1955’s The Killing was the third classic heist film of the 1950s following John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Jules Dassin’s Rififi, but it was a first in many ways.

It was the first film version of a novel by Lionel White (The Night of the Following Day) and the first to feature the writing of a screenplay by Jim Thompson whose own novels, including The Grifters, would eventually be filmed. While it was director Stanley Kubrick’s third feature film, it was his first significant work.

Kubrick, who was notorious for putting his name on things associated with his films that others were responsible for, did not want to give Thompson credit for writing the film’s screenplay but eventually agreed to give him credit for writing “additional dialogue.” That was in turn changed to “dialogue by,” an appropriate designation since it was Thompson who wrote all the film’s dialogue.

The film, which looks stunning in its 4K UHD release from Kino Lorber, was marketed as being “in all its fury and violence, like no other picture since Little Caesar and Scarface,” which was a bit of an overstatement. The fury and violence were largely limited to the post-heist scenes at the end of the film.

Sterling Hayden, who earlier led the cast of Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, was given sole star billing. Co-star billing went to Coleen Gray (Nightmare Alley) and Vince Edwards (The Devil’s Brigade), with Jay C. Flippen (They Live by Night) given slightly reduced lettering, and Marie Windsor (Trouble Along the Way) and Ted de Corsia (The Lady from Shanghai) given even more reduced lettering on the film’s poster. This was hardly giving the film’s standout players, Windsor and Elisha Cook Jr. (The Maltese Falcon) their proper due.

Hayden plays an ex-con, who upon his release from a four-year prison stint, organizes an intricately planned robbery during a horserace at a popular Los Angeles racetrack. He recruits one of the track’s cashiers (Cook) with a nagging wife (Windsor); barman Joe Sawyer (The Petrified Forest) whose seriously ill wife, Dorothy Adams (The Best Years of Our Lives), needs immediate care; and a crooked cop (de Corsia), and his mentor and financier (Flippen). Gray has a small role as Hayden’s wife as does Edwards as Windsor’s gangster boyfriend.

Gray famously said in numerous interviews, “Marie Windsor is the whole show” which I would amend to “Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook are the whole show,” it’s their characters you remember long after seeing the film.

Extras include a very astute audio commentary by author and film historian Alan K. Rode.

Kubrick’s follow-up film, 1957’s Paths of Glory, for which Jim Thompson was given proper screen credit, will be released in 4K UHD by Kino Lorber on August 23.

Also given a 4K UHD release from Kino Lorber is 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film that I have never liked.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to find what others see in this quirky film about a couple who fall out of love and undergo a procedure to have each other removed from their memory. The premise is an interesting one, but I find its execution alternately bland and annoying.

It’s from a story by the film’s French director, Michael Gondry (The Science of Sleep), and his writing partner (Pierre Bismuth) that was taken over by Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman Adaptation. Somehow the three managed to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay over Vera Drake, Hotel Rwanda, The Aviator, and The Incredibles.

The film’s only other nomination was for Best Actress for Kate Winslet, who I thought should have been nominated that year for Finding Neverland instead. The then still Oscarless actress lost to Hilary Swank who won her second Oscar for Million Dollar Baby.

Jim Carrey (The Truman Show), an actor who I usually find annoying, I thought was rather endearing opposite the over-animated Winslet. Incredibly less interesting were the usually fine Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy), and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton).

Despite my misgivings about the film overall, I do think that it looks very nice indeed in its latest incarnation on 4K UHD.

There are no extras on the 4K UHD disc, but Kino Lorber provides a Blu-ray featuring a host of extras including previously recorded commentary by Gondry and Kaufman.

Australia’s Imprint has provided us with two major region-free releases.

First up is the first ever Blu-ray of Robert Benton’s 1994 film Nobody’s Fool for which Paul Newman received his 8th Best Actor Oscar nomination as a rascally ne’er-do’ well construction worker examining his life as he approaches retirement. The role won him his only New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics acting awards. He had previously won the New York Film Critics award for his direction of 1968’s Rachel, Rachel, which will be released on Blu-ray on September 6 by Warner Archive.

Also new from Imprint is Directed by Jim Sheridan: Four Irish Films (1989-1997). The four films include three starring Daniel Day-Lewis: My Left Foot, for which he won his first Oscar; In the Name of the Father, for which he received his second Oscar nomination; and The Boxer, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. The fourth film is 1990’s The Field, for which Richard Harris received an Oscar nomination as the patriarch of an old Irish family fighting an attempt by a rich American to buy the family’s property.

The Field is making its Blu-ray debut. All four films in the Sheridan collection contain newly conducted interviews and commentaries.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray releases of Little Man, What Now? and Next Time We Love.