The Passion of Joan of Arc is a film of the time in which it takes place, the time in which it was made, a film for our time, and a film for all time, one of the few undisputed masterworks in cinema history.

Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc in French) AKA the Maid of Orleans was born the daughter of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family in the north of France in 1412. The teenaged Joan claimed to have received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexander urging her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination in 1825, late in the Hundred Years War. The uncrowned king sent her to the siege of Orleans as part of a relief mission in 1829 which led to the end of the siege and Charles’ coronation at Reims.

On May 23, 1430, Joan was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, which was allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais on a variety of charges. Declared guilty, she was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, dying at nineteen years of age. In 1456, an inquisitional court examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, found her innocent and declared her a martyr. In the 16th Century, she became a symbol of the Catholic League which opposed the growing influence of Protestantism in France. In 1803, Napoleon declared her a national symbol of France. She was beatified in 1909 (proposed for sainthood) and canonized in 1920 (made a saint).

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film is based on the transcripts of Joan’s trial which were released shortly after her canonization, making it a film very much of the time in which it takes place. The art of the film makes it one of its time in which Dreyer interposes scenes of the trial of Christ before Pilate and helmeted World War I soldiers. It speaks to our time in the way in which a lone woman stands up to mighty men despite the dire consequences. It’s a silent film built on words that speak to us across time more clearly than any of the many other films about the 15th century saint.

The newly released Criterion Blu-ray features the film in both its original 20-frames-per-second projection and the 24-frames-per-second used in the original DVD restoration. Both version can be played silently or with different musical scores.

Three recent major films, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Paddington 2, and The Death of Stalin, have been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD in the U.K., but not yet in the U.S. The first two will be released in the U.S. in late April, but the third doesn’t have a U.S. release date yet.

To add insult to injury, when Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is released in the U.S. it will be released on DVD only, an indication Sony is spending as little on its home video release as they did on promoting the film’s limited December 29th release. The film received no major awards recognition in the U.S. but did receive well-earned BAFTA nominations for both Annette Bening as screen legend Gloria Grahame in her last days and Jamie Bell as her last much younger lover.

Grahame was in her early fifties and Peter Turner (Bell’s character) was in his late twenties when they met in 1979. Taken from Turner’s memoir, the film follows their meet-cute romance through Grahame’s decision to spend her last days in 1981 with Turner and his family.

Bening’s performance is among her best. It’s right up there with her Oscar-nominated work in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia, and The Kids Are All Right as well as her highly regarded performance in 2016’s 20th Century Women. Bell’s performance is his best since his screen debut in Billy Elliott, even giving him a great dancing scene and having his Billy Elliott co-star Julie Walters play his mother. As and added treat, Vanessa Redgrave appears briefly as Grahame’s mother.

It’s rare for a sequel to an animated or mixed-media film to surpass the original. Indeed, it’s rare for a sequel of any film to surpass the original. Paddington 2, however, manages to do that in spades with Ben Whishaw voicing the cuddly bear and Imelda Staunton his now 100-year-old aunt. Leading the live cast are Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Samuel Joslin, and Madeleine Harris as his adopted family and Hugh Grant in a delightful BAFTA-nominated performance as the film’s villain, whose best scene is post-end-credits. Leave this one before the end-credits at your peril.

An odd duck of a film, The Death of Stalin is a satire about the death of the Soviet dictator in 1953 and the chaos surrounding it. Written and directed by Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, TV’s Veep), the film is a frantic Monty Python-style production with scenes of startling brutality puncturing the comedy. The film’s most vivid scene is a fictional one in which one of the main characters is shot and killed, his body burnt, his ashes scattered in the wind, and his face and name eliminated from the country’s records.

The eclectic cast includes Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Simon Russell Beale as Beria, Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, Michael Palin as Molotov, Paddy Considine as Andreyev, and Andrea Riseborough as Svetlana and Rupert Friend as Vasily, Stalin’s children.

Warner Archive has released Blu-ray upgrades of Fritz Lang’s last two Hollywood films, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both of which were originally released in 1956.

The better-known While the City Sleeps is about the inner-workings of a New York City newspaper and the hunt for a serial killer. Publisher Robert Warwick dies suddenly, and his son Vincent Price announces that day-to-day management of the paper will be given to one of three department managers, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, or James Craig, while Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Andrews works with detective Howard Duff to trap the killer (John Barrymore, Jr.). Sally Forrest as Andrews’ girl has the biggest female part although Rhonda Fleming as Price’s faithless wife and Ida Lupino as a society reporter have showier roles.

A more interesting suspense film, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt features Dana Andrews as a writer who works with his publisher (Sidney Blackmer) to plant evidence of his guilt in a murder so that after he is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, the publisher will provide the evidence that frees him. Joan Fontaine is Blackmer’s daughter and Andrews’ fiancée. It ends in a triple-twist.

This week’s new releases include Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Criterion release of Women in Love.