3 great movies are among new DVDs

Three excellent films in three distinctive genres lead off this look at movies that are new to DVD this week.

"All the King's Men" (Columbia, 1949, not rated, $19.94). Broderick Crawford won the best-actor Oscar for his bravura performance as Willie Stark in this adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning book — and the film also won for best picture and best supporting actress (Mercedes McCambridge).

And deservedly so.

Crawford is a great example of a character actor who landed the role of a lifetime and ran with it. His portrait of an honest backwoods Southerner who rises in politics and allows corruption to change him holds up as an acting triumph. (The story is loosely based on Huey Long.)

And not-so-coincidentally, a new remake starring Sean Penn — and highly touted on this DVD — opens in a couple of weeks. Too bad there aren't any extras about this film, or Crawford.

Extras: Full frame, trailer, featurette about new remake, optional English subtitles, chapters.

"Gojira (Godzilla)" (Toho/Classic Media, 1954/1956, not rated, b/w, $21.98, two discs). If you're a monster-movie fan, you've probably read over the years that the original "Gojira" is much better than the re-edited English-language "Godzilla, King of the Monsters." And, like me, you may have wished it would be released in this country so we could find out firsthand, without having to resort to bootleg copies on eBay.

Well, now's your chance. This double-disc set has the original "Gojira," along with illuminating audio commentary and some enjoyable featurettes. And it also has a second disc with "Godzilla, King of the Monsters," which features pre-"Perry Mason" Raymond Burr edited in so that he seems to be interacting with the Japanese performers — and another, equally interesting audio commentary.

The bottom line? "Gojira" is indeed far superior, a very good monster movie in its own right, and miles better than any of the myriad sequels that followed. The acting is first-rate, allusions are more specific to the atom bombs that were dropped only a few years earlier, and much of the film is quite affecting.

It should be noted that neither print here is perfect — apparently no existing prints of either film are without flecks, specks and other visual flaws. But it's much better than many I've seen of "King of the Monsters."

Extras: Full frame, two films: "Gojira" (in Japanese with English subtitles) and "Godzilla" (in English), audio commentaries, featurettes, trailers, chapters; 16-page booklet