Detroit is the latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal who won Oscars for 2009’s intense Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, and additional nominations for 2012’s equally intense hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty.

This time they’ve turned their attention to the race riots in the mostly black Victoria Park section of Detroit fifty years ago in July 1967. The centerpiece of the film is the Algiers Motel incident in which one of the occupants of the motel shot a toy pistol out of his window which caused the National Guard, the Detroit police, and the Michigan State police to swarm the building with the Detroit police in charge of the investigation.

At the motel are resident Carl (Jason Mitchell), the guy with the toy pistol, and his friends Lee (Peyton Alex Smith) and Aubrey (Nathan Davis Jr.); Larry (Algee Smith) and Fred (Jacob Latimore), band members of the Dramatics; Greene (Anthony Mackie), a recently discharged Vietnam veteran and Julie (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever), two white girls visiting from Ohio. Bursting into the motel are three racist white cops (Will Poulter, Ben O’Toole, Jack Raynor) and a black security guard (John Boyega), along with two national guardsmen.

Before the police interrogation at the motel is over, all the occupants will have been terrorized and three of them will have been murdered by the police. Eventually the three racist policemen will be arrested and tried for their crimes. Although acquitted, none of them were ever returned to active duty.

All the actors in the film are fine, but the standouts are Algee Smith and Will Poulter. Smith is especially moving as the young singer with a promising career who gives it all up to lead a choir at a small neighborhood church so he doesn’t have to perform in downtown clubs which the police are constantly harassing. Poulter, on the other hand, plays to perfection the personification of pure evil.

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

All things must come to an end and after eleven years, eight sets, and 25 episodes of the British detective series, George Gently: Series 8 brings the series that began with a storyline set in the mid-1960s to a close at the end of 1970.

Martin Shaw as the intrepid inspector and Lee Ingleby as his sergeant, who have been with the series from its inception, and Lisa McGrillis as their next-in-line, who has been with the series since 2014, go out in high style with the last two episodes examining issues that are still with us all these years later.

The first episode is about sexual harassment which figures into the murder of a man whose body is found in a chemical waste tank, years after his wife has been convicted of his murder. The second episode is about high government corruption and collusion with foreign entities.

George Gently: Series 8 is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Cohen Media, which has previously given us superb 4K restorations of Merchant and Ivory’s Howards End and Maurice on Blu-ray, have now added Heat and Dust to their Blu-ray collection.

The first international success for producer Ismael Merchant and director James Ivory, 1983’s Heat and Dust gives us two stories in one as the narrative moves back and forth between the 1920s world of the British Raj in India and the more socially free world of India in 1982.

Julie Christie stars as the modern Englishwoman in India investigating the life of her late great-aunt (Greta Scacchi) who was married to a British civil servant (Christopher Cazenove) and has an affair with the local Nawab (Shashi Kapoor) which leads to her banishment. Nickolas Grace co-stars as the elderly gent who provides Christie with the details of her aunt’s life. There are hints of reincarnation and a superb camera shot of Christie looking through a window in Scacchi’s home in banishment where the two women almost become one.

Extras include the commentary from the previous DVD provided by Merchant, Scacchi, and Grace.

Kino Lorber continues to provide Blu-ray upgrades of oft-forgotten films, including the newly released China Moon and Legend of the Lost.

China Moon was the first of four films to date that were directed by John Bailey. Bailey, the current president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the Oscars, is better known as a cinematographer. Films on which he has been director of photography include Without a Trace, The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, As Good as It Gets, and The Way Way Back. He was asked to direct China Moon by Kevin Costner, who was originally supposed to play the lead. Costner dropped out and was replaced by Ed Harris, who has one of his best lead roles here opposite Madeleine Stowe and Benicio Del Toro.

A modern noir, the film revolves around Central Florida policeman Harris and his partner, Del Toro, who are swept into the world of femme fatale Stowe and her abusive husband, Charles Dance. There are twists and turns galore in this highly satisfying mystery that weaves its way to a shocking conclusion with more last-minute surprises than any film since the original 1957 version of Witness for the Prosecution.

Filmed in late 1990 and early 1991, the film was not released until 1994 due to Orion Studios’ bankruptcy. It’s well worth catching up with.

Legend of the Lost is a bit of an oddity. It was filmed in Libya by John Wayne’s production company, Batjac, putting Wayne, Sophia Loren, and Rossano Brazzi in one of the screen’s strangest triangles. The hackneyed story of the search for buried treasure in the Sahara Desert is saved somewhat by Jack Cardiff’s magnificent cinematography, eclipsed only by Lawrence of Arabia desert landscapes which didn’t appear until five years later.

This week’s new releases include Dunkirk and Victoria & Abdul.