently only available on Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 on standard DVD.

Criterion has released a 4K digital restoration Blu-ray of Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic The Graduate. Included are two commentaries, both previously available albeit on competing releases. Also included is a lengthy new on-camera interview with Dustin Hoffman who talks about his early career and his experiences making the film which made him a star including why Nichols would not allow the actors to see the dailies. He didn’t want 35-year-old Anne Bancroft to realize that the way she was being lit made her look older while the way 29-year-old Hoffman was being lit made him look younger.

Bancroft can also be seen in another of her iconic film roles newly released on Blu-ray as Shout Factory brings us Franco Zeffirelli’s four-part 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth in which she plays Mary Magdalene to Robert Powell’s Jesus, along with the likes of Olivia Hussey as the Virgin Mary, Michael York as John the Baptist, Rod Steiger as Pontius Pilate, Ian McShane as Judas, James Farentino as Peter, and a host of famous actors weaving in and out of the proceedings. Among them are Peter Ustinov, Christopher Plummer, Valentina Cortese, Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Laurence Olivier, James Earl Jones, Ralph Richardson, Cyril Cusack, Ian Bannen, Ian Holm and Claudia Cardinale. More literate than most biblical films of the era, it was co-written by Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), Suso Cecchi D’Amico (Bicycle Thieves) and Zeffirelli himself, best known as the director of 1968’s Romeo & Juliet. York provides an on-screen commentary about his experiences working with Zeffirelli and having to speak lines to a blank wall, the dramatic interchange with Christopher Plummer filled in later as the two filmed their scenes on separate occasions.

Shout Factory has also released the long sought Blu-ray edition of Roger Donaldson’s 1987 thriller No Way Out, still remembered for the Kevin Costner-Sean Young sex scene in the back of a cab. Costner, at the start of his mega stardom, and Gene Hackman at the height of his, are both terrific in this cat-and-mouse game, which is a remake of 1948’s The Big Clock which is available on standard DVD.

Speaking of thrillers, Warner Archive has finally given us the equally long sought Blu-ray release of two of Bogart and Bacall’s best, 1946’s The Big Sleep and 1948’s Key Largo, the latter co-starring Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor in her Oscar-winning role.

Italy’s famous late 1970s to late 1980s directing duo, The Taviani Brothers, are well represented with a newly released Blu-ray collection from the Cohen Media Group. Included are Padre Padrone; the 1977 winner of the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; The Night of the Shooting Stars, which won the 1982 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes; and the Sicilian-set 1984 film Kaos. The brothers, now in their 80s, having enjoyed a critical resurgence in recent years, are still making movies and still winning awards but these three films represent them at their very best. If you’ve never seen them, now would be a good time to catch up.

This week’s new releases include the films featuring the Oscar winning performances of Best Actress Brie Larson (Room) and Best Supporting Actress Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl).