The Promise is an historical epic about the extermination of 2.5 million people in the Armenian Genocide of 1915 that deserves better than the 57,000 one-star ratings it received on IMDb.thanks to genocide deniers, bringing its overall rating to just 5.9.

The title refers in part to a promise of marriage a young Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac) makes to a girl from his village (Angela Sarafyan) in exchange for the dowry that allows him to attend medical school in Constantinople in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. In Constantinople, he falls in love with another Armenian girl (Charlotte Le Bon), one who was educated in Paris. She has returned home with an American correspondent (Christian Bale), the new relationship forming an uneasy triangle.

The title also refers to the promise of the surviving Armenian people to never forget.

The dual love story is set against the background of the breakout of World War I in which the Ottoman Empire is on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Fearing that the Armenians secretly side with Russians and their allies, the Muslim Turks systematically round up the Christian Armenian men and either force them to join the Army or go on long marches with women and children, shooting the weak ones, resettling the survivors in holding centers from which they will eventually be executed as are any Turks who help them. Whole towns of Armenian people are also executed despite well-intentioned but empty promises from Woodrow Wilson’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (James Cromwell) that help will come. It was this process that Hitler used to promulgate his “final solution,” asking in 1939, “who remembers the Armenians?”

Although 29 countries and 46 states have officially recognized the massive killings as genocide, as have most genocide scholars and historians, the Ottoman Empire’s successor Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge it.

Isaac delivers another one of his great chameleon performances, even adapting a historically accurate Armenian accent. The other actors, including Shoreh Aghdasloo as his beloved aunt, are also outstanding, but it’s Isacc’s film and he is exceptional in every scene, whether jockeying his love for the two women in the tradition of Doctor Zhivago, running from the Turks, or leading an exodus for the lucky few who escape the genocide.

The film was written and directed by Terry George, whose similar examination of the Tutsi Genocide by the ruling Hutus in Rwanda in 2004’s Hotel Rwanda resulted in three Oscar nominations including one for George for his screenplay. He had previously been nominated for In the Name of the Father about the troubles in his own Northern Ireland.

The Promise is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Marc Webb, who hasn’t made a really good film since 2009’s (500) Days of Summer comes close with Gifted, a sweet, if predictable, film about a seven-year-old child prodigy.

If McKenna Grace Mary Adler doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart as the precocious girl, then Fred, her one-eyed cat, surely will. Chris Evans co-stars as her uncle Frank, who has raised her after the death of her mother when she was six months old. Now Frank’s mother, Mary’s grandmother, played by Lindsay Duncan, wants custody of Mary so that she can mold her into the world-renowned mathematician her mother was instead of providing her with the normal childhood her uncle wants for her. Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer co-star.

Gifted is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

1976’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea was adapted from Yukio Mishima’s novel by Lewis John Carlino (The Great Santini) six years after Mishima committed ritual suicide in the wake of his failed coup to restore the Emperor of Japan to his pre-World War II supremacy.

The film which has a washed out look on the new bare-bones Shout! Blu-ray is a shocking tale of a disturbed teenager (Jonathan Kahn) who comes between his widowed mother (Sarah Miles) and her merchant marine lover (Kris Kristofferson). The best thing about it remains Sarah Miles’ Golden Globe-nominated performance.

A huge hit in its day, 1960’s Where the Boys Are follows the adventures of four college girls (Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, Yvette Mimieux, Connie Francis) on their spring break in Fort Lauderdale “where the boys are.” The boys include George Hamilton, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin.

Although it starts out as a comedy, things turn serious with myriad discussions about premarital sex, which none of the girls would really participate in because they are after all, “nice” girls. None, that is, except Mimieux, who is raped and attempts suicide.

The film was heavily promoted as Francis’ acting debut. The most popular girl singer of her day, she may have had a singing voice as good as Judy Garland’s, but she lacked the acting chops, and her acting career was over after just three more films. This one, however, remains highly watchable as an artifact of its era. Warner Archive’s Blu-ray upgrade does it full justice.

1954’s Night People has been given a beautiful 4K restoration by Kino Lorber. An Oscar nominee for Original Story, Nunnally Johnson’s film was a cold war thriller set in West Berlin with Gregory Peck in one of his better lesser-known roles as a U.S. military officer who negotiates the exchange of a kidnapped U.S. soldier for Russian spies. It predates the similar real-life events depicted in Bridge of Spies by three years. Broderick Crawford, Anita Bjork, and Rita Gam co-star.

1937’s You Only Live Once was Frtiz Lang’s second Hollywood film, after 1936’s Fury. Unlike the earlier film with its studio-imposed happy ending, this independent production, produced by Walter Wanger, is unsparing in its depiction of an ill-fated couple played by Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney.

The first film to remotely depict the real-life Bonnie and Clyde, Burnett Guffey who assisted Leon Shamroy with his stunning cinematography, would become the credited cinematographer himself on the 1967 Warren Beatty-Faye Dunaway Bonnie and Clyde. In the interim, of course, we had They Live by Night and Gun Crazy.

The beautifully restored ClassicFlix Blu-ray improves both the picture and sound of previous home video releases ten times over.

This week’s new releases include The Legend of Ben Hall and The Drowning.