Richard Linklater was among the first and most successful of directors to emerge from the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s, so why aren’t his films more readily available on DVD and Blu-ray?

Linklater’s latest film, Bernie, is the first to get a Blu-ray release out of the gate since A Scanner Darkly five years ago. 1993’s Dazed and Confused is his only other film to get Blu-ray treatment and that not until last year. SubUrbia has never been released on DVD; the DVD of the highly successful School of Rock is out of print; his Oscar nominated Before Sunset and its forerunner Before Sunrise have yet to get a Blu-ray upgrade and his last released film, Me & Orson Welles, was barely released on standard DVD.

Fourteen years in gestation, Bernie is one of Linklater’s most accomplished films. Telling the true story of an East Texas good old boy assistant funeral director who murders his elderly benefactress, Bernie is laced with Linklater’s comic genius and performed by Jack Black at his most accomplished. Black, a very funny guy, is an actor first and a comic second, which works to the film’s advantage. He is also a very talented singer whose repertoire here ranges from hymns (“Amazing Grace”) to Broadway ballads (“I’ve Never Been in Love Before”) and showstoppers (“76 Trombones”). If the real-life Bernie Tiede was half as charismatic as Black plays him, it’s no wonder most of the town of Carthage refused to believe he was guilty of murder even after he confessed.

As the elderly object of Black’s affections, Shirley MacLaine is properly stoic and standoffish as the town’s richest widow, but she isn’t particularly mean which sort of underscores the argument that her character wasn’t very nice.

Matthew McConnaughey is effective as the local D.A. who successfully petitions a judge to move Bernie’s trial to a more prosecution friendly town whose residents, one Carthage gossip advises, have more tattoos than teeth. The gossips, amateur actors culled from colorful locals, are to a person, a terrific bunch of scene stealers. Included as an extra, we get to see many of the gossips’ auditions, most of which are a hoot.

Bernie is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The most acclaimed film of 2011, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation has to date won fifty-five international awards including a Best Foreign Film Oscar. The complex Iranian film succeeds on many levels – from its superb writing (by Farhadi) and acting to its fascinating look at a culture that is either unknown or misunderstood by most of the world.

The story concerns a couple who undergo a trial separation before deciding on reconciliation or divorce. The wife wants to leave the country so she can open doors for her daughter, while her husband refuses to leave his Alzheimer’s afflicted father, A secondary storyline involves the father’s part-time caregiver, her conservative husband and a suspected theft. The film delves into the clash of cultures within Iranian culture as well as the intricacies of its legal system.

The film is wholly absorbing even if it suffers a bit from unresolved ending. After all the other storylines have been concluded, we’re still left with the central issue of whether the girl will go with the mother or stay with the father. The court leaves the decision up to her. The film ends before we are told her decision and the audience is left to its own interpretation.

A Separation is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Olive continues its releases of previously unreleased Republic Films on Blu-ray.

Leo McCarey’s controversial 1952 film, My Son John, is not the warm, fuzzy comedy-drama you would expect from the director of Ruggles of Red Gap; Make Way for Tomorrow; The Awful Truth; Going My Way; The Bells of St. Maruy’s or An Affair to Remember. Rather, it is a shrill, anti-Communist treatise that is so bad it’s good in a jaw-dropping way.

Robert Walker, in his last role, plays a dupe of the Commies whose small town devout Catholic parents, Helen Hayes and Dean Jagger, have no idea their son has turned until FBI agent Van Heflin lets them in on the secret. Hayes, better known at the time for her stage roles than her screen work was nevertheless a subtle actress on screen until this. Her moans, her quirks, her sighs are screamed to the third balcony, and so are those of Jagger, whose best performances have otherwise been subtle as well. The film’s most notorious scene has Jagger make Walker swear on the family bible that he is not a Communist, and then, realizing if he were he would lie, takes the bible and hits him on the head with it.

Walker’s sudden death of a heart attack at 32 occurred before completion of the film. Several scenes of the actor were adapted from his last completed film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

Despite the film’s general drubbing by the critics, McCarey was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Story. Nevertheless the once prolific McCarey never really recovered from the critical assault and would make only three more films.

One of the least known films to win an Oscar for Best Song, Mitchell Leisen’s Captain Carey, U.S.A. from 1950 is best known as the source of the now standard “Mona Lisa”, which is used imaginatively in the film about the World War II Italian resistance and its late forties aftermath. Alan Ladd stars as the American spy they hide until someone betrays him and them, resulting in the execution of eighteen men. The song is sung only once in Italian, but played throughout as an instrumental. The English lyrics are never heard.

Part police procedural, part rogue cop exposé, Don Siegel’s 1954 film, Private Hell 36 stars Steve Cochran as a cop who steals money from the recovered funds of a robbery in order to provide singer-girlfriend Ida Lupino with trinkets. Howard Duff is Cochran’s honest partner, Dorothy Malone is his wife and Dean Jagger is the police captain in this fairly exciting thriller.

This week’s new DVD releases include the second season of Boardwalk Empire and the first season of Homeland.