It's frustrating, all these lavish DVD packages of movies that weren't good to begin with.
But that's not a problem with the first-ever Blu-ray release of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 masterpiece "Apocalypse Now." In this overwhelming set (three discs and a superbly designed booklet), a great movie gets the comprehensive handling it deserves.
The result is the best home video release of the year. "Apocalypse Now" is, of course, one of the great war movies, unfolding in a Vietnam that looks real but is steeped in dreamlike atmosphere and the madness of combat.
The plot roughly follows that of Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella "Heart of Darkness" (it was set in Africa): An Army special ops officer (Martin Sheen) is sent upriver on a patrol boat into Cambodia to assassinate the renegade Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando).
This package offers the original theatrical cut and "Apocalypse Now Redux," the decade-old expanded version.
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Ed Burns, the director of "The Brothers McMullen" and "She's the One," writes and directs the small romantic comedy "Nice Guy Johnny," which came out on home video Tuesday. He also plays the womanizing uncle of a young man, giving the nephew (played by Matt Bush) some unasked-for and not necessarily sage romantic advice.
Stephen Sondheim's "lost" TV musical, "Evening Primrose," makes its home video debut this week. Created especially for television, it aired only once, on "ABC Stage 67." Based on a short story by John Collier, the black-and-white musical stars Anthony Perkins as a poet who can't cope with the demands of the outside world and decides to live inside a department store - where, when night falls, he discovers a bunch of people who had the same idea and have lived there for years.
"Lake Placid 3" is a campy, sexy, gory story about insatiable people - and crocodiles. Colin Ferguson and Yancy Butler co-star in the unrated film that contains both graphic violence and full frontal nudity.
"Mutants" (in French with subtitles) is a zombie movie in which a woman is torn between life and love when the man she craves is infected.
Also released Tuesday
"Dancing Across Borders"
"The Girl Who Played With Fire"
"Sex and the City 2"
"Wild Grass"
"Winter's Bone"
"South of the Border"
"King of the Avenue"
"Last Day of Summer"
"Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child"
