Shout Select has released a 4K Ultra HD restoration of Oliver Stone’s 1989 Vietnam War film, Born on the Fourth of July.

Nominated for 8 Oscars and winner of two for Best Director and Best Film Editing, the film with a screenplay by Ron Kovic and Stone, is based on Kovic’s 1976 autobiography originally scheduled to go before the cameras in 1979.

The war which raged from 1955-1975 was not a popular subject for Hollywood. The only major studio film made about the war while it was going on was 1968’s roundly lambasted John Wayne movie, The Green Berets. Three years after the war ended, there were several highly acclaimed films about the war including The Boys in Company C., Go Tell the Spartans, and the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, followed by 1979’s Apocalypse Now. It was at this time that William Friedkin planned to film Born on the Fourth of July with Al Pacino as Kovic.

Friedkin dropped out and was replaced by Daniel Petrie who hired Stone to co-write the screenplay. Pacino got cold feet and financing dried up. No further films about the war were forthcoming until 1984’s Streamers and Birdy. Two years later, Stone made Platoon, the first definitive film about the war which was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 4 including Stone’s first for Best Director.

There were five films about the war in 1987 including Gardens of Stone and Full Metal Jacket paving the way for Kovic and Stone to finally film Born on the Fourth of July with emerging superstar Tom Cruise as Kovic. Cruise had been praised for his lead performances in such films as Risky Business and Top Gun but his best reviewed dramatic performances were in support of Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman in The Color of Money and Rain Man, respectively, leaving producers concerned about whether he could pull off the heavier scenes of playing a paraplegic war hero turned anti-war activist. They needn’t have worried. Cruise was brilliant in the film, easily earning his first Oscar nomination albeit losing to Daniel Day-Lewis who won playing another handicapped protagonist, poet Christy Brown in My Left Foot.

The film features superb supporting performances by Raymond J. Barry (Dead Man Walking) as his Jewish father and Caroline Kava (Snow Falling on Cedars) as his Catholic mother. Josh Evans, son of Robert Evans and Ali MacGraw, plays Kovic’s younger brother. Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Frank Whaley, and Kyra Sedgwick have smaller roles.

Kovic’s inspiration for the book and film was previous antiwar book and film, 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Late in the film, however, is a fictional scene imposed by Stone that is highly reminiscent of a similar scene in the 1927/28 Oscar winner Wings in which Cruise as Kovic visits the family of his fallen comrade.

John Williams’ score is augmented by classic songs ranging from “You’re a Grand Old Flag” to “Rock Around the Clock” to “Moon River” to “American Pie” to “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”.

Both the 4K and the accompanying Blu-ray feature both Stone’s previously recorded commentary and the brand-new commentary of film critic Matt Zoller Seitz. A new interview with Stone is included on the Blu-ray.

Cohen Media Group has released a Blu-ray of James Ivory’s 1977 film, Roseland.

One of Merchant Ivory’s earlier films, Roseland doesn’t reach the emotional heights of such later films as A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day, but it is an interesting film along the way on the duo’s rise to cinematic greatness with a screenplay by their writing partner, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

The film is comprised of three interconnecting short stories set in the fabled NYC dancehall.

The first story. “The Waltz” features Oscar winner Teresa Wright (Mrs. Miniver) in her last starring role as a recent widow who finds a new dance partner in Lou Jacobi (The Diary of Anne Frank) but she can’t stop thinking and talking about her late husband, not a good way to start a new relationship.

It ends wistfully.

The second story, “The Hustle” features Geraldine Chaplin (Doctor Zhivago) as a recent divorcée who falls hard for a gigolo played by future Oscar winner Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter) who is already balancing two women, dance instructor Helen Gallagher (the now 98-year-old Tony winner for Broadway’s No, No, Nanette) and wealthy patron Joan Copeland (Arthur Miller’s sister who died in 2022 at 99).

Even though Chaplin humiliates herself by taking two jobs to pay for Walken’s ongoing lessons with Gallagher he still prefers to stay with Copeland.

It doesn’t end well for Chaplin.

The third story, “The Peabody” features Lila Skala (Lilies of the Field) as a retired German cook and occasional house cleaner with an elaborately made-up backstory in which she pretends to elderly dance partner David Thomas that she was a renowned opera singer. She bases the deception on the premise that Americans don’t know anything about opera, they only know about movies.

The most poignant of the short stories, The Peabody, which ends with its protagonist literally dancing herself to death, earned a Golden Globe nomination for Skala, losing to Vanessa Redgrave in Julia.

Happy viewing.