Do the Right Thing has been given a 4K digital restoration, approved by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio Soundtrack and audio commentary from 1995 featuring director Spike Lee, Dickerson, production designer Wynn Thomas, and actress Joie Lee (Spike’s sister). The two-disc Blu-ray edition includes a documentary from 1989 by St. Clair Bourne in a new 2K digital transfer and new interviews with costume designer Ruth E. Carter, NYC Council Member Robert Cornegy Jr., writer Nelson George, and filmmaker Darnell Martin.

Included in addition are three programs from 2000 and 2009, featuring Lee and various cast members, a music video for the film’s theme song, “Fight the Power” directed by Lee, the filmmakers’ 1989 Cannes Film Festival press conference, and more.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last thirty years, you know that Spike Lee has been bemoaning the fact that his film was only nominated for two Oscars – one for Danny Aiello for Best Supporting Actor and one for himself for Best Original Screenplay while the Oscar for Best Picture went to Driving Miss Daisy, a much gentler film about race relations. Let me just say that while Do the Right Thing may be a more important film than Driving Miss Daisy and the other four film nominated for Best Picture that year, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dream, and My Left Foot, it is not necessarily better than any of them. Time, though, has been kind to Lee’s film about a day in the life of a block in a Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood boiling over with the summer heat and rampant racism on all sides.

In only his third film, Lee shows a mastery of film technique that he further perfected over the years through such subsequent films as 1992’s Malcolm X, 1999’s Summer of Sam, 2002’s 25th Hour, and 2018’s BlacKkKlansman. Although classified as a comedy/drama, the film, which erupts into violence in its final half hour, relies a bit too much on insult humor to be genuinely funny but hits its mark with its dramatic fallout.

Lee himself plays Mookie, the central figure, a well-intentioned but somewhat aimless young man whose latest job is as a pizza delivery man for Danny Aiello’s pizza parlor. Deemed “not black enough” by the locals not only for working for Aiello, but for having a Puerto Rican girlfriend (Rosie Perez) and an interracial child as well, it is Lee who unexpectedly escalates the violence in the film’s climax when he throws a garbage can through his employer’s window.

Aiello’s Sal is proud of the fact that his African American neighbors have grown up on his pizza, and though not outwardly racist himself, his oldest son Pino (John Turturro) certainly is. Neither Sal nor Pino will allow stuttering Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) to put the picture of a black man on Sal’s wall of Italian stars. Meanwhile crazy Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), who has been thrown out of Sal’s place, wants to start a boycott of the place in which he is joined by Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) after his beloved boombox is smashed by Sal when he refuses to turn down the volume. Despite the entreaties of alcoholic Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) and straitlaced Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) to do the right thing, nobody does, and all hell breaks loose culminating in the chokehold death of one of the most innocent of characters at the hands of the police. Even more powerful and unforgettable today, it is a film worth savoring.

Although Aiello received the lion’s share of awards recognition, Davis, Dee, Turturro, Richard Edson as Turturro’s younger brother, Smith, and Nunn are also highly commendable.

Criterion has also given a 4K digital restoration to Michael Radford’s 1984 film of George Orwell’s 1948 vision of the future in 1984. Supervised by cinematographer Roger Deakins, the transfer is stunning. The Blu-ray also offers a choice of two soundtracks, one by composer Dominic Muldowney and one by the Eurythmics. Muldowney composed the score for the film under Radford’s direction but unbeknownst to him producer Richard Branson had hired the Eurythmics to come up with the score used in the original release print. Radford eventually came to admire the Eurythmics score, but the 2003 DVD release of the film used the original Muldowney score. This is the first time that viewers have a choice between the two.

John Hurt is outstanding in the central role of Winston Smith, a cog in the wheel of the world of Big Brother, with Richard Burton in his final role as O’Brien, his Inner Party handler who interrogates and brainwashes him. The film is dedicated to Burton who died two months before the film’s release.

Although the idea of releasing a film version of 1984 in 1984 was a unique selling point, Terry Gilliam’s similarly themed 1985 film Brazil impressed critics and audiences more, as did Ridley Scott’s 1982 dystopian tale Blade Runner, but judged on its own merits, it’s a powerful film as is the 1956 version of 1984 with Edmond O’Brien as Smith and Michael Redgrave as O’Connor renamed to avoid confusion with co-star O’Brien.

Double-crosses and triple-crosses lead to a Criss Cross in Robert Siodmak’s masterful 1949 film noir of that name, given a 4K scan for the new Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

Burt Lancaster, who made his film debut as a fall guy for Ava Gardner in Siodmak’s 1946 film The Killers, plays a fall guy for Yvonne De Carlo in this one.

Lancaster’s characters may be losers, but he is one of the few male actors in Siodmak’s films noir who plays the central character. In Phantom Lady, it’s Ella Raines who drives the narrative. In the subversively named Christmas Holiday, it’s Deanna Durbin, not Gene Kelly, who drives it. In The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, George Sanders is overwhelmed by Geraldine Fitzgerald. In The Spiral Staircase, it’s a mute Dorothy McGuire, not any of her male co-stars, that we spend the most time with and in The Dark Mirror, it’s Olivia de Havilland in the dual role of twin sisters, one of whom is a murderer, who is in charge, not psychiatrist Lew Ayres.

It’s the high-tension robbery of an armored car by Lancaster and cohorts in Criss Cross and its aftermath that are the highlights of the film in which Lancaster and De Carlo receive strong support from Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Richard Long and an unbilled Robert Osterloh.

Making a long overdue leap to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, Mitchell Leisen’s 1934 film, Death Takes a Holiday stars Fredric March as the grim reaper who takes time off mingling with Evelyn Venable, Guy Standing, Katharine Alexander, Gail Patrick, Helen Westley, Kathleen Howard, Kent Taylor, and Henry Travers during a three-day period in which no one dies. The film was nominated for Best Picture at that year’s Venice Film Festival at which Leisen won a special citation. It still holds up and is superior in every way to Meet Joe Black, Martin Brest’s ponderous 1998 remake starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of The Thin Man and The Leopard Man.