A24 has released The Zone of Interest on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray, each sold separately, and available only from their website.

The 2023 Oscar winner for Best International Feature and Best Sound was also nominated for Best Picture, Directing, and Adapted Screenplay, the latter two going to writer-director Jonathan Glazer.

The film had looked stunning in theatres and on TV via streaming, but the 4K UHD upgrade is a knockout. The sound is crystal clear and the imagery immaculate, making this one of the very best looking and sounding 4K UHD discs yet available.

Christian Friedel’s portrayal of Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz who oversaw the systematic killing of roughly three million people, is chilling in its banality. He plays him as a “family man” who saw his work as just another job albeit one that allowed his privileged family to live in luxury on the other side of the wall from the gas chambers. Sandra Hüller as his entitled wife is just as chilling in a performance that is the opposite of her vulnerable murder suspect in 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall for which she received numerous awards including a richly deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

The film’s horror is palpable. To quote David Ehrlich’s Indie Wire review of the film, its vision of normality is — as Hannah Arendt once described that phenomenon — “more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”

In German with English subtitles, the A24 release features three documentaries on the making of the film.

The Zone of Interest is essential viewing whether you see it in 4K, on standard Blu-ray, or in one of its streaming venues but if you have the option, go for A24’s 4K UHD release.

The Criterion Collection has released Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.

The 1993 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, is a masterpiece that was one of several of that year’s films examining the quirks of modern Chinese life. Its competition for the Best Foreign Language Film of the year included Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, while two Hollywood films, Wayne Wong’s The Joy Luck Club and Oliver Stone’s Heaven & Earth, also won acclaim for their celebrations of Chinese heritage.

The original U.S. release of Farewell My Concubine was botched by Miramax which cut around 20 minutes from its international release rendering the story difficult to follow. The 1999 Miramax DVD, labeled “director’s cut” restored the missing footage. The Criterion release is from a British release print of the film.

Spanning fifty-three years of Chinese history from 1924-1977, it follows aspiring actors played as adults by Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi as they emerge from a brutal childhood to find fame and glory as Beijing opera stars. Cheung is heartbreaking in his unrequited love for Fengyi as is Gong Li in her betrayal by both men.

The title of the film is also the title of the classic Chinese opera that Cheung and Fengyi perform together throughout most of their careers, Fengyi as a king and Cheung in drag as his concubine.

Extras include an interview with Janet Yang, the current president of AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) who lived in China for a year and a half from 1979-1980.

Extras also include a 2003 documentary on the making of the film and one 1993 interview with director Chen.

Also newly released on 4K UHD are four popular films from 1980-1997. In order of their theatrical release, they are 1980’s Can’t Stop the Music, 1983’s Risky Business, 1987’s No Way Out, and 1997’s In & Out. Risky Business is a Criterion release, the others are from Kino Lorber.

Can’t Stop the Music, which starred the Village People, Valerie Perrine, Bruce Jenner, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Sand, was a flop in its original release but became a cultural phenomenon when it began being shown in theatres at midnight a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show of a few years earlier. Stage and TV veteran Nancy Walker directed what was to be her first film in a three-picture deal. After the flop of the film, the deal was rescinded. This thus ended up being her only film as a director.

Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman, is a comedy about Reagan-era materialism featuring Tom Cruise in his breakthrough performance as suburban preppie. Rebecca De Morney co-starred as an enterprising call girl. The sharp-witted film remains fresh and daring more than forty years later.

No Way Out followed The Untouchables and preceded Bull Durham and Field of Dreams as one of Kevin Costner’s four mega hits on his way to an Oscar for Dances with Wolves.

A remake of John Farrow’s 1948 thriller The Big Clock starred Costner and Gene Hackman in the roles Ray Milland and Charles Laughton played in the original, but alas, there are no equivalents of either Mrs. Farrow (Maureen O’Sullivan) or Mrs. Laughton (Elsa Lanchester) who were so memorable in the original, but we do get Sean Young and lots of steamy sex in their place.

In & Out, written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz, is a comedy born out of Tom Hanks’ acceptance speech for his 1993 Oscar for Philadelphia.

You may recall that Hanks thanked, among others, his gay high school teacher, as his inspiration for his character. In this film, Matt Dillon is the Oscar-winning actor whose speech outs high school teacher Kevin Kline whose fiancée Joan Cusak freaks out. Debbie Reynolds, Wilford Brimley, Bob Newhart, and Tom Selleck co-star.

Happy viewing.