Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day has arrived on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray.

The highly anticipated film was not the big box-office hit it was expected to be, but it is nevertheless one of Spielberg’s best science fiction films, right up there with E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.

This is one of those films that the less you know about it going in, the better. The film is framed in such a way that you know instinctively that Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor are good guys, but are they humans, or aliens from another world? Are the people who are looking for them, including Colin Firth and Colman Domingo, good guys or bad guys?

The film’s cinematography, editing, and visual effects are Oscar worthy as are the performances of Blunt, O’Connor, and Domingo. There are also good performances in major supporting roles from Eve Hewson, Wyatt Russell, and Tommy Martinez, making this a contender for a Best Casting Oscar as well.

94-year-old John Willimas’ score is so good it could easily net him his fifty-fifth Oscar nomination and sixth win.

Newly released on standard Blu-ray are three of the year’s other best films so far,Power Ballad, The Sheep Detectives, and Tuner

John Carney’s Power Ballad is an infectious as the Irish director’s previous two musicals set in his hometown of Dublin, 2006’s Oscar-winning Once and 2016’s even better Sing Street. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another ten years for him to come up with another one.

It stars Paul Rudd as a transplanted American who fronts a Dublin wedding band who never acted on his ambitions to have a bigger career. One night he meets and has a few drinks with visiting former boy band singer Nick Joans who Rudd helps smooth out the lyrics of one of his songs. He then sings his theme song for Jonas which Jonas steals and makes a big hit of in the U.S.

Rudd’s performance is one of his best. He not only sings but plays the guitar, which is something he learned to do for the film. Jonas, a real-life former boy band singer, is also excellent and there are fine supporting performances from Carney’s co-writer Peter McDonald as Rudd’s friend, Beth Fallon as Rudd’s teenage daughter, Marcella Plunkett as his wife and Sing Street star Jack Reynor as Jonas’ hard-as-nails manager.

Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives is the year’s biggest surprise thus far, a superbly rendered murder mystery in which talking sheep are smarter than most of the humans around them. You wouldn’t expect something like that to work, but it does.

Hugh Jackman is the shepherd who reads mysteries to them so that when he is murdered, it’s up to them to help solve his murder. Humans include detective Nicholas Braun, reporter Nicholas Galitzine, and lawyer Emma Thompson. The sheep are voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, Julia Louis-Drefuss, and Patrick Stewart. It’s much better than it sounds so do yourself a favor and see it.

Danile Roher’s Tuner is about a talented piano tuner suffering from hyperacusis who discovers an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes, turning his life upside down.

Leo Woodall is outstanding in the central role with Dustin Hoffman in his best role in years as his mentor. Havanna Rose Liu is a piano virtuoso who becomes romantically involved with Woodall and Tovah Feldshuh is Hoffman’s long-suffering wife.

The second wave of Warner Archive’s August releases has arrived. The six films include a spa4K UHD upgrade of em>Auntie Mame, a remastered standard Blu-ray of The Bad Seed, and first time in the format renditions of The Broadway Melody of 1938, The Human Comedy, and The Wings of Eagles.

Morton DaCosta’s 1958 adaptation of Broadway’s Auntie Mame is one of the crown jewels of classic Hollywood. You can’t love movies and not love this one with Rosalind Russell at her peak as author Patrick Dennis’ eccentric aunt. The biggest bix-office of 1959 following its Christmas 1958 release looked great on its 2017 Blu-ray debut but looks even better here.

The great supporting cast includes Forrest Tucker, Coral Browne, Peggy Cass, Patric Knowles, Connie Gilchrist, Yuki Shimoda, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Joanna Barnes, Pippa Scott, Willard Waterman, Lee Patrick, Robin Hughes, Henry Brandon, and Jan Jandzlik, the only surviving cast member as young Patrick who is interviewed as an extra on the disc.

Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 film, The Bad Seed hasn’t aged as well. Like Auntie Mame, it is an adaptation of a Broadway play that was itself an adaptation of a best-selling novel, but the once lauded performances of Nancy Kelly as the mother of the killer child, Patty McCormack as the murderous brat, and Eileen Heckart as the mother of one her victims do not hold up as well. The best thing about this one is the commentary by McCormack and Charles Bush and the on-screen interview with McCormack from the 2005 DVD and 2011 first Blu-ray release.

Roy Del Ruth’s 1937 film, The Broadway Melody of 1938 is an ingratiating lightweight musical comedy toplining Robert Taylor as a young Broadway producer, Eleanor Powell as his tap-dancing co-star, George Murphy and Buddy Ebsen as buddies, and Sophie Tucker and Judy Garland as mother and daughter. Tucker sings her signature tune, “Some of These Days”, and Garland reprises “Dear Mr. Gable” from her film short debut.

Clarence Brown’s 1943 film, The Human Comedy is one of the most poignant films ever made with Mickey Rooney and Frank Morgan at the top of their craft as a young delivery boy and an old telegrapher respectively. Fay Bainter is Rooney’s mother, and Donna Reed, Van Johnson, and Butch Jenkins are his siblings. In other important roles, James Craig is Rooney’s boss and John Craven is Johnson’s orphaned army buddy. They’re all terrific.

John Ford’s 1957 film, The Wings of Eagles is one of his lesser efforts. John Wayne is Naval Commander turned screenwriter Frank “Spig” Wead, Dan Dailey is his Navy buddy nicknamed “Jughead”, and an ill-used Maureen O’Hara is his disapproving wife in this tone-deaf film which is half slapstick comedy and half debilitating illness medical drama.

Happy Viewing.