This week's new DVD releases take on a wide range of topics: Ang Lee offers a tragic love story in Brokeback Mountain, Leni Riefenstahl documents the rise of the Nazi party in the disturbingly effective Triumph of the Will, and an Iranian police detective contemplates mortality in Hassan Hedaiat's Twilight.
1. Brokeback Mountain
Even though it is still out in theaters, Focus Features has rushed Ang Lee's acclaimed film to DVD. Sure, it didn't win Best Picture, but never let the Academy be an arbiter of taste. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal give accomplished performances as repressed ranchers in love.
2. Triumph of the Will
Leni Riefenstahl documentary of the Sixth Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg is a frightening example of powerful film propaganda. Featuring a cast of thousands as well as, of course, Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess, Goering and other top party officials, the film's sweeping style was later used by American director Frank Capra for his war documentaries.
3. Twilight
Hassan Hedaiat's haunting drama, gorgeously shot by cinematographer Hossein Maleki, stars legendary Iranian cinema icon Ezzatollah Entezami as an aging, lonely police inspector unraveling a complicated murder and coming to terms with his own mortality.4. Goyokin
Former samurai Magobei is forced to return to his sword-dueling ways when the gang he once ran with puts an innocent woman in danger in Hideo Gosha's 1969 film. Coming to this woman's defense, Magobei is tortured and made to pay for abandoning his people in the past.