As comic book movies go, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the best of the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) era. While I found the first film in the new series, 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, ultimately disappointing, the new film has a tighter script and fewer players to keep track of. That said, the film is still a comic book movie of the CGI era in which special effects are given more screen time than story development.

Captain America was first introduced as a war hero in 1941 in a comic book series that ended in 1950, had an attempted revival in 1953 and achieved new found popularity in 1964 when the character was revived from suspended animation in an iceberg as part of Marvel’s Avengers series. The 2011 film had him in suspended animation since World War II which is why, although he is now 95 years old, he has the body of a young man.

Both films could have been more dramatically relevant if more time had been spent developing the character’s fish out of water persona instead of using most of their screen time on those eye-popping special effects. Chris Evans seems more comfortable in his shoes as Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) this time around and Samuel L. Jackson is in fine authoritative form as his boss and mentor, Nick Fury. Anthony Mackie has the proper mix of lightheartedness and seriousness as Rogers’ new friend Sam Wilson (aka Falcon) and Scarlett Johanssen is properly no-nonsense as the loyal Avenger, Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow). Emily Vancamp is also impressive as Rogers’ neighbor Kate (aka Agent 13) despite the Rogers-Kate relationship being given scant screen time.

(Editor’s NOTE: this paragraph contains major spoilers) Sebastian Stan makes a welcome return as Rogers’ old buddy Bucky Barnes, thought long dead, who emerges as the dread Winter Soldier, a pawn of Hydra, the film’s obligatory bad guys. The film’s one major casting mistake is Robert Redford as the film’s principal bad guy. Perhaps the 78-year-old actor has played salt of the earth good guys for so long he is incapable of playing an evil dude this late in his career.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was directed by longtime TV directors Anthony and Joe Russo who are set to direct the third film in the franchise.

The film is available on standard DVD, Blu-ray and 3-D Blu-ray.

Cohen Media Group, which specializes in releasing foreign films and restorations of older films, both domestic and foreign, has made two of their recent theatrically released restorations on Blu-ray.

The only collaboration between Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht, 1943’s Hangmen Also Die was a troubled production. Made in response to the Nazi bloodbath in Czechoslovakia after the assassination of Deputy Reich Protector “Hangman” Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942, the film’s script was written in German by director Lang (Metropolis, M) and playwright Brecht (The 3 Penny Opera). Screenwriter John Wexley (Angels With Dirty Faces) was brought in to do the translation. When Wexley, who had added his own touches, demanded sole credit for the screenplay, Brecht protested. The Writers Guild arbitrated. Their questionable decision was that since Brecht’s well known intention was to return to Germany after the Nazis were defeated, Wexley needed the credit more. A compromise was worked out so that Lang and Brecht received credit for their original story and adaptation, the screenplay credit would be Wexley’s alone. Ironically, Brecht never wrote another screenplay for a Hollywood film and returned to Berlin after the war where he was East Germany’s leading playwright and director for the remainder of his life. He left the U.S. before being blacklisted during the Communist witch hunts of the late 1940s. Wexley wasn’t as lucky. He was blacklisted in 1947 and remained inactive for most of the remaining thirty years of his life although he did write the screenplays for two East German films produced in 1959 and 1962, both after Brecht’s death.

The film itself was one of a number of films of its era dealing with Nazi resistance, although most of them were set in unnamed or fictional countries. Hangmen Also Die was one of the few to name names as was Lang’s 1941 film Man Hunt, recently released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time.

Brian Donlevy plays the fictional assassin who escapes the scourge of the Nazi killing machine while Walter Brennan as a beloved Czech schoolteacher, Alexander Granach as a hound dog Nazi police inspector, and Gene Lockhart as a particularly irksome collaborator are not so lucky. In real life, not only were the real assassins (there were two) hunted down and trapped by the Nazis, who then shot themselves to avoid interrogation, but the Nazis went on to destroy an entire town, killing the men, interring the women in concentration camps, and separating the children who were either adopted by German families if they fit the “good” German profile or killed if they didn’t.

The Blu-ray features several historically informative extras.

Patrice Chéreau’s 1994 film Queen Margot was the third film version of Alexandre Dumas’ 1845 novel. There had been a 1910 silent version and a 1954 version starring Jeanne Moreau as Margot and Francoise Rosay as her mother, the treacherous Catherine de Medici. The 1994 version starred Isabelle Adjani as Margot; Daniel Auteuil as her husband, Henri di Navarre; Vincent Perez as her lover, La Mole; Jean-Hugues Anglade as her brother, Charles IX; Pascal Greggory as her brother, Anjou; and Virna Lisi as Catherine de Medici.

A sex-and-violence epic as had seldom been seen on the screen before, the 1994 film was cut by 16 minutes by Miramax when released in the U.S. just before Christmas that year. What was cut was the film’s most notorious sequence, the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, engineered by de Medici to eliminate thousands of French Protestants the Catholic queen mother thought to be a threat to her son, Charles IX’s reign. Without this sequence, however, many of the characters’ motivations are a bit fuzzy. The 2007 DVD restored the sequence but there were still elements of the film missing. The film has now been fully restored in a magnificent new transfer.

Isabelle Adjani, nearing 40 when she made the film, was still a ravishing beauty, looking more like 19, her character’s unstated real age when she wed Henri di Navarre, the Protestant king of Navarre whose marriage was supposed to bring Catholics and Protestants together putting an end to a long religious war. Instead, the wedding was a ploy on the part of de Medici to bring thousands of Navarre Protestants to Paris for the ceremony after which they would be slaughtered. Margot is successful in protecting Henri and La Mole, her Protestant lover, against the machinations of her evil mother and brother, Anjou, at least for a time. Her brother the king is portrayed as a confused weakling until he is attacked by a wild boar during a hunt in which both Anjou and their younger brother Alencon stand by waiting for him to die while Henri intervenes to kill the boar and saves his life. More evil follows and de Medici’s plot to poison Henri backfires, but she gets her revenge against the daughter she unreasonably hates in one of her most treacherous acts.

Dumas (The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo) wrote two sequels to Queen Margot which have never been filmed. In real life, Henri, would become one of France’s better kings, Henry IV, after the assassination of Henry III (the evil Anjou). He would eventually divorce Margot, not because of her many lovers, but because she was unable to give him the children the royal succession required. The two, however, remained friends for the remainder of their lives.

The film was nominated for just one Oscar for its costume design, but did better at the Césars (the French Oscars) where it won five of the twelve awards it was nominated for: Best Actress (Adjani), Supporting Actor (Anglade), Supporting Actress (Lisi), Cinematography and Costume Design.

The Blu-ray also features several historically informative extras.

Kino Lorber has released Richard Lester’s 1966 film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum on Blu-ray. A disappointing version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, the film omits more than half of the original score although it does provide Zero Mostel with one of his better screen roles reprising his Tony Award-winning role as the Roman slave seeking freedom. Second billed Phil Silvers, who has a really minor role, would himself win a Tony in Mostel’s role in the short-lived 1972 revival. Jack Gilford, Michael Crawford and Buster Keaton, who died prior to the film’s release, co-star.

This week’s new releases include Godzilla and The Fault in Our Stars.