Joel and Ethan Coen have had a strong track record writing, directing and producing films for more than thirty years, so they’re allowed an occasional misstep. One such misstep is their latest film, Hail, Caesar!, an ambitious take on the Hollywood studio system in its last days in the early 1950s. Billed as a comedy-mystery, the comedy, though occasionally amusing, is mostly forced while the mystery is just too bizarre for words.

Josh Brolin is a bit too deadpan as the harried studio executive whose most valuable star (George Clooney) has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Clooney as the Robert Traylor-Charlton Heston type star mugs uncontrollably. Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams type swimming star has none of the charisma that made Williams watchable out of the pool. Alden Ehreneich shows some spark as a fish out of water new star in a Gary Cooper-Howard Keel sort of way but it’s not enough to make the character truly memorable. Tilda Swinton again shows her flair for looking different in every film, but her twin gossip columnists are rather lame creations. Only Channing Tatum in a knockout Gene Kelly style dance number shows real pizzazz of the sort that would have actually made him a star in that era. More of Tatum and less of the other actors might have made it more fun.

Hail, Caesar! is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It takes a while to figure out what’s going on in Anomolisa, the recent Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature in which the actors are directed by Oscar winning writer Charlie Kaufman (from his 2005 play) and the stop-motion puppets are directed by Duke Johnson. As an exercise in depression and paranoia it can’t be beat.

David Thewlis voices the story’s main character, a tired businessman who flies from Los Angeles to Cincinnati to give a speech at a sales convention. Jennifer Jason Leigh voices the newly discovered love of his life, a woman named Lisa who considers herself an anomaly, thus Thewlis’ character’s film titled name for her. The remarkable Tom Noonan voices everyone else. No film has ever captured the mundanity of a business trip and spending a night at an out-of-town hotel nearly as well.

Anomalisa is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It’s rare these days for a major film, whether a box office success or not, to be put out on DVD and not to be simultaneously released on Blu-ray, which is why I was quite surprised when Lionsgate released 99 Homes on DVD only back in February. Four months later they have done the right thing and released this underrated gem on Blu-ray as well.

The film, which made the festival route in the Fall of 2014, was released theatrically in the Fall of 2015 to strong reviews, but was not a box-office hit even after Michael Shannon earned Golden Globe and SAG nominations for his portrayal of a sleazy real estate agent. The film is a much better examination of the collapse of the housing market than the Oscar-winning The Big Short. Comparisons of Andrew Garfield’s displaced homeowner to Henry Fonda’s character in The Grapes of Wrath were not unfounded.

Newly released Blu-ray upgrades also include the epic miniseries Roots; the film classics They Were Expendable and She Swore a Yellow Ribbon; and cult classic The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Alex Haley’s Roots was scheduled by ABC to be shown for eight days straight from Sunday to Sunday in January 1977 for two hours each night from 9 to 11 Atlantic and Pacific time, 8 to 10 Central and Mountain time. Network executives were not expecting a strong response. What they got was a cultural phenomenon about race relations in the U.S. that everybody simply had to see. People either stayed or rushed home to watch each and every episode. Even the casinos in Las Vegas suffered business as revelers took to their rooms to watch it. The hard-hitting miniseries followed Haley’s ancestors from the enslavement of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) in the 18th Century to his descendants’ post-Civil War emancipation. It received 36 Primetime Emmy nominations and 9 wins. Among the actors, Louis Gossett, Jr. in a leading role; Ed Asner and Olivia Cole in support were winners; while Burton, John Amos, Ben Vereen, Leslie Uggams, and Madge Sinclair in other leading roles; and Moses Gunn, Cicely Tyson, Robert Reed, Sandy Duncan, and Ralph Waite in support had to settle for nominations.

Warner Bros. Blu-ray upgrade includes several new documentaries as well as those imported from the 2007 standard DVD release.

One of the best films about World War II, John Ford’s 1945 film They Were Expendable is a tribute to the PT boat commanders who defended the Philippines after General MacArthur left the islands. Robert Montgomery, a real-life PT boat commander, has the lead while second lead John Wayne received his best notices since Ford’s Stagecoach, and Donna Reed went from MGM contract player to major star as Wayne’s love interest. The black-and-white cinematography looks stunning on Blu-ray.

Ford’s 1949 film She Swore a Yellow Ribbon was the second film in his cavalry trilogy, preceded by 1948’s Fort Apache, a 2012 Blu-ray release. It was succeeded by 1950’s Rio Grande, which was also released on Blu-ray in 2012. All three starred John Wayne who plays the same character in the other two films, but not this one in which he plays an older character looking forward to his retirement. It is also the only one of the three to be shot in color. In fact, it earned an Oscar for its majestic color cinematography which looks fantastic on Blu-ray.

Dr. Seuss’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T opened to devastating reviews in 1953, but has since become a cult classic. Although the Blu-ray vastly improves on the film’s tepid DVD release, it still can’t overcome its rather inconsequential storyline.

Tommy Rettig stars as an 11-year-old boy who falls asleep practicing piano and dreams of a nightmarish world where his tyrannical piano teacher (Hans Conried) holds his mother (Mary Healy) prisoner while local plumber and potential stepfather Peter Lind Hayes is forced to install 500 sinks for the 500 boys who are forced to participate in a concert in which they must all sit at the same giant piano. Dr. Seuss wrote the story and he and Allan Scott wrote the screenplay which was directed by Roy Rowland and produced by the usually impeccable Stanley Kramer.

This week’s new releases include Eddie the Eagle and Hello, My Name Is Doris.