From its initial screening at Sundance last January to its theatrical release in August and beyond, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood seemed poised to win the preponderance of year-end critics’ awards. What seemed less certain was its ability to win more middle-of-the-road recognition from the likes of the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy Awards. Yet it has, which is astonishing for an independent film in which nothing much happens over the course of almost three hours representing twelve years in the life of a boy from the age of 6 to 18. What then, accounts for its staggering success? Perhaps it’s that the film is not as simple as it seems at face value.

When Linklater set out to make his film, he had no idea where it was going. He took his cues from life events that happened during the making of the film as well as the particular style of the boy at the center of his film – newcomer Ellar Coltrane who was not the stereotypical Texas boy raised on guns and religion, but a sensitive artistic kid whose parents were artists.

Coltrane’s parents in the film are played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, who are divorced at the outset. Over the course of twelve years, Arquette will marry again, divorce again, co-habit with a younger boyfriend and eventually find solace in living alone. Hawke will re-marry, happily, and raise a second family. The kid will grow up, have his heart broken and go to college. It’s a typical modern extended family saga. When it ends, just like Arquette’s character, just as in real life, you wish there had been more. The film is that brilliant in its simplicity.

Amazingly, Linklater directed nine films and six episodes of a TV series while Boyhood was in the process of being made. Among them were School of Rock, Before Sunset, Me and Orson Welles, Bernie and Before Midnight, quality projects all. The man’s been busy.

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

Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1978 film, The Boys from Brazil was one of the first films released on Blu-ray, albeit not in the U.S. Available as a U.K. import for years, the thriller from Ira Levin’s novel is now available in a nicely rendered domestic transfer from Shout Factory.

The film had a great pedigree. It had been Levin’s most popular novel since Rosemary’s Baby. Oscar winner Schaffner (Patton) was still a major name and stars Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason were still major players. Peck had starred in the hit thriller The Omen just two years earlier at the same time Olivier played a Nazi dentist fashioned after Nazi butcher Josef Mengele in Marathon Man. In this go-around, Peck would be Mengele himself and Oliver, who earned an Oscar nomination for Marathon Man would be a Jewish Nazi hunter fashioned after Simon Wiesenthal.

The film has an absurd, albeit terrifying plot, in which Mengele, still active in South America, perpetrates a plot in which Mason and other trained assassins are to kill ninety-four sixty-five-year-old men all over the world. The reason behind the plot is even more terrifying.

Olivier’s accent is off-putting at first, but his character’s humanity and the actor’s characterization soon win you over. He earned his tenth Oscar nomination for acting out of twelve nods total. Peck fares less well playing against type, but he was good enough to impress the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They gave him a Golden Globe nomination instead of Olivier. Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, John Rubenstein and Steve Guttenberg are fine in support but the film belongs to Olivier.

Fernando Meirelles’ 2005 film of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener is another film that had only been available on Blu-ray in the U.S. as import. Why Universal delayed the Blu-ray release of such a major film for going on ten years is a complete mystery to me, but it’s here at last.

Nominated for four Oscars including Best Supporting Actress for which Rachel Weisz won, the film had been nominated for three Golden Globes including Best Picture and Director. Neither body, however, nominated Ralph Fiennes for his moving portrayal of a man trying to find the truth behind his wife’s murder. Danny Huston and Bill Nighy have featured roles in a le Carré adaptation that’s up there with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the more recent A Most Wanted Man.

Universal has also belatedly released two more spy thrillers to Blu-ray.

Robert De Niro’s 2006 film The Good Shepherd with an original script by Eric Roth, was oversold as “The Godfather of CIA movies”. Sorry, but it’s hardly that. The closest comparison I would make is Mervyn LeRoy equally so-so 1959 film, The FBI Story which was about the life of an FBI agent played by James Stewart. Stewart was as amiable in his day as this film’s Matt Damon is today, but neither film is among either actor’s best. Like the earlier film, this one puts its protagonist into legendary historical sequences and like its predecessor it doesn’t give the rest of the cast much to do. Angelina Jolie is a stand-in for Vera Miles as the dutiful wife, with De Niro, Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, Keir Dullea and others popping up here and there.

Mike Nichols’ 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War with Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman is a lot livelier. Part biography, part comedy, part drama, it’s the story of a Texas congressman’s involvement with the Afghan Taliban leading to the defeat of the Russians in 1993. Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar. He, Roberts and Hanks were all nominated for Golden Globes as was Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, and the film itself for Best Comedy or Musical. It remains a matter of taste.

Nichols is on firmer ground with his best comedy aside from The Graduate, 1988’s Working Girl which has been given a long missing Blu-ray upgrade, from Fox. This sparkling comedy has lost none of its charm in the intervening years. Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Melanie Griffith), two Supporting Actresses (Joan Cusack, Sigoruney Weaver), and it won for Song (Carly Simon’s soaring anthem, “Let the River Run”). It looks better than ever on Blu-ray.

This week’s new releases include Gone Girl and A Walk Among the Tombstones.