New to home video on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray are four of the best suspense films ever made and a once popular musical released over the course of the last sixty-five years. The films in chronological order are Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller, North by Northwest; William Wyler’s 1968 musical, Funny Girl; Sam Raimi’s 1998 morality tale, A Simple Plan; David Ficher’s 2007 decades-spanning serial killer manhunt, Zodiac; and Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 humanistic sci-fi horror masterpiece, Godzilla Minus One.

North by Northwest was suspense master Htchcock’s only film made between 1954 and 1976 that wasn’t released by either Paramount or Universal. While all the Paramount and Universal films have long had state-of-the-art restorations, the MGM film has always had a washed out look on home video until now. Restored by Warner Bros., the film looks like it was made yesterday, not sixty-five years ago.

The film is a typical Hitchcock thriller in that the central figure is an innocent man implicated in a crime that he didn’t commit. In this case, he’s played by Cary Grant in his fourth Hitchcock film following 1941’s Suspicion opposite Joan Fontaine, 1946’s Notorious opposite Ingrid Bergman, and 1955’s To Catch a Thief opposite Grace Kelly. This time his leading lady is Eva Marie Saint as a double agent balancing Grant on one hand and villain James Mason on the other. The comedy is left mostly to Jessie Royce Landis as Grant’s acerbic mother in the film’s early scenes.

What Hitchcock gives us is a tour-de-force that builds relentlessly through a series of classic set pieces include an attempt to kill Grant by getting him drunk and putting him behind the wheel of a car on a treacherous Long Island road; a high-profile murder in broad daylight at the U.N.; Grant outrunning a killer crop duster plane; and an escape across the faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore by Grant and Saint.

Extras include two separate commentaries and three mini-documentaries on Hitchcock and his films.

William Wyler’s eagerly awaited film version of the 1964 Broadway musical, Funny Girl proved popular if disappointing as most of the show’s score not sung by star Barbra Streisand as Ziegfeld legend Fanny Brice was scuttled. The performances of Anne Francis and Lee Allen are almost completely cut to ribbons. Kay Medford’s role is chopped to the point of it being little more than a walk-on but it was enough to get her a supporting actress nomination in a weak year for the category. The film is almost all about la Streisand and her off-and-on romance with Omar Sharif.

Walter Pidgeon does what he can with his supporting role as Flo Ziegfeld.

The Columbia release was nominated for 8 Oscars including Best Picture but won just one for Streisand who tied with Katherine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter for Best Actress. It lost Best Picture and four other Oscars to Columbia’s other musical nominee that year, Oliver! which had been nominated for 11.

Extras on the Criterion release include the acclaimed 1996 documentary, Directed by William Wyler, and new interviews with Streisand and Wyler’s son, David.

Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan was advertised with the provocative line, “sometimes good people do evil things” which just about tells you everything you need to know going into the film.

Bill Paxton stars as a struggling blue-collar worker in a Minnesota town, who with his slow-witted brother (Billy Bob Thornton) and brother’s friend (Brent Briscoe) finds a crashed plane with a dead pilot and a bag of money totaling more than $4 million. After a bit of soul searching, they decide to take the money and entrust Paxton to keep it until it’s safe to spend. Paxton’s high-minded librarian wife (Bridget Fonda) at first objects but soon not only agrees to the plan but has ideas of her own.

Raimi (Spider-Man 2) directs with usual aplomb from the novel by Scott B. Smith who was nominated for an Oscar for the film’s screenplay. Thornton was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Extras on the Arrow release include two commentaries and several making-of documentaries.

David Fincher made his reputation as a music video director before directing such high-profile films as 1995’s Se7en and 1999’s Fight Club. 2007’s Zodiac was his most accomplished film up to that time.

Jake Gyllenhaal had the film’s lead role as Robert Graysmith, the author of the book upon which the film is based. A cartoonist turned reporter, he became obsessed with solving the San Francisco area’s serial killer whose spree lasted from the mid-1960s to 1983. Mark Ruffalo as an equally obsessed detective, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Gyllenhaal’s fellow reporter co-star with Chloë Sevigny leading the supporting cast as Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend.

A Blu-ray of the film’s director’s cut and a second Blu-ray with bonus features are included in the Paramount release.

Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One won a much deserved 2023 Oscar for Best Visual Effects, but the film was so much more than that. It could have been nominated for Best Picture, International Film, Directing, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Production Design, and Sound, it was that good.

The film is not only one of the best sci-fi horror movies ever made, it is also a highly humanistic drama about Japan in the years after World War II. In that regard, it compares favorably to Wyler’s 1946 masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives which deals with readjustment to life in the U.S. immediately after the war.

Ryunosuke Kamiki stars as a kamikaze pilot who fakes engine trouble at the end of the war so that he can bring his plane in for repairs rather than commit harakiri. His conscience weighs heavily on him as all the repairmen are killed by the monster while he lives.

Sakura Ando co-stars as the girl who rescues an orphan and raises her with Kamiki. Her disappearance and presumed death from an attack by the monster drive Kamiki to a kamikaze-style attempt at killing the monster.

Although the film foreshadows a bittersweet ending, there are several surprises that make it not only believable in context but exhilarating for the audience. Extras on the Toho Co, release include making-of documentaries and the film’s red-carpet opening.

Happy viewing.