Looking as stylishly ‘80s in Dolby Vision as you’d anticipate, ST. ELMO’S FIRE (108 mins., 1985, R; Sony) makes its case on 4K UHD this month from Sony as one of the definitive “Brat Pack” films of the decade. Joel Schumacher’s 1985 melodrama looks at the lives and loves of young twentysomethings just out of college, trying to make a go of it in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C.

Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham and Andie MacDowell were the familiar faces still fresh on the big screen back in ’85, when “St. Elmo’s Fire” became a big hit at the box-office.

Schumacher’s script, written with Carl Kurlander, is a glossy, pretentious “yuppie soap opera” all the way, but in spite of having to populate mostly-unappealing characters, the cast makes it compelling, with an immediately recognizable David Foster score and vivid Panavision cinematography by Stephen H. Burum lending a strong assist. Anyone who lived through the ’80s had to have come across this movie at some point, and it’s a blast of nostalgia that has held up as well as most tenny-bopper vehicles of the day, even if the film proves unintentionally funny and glib at times. Mostly, though, it works as a showcase for its stars, then on the cusp of stardom or having already reached their peak in some instances.

“St. Elmo’s Fire” was beautifully lensed by Burum and Schumacher in Panavision (2.35), and previous home video releases – especially the early, cropped presentations – failed to reproduce the movie’s visual scheme in a satisfying manner. Not even the Blu-Ray was able to achieve the vivid colors Sony’s new Dolby Vision HDR grading boasts here – this is a spectacular looking UHD, from its warm saturation to the neon-hued signs on the streets of D.C., capped with precision detail throughout.

As usual with Sony, a multitude of audio options include Dolby Atmos and original 5.1/2.0 DTS MA tracks, presenting viewers with a superbly engineered blend of clear dialogue and background music (Foster’s score remains omnipresent on the radio even today). Extras are reprieved from the 2009 Blu-Ray. These include a commentary track from the director, to the original featurette, theatrical trailer, and (yes!) music video of John Parr’s immortal hit single “Man in Motion.” A batch of deleted scenes (several minutes of which include Martin Balsam as Winningham’s father) and a 2009 conversation with Schumacher, looking back on the production, are also carried over.

---

Also New & Noteworthy

LETHAL WEAPON 4K UHD (109/117 mins., 1987, R; Warner): Richard Donner’s long-running “Lethal Weapon” series may have run its course by the time its fourth installment was released in 1998, but for action fans, they remain personal favorites — the pinnacle of the Joel Silver-produced, stylized “buddy pictures” that became a permanent part of our movie-going culture during the 1980s.

Of course, it helped that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, as a pair of mismatched L.A. cops, had splendid chemistry together on-screen, and also that Donner, who seemed to find his niche as an action filmmaker with the series, handled each picture with plenty of energy and distinction. Go ahead, say that two, maybe even three films in the series was enough — but you won’t find a lot of viewers who weren’t at least mildly entertained by either the first or second entries in the series at least, while parts 3 and 4 made box-office chum of its counterparts financially if nothing else (though with the star profit participation and salaries, I’m not sure the studio made a whole lot of money in the process).

The original “Weapon” arrived in the fall of 1987 and was a box-office hit for all involved. Intriguingly, this first entry in the series — written by Shane Black — is markedly different than the sequels that followed. The tone is darker and edgier (Gibson’s character, mourning the death of his wife, is outwardly suicidal), and the look of the movie, photographed by Stephen Goldblatt, also makes for an interesting contrast to the subsequent films. The movie, shot in 1.85, lacks the anamorphic, widescreen look of the following installments, but what the movie may lack in terms of the broad, sometimes cartoonish action trademarked by the sequels, it compensates for in more realistic writing and character development. Overall, it’s entertaining, though I didn’t think that it held up as well as its subsequent installment (Gary Busey’s generic “‘80s villain” also generates a few chuckles of the unintended kind these days).

Warner has taken a while to release one of their major ‘80s hits on UHD but the HDR10 presentation (1.85) is excellent with both remastered Dolby Atmos and original 2.0 Dolby Stereo (DTS MA) mixes on-hand. Both the theatrical version and Director’s Cuts are included plus two featurettes and a Digital HD code. Hopefully fans won’t have to wait as long for the sequels to receive a similar upgrade.

A MINECRAFT MOVIE 4K UHD (101 mins., 2025, PG; Warner): If you haven’t played “Minecraft” there probably isn’t much mileage to be extracted from this innocuous, “Jumanji”-ized film version of the worldwide gaming phenomenon – yet there certainly were enough takers at the box-office. In fact, “A Minecraft Movie” is the year’s reigning box-office champ – a formula mix of wan cinematic ingredients (Jack Black essentially in the Robin Williams role from “Jumanji,” top-billed Jason Momoa donning a pink jacket) with silly comedy, loads of special effects, and ample callouts to the game which tormented theater ushers from coast to coast (admittedly, there are worse things than throwing popcorn). If you’re part of the crowd that propelled the in-take with its “audience participation” elements, then Warner’s 4K UHD (2.39) will be right up your alley, featuring Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos sound, a host of featurettes and a Digital HD code.

FALLOUT Season One 4K UHD Steelbook (450 mins., 2024; Warner): Successful video game adaptations are few and far between, obviously, with Amazon’s expensive take on the popular “Fallout” RPG series a rarity since it met with widespread approval from fans. Not that the series itself is all that amazing — I had enough of the show’s juvenile violence and departed pretty quick — but the production values are high and the cast which includes Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan and “Yellowjackets” alumnus Ella Purnell is appealing also. If you’re a massive fan of the source material “Fallout” does it justice too — I just wish the tone were a little less explicit and bombastic. Warner’s superb 4K UHD is out in Steelbook form this week and offers a robust technical package including Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos sound, commentary, featurettes, interviews, animated shorts and collectible art cards in its limited-edition package.

---

Warner Blu-Ray Re-Issues

Available through Moviezyng along with the usual suspects are a host of out-of-print Warner Blu-Rays that have been newly reissued. Here’s a breakdown!

SPHERE Blu-Ray (134 mins., 1998, PG-13; Warner): Dustin Hoffman mumbles, Sharon Stone has a really bad haircut, and the final act comes across as a confused, jumbled mess. For those reasons, director Barry Levinson’s second work derived from a Michael Crichton novel doesn’t deserve to fully succeed (and isn’t nearly as good as his first Crichton adaptation, “Disclosure”), but the big surprise here is how enjoyable “Sphere” still turns out to be for much of its running time.

Levinson’s first stab at a sci-fi thriller is a talky but still compelling affair, as Chriction’s intriguing premise of time travel and a crashed spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific ocean floor provides enough intellectual meat to carry the first half. Once the three scientists (Hoffman, Stone, Samuel L.Jackson) sent to study the ship begin hallucinating and manifesting their own demons, “Sphere” starts to take a turn towards the routine, as the director’s unfamiliarity with action-filmmaking and this genre become all too evident; the editing in particular is not as crisp and effective as we usually find in a film like this, making the film’s supposedly-suspenseful climax a rather prolonged, waterlogged ordeal before the picture straightens itself out for a satisfying (if obviously reshot) finish.

Still, “Sphere” works for the most part, and its reliance on questioning things not seen but rather imagined is an intriguing notion that is to be commended. A better movie could have been made from this material – preferably one without its combative characters constantly squabbling with each other – but it’s far from the wash-out many said it would be.

Warner’s Blu-Ray serves up a serviceable reprise of its earlier format edition, with a high bit-rate VC-1 (2.35) encode, 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack, commentary, a VFX featurette, trailers and TV spots.

GRAND PRIX Blu-Ray (176 mins., 1966, PG; Warner): John Frankenheimer’s 1965 offering “Grand Prix,” meanwhile, also returns to Blu-Ray with the thrills of the new Brad Pitt “F1” film still fresh in the minds of movie-goers.

The camera work and racing sequences in this Super Panavision-shot MGM production are outstanding and look marvelous in Warner’s 1080p presentation here, but the movie sags whenever it’s not in motion. The Robert Alan Arthur script spins a weak soap opera triangle involving James Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Brian Bedford, while other drivers including Yves Montand and Antonio Sabato also find life outside the track to be nearly as turbulent. Viewers, meanwhile, might feel compelled to hit fast-forward whenever the movie’s great looking car sequences and use of the wide Panavision frame aren’t going on.

In addition to a terrific 1080p (2.35) transfer and DTS Master Audio soundtrack (highlighting Maurice Jarre’s score), Warner’s disc includes five featurettes and the original trailer.

9½ WEEKS Blu-Ray (117 mins., Unrated, 1986; Warner): Adrian Lyne directed this Zalman King production – a big-screen Cinemax After Dark movie starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger as detached New Yorkers who immediately become physically attracted to one another after a chance encounter. The duo then engage in a sexual relationship that becomes harder for them to live with – especially the kinkier it becomes.

Lyne would do fine work in his breakout hit “Fatal Attraction” just a year later, but it’s clear that “9½ Weeks” was mostly the product of King, who also co-wrote this slow-going erotic drama that generated a good amount of controversy back upon its initial release. These days, the presence of Basinger and Rourke proves to be more alluring than the tepid screenplay, which results in a tedious and emotionally uninvolving film.

Warner’s Blu-Ray (1.85) of this 1986 Producers Sales Organization release (which MGM distributed theatrically to weak box-office grosses despite some controversy over the film’s rating and sex scenes) looks aged but untouched from DNR. The DTS MA 5.1 soundtrack is merely passable, sporting a blah Jack Nitzsche score.

---

Animation Back in Print

Returning to circulation at last is Warner’s LOONEY TUNES: PLATINUM COLLECTION VOL. 1 Blu-Ray along with its immediate format follow-up.

A sparkling, well-chosen assortment of 50 Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes favorites, the three-disc Blu-Ray set – initially available in 2011 – sports a robust assortment of cartoons that, yes, have mostly been released before on physical media previously, but never in the truly outstanding, AVC encoded transfers seen here. Natural grain has been left intact, details and colors shine through like you haven’t seen before, and the cartoons have been untouched in terms of edits. Audio commentaries and isolated scores are also in abundance. Here’s what’s included:

Disc 1 focuses on the principal Looney Tunes characters: Hare Tonic, Baseball Bugs, Buccaneer Bunny, The Old Grey Hare, Rabbit Hood, 8 Ball Bunny, Rabbit of Seville, and the sublime What’s Opera Doc?, all starring Bugs; The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, A Pest in the House, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Duck Amuck, Robin Hood Daffy with Daffy Duck plus Baby Bottleneck, Kitty Kornered, Scaredy Cat and Porky Chops with Porky Pig; the vintage Old Glory; A Tale of Two Kitties and Tweetie Pie with Tweety and Sylvester; Fast and Furry-Ous and Beep Beep from the Road Runner series; Lovehorn Leghorn starring the lovable southern rooster; For Scent-Imental Reasons with Pepe Le Pew; and Speedy Gozalez’s 1955 debut. Featurettes include a look at the music of Raymond Scott (a major influence on WB cartoon composer Carl Stalling) along with an examination of how his “Powerhouse” piece was used in countless WB cartoons; a profile on the creation of What’s Opera Doc?; a featurette on Chuck Jones’ lasting legacy; and a segment on Pepe Le Pew.

Disc 2 is kicked off by six “One Shot Classics” including the immortal One Froggy Evening; The Three Little Bops; I Love to Singa; Katnip Kollege; The Dover Boys at Pimento University; and Chow Hound. Next up is “The Complete Marvin the Martian” in five classic shorts (Haredevil Hare, The Hasty Hare, Duck Dodgers, Hare-Way to the Stars, Mad as a Mars Hare); the “Complete Tasmanian Devil” (Devil May Hare, Bedevilled Rabbit, Ducking the Devil, Bill of Hare and Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare): the “Complete Witch Hazel” (Bewitched Bunny, Broom-Stick Bunny, A Witch’s Tangled Hare, A-Haunting We Will Go); the “Complete Marc Anthony” (Feed the kitty, Kiss Me Kat, Feline Frame-Up); and the “Complete Ralph Williams” (From A to Z-Z-Z-Z, Boyhood Daze). Special features on this second BD platter include a featurette on One Froggy Evening; a profile of miscellaneous “one-off” Looney Tunes shorts; and featurettes on Marvin the Martian, the Tasmanian Devil and the Ralph Phillips cartoons.

The third disc in this “Platinum Collection, Volume 1″ set is a mix of bonus cartoons and behind-the-scenes content. In addition to an extensive profile of Chuck Jones (“Chuck Amuck: The Movie,” “Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens, A Life in Animation” and “Memories of Childhood”), nine “locked in the vault” cartoons includes six shorts produced for the U.S. government (Point Rationing of Foods; Hell-Bent For Election; So Much for So Little, Orange Blossoms for Violet, A Hitch in Time,  90 Day Wondering, Drafty Isn’t It?, The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics and The Bear That Wasn’t). There are also pencil tests from Jones’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” while the bonus shorts are presented in a mix of either standard-def or high-def AVC encodes.

Also on-hand here is a late ‘60s Warner cartoon “The Door” produced by Bill Cosby and a slate of bonus cartoons that were mostly animated as part of Looney Tunes TV specials and/or as a prelude to theatrical features (Fright Before Christmas, Spaced-Out-Bunny, Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24th ½ Century, Another Froggy Evening, Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension [produced for an Australian theme park!], Superior Duck, From Hare to Eternity, Father of the Bird and Museum Scream). As with the extra Jones shorts, these bonus cartoons are all presented in AVC encodes but are a mix of high-def and (mostly) standard-def depending on the specific short.

Overall this is a terrific package from Warner Home Video, offering a nice mix of shorts and supplemental content that should appeal to hard-core Looney Tunes fans and the casual viewer alike.

Also re-pressed on disc is Warner’s second Blu-Ray retrospective, LOONEY TUNES PLATINUM COLLECTION VOLUME 2. Once again employing the sage commentary of historians like Jerry Beck, Volume 2 offers the following:

-Disc one (all shorts in HD) includes a generous assortment of cartoons starring the WB power players, including Bugs Bunny in A Wild Hare, Buckaroo Bugs, Long-Haired Hare, Ali Baba Bunny and Showbiz Bugs; several Daffy Duck shorts including The Wise Quacking Duck, What Makes Daffy Duck?, Bob Clampett’s hugely entertaining early Book Revue, and Chuck Jones’ Deduce You Say; Porky Pig in Porky in Wackyland, You Ought to Be in Pictures, and Porky in Egypt; Sylvester and/or Tweety in Back Alley Uproar, Little Red Rodent Hood, Canned Feud, Gift Wrapped, Birdy and the Beast, and Home Tweet Home; Road Runner shorts including Going! Going Gosh! and Zipping Along; Pepe Le Pew in Scent-Imental Romeo; Foghorn Leghorn in a Henery Hawk short that introduced the character; the Daffy Duck-Foghorn Leghorn team-up, The High and the Flighty; and a pair of Speedy Gonzales shorts, Tabasco Road and Mexicali Shmoes. Extra features include featurettes on Tex Avery, Elmer Fudd, Bob Clampett, black-and-white Looney Tunes shorts, and Leon Schlesinger.

-Disc two (all shorts in HD) offers several mini-anthologies, including Chuck Jones’ “Hunting Trilogy” with Elmer Fudd taking on Bugs or Daffy in Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!; the complete Nasty Canasta with the Wild West villain going up against Daffy in Drip-Along Daffy and My Little Duckaroo, and against Bugs Bunny in Barbary-Coast Bunny; Bugs Bunny vs. Cecil Turtle in Tortoise Beats Hare; Tortoise Wins by a Hare, and Rabbit Transit; early Leon Schlesinger rabbit ‘toons with Porky’s Hare Hunt, Hare-Um Scare-Um, Prest-o Change-o, and Elmer’s Candid Camera; Beaky Buzzard’s output (Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, The Bashful Buzzard, The Lion’s Busy, and Strife With Father); a pair of cartoons featuring A. Flea (An Itch in Time, A Horsefly Fleas); and several terrific “one shot classics” including Page Miss Glory, Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out, Chuck Jones’ Rocket-Bye Baby, Russian Rhapsody and Dough Ray Me-Ow. Featurettes include a look at Chuck Jones’ “Wabbit Season Twilogy”; “Looney Tunes Go Hollywood”; an archival conversation with Tex Avery; and Looney Tunes Go To War.

-Disc three is a special features platter including numerous featurettes and bonus cartoons, though all of these are presented in standard definition. Among the retrospective featurettes are Tex Avery: The King of Cartoons; Friz on Film, profiling the work of Friz Freleng; a Cartoon Network documentary, “Toonheads,” on some of the “lost” Warner Bros. animation; and a look at Private SNAFU’s animated output. Bonus shorts include numerous Avery efforts from his tenure at MGM (Blitz Wolf, Red Hot Riding Hood, Screwball Squirrel, Swing Shift Cinderella, King-Size Canary, Bad Luck Blackie, Senor Droopy, Wags to Riches, Symphony in Slang, Magical Maestro and Rock-a-Bye Bear); several Freleng MGM cartoons (Poultry Pirates, A Day at the Beach, The Captain’s Christmas, Seal Skinners and Mama’s New Hat); a variety of Leon Schlesinger animated pieces (Boko; Sinkin in the Bathtub; Crying for the Carolines, an early “Spooney Melodies” short; It’s Got Me Again, the first Oscar for the studio’s animation unit; the title sequence from the John Wayne early ‘30s western “Haunted Gold”; and Scheslinger Productions’ Christmas Party); and the complete run of Private SNAFU and Mr. Hook shorts.

In all this is another appealing anthology for Warner Bros. animation fans with the remastered HD cartoons offering appreciable gains in detail and sharpness from their standard-def counterparts, especially considering the age of the materials involved.

Finally, Ralph Bakshi’s troubled but compelling 1978 animated version of LORD OF THE RINGS (132 mins., PG; Warner) has also been newly brought back into circulation this month from Warner.

Bakshi’s film was compromised by numerous budgetary and technical challenges — elements that prevented the eagerly-anticipated film from reaching its full potential. With that being said, the finished picture isn’t without its positive attributes, including some nifty stand-alone sequences and effective use of “Rotoscoping,” which is jarringly contrasted here at times with animation that’s sometimes less than special. Bakshi’s penchant for colorful, eclectic design still occasionally shines through this 132-minute, Chris Conkling-scripted “downsizing” of the first two books in the series (it concludes abruptly after the battle at Helm’s Deep), which is further graced by a superlative Leonard Rosenman score that unquestionably ranks with the late composer’s finest works.

Unfortunately, the production issues that plagued “Lord of the Rings” ultimately deprived Bakshi from concluding his adaptation; despite robust, if not spectacular, box-office grosses, an announced sequel was kiboshed, leading Rankin-Bass to finish off Bakshi’s work with a TV-movie version of “Return of the King” in May of 1980 — that project essentially serving as an unofficial sequel to “Lord of the Rings” (and a direct follow-up to their earlier animated rendering of “The Hobbit”).

Warner’s Blu-Ray of Bakshi’s LOTR looks and sounds acceptable, though the source elements understandably vary in appearance at times. Generally speaking, the VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer at least does a capable job of preserving the project’s color scheme, while an acceptable Dolby TrueHD soundtrack supports Rosenman’s rousing score (one which Bakshi reportedly disliked — no surprise since the director originally wanted Led Zeppelin to contribute music to the soundtrack!). The audio seems a bit “brittle” at times, but one has to chalk that up to the era’s rather primitive Dolby Stereo recording, while a 30-minute profile of Bakshi, with comments on LOTR incorporated within, rounds out the package.

While I would’ve preferred seeing a proper documentary on the making of the film (its interesting backstory includes Stanley Kubrick and John Boorman’s participation in the project), this is still a fine presentation of Bakshi’s work — a movie which has its shortcomings but nevertheless remains one to be admired, particularly considering the era in which it was produced.

---

New From Warner Archive

Warner Archive’s latest releases are led off by a 4K UHD of HIGH SOCIETY ( 111 mins., 1956), the colorful musical adaptation of Philip Barry’s play “The Philadelphia Story,” reconfigured for the swank confines of Newport, Rhode Island by writer John Patrick and director Charles Walters. Of course, it’s the cast – Grace Kelly in her last movie, playing opposite Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra – that viewers most recall from this polished MGM production, along with Cole Porter’s score, which yielded the hit “True Love.”

Filmed in VistaVision, “High Society” was fully remastered from the OCN for Warner’s 4K UHD, sporting a luscious new Dolby Vision presentation (1.85) with a remixed Dolby Atmos soundtrack that offers nice separation during the musical numbers. The original mono is also included plus the featurette “Cole Porter in Hollywood: True Love,” the 1956 premiere newsreel, audio-only promo spots, trailers, and the MGM Cinemascope cartoon “Millionaire Droopy.”

One of the seminal “big business” films from the 1950s, EXECUTIVE SUITE (104 mins., 1954) serves up a “Succession” of its time, with William Holden, Fredric March and Barbara Stanwyck all vying for control of the Tredway Corporation after its President unexpectedly dies. Robert Wise helmed a witty Ernest Lehman script for this MGM release, produced by John Houseman and included here alongside an Oliver Stone (!) commentary, Tom & Jerry and Pete Smith shorts, the trailer, and a sharp looking 1080p (1.75, 2.0 DTS MA mono) transfer.

A sentimental WWII drama, THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (92 mins., 1945) is an RKO release starring Robert Young as a scarred vet who meets and marries a plain girl (Dorothy Malone) who believes she’s not attractive enough to marry. The cottage they move into ignites their actual love for one another in DeWitt Bodeen and Herman Mankiewicz’s adaptation of Arthur Wing Pinero’s play, directed by John Cromwell. Warner’s Blu-Ray (1.37 B&W, 2.0 DTS MA mono) offers the trailer and 1945 and 1953 radio adaptations of the source as well.

A film noir favorite, HIS KIND OF WOMAN (120 mins., 1951) sprinkles in some knowing comedy to go along with its film noir premise involving a gangster (Robert Mitchum) who hightails it to Mexico, only to find out he’s been set up. Along the way he meets an apparent heiress (Jane Russell) and a Hollywood actor (Vincent Price in one of his best performances) who add a tongue-in-cheek component to this John Farrow-directed effort, a bit long at two hours but highly recommended for fans of the stars. Vivian Sobchak’s commentary, a Bugs Bunny short, and the trailer are included in Warner Archive’s remastered Blu-Ray (1.37 B&W, 2.0 DTS MA mono).

Elia Kazan’s SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (124 mins., 1961) makes its debut on Blu-Ray via Warner Archive this month as well. A sensitive original story by “Picnic” author William Inge chronicles the overheated emotions between a pair of Kansas teens, here played by Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. Kazan’s body of work as a whole doesn’t have nearly the following it once did, but the star power of Wood, breaking out of “kid” roles here, and a young Beatty in his screen debut should generate ample appeal for buffs. “Elia Kazan: A Director’s Journey” is a terrific 1995 documentary on Kazan from Richard Schickel and is included here as in extra in Warner Archive’s Blu-Ray (1.85, 2.0 DTS MA mono) alongside the trailer.

Finally, THE CITADEL (112 mins., 1938) stars Robert Donat as a doctor in a Welsh mining town who finds greater fiscal gains serving the rich in London, at least until tragedy forces him to re-examine his life in director King Vidor’s highly-regarded adaptation of A.J. Cronin’s novel. Rosalind Russell, meanwhile, co-stars with Ralph Richardson and Rex Harrison among the distinguished cast. In addition to a remastered 1080p (1.37 B&W, 2.0 DTS MA mono) transfer, Warner Archive’s disc includes “The Ship That Died” and “Strange Glory” short subjects, “The Daffy Doc” cartoon and the trailer.

---

Quick Takes

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Blu-Ray (89 mins., 1988; Shout!): Profoundly sad anime based on the life of WWII survivorAkiyuki Osaka, this look at two siblings trying to remain alive and find food in an abandoned bomb shelter is widely regarded as one of the most haunting, albeit depressing, animated films ever made. It was certainly a shock to the system upon its original release as well, and now “Grave of the Fireflies” is back on Blu-Ray in a two-disc BD/DVD set sporting a 1.85 transfer, both Japanese audio and two English dubs (from 1998 and 2012), storyboards, promo videos, an interview with Roger Ebert and conversation with director Isao Takahata.

EEPHUS Blu-Ray (99 mins., 2025; Music Box): Well-acted, poignant independent drama from director Carson Lund serves up a story of wannabes and has-beens who play recreational baseball in New England, at least until their stadium is about to be demolished. A good amount of heart and character development fuels the script by Lund, Nate Fisher and Michael Rasta, hitting upon the expected beats but with sincere performances by all; Red Sox fans will appreciate the appearances of broadcaster Joe Castiglione and pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee as well. Music Box’s Blu-Ray (2.39, 5.1 DTS MA) is a Special Edition sporting commentaries, behind-the-scenes materials, bloopers, interviews and much more.

NEXT TIME: Arrow springs Stallone’s COBRA on 4K UHD! Until then, don’t forget to drop in on the official Aisle Seat Message Boards and direct any emails to our email address. Cheers everyone!