The Capture (1950/Film Detective)/Edge Of Darkness (1943*)/King Richard (2021/Warner Blu-ray)/Some Came Running (1958/MGM*)/Straight Time (1978/all Warner Archive Blu-rays)/A Walk In The Sun (1945/MVD/Kit Parker Blu-ray)

Picture: B/B/B-/B/B/B- Sound: C+/C+/B/B-/B-/C+ Extras: B/C/C/C+/B/B- Films: C+/B-/C+/B+/B+/C+

PLEASE NOTE: The Edge Of Darkness, Some Came Running and Straight Time Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

As awards season heat up, here's a group of classic dramas and one new entry...

John Sturges's The Capture (1950) is a Western that also wants to be a drama and has some Noir traces. Very slow to start, Lew Ayers plays a man on the run from the police after he is accused of killing a man and happens to fall for his widow (Teresa Wright) who is not sure who did the killing. The film eventually adapts a flashback strategy with its mystery and melodrama that even takes this out of the Western genre, but that does not make the film exceed it despite Niven Busch's ambitious screenplay.

The problem is they try to do too much here and it catches up with them, plus Busch's writing trajectory was increasingly a little off and not working as well as it could (from The Postman Always Rings Twice working just well enough to Duel In The Sun not delivering like it could have to this. This also leads us to seeing and reliving moments form too many previous films, but it came out when Westerns were about to go into transition, so it fits into that part of its history. That makes it worth a look for those interested in it or its talent in front of and/or behind the camera.

Extras include an illustrated booklet with the essay Not Quite Picture Perfect by Don Stradley, while the disc adds two featurettes (Teresa Wright: The Actress Next Door and John Sturges: Man Of Action) and a feature-length audio commentary track by C. Courtney Joyner and Western genre fan Henry Parke (uncredited on or inside the package text) who leave no stone unturned in discussing everything Westerns.

Lewis Milestone's Edge Of Darkness (1943) isn an excellent piece of anti-Nazi propaganda made by Warner Bros. and the Brothers Warner, who knew how to go after the Axis Powers like no other studio in the world. Though I could do with out the God (read Allies) versus 'Godless' (read Nazis) dichotomy, I am for the rest of it, though lead Errol Flynn (who fights Nazis here) has been sometimes considered a supporter of Fascism in Europe (unconfirmed and still debated,) he is convincing here as part of the team that is ready to take them on.

In the smart Robert Rossen screenplay, this is set in Norway occupied by Nazis on the kill and does everything they can to defend themselves and never, ever let up, no matter the bloodshed or sacrifice. Well shot and produced with some seriously dramatic music by the great Franz Waxman, supported by a solid cast that includes Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Nancy Coleman, Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon and Charles Dingle, it is well rounded and in light of recent events, suddenly more relevant than ever.

Extras include the Original Theatrical Trailer, the live-action, monochrome Warner short Gun To Gun and black and white Warner animated classic To Duck... Or Not To Duck.

Renaldo Marcus Green's King Richard (2021) is not any kind of Shakespeare film, but a more comical than necessary semi-biopic of how Richard Williams (Will Smith) worked to give his two daughters Venus and Serena a chance to play the game of tennis as children at a time when there were hardly any players of color in the game in the United States and event he world. Running two hours, 25 minutes, thew film could have been a serious, smart character study of their story and the problematic situations they faced before the sisters became worldwide tennis icons.

Unfortunately, it decides to be too comical to begin with, is way too predictable in its narrative and is stuck in a comic mode too long and often to tell us much more than we did not already know. Smith as the title father would seem a good choice, but the big problem is that he never transforms into the man like he did in Mann's Ali and the result seems like a stand-up comedy Oscar-baiting exercise that is more like an elongated skit than a seriously good or convincing performance. Having seen Mr. Williams over the decades and hear him speak on occasion, Smith misses the mark throughout and the film disappoints overall.

The makers behind the camera and the screenplay obviously has a love for all the Williams Family, but that is not the same as making a palpable film on them and this also sadly becomes a huge missed opportunity for all in what had to potential to be one of the year's best films.

Extras include Digital Code, while the disc adds Deleted Scenes, plus the featurettes: Following the Plan - The Making of King Richard, Becoming Richard and Champions On Screen.

Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (1958) is a classic and surprising turn from a director best known for his Musicals and how he innovated the genre, but he tried other kinds of subject material and this dark melodrama with slight Noir overtones (this was the last year of the original Film Noir era) with Frank Sinatra as a soldier waking up on a bus that his fellow solders put him on after a heavy night of drinking. Unfortunately, they sent him back to the hometown he has been avoiding and enlisted to get out of, a private hell of small town greed, vanity, small-mindedness and criminality hiding behind money, lies, religion, tradition, a phony sense of family and ugly secrets, some of which are open ones. How times never change.

He meets a wild gal on the bus (Shirley MacLaine in a breakthrough role) as he check into a hotel to avoid his family and word gets around fast that he's back. Running (no pun intended) 136 minutes and not wasting any of that time to tell this tale the long way (based on a book by the author of From Here To Eternity, the feature-film version of which was Sinatra's comeback) is one of the great, early widescreen films to show that scope was not a gimmick and how you could say and show new things with it. An early such triumph like Cukor's 1954 A Star Is Born remake with Judy Garland, the acting style (authentic for the time as it is) might throw some people off, but the film is as dead on about its subject matter as it was at the time and makes the big statement, even if some miss it. It is not pretty, but its very, very true.

The supporting cast including Dean Martin, Arthur Kennedy, Martha Hyer, Nancy Gates, Leora Dana, Larry Gates and uncredited turns by Marion Ross and William Schallert keeps the phony feel of the town palpable. One of the great portraits of the dark side of the U.S., this is highly recommended.

Extras include the Original Theatrical Trailer and featurette: The Story of Some Came Running with some great scholarly interviews, et al.

Sometimes a great actor makes a great film and no matter how amazing the work is, it gets lost in the shuffle of other films. Not a big hit in its time (an early victim, along with Scorsese's New York, New York a year earlier) of the massive financial success of the first Star Wars pushing executives to look for megahits instead of also supporting mature, adult, intelligent films, Dustin Hoffman gives an amazing performance in Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time (1978) as a convict who is done serving his time.

He is given few options to stop being a criminal, but some temptations are too much and he is very set in his ways, so this deep, dark character study remains as relevant as ever, yet sadly is also a portrait of 'the good old days' of crime in what we might now consider the analog era. Max Dembo (Hoffman) has a new parole officer (the always amazing M. Emmet Walsh) that he is not happy with, falls for a beautiful gal (Teresa Russel in her early prime) at the unemployment office and makes the final mistake of visiting some old partners in crime (Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton) that just dooms him. But he'll have his version of some fun first, even if it puts him in jeopardy.

Produced by the too-brief-lived First Artists in conjunction with Warner Bros., the film holds up extraordinarily well, everyone involved (including newcomers like Kathy Bates!) is working in top, prime, strong form and melding together extraordinarily well. This is at least a minor classic of 1970s cinema and though Hoffman admits his private life was in bad shape when made, he loves the film and rightly so, recognizing some of his most amazing work and part of the larger body that adds up to one fo the greatest acting careers in cinema history.

No, it is not always easy to watch and not for children by any means, but the Alvin Sargent-Edward Bunker-Jeffrey Boam (before his writing got too silly in later films) screenplay is smart, realistic, fearless and even brutal. Now, the film has been fully restored, preserved and is a gem with all kinds of curios that should lead to it being widely rediscovered (if we are lucky) and any serious film fan should consider it a must-see.

Extras include the Original Theatrical Trailer, vintage featurette Straight Time: He Wrote It For Criminals and an outstanding, feature-length audio commentary track by Grosbard and Hoffman.

Lewis Milestone's A Walk In The Sun (1945) has been upgraded to Blu-ray and we covered the DVD many years ago at this link:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9296/Far+Cry+(2008/Vivendi+DVD)+++A+Walk+In+The

I still think the film holds up for what does work and am glad it got this upgrade because all classic films deserve them. Playback performance is improved as expected, considering how old the DVD is. Extras repeat an hour-long interview with the great Norman Lloyd, who only just passed away a little while before this Blu-ray (!) and this version adds a DVD edition, plus a WWII Fox Movietone News newsreel piece, Zanuck Goes To War featurette and an uncut version of The Battle Of San Pietro.

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfers on Capture, Darkness and Sun can show the age of the materials used, but these new editions are still far superior transfer to all previous releases of the films on home video. Sun has a few more rough spots than expected and Capture (originally issued by RKO, they apparently did not retain the right to it) a few less, but they are almost orphan films, so looking this good in their cases is impressive.

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on all three films are about as good as they are going to sound for their age, especially Darkness, as you can only do so much for this older optical mono sound. Cheers to all who worked so hard to save these films.

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Time is also a great restoration and looks like it was newly struck with its detail and depth. Director of Photography Owen Roizman, A.S.C. (The French Connection, the original Stepford Wives, Network, The Exorcist, Vision Quest) does some of his most effective work here, adding to the impact of the already stark narrative.

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is also strong and almost sounds like it could have been in stereo, warm and as bass-rich as it turned out. David Shire (Coppola's The Conversation, Drive, He Said, Fincher's Zodiac, the original Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, All The President's Men, Romero's Monkey Shines, Only When I Laugh) also turns in one of his most effective music scores. The combination is great and the best way to see the fum outside of a brand new 35mm film print.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Running was shot in the original CinemaScope format, so it can have some distortion and detail issues, but its use of color (MetroColor that looks so good, many think it is Technicolor!) is as superior as its composition, which is no wonder why Martin Scorsese considers it one of the ten best widescreen films ever made. Director of Photography William H. Daniels, A.S.C., started lensing films in the silent era (Stroheim's Greed, Foolish Wives, Merry-Go-Round) well into the sound era (Anna Christie, Grand Hotel, Queen Kelly, Dinner At Eight, Ninotchka) soon proved he could also excel in large frame formats (VistaVision on Strategic Air Command,) full color and widescreen scope films like this, How The West Was Won and several Frank Sinatra hits. The restoration results here are very impressive.

Though the film was issued at its best in 4-track magnetic stereo sound, that soundmaster is missing and hopefully not lost, so Warner Archive only had the optical monophonic version that is presented here in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound. Its fine for what it is, but you can tell some scenes were designed for stereo.

Finally, the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on King is the only HD shoot on the list and in this format, has color range limits and some motion blur, though that might not be an issue on the also-issued 4K edition we hope to cover down the line. As it stands, compositions are not bad, but not as great as they could be. The sound is Dolby Atmos 11.1 (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) that is dialogue-based and only kicks in so much, but you still lose a little bit in the mixdown, so it is the best way to hear it.

To order either of the Edge Of Darkness, Some Came Running and/or Straight Time Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20

- Nicholas Sheffo