Winchester from the Spierig Brothers, German born Australia-based directors Michael and Peter Spierig, despite my initial misgivings is an interesting suspense thriller based on an episode in the life of eccentric heiress Sarah Winchester.

It’s 1906, and 66-year-old Winchester, played by the enigmatic Helen Mirren, is the subject of a psychiatric examination by a San Francisco doctor hired by the Winchester Repeating Rifle Arms Company in hopes that the doctor will find her unfit to continue serving on the company’s board. Instead, the doctor played by Jason Clarke, is convinced that Winchester’s mansion is haunted by the ghosts of people killed by the rifles made by her late husband’s company and that she must continue to build to lock away the vengeful ghosts.

Winchester never finished building her mansion in San Jose, California. It was under construction twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from 1884 until her death at the age of 82 in 1922. With its seven stories containing hundreds of rooms, long hallways and staircases that lead to nowhere, the Winchester Mystery House opened to the public in 1923, five months after her death, and has remained a popular California tourist attraction ever since. In 2016 they even found a furnished room in the attic they never knew existed before. In 2017, they added a new tour taking visitors through rooms not previously open to the public.

The mansion’s seven stories were reduced to four in the 1906 earthquake, which is the climax of the film. A fascinating making-of documentary accompanies the film on Blu-ray and standard DVD. The exterior shots are of the real mansion as are several of the interior scenes, but most of the action takes place in meticulously reconstructed rooms, hallways, and staircases built by craftsman on set in Melbourne, Australia.

Winner of numerous year-end awards for Best Foreign Language Film, German director Fatih Aken’s In the Fade is easily his best film since 2007’s The Edge of Heaven and like that earlier film is about a search. In this case, the search is for, trial of, and eventual resolution of the enigma of who killed Diane Kruger’s husband and six-year-old son and why. The first two-thirds of the film are absolutely riveting. It’s only when it goes into Death Wish mode in its final scenes that it becomes routine and predictable until it comes to its inevitable conclusion. The film’s most shocking scene is the courtroom sequence in which a pathologist describes in vivid detail the effects of a nail bomb on Kruger’s young son’s body. You’ll wonder how Kruger can sit there and listen to all that until she finally does what most people would have done after the pathologist’s first few words…run out of the courtroom.

Warner Bros. Blu-ray and standard DVD release of In the Fade includes both the original German audio with English subtitles as well as an English-dubbed version, something that is rarely done for films on home video these days, even those that were originally release in U.S. theatres in dubbed versions.

Despite all its awards, In the Fade failed to make the cut of Oscar’s list of nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. One that did make the cut was the Lebanese film The Insult, which has also been newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The Insult was directed by Lebanese born, now Paris-based Ziad Doueiri, heretofore best known in the US. as Quentin Tarantino’s first cameraman on Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Doueiri’s filmic references for The Insult were two of his favorite American films, Judgment at Nuremberg and The Verdict.

The film begins with an encounter between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee over an incident in which the Christian Tony accidentally pours water on a city worker’s head whose foreman, Palestinian Yasser, tries to remedy the situation to no avail. Frustrated, Yasser gives up, calling Tony a vulgar name for which Tony demands an apology that Yasser refuses to give. The situation escalates and ends up first in civil court in which neither party is represented by counsel, then in appeals court where a famous wily lawyer represents Tony while his up-and-coming daughter represents Yasser. Tony’s lawyer is a combination of James Mason in The Verdict and Richard Widmark in Judgment at Nuremberg.

The film’s best scene is a throwaway one that the director almost didn’t film which takes place in the street as the two men leave the court and get in their cars. Mechanic Tony comes to the rescue when Yasser’s car won’t start. The two men don’t speak, but their silence speaks volumes, foreshadowing the film’s highly satisfying ending.

The Insult is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. It’s in Lebanese with English subtitles.

Universal, which has been the slowest of all the major studios in bringing their classic films to Blu-ray, has now released sparkling upgrades of five of them. 1934’s Cleopatra and 1943’s For Whom the Bell Tolls are from their catalogue of pre-1948 Paramount films while 1947’s The Egg and I and 1963’s The Thrill of It All and The List of Adrian Messenger were originally Universal releases.

Cleopatra was one of three 1934 Claudette Colbert films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, the others being Imitation of Life and It Happened One Night for which Colbert won. Largely forgotten in the wake of Fox’s mammoth 1963 remake, DeMille’s version what quite the spectacle in its day. Audiences who thrilled at Colbert bathing in asses’ milk in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross two years earlier came in droves to see her clutch the asp to her breast in this one.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, from Ernest Hemingway’s epic Spanish Civil War novel, drew World War II audiences in to the then-shocking scene in which Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman share a sleeping bag. This is the film in which Bergman was nominated for an Oscar over her more enigmatic performance in Casablanca which won its year’s Best Picture award. Cooper was nominated too, as were Akim Tamiroff and Katina Paxinou in support. Paxinou’s fiery partisan was the only winner out of the film’s eight nominations.

The Egg and I was a hugely popular comedy in which city dwellers Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray try to make a go of a farm. The film is most famous for introducing Ma and Pa Kettle and their brood. Played by Marjorie Main, who scored an Oscar nod for her performance, and Percy Kilbride, the team went on to make nine sequels through 1957.

The Thrill of It All teamed Doris Day and James Garner in what would be their only pairing. They’re delightful together in this late screwball comedy featuring Arlene Francis and ZaSu Pitts in her final role.

The List of Adrian Messenger, cleverly directed by John Huston, is a stylish murder mystery in which you learn early on that Kirk Douglas is the murderer, but the actor turns up in so many disguises you never know whether it’s him, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, or Tony Curtis, all of whom also appear in disguise, who is the next conceivably menacing character you meet. George C. Scott, Dana Wynter, Clive Brook, Gladys Cooper, Herbert Marshall, John Merivale, and 12-year-old Walter Anthony (Tony) Huston appear without disguise.

This week’s new releases include Moonrise and Gun Crazy.