Paramount has released a 25th Anniversary Edition of The Truman Show on 4K Ultra HD. The title of the release is misleading as the only thing different about it is the inclusion of the 4K disc. The accompanying Blu-ray is a reissue of the 2005 release.

Time has been kind to this 1998 film. Initially, I thought it was something that was done just as well, if not better, by Rod Serling’s classic TV series, The Twilight Zone, that ran from 1959-1964. That’s because I had been looking at it as a fantasy film, which is the way Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) wrote it, but Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, Witness) had something else in mind.

Weir did not film it as a fantasy but as a film about a reality TV show, something that hadn’t yet taken hold in the U.S. By the time of the film’s initial Blu-ray release, a mere seven years later, that had changed. Now, with a large percentage of the population ready to believe anything no matter how ridiculous while at the same time denying scientific facts, it seems terribly real.

Jim Carrey, in his first dramatic role, is a thirty-year-old man who has no idea that his life has been shown on TV twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from the moment of his birth to the present day. He has no idea that the woman he is married to (Laura Linney) is an actress who is paid big bucks to play his wife and make product endorsements, coming up with the most outlandish product introductions in the midst of a conversation about something else. Nor does he know that his best friend since childhood (Noah Emmerich) was an ambitious child actor who was paid to be his friend but has now become his best friend in real life.

Truman (Carrey) begins to realize all is not as it seems when the girl (Natascha McElhone) he has become infatuated with is whisked off out of his life not once but twice. Then he notices other things that lead to an attempted escape.

Ed Harris, in an Oscar-nominated performance, plays the mercurial show creator and director who is determined to end the show just one way, with Truman’s death. His crew is led by Paul Giamatti and Philip Baker Hall.

Weir’s surefooted direction does a terrific job of balancing the film’s light comedy with its underlying tension.

The film was nominated for just three Oscars: Best Director (Weir), Screenplay (Niccol), and Supporting Actor (Harris). It could as easily have been nominated for Best Picture, and maybe Best Actor, as well.

The accompanying Blu-ray features a making-of documentary featuring interviews with Weir, Carrey, Linney, Harris, and Emmerich, among others, made at the time of the Blu-ray’s initial 2005 release.

If you enjoy watching films in groups as I do, I suggest watching this one with three other films from the 1990s available in 4K Ultra HD. They are Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca, Jan de Bont’s Speed, and Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way.

The year before New Zealand born, London based Niccol’s screenplay for The Truman Show solidified his international reputation, he wrote and directed Gattaca, a dystopian science-fiction film set in the “not too distant future” where eugenics is common. The film’s title is composed of the letters G, A, T, and C, which stand for guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA.

Absurdly nominated for just one Oscar for its art direction & set decoration, the film deals with a future world in which prejudice based on birth is not only allowed but encouraged.

Ethan Hawke stars as a naturally conceived man considered genetically inferior to the new majority of artificially conceived humans, including a younger brother (Loren Dean) with assumed greater stamina and a longer life expectancy. Deemed an “invalid,” he is ineligible to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. He secretly buys the identity of a “valid” (Jude Law) on the black market whose unreported injury in an auto accident leaves him paralyzed. Uma Thurman co-stars as a fellow astronaut, and Hawke’s love interest. The supporting cast includes Alan Arkin, Ernest Borgnine, and Gore Vidal.

Done without a lot of special effects, the film was a box-office flop when first released but has since gained a deserved cult following as one of the greatest films of its genre. Hawke, Law, and Dean are especially good.

The Sony Pictures 4K release includes making-of documentaries on the accompanying Blu-ray disc.

The 1994 blockbuster Speed was the directorial debut of Jan de Bont, the cinematographer of Die Hard and Basic Instinct fame who pulls out all the stops as Keanu Reeves, as a young cop, and Sandra Bullock, as the unlikely replacement driver of a city bus. The pair works together to keep the bus going at over 50 miles per hour to prevent a bomb attached to the bus’ undercarriage from exploding.

The edge-of-the-seat thriller has never been topped. In fact, de Bont’s own 1997 sequel was a notorious flop. The original, though, for which Reeves did 90 percent of his own stunts and Bullock learned to drive the bus, is a genuine crowd-pleaser that never grows old.

The 20th Century-Fox 4K release includes making-of documentaries on the accompanying Blu-ray disc.

From 1976’s Carrie through such 1980s hits as Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, and The Untouchables, Brian de Palma had been a directing force to be reckoned with. 1993’s Carlito’s Way came near the end of his reign at the top. Only one hit, 1996’s Mission: Impossible, would follow.

Carlito’s Way, though, was one of his best with Al Pacino in an excellent performance as a Puerto Rican former convict who the harder he tries to stay out of trouble, the more they drag him back. It’s closer to Pacino in The Godfather Part III than Scarface and worth catching for his fine performance as well as that of an unrecognizable Sean Penn as his flaky mouthpiece.

The Universal 4K release includes making-of documentaries on the accompanying Blu-ray.

Happy viewing.