Philip Seymour Hoffman gives perhaps his finest performance as a German intelligence officer in A Most Wanted Man.

Reassigned to the port city of Hamburg after botching an operation in Berlin, Hoffman’s character uncovers the details of the funding of Islamic extremists that has befuddled his bosses as well as the Americans and other international espionage agents. He engages the co-operation of an unlikely group of helpers and secures the release of an innocent from further tyranny to give the film the happy ending no other from a John le Carré novel has ever had, but wait – this is a film adapted from a novel by the author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardner. Nothing is what is seems and no one, not even the staunchest of heroes is safe.

Rachel McAdams, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Willem Dafoe and Robin Wright co-star.

A Most Wanted Man is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Disney owns the rights to The Sleeping Beauty, its 1959 character based on the late 18th Century fairy tale. It’s their right to turn the fairy tale on its ear and make the old story’s evil villainess a victim and heroine as well as a temporarily justifiably vengeful villainess. Such is the case with Maleficent which showcases Angelina Jolie as the benevolent fairy whose wings are clipped by a cowardly prince who wants to be king. In revenge she puts a curse on his only child but comes to regret it as she finds a kindred spirit in the growing princess.

Twists also involve the role of the dragon and “true love’s kiss”. Elle Fanning co-stars as Aurora, with Sharlto Copley as the cowardly prince, Sam Riley as Maleficent’s chameleon assistant, Brenton Thwaites as a handsome prince and a fairy trio consisting of Imedla Staunton, Lesley Manville and Juno Temple.

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

Warner Archive has released its third Blu-ray upgrade of a 1955 musical. In the footsteps of Hit the Deck and Kismet comes another odd choice, Pete Kelly’s Blues, odd because there are four 1955 musicals under Warner’s control yet to be released on Blu-ray that are far superior to these three. We are still waiting for Love Me or Leave Me, Interrupted Melody, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and It’s Always Fair Weather as well as the cream of the crop of mid-1950s musicals, 1954’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

To be fair, the Blu-ray release of Pete Kelly’s Blues looks and sounds better than this film ever has. The problem is that producer-director-star Jack Webb is so stiff that his character’s nightclub chandeliers have more personality. What makes the film worthwhile is an excellent jazz score and the singing of co-stars Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. The eclectic cast also includes Janet Leigh, Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine, Lee Marvin and Jayne Mansfield. Peggy Lee received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing a drug addicted chanteuse who ends up in an asylum.

Kino Lorber continues to reissue major United Artist films from the 1950s and 60s on Blu-ray. Among the company’s recent releases are Man of the West and Run Silent, Run Deep from 1958 and The Young Savages from 1961.

Anthony Mann’s Man of the West was the last of the director’s gritty westerns that usually starred James Stewart. He and Stewart hit box office gold with such western classics Winchester ‘73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur and The Man from Laramie as well as the musical The Glenn Miller Story earlier in the decade but fell out during the filming of 1957’s Night Passage after which Mann was replaced by TV director James Neilson. He went on to make two more westerns in the gritty style of the Stewart films, replacing him with Henry Fonda in The Tin Star and Gary Cooper in Man of the West.

Cooper’s history as a western film star goes back to silent films, making him an ideal choice to play the reformed outlaw whose plans of a peaceful lie are thwarted by his former boss, an annoyingly over-the-top Lee J. Cobb. Jack Lord as Cobb’s henchman son and Julie London as a schoolteacher forced to do a striptease to save Cooper’s life, provide the film’s best performances aside from Cooper’s.

Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster play a submarine captain and his executive officer in Robert Wise’s Run Silent, Run Deep. The significance of the title is not made apparent until the film’s final moments. In the meantime the film plays like a standard World War II navy film in which major stars give their all.

Lancaster, then 34, and Gable, then 57, reportedly did not get along during filming primarily because of co-producer Lancaster making fun of Gable’s age and his refusal to work past 5 P.M. The animosity, however, bodes well for the film as their characters are not supposed to like each other very much through most of the film..

John Frankenheimer’s The Young Savages, was the veteran TV director’s second theatrical film, his first in four years. Adapted from Evan Hunter’s best-seller, A Matter of Conviction, the film starred Lancaster as an assistant district attorney prosecuting three teenagers for the murder of a blind fifteen-year-old. The film plays like a reverse Perry Mason episode with the prosecutor solving the case to the detriment of his own position. While the plot may stretch credulity, the film’s gritty location filming on the streets of New York provides the necessary realism. Frankenheimer did not have to augment his big screen work with intermittent TV work for another quarter century.

This week’s new releases include Jersey Boys and the Blu-ray debut of Christmas in Connecticut.