This isn’t a particularly good time for political films. With real life events involving crimes in high places taking bizarre turns nearly every day, it’s almost impossible to take a contemporary political thriller seriously on the big screen. Maybe that’s the reason last year’s highly anticipated Miss Sloane flopped at the box-office and with awards voters.

Jessica Chastain gives one of her best performances as the Washington lobbyist who gives her all to the job, and then some. Her title character leaves her long-time firm in disgust when they take on a client who wants them to mount a campaign to stop a modest gun control bill from going through Congress. She’s been recruited by the other side. Her former bosses, led by Michael Stuhlbarg and Sam Waterston, backed by the gun lobby, set out to not only win the argument in Congress, but to destroy her in the process. She has the support of her new boss (Mark Strong) and the loyal staff she’s taken with her (including Douglas Booth), but it’s an uphill battle, especially after she makes vulnerable anew a victim of violence (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) she had befriended. Along the way, she’s lost her best friend (Allison Pill) to the dark side and incurred the wrath of the powerful Congressional Committee Chairman (John Lithgow) who is a tool of the gun lobby. The only bright spot in her life is the call-boy with a heart of gold (Jake Lacy) who lies to protect her at the hearing that will decide her fate.

The film was directed by John Madden, who cut his teeth on British television (Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse) before directing such films as Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. He directs Miss Sloane more in the style of his early TV work than his later, lighter films.

Miss Sloane is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

For a film set in and around musical theatre, one would expect Sing to be filled with song and it is, sort of. The problem is that there’s too much of it, and not enough. There’s too much in that it crams in too many songs in too many different styles in too short a time. There’s too little in that all we get are snippets of songs. Even when the songs are sung full out, they’re sung in the background while the action occurs somewhere else.

The plot centers around amateur acts competing for a spot in the main show, which is given short shrift at the end. It’s done much like a TV talent show, albeit with cute cartoon animals with human characteristics instead of actual human beings. It’s a shame the superb voice cast, headed by Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johanssen, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Jennifer Saunders, and Jennifer Holliday, isn’t given the opportunity to showcase their vocal talents more fully.

Sing is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Arrow Academy has released Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso on Blu-ray and DVD in both its 124-minute version which captivated the Cannes Film Festival and became the general release version, and its original 174-minute version. The 124-minute version includes an incisive commentary from Italian cinema expert critic Millicent Marcus with input from Tornatore. The beloved 1988 film, released in the U.S. in 1990, was a tribute to the glory days of movies and cavernous single screen movie theatres with indelible performances by Philippe Noiret as Alfredo the projectionist and 8-year-old Salvatore Cascio as Toto, his young apprentice. Extras include a tribute to Tornatore and a making-of documentary featuring Noiret and Cascio, but not Marco Leonardi and Jacques Perrin who play older versions of Toto.

Hal Ashby won an Oscar for editing In the Heat of the Night before becoming one of the seminal directors of the 1970s. The seven films he made during that decade would define it in cinematic terms as much as the work of anyone. From The Landlord to Harold and Maude to The Last Detail to Shampoo to Bound for Glory to Coming Home to Being There, his films were as consistently as good as those of Altman, Coppola, Scorsese, and Spielberg, but unlike those dynamos, his career essentially ended with the decade. Although he made four more films before dying at 59 in 1988, none of those films approached the greatness of his 1970s output.

Criterion has released a beautifully restored edition of Being There taken from a 4K transfer supervised by Caleb Deschanel, complete with a myriad of extras including a making-of documentary with members of the production team as well as archival footage of Ashby and star Peter Sellers.

The film has renewed relevance in light-of the current political atmosphere in Washington. Sellers plays a simple-minded gardener whose “simple brand of wisdom,” learned from a life spent in front of the TV, is taken for genius by the Washington politicians who want to run him for president. Fantasy then, reality now. Melvyn Douglas earned a much-deserved second Oscar as the powerful financier who befriends him.

Olive Films has released a new-to-Blu-ray version of Jules Dassin’s 1962 film Phaedra. Made between Never on Sunday and Topkapi, the two hit films Dassin made with wife Melina Mercouri, this one features Mercouri in a less sympathetic role as the wife of a Greek shipping magnate (Raf Vallone) who has an affair with his son from an earlier marriage (Anthony Perkins). The black-and-white cinematography and Oscar-nominated costumes are the film’s real stars.

Acorn Media has released The Brokenwood Mysteries Set 3 on Blu-ray and standard DVD. The New Zealand based mystery series returns with four more contemporary mysteries that compare favorably with the best contemporary British examples of the genre including George Gently and Vera.

BBC has issued restored DVDs of both The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Bradley had a one-season run in the U.K. in 1998 and the U.S. in 1999. It compares favorably to the more recent Australian series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries with Diana Rigg in splendid form as an amateur sleuth in the 1920s, assisted by her loyal chauffeur, played by Neil Dudgeon, now the star of Midsomer Murders.

Lynley, which had a six-season run in the U.K. from 2001-2007 and in the U.S. from 2002-2008, is very much in the vein of recent British detective series including the previously mentioned Inspector Morse, George Gently, and Vera. Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small star as the inspector and his sergeant. The series is being reissued in three sets. The first two have already been released, with the third scheduled for an August 1st release.

This week’s new releases include A Monster Calls and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.