Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, which opened on Christmas Day, 2012, was a huge box-office hit and an awards magnet, but one I just didn’t have a desire to see in theaters in the wake of the Newtown Sandy Hook massacre in which twenty six and seven year old children and six of their educators were killed eleven days earlier. The DVD was released last Tuesday, the day after the Boston Marathon bombings in which three people, including an eight year-old boy, were killed and hundreds more were injured. With images of little Marty Richard and his “no more hurting people” drawing still fresh in mind I really had no stomach for watching the film this week either, but I forced myself to do so.

The film is expertly made in the tradition of Tarantino’s previous films, but it is unnecessarily violent. The actors, all of them good, seem to be having fun drawing one another’s blood, but it’s not something I can recommend to anyone who is not already predisposed to seeing it.

Jamie Foxx has the title role of a freed slave and turns in one of his best performances. Even better is Christoph Waltz, who won an Oscar as the wry, urbane German dentist who buys his freedom and helps him search for his wife, Kerry Washington, now the property of vicious plantation owner Leonardo DiCaprio. Samuel L. Jackson is DiCaprio’s head house slave, who is even more vicious than his master. Those are the principal players. You can play “hey, look, there’s…” throughout the film as in “hey, look, there’s Dennis Christopher” or “hey look, there’s Michael Parks” or “hey, look, there’s Don Johnson” but it doesn’t help the violence go down any easier. It’s worth seeing, but not in the wake of such real life tragedy all around us. It’s not really award worthy either, although Waltz’s performance and Tarantino’s screenplay are certainly audacious.

Django Unchained is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Fox Home Video continues to release its back catalogue in bare bones standard DVD only packaging. As I’ve said before, the old black-and-white films generally come off looking best with the later cinemascope color films for the most part getting short shrift. There are two major exceptions in this latest batch.

The best film in this new batch is Jack Cardiff’s 1960 version of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers in which Freddie Francis’ gorgeous Oscar winning black-and-white cinematography is showcased in all its widescreen glory. The film, which was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture, still retains the power that emanates from Gavin Lambert and T.E.B. Clarke’s screenplay; the breathtaking cinematography and art direction and the stellar performances of its three stars. Dean Stockwell has never been better than as the impressionable younger son of a drunken coal mining father and manipulative mother played by Trevor Howard and Wendy Hiller at their ferocious best. Howard received an Oscar nomination for his performance, but Hiller, who is even better, shamefully did not. Mary Ure, Oscar nominated as Stockwell’s older lover, and Heather Sears as his young love, also stand out in the film which features Ernest Thesiger in one of his last roles and Donald Pleasence in one of his earliest.

Also receiving impressive treatment, the cinemascope framing of Henry Levin’s 1959 film, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker has been preserved. Unfortunately that is the best part of this rather mild film about bigamy. The real-life Pennsylvania Pennypacker family produced a Civil War general and a governor of the State from 1903-1907. Whether or not this particular story is based on truth or not remains a mystery. The droll Clifton Webb plays the man with two families, one in Harrisburg and one in Philadelphia. The emphasis is on the Harrisburg family with Dorothy McGuire as his wife there. Charles Coburn, Jill St. John, Ron Ely and Ray Stricklyn co-star.

Receiving far less respect, Vincente Minnelli’s 1964 film, Goodbye Charlie, has been released in the dreadful pan-and-scan format of the previous VHS release. Granted, this silly comedy about a philandering man reincarnated as a woman played by Debbie Reynolds was not one of Minnelli’s best, but Minnelli was one of the few directors working in cinemascope from the early 1950s through the 1960s whose films were perfectly framed to take advantage of the new process. It’s an insult to his work. Tony Curtis and Pat Boone co-star.

The earliest film in the batch is the 1935 charmer, The Farmer Takes a Wife directed by Victor Fleming. Henry Fonda made his auspicious screen debut here as the mid-19th Century farmer who falls in love with Janet Gaynor, a cook on a canal boat on the Erie Canal. She’s torn between her love for Fonda and the excitement of traveling up and down the canal. Also standing in the way of their happiness is Gaynor’s boss, Charles Bickford. Fonda and Bickford would not appear in another film together until 1966’s A Big Hand for the Little Lady, Bickford’s last.

Made shortly after America’s entry into World War II, 1942’s fast-paced Berlin Correspondent directed by Eugene Forde, features Dana Andrews in one of his earliest starring roles. He plays a radio correspondent broadcasting from Berlin who sends out coded messages in those broadcasts. This improbable tale has him inadvertently betraying his informant to a Nazi spy who turns out to be the informant’s daughter engaged to a Gestapo colonel. Virginia Gilmore as the dubious spy and Martin Kosleck as the colonel are outstanding as is Mona Maris as a woman scorned. Sig Ruman is on hand for comic relief, virtually reprising his role from To Be or Not to Be.

A more serious World War II film, 1943’s The Moon Is Down, directed by Irving Pichel from John Steinbeck’s novel, features a sturdy cast of character actors in an account of the Nazi invasion of Norway. Cedric Hardwicke is the Nazi commandant; Henry Travers the town mayor; Lee J. Cobb the town doctor; Doris Bowden, a newlywed whose husband is senselessly shot by the Nazis for a minor infringement and Peter Eyck the Gestapo officer who longs to find someone to talk to. It’s well done, but standard to the genre.

Clifton Webb’s most popular character was by far Mr. Belvedere. Fox has recently released several of the sequels and has now finally released the original 1948 Sitting Pretty for which Webb received his third Oscar nomination, his first and only one in the lead category. Directed by Walter Lang, Webb plays the acerbic babysitter who can’t stand kids, ably assisted by Maureen O’Hara, Robert Young and Richard Haydn.

George Cukor provided character actress Thelma Ritter with her first star billing as the matchmaker in 1951’s The Model and the Marriage Broker. Jeanne Crain as the model and Scott Brady as the guy she tries to set her up with actually get billing over Ritter, but it’s her film all the way and she runs with it. The supporting cast including Jay C. Flippen, Zero Mostel, Michael O’Shea, Nancy Kulp and Dennie Moore is also quite good.

This week’s new releases include The Impossible and Promised Land .