Dunkirk is one of the year’s most acclaimed films. Before Christmas, it had already earned 99 nominations and 18 wins from various awards bodies. Critically, it is the best reviewed war movie since Saving Private Ryan nearly twenty years ago. On a technical level, it is an outstanding film. Dramatically, however, like most of writer-director Christopher Nolan’s films, although it contains several scenes of great power, it seems to be directed at arms-length with an avoidance of sloppy sentimentality that is both refreshing and off-putting.

The film is about the evacuation of nearly 400,000 British, Belgian, and French Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between May 26 and June 4, 1940. The enormous undertaking was conducted not only by ship, but by small vessels that crossed the channel from England while the British Royal Air Force engaged the German Luftwaffe by air overhead. Nolan’s film tells the story from three perspectives, that of a British foot solider (Fionn Whitehead), a pilot (Tom Hardy), and the owner of a pleasure craft (Mark Rylance) who crosses the Channel with his teenage son (Tom Glynn-Carney) and his son’s friend (Barry Keoghan). The narrative switches back and forth between the three storylines.

Of the three, Hardy’s storyline is the weakest dramatically with the actor’s face covered by a flight helmet and oxygen mask throughout most of the film. Whitehead is mostly an observer who interacts with most of the film’s cast who come and go throughout the film. They include Kenneth Branagh, James D’Arcy, Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy, and Jack Lowden. We do, however, get to know Rylance, Glynn-Carney, and Koeghan a little better, making their storyline more compelling. Koeghan, a Film Independent nominee this year for his supporting role in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is especially good as a frightened, but brave, 17-year-old. The off-the-cuff conclusion of his story, which makes the cover story of the local newspaper, is a prime example of what I mean by Nolan downplaying a storyline that would have been played up by most directors which he downplays to avoid sloppy sentimentality. That’s refreshing, but it’s also off-putting considering the emotional investment the audience has in his story.

Dunkirk is available on Blu-ray, standard DVD as well as 4K UHD BD.

Twenty years after Judi Dench became an unexpected film star at the age of 63 with her portrayal of Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, for which she received her first of seven Oscar nominations to date, Dame Judi is back playing the British monarch in Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul, which begins during her diamond jubilee in 1897, more than thirty years after the events chronicled in Mrs. Brown.

Old and tired, surrounded by sycophants, Victoria’s life is brightened by the arrival of Abdul, an Indian servant everyone assumes is Hindu, although he is, in fact, Muslim. The two strike up a friendship that further alienates the sycophants, which can come to no good, but even as she warns him to leave before she dies, and they throw him out, he stays by her side. With the tragic deaths of the only three sympathetic characters in the film, it’s difficult to see why this film is classified as a comedy, although there are certainly comic moments in it, most of them on display in the misleading trailer.

Frears, who directed Dench to her last Oscar nomination, for Philomena, derives excellent performances from Dench and Bollywood star Ali Fazal, with Dench on track for a possible eighth Oscar nomination. The stand-out in the supporting cast is Adeel Akhtar as Abdul’s friend Mohammad, with the late Tom Pigott-Smith as Victoria’s palace aide; Eddie Izzard as the future king, Edward VII; Michael Gambon as Prime Minister Salisbury; Paul Higgins as Victoria’s physician; and Olivia Williams as Lady Churchill, left mostly to scowl.

Victoria & Abdul is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

A nice surprise, David Gordon Green’s Stronger is a low-key film that presents its Boston Marathon bomb survivor, Jeff Bauman, not as a larger-than-life hero, but as an ordinary guy who finds himself in a tough situation. In fact, Jake Gyllenhall, in easily his finest performance, plays him as a jerk who, when he finally wises up, proves to be the hero everyone thinks he is.

Bauman is alluded to as the guy who put the chicken on the rotisserie at Costco, whose lower middle-class family is surprised to learn that Costco had him covered with insurance that would pay for his care. He lives in a walk-up apartment with his overbearing alcoholic mother, played to the hilt by Miranda Richardson. He was at the finish line of the marathon to support his former girlfriend, with whom he had broken up for the third time a month earlier. Played by the remarkable Tatiana Maslany, she will be his saving grace.

The performances of Maslany and Richardson are almost as good as Gyllenhaal’s, and the entire supporting cast, comprised mostly of local Boston actors, is excellent. Carlos Sanz is outstanding in his 11th hour appearance as Carlos, the man in the cowboy hat who helped rescue Bauman. His backstory will move you to tears.

Gyllenhaal, who hasn’t had an Oscar nomination since 2005’s Brokeback Mountain and who should have gotten one for 2014’s Nightcrawler, was an early favorite to finally receive another one this year, but the film’s meager box office will likely keep that from happening.

Overall all, though, the film from the director of George Washington, has more light moments than Victoria & Abdul.

Stronger is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Every year, of course, has early Oscar favorites who fail to make the cut. One of the most famous was Lillian Gish, who, after winning the National Board of Review award for Best Actress of 1987 for The Whales of August in a tie with Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, was a highly anticipated Oscar nominee that year. The film in which she starred with Bette Davis, Vincent Price, and Ann Southern, now out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, ended up with just one nomination, for Sothern in support.

Previously available on a no-frills DVD release from MGM, the Kino Lorber Blu-ray features a brand-new commentary by producer Mike Kaplan, moderated by film critic Stephen Farber and heretofore unseen vintage in-depth interviews with the film’s four stars and featured player Harry Carey Jr. made during the fifth week of the eight-week film shoot. Kaplan, who first worked with Gish on publicity for the 1967 film The Comedians, tried for twenty years to find a suitable starring vehicle for Gish, then had to convince the money men that people would go to see a film starring the silent screen legend and post-stroke Davis as elderly sisters. Gish was 92 during filming, 94 by the time the film was released. Davis was 79. Sothern, who played their childhood friend, was 78. Price, who played their neighbor on the make, was 76. Carey, who played their handyman was 66. They remain the oldest star cast ever seen in a major Hollywood film.

This week’s new releases include The Mountain Between Us and Flatliners.