With so many of this year’s films coming up short, it’s nice to find one that exceeds expectations. Such is the case with Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s The Miracle Club which stars Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, and Maggie Smith all doing their best big screen work in years. It’s out now on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

O’Sullivan, best known for his direction of episodes of such British TV series as Vera, Single-handed, Shetland, and Call the Midwife, was the perfect choice for directing this layered comedy-drama-mystery about three impoverished Irish women who, despite their husbands’ objections, get together to participate in a talent show that should they win will get them on a bus to Lourdes in search of cures for their various ills.

Set in 1967, the women are played by Bates as a mother of six who has just discovered a lump in her breast, Smith as an elderly woman with one leg that is shorter than the other, and Agnes O’Casey as a young mother of a little boy who refuses to speak. Linney is the daughter of a friend of Smith and Bates who has returned to Dublin from Boston for the first time in twenty years to bury her mother who is briefly voiced by Brenda Fricker. Linney hates Bates and Smith, and they hate her for reasons that will eventually be explained.

To win a lottery for the trip, the women must participate in and win a talent contest thrown by the local church for their tickets on the bus and their hotel accommodations at Lourdes where they can walk in the footsteps of St. Bernadette and bathe in the restoring baths said to have produced miraculous cures.

Bates, who has recently found the lump in her breast, is a replacement for the recently deceased Fricker. Her incompetent husband, played by Stephen Rea, fears being left on his own with the large family that Bates is the main provider for. Smith’s aged husband, played by Niall Baggy, fears that he will die without her to take care of him. O’Casey’s husband, played by Mark O’Halloran, thinks she babies the boy too much, especially with an actual baby in the house in need of constant care. He tells her if she takes the boy to Lourdes not to bother coming back.

At the competition, Bates is the lead singer of a girl band on “He’s So Fine” with Smith and O’Casey acting as backup vocalists. They seem like sure winners until a young boy the same age as O’Casey’s son sings a heartrending ballad. The boy wins and all hope seems lost until the boy comes over to their table and gives his tickets to O’Casey so that her son can be cured of his inability to speak.

Linney decides to join the women on the bus if for no other reason than to annoy them and is assigned a room at Lourdes with Smith while Bates and O’Casey and her son share another room. Little by little the reasons for the antagonism between Linney and the older women is revealed and resolved, and they all return home disappointed and disillusioned as none of their hoped-for miracles occur. In their place are small miracles as Bates’ husband found he had the strength to care for his family in her absence, Smith’s husband found he didn’t die without her to take care of him, and O’Casey’s husband was there to meet her when she got off the bus with the baby that he was forced to take care of in her absence in his arms. O’Casey’s son, with the tension between his parents gone, finally feels confident enough to speak his first word which he does off in a corner by himself, and quite a word it is.

The film ends with Smith revealing one last secret to Linney.

The one mystery that is not revealed in the film is how Bates and Rea, who were in their mid-70s when the film was made, could be the parents of children aged 10 to 21. That’s because the film had been in the planning stages for twenty years and the producers didn’t want to replace them with younger actors.

The only extra on the Blu-ray is the theatrical trailer which emphasizes the film’s comedic moments.

Three of the most popular Oscar nominated films of the last half century have been given 4K Ultra HD upgrades. They are 1973’s American Graffiti, 1985’s Witness, and 1996’s Fargo.

Nominated for five Oscars, Universal’s American Graffiti failed to take any home, losing Best Picture to another Universal release, George Roy Hill’s The Sting.

Directed by George Lucas four years before Star Wars, American Graffiti is a classic coming-of-age film set against the backdrop of hot rods, drive-ins, and rock ‘n’ roll, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, and Cindy Williams starred, with Harrison Ford and Suzanne Somers also in the cast.

Extras including Lucas’ commentary are imported from previous DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Nominated for eight Oscars and winner of two, Peter Weir’s Witness lost the Best Picture Oscar to Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa.

Harrison Ford, in his only Oscar nominated performance, plays a Philadelphia detective protecting an Amish boy (Lukas Haas), the sole witness to a brutal murder, and his mother (Kelly McGillis), from the killers while hiding out in their Pennsylvania Dutch community. The film was justifiably praised for its sensitive depiction of the Amish community.

Extras on the Arrow release include previously released interviews with Ford and Weir, among others.

Nominated for seven Oscars and winner of three, Joel Coen’s Fargo lost the Best Picture Oscar to Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient.

Set in snowbound Fargo, North Dakota, this crime thriller with dollops of humor provided Frances McDormand with the first of her three Oscars as the very pregnant detective investigating a bizarre murder involving William H. Macy in his only Oscar nominated performance, Steve Buscemi, and Harve Presnell among others.

Extras include commentary from Roger Deakins, who received the second of his sixteen nominations to date as the film’s cinematographer. He did not win an Oscar until his 14th and 15th nominations for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917.

Happy viewing.