BlacKkKlansman is easily Spike Lee’s best film in decades. Taken from Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir of his experiences as an undercover black detective in Colorado Springs, who in 1979 posed as a white man in order to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan, the action in the film is moved back to 1972 to encompass Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, allegedly supported by the Klan.

John David Washington, who made his film debut as a six-year-old in Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X starring his father, Denzel Washington, has the lead as Stallworth. Adam Driver co-stars as his partner, a Jewish detective who stands in for Stallworth when he meets with the Klan, not only pretending to be a black cop pretending to be white but having to hide his own heritage from the dangerous, hate-filled Klan. Both actors turn in excellent performances, making this riveting drama totally believable from start to finish.

Robert John Burke as Stallworth’s supportive police chief and Topher Grace as the Klan’s Grand Wizard are also outstanding in their roles. The one scene that doesn’t seem real is the penultimate one in which Stallworth reveals himself to Duke on the phone. Factchecking reveals that this never happened. Duke didn’t learn until 2006 that he had been duped.

Although the film does have a few amusing scenes, it is not a comedy even though it was marketed as such.

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

Disney has released two new films on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The sequel to The Incredibles, the 2004 Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature, has arrived and is just as much fun as the original.

Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter, reprising their roles from the originals along with Samuel L. Jackson in a reduced role, head the voice cast of Incredibles 2 in which Hunter’s character takes on the bad guys while Nelson’s character stays home with kids for most of the film. Catherine Keener has a prominent voice role in support.

Personally, I prefer last year’s dramatic film about the life of AA Milne’s son who was the inspiration for the Christopher Robin books entitled Goodbye Christopher Robin. It was directed by Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn). Disney’s mixed animated, live-action Christopher Robin, which is about the fictional character grown up, was directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland). The irony here is that the real-life model for the character grew to hate his image, the fictional one in Disney’s film embraces it. Consequently, the Disney film took in $99 million at the box office whereas the more realistic film took in less than $2 million.

The British Independent Film Awards have embraced Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here in a big way, nominating it for eight 2018 awards including Best Film, Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Director (Ramsay), Screenplay (also Ramsay), Cinematography, Editing, Music, and Sound. A riveting film, thanks mainly to Phoenix’s grab-them-by-the-throat-and-don’t-let-go performance, this is one that you can’t take your eyes off of for even a second. What, though, is it about?

If you watch it cold you may think that it is about a suicidal hitman. It is, sort of, but Phoenix’s character is supposed to be a traumatized former soldier suffering from PTSD, which is quickly becoming the movies’ favorite go-to mental disease. The upshot, though, is that he only kills bad guys. He is paid to rescue young girls who have been kidnapped and, in some instances, sold to human traffickers.

Although the film has a large supporting cast, it is pretty much a one-man showcase for Phoenix. Most prominent in support are veteran character actress Judith Roberts (Eraserhead) as his mother and newcomer Ekitarena Samsonov as the girl he saves who saves him.

New Blu-ray upgrades include Art School Confidential, The Princess Bride, and three vintage Universal comedies.

Art School Confidential is from Terry Zwigoff, the irreverent director of 2001’s Ghost World and 2003’s Bad Santa. It stars Max Minghella, son of Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) who plays the impressionable art student in a fictitious school patterned after Brooklyn’s prestigious Pratt Institute. There he becomes involved with a gallery of artistes and pretentious wannabes, one of whom may be a serial killer. Among them are John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Matt Keeslar, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston, and Adam Scott. Sophia Myles is the object of his affection. It’s all in great fun, though you may not like the ending.

The Princess Bride is Rob Reiner’s enduring live-action fairy tale starring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright as the young lovers in the book read to a sick kid (Fred Savage) by his grandfather (Peter Falk). Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, and André the Giant co-star. The Criterion release includes extras both archival and new.

The three vintage Universal releases are Tammy and the Bachelor, Man’s Favorite Sport? , and Strange Bedfellows.

1957’s Tammy and the Bachelor remains charming as ever with Debbie Reynolds in one of her best remembered roles as the backwoods girl who charms rich dude Leslie Nielsen with the help of his unconventional aunt (Mildred Natwick). The delightful cast includes Walter Brennan as Debbie’s jailed grandfather, Sidney Blackmer and Fay Wray as Nielsen’s stuffy parents, and Louise Beavers as their maid.

Howard Hawks’ 1964 film Man’s Favorite Sport? takes the premise of Christmas in Connecticut in which a female writer becomes famous for writing articles about cooking that she knows nothing about and changes her into a male writer who becomes famous for writing articles about fishing which he knows mothing about. It then takes the writer (Rock Hudson) and adds a wacky girlfriend (Paula Prentiss) and you have a virtual remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby with Hudson and Prentiss in lieu of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in this delightful farce.

1965’s Strange Bedfellows was a critical and box-office dud. It’s strange indeed why Universal would opt to upgrade this turkey over 1961’s superior Come September in which stars Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida were used to much better advantage. Everything about it is fake including the European locations which were filmed on Universal’s backlot.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray releases of The Blue Dahlia and Single White Female.