Beasts of No Nation makes its home video debut on a Criterion Edition Blu-ray and standard DVD six years after its Netflix streaming and limited U.S. theatrical run.

Making a film of Nigerian-American writer Uzodinma Iweala’s best-selling 2005 novel was a passion project for director Cary Joji Fukunaga. The director of 2009’s Sin Nombre, 2011’s Jane Eyre, and an Emmy winner for TV’s True Detective, wrote and produced the film as well as acting as director of photography and cameraman.

The story of an innocent pre-teen child who is forced to become a soldier in a civil war after the murder of his father and older brother in an unnamed African country was filmed in Ghana with amazing first-time actor Abraham Attah in the central role. He is supported by Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) along with a cast of non-actors in one of the best anti-war films of recent years.

Fukunaga cast real former child soldiers and members of the various factions from the Sierra Leone and Liberian Civil War such as the Liberian Armed Forces, the LURD, and the CDF as extras and consultants but the production ran into difficulty getting everyone onto the set in Ghana because they were held up in the Ivory Coast as suspected mercenaries.

In preparation for playing The Commandant, leader of the children, Elba exercised less than normal, put on extra weight, grew out his beard, and shaved the front of his hair to suggest a receding hairline because he wanted his character to be rough-looking and out of shape, to distinguish him from the usual handsome, fit, well-groomed characters he often played.

Idris Elba was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the BAFTAs. Abraham Attah received a Critics Choice nomination for his performance as well. Oscar, however, wasn’t biting due to the widespread disapproval of the Netflix business model in Hollywood. It wasn’t until 2017’s Mudbound that a Netflix film received an Oscar nod.

This the fifth Netflix film to receive a Criterion Edition release following 2018’s Roma and 2019’s Marriage Story, The Irishman, and the documentar, Rolling Thunder Revue.

Extras include two lengthy interviews with Fukunaga, one also featuring Iweala, Elba, and now-20-year-old Attah (Spider-Man: Homecoming).

Fukunaga’s next film is No Time to Die, the last James Bond film to star Daniel Craig, due next month.

Shout! Factory has released The Oh, God! Collection on Blu-ray.

The Oh, God! trilogy consists of three films starring George Burns, the first of which broke the 15-week hold of the original Star Wars as the number one film at the U.S. box-office in 1977. Its reign was short-lived. Star Wars returned to the number one position the following week.

Carl Reiner’s Oh, God! was designed as an antidote to 1973’s The Exorcist and 1976’s The Omen, both of which had initially skeptical audiences believing in the devil.

Based on a novel by Avery Corman (Kramer vs. Kramer), the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay by Larry Gelbart (Tootsie).

Director Reiner originally envisioned Mel Brooks (1983’s To Be or Not to Be) as God and Woody Allen (Annie Hall) as the mild-mannered small-town grocery manager he selects to deliver his message to the modern world. Then George Burns came out of semi-retirement to replace Jack Benny (1942’s To Be or Not to Be), who died suddenly, as the grumpy ex-vaudevillian in 1975’s The Sunshine Boys, winning an Oscar for his efforts. He became the ideal choice to play God opposite singer John Denver in his first film as the grocery manager.

Teri Garr plays Denver’s skeptical wife, a role similar to the one she played later that year in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Veteran character actors Donald Pleasence, Barry Sullivan, Jeff Corey, Titos Vandis, and Paul Sorvino play clergymen of various faiths who question Denver’s accounts of having met God. At God’s direction, Denver confronts evangelist Sorvino at one of his rallies in which he accuses him of being a phony. Sorvino brings a libel suit against Denver, presided over by Barnard Hughes, in which Ralph Bellamy is his lawyer. Denver represents himself, calling God as his only witness, a cinematic reference to Santa Claus in his sanity trial in Miracle on 34th Street.

The sequels, Oh, God! Book II and Oh, God! You Devil! deliver more of the same with Burns playing both God and Devil in the latter. Burns is the only actor to appear in all three films.

Also new from Shout! Factory is a Blu-ray Collector’s edition of David Cronenberg’s 1983 film of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone taken from a new 2020 scan from the film’s original negative.

This was both King’s seventh novel and his seventh work to be filmed, although only Carrie and The Shining were earlier novels that made it to the big screen before it. This was the first King novel to become a number one bestseller in hardcover. It was also the first film Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers) directed for which he hadn’t written the screenplay. Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) was responsible for that.

Oscar winner Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter) has his best-known starring role as the high-school teacher who has a late-night car accident that puts him into a coma for five years. When he awakens, he finds he has the gift of second sight, that gives him the ability to predict and change the future.

He saves several children from near-death, helps the police find a serial killer, and prevents a diabolical politician from ascending to the presidency. Brooke Adams (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is his ex-girlfriend, Tom Skerritt (The Turning Point) the local sheriff, Herbert Lom (The Phantom of the Opera) his kindly doctor, and Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) the two-faced politician. It remains a truly gripping film.

Extras include a new on-camera interview with Brooke Adams and audio commentary from cinematographer Mark Irwin (Scream).

This week’s new Blu-ray releases include Mare of Easttown and State of the Union.