Ran; Citizen Kane; Daddy’s Home; In The Heart Of The Sea; Yakuza Apocalypse – Review

Restored classics from Kurosawa and Orson Welles beat the competition hands down in a thin weekIf it’s a lean week for new DVD releases, that’s just as well: there’s no competing with this week’s classic reissues, beginning with an indispensable new Blu-ray of Ran (Studiocanal, 12). Following a brief but glorious run in cinemas, this 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s 31-year-old Sengoku Shakespeare riff transfers every ravishing nuance of its digital makeover to the small screen – its vast, swarming compositions razor-sharpened, its deep, marbled skies heavy with weather, the regal reds of its military rags glistening as if wet on the canvas.It’s a rare case of restoration as revelation: having first encountered Kurosawa’s poetically brutal redesign of King Lear on comparatively mucky VHS as a teen, I could see what was beautiful about it without fully seeing its beauty.