■ Morrissey: 25 Live
It was meant as the non-arena show: Earlier this year, Morrissey chose to play the intimate, 1,800-seat auditorium of Hollywood High School after selling out the Staples Center the night before. Most of 25 Live was shot at the smaller venue, where the singer whose songs have affected his hearers so deeply could be experienced up close. The graying ’80s star hasn’t lost his knack, singing a mix of solo and Smiths songs.
■ Blood and Sand
Full color on big screens was still new and spectacular when Rouben Mamoulian directed Blood and Sand (1941), out on Blu-ray. In Mamoulian’s hands, color film wasn’t merely a means to photograph reality but to transmute it into art, using Technicolor the way a painter draws from his palette. Tyrone Power stars as a Spanish bullfighter in this lavish drama, with Rita Hayworth as his love interest. No bulls were harmed in the production.
■ American Guerilla in the Philippines
With Metropolis and M, German director Fritz Lang made two of cinema’s greatest films, but his Hollywood career never regained those heights. American Guerilla (1950) was like many other World War II movies that rolled off the assembly line in idealized tributes to Greatest Generation determination. Lang’s depiction of resistance to the occupying Japanese is capable yet an odd footnote in a résumé of classics. Box office bait Tyrone Power stars as the heroic American commander.