Capote

(Note: This review refers to the Blu-ray version of the DVD.)

Truman Capote's "nonfiction novel," about the real-life 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan., and the arrest and execution of the killers, has inspired its share of movies. The first, of course, was Richard Brooks' 1967 adaptation of the best-selling book, starring Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Shooting in black-and-white CinemaScope, Brooks creates a vivid sense of immediacy in a style both realistic and expressionistic, part reportage, part dramatic interpretation. John Forsythe leads the investigative procedural portion of the film, and Paul Stewart is a reporter and a kind of Capote stand-in who narrates the final act. Brooks' psychological commentary dates the film more than the style, but his portrait of the damaged men and Perry's tormented psyche is still effective. As Perry talks to the priest on the night of his execution, the light through the window on a rainy night casts the shadows of tears running down his cheeks.

The Blu-ray double feature pairs "In Cold Blood" with "Capote," Bennett Miller's 2005 film that dramatizes the story of Capote's research and relationship with Smith and Hickock as they appeal their death sentences. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his astounding screen incarnation of Capote. He goes beyond mimicry to inhabit the contradictory soul under the fey, mannered skin of the social creature who is most at home holding court in New York cocktail parties and yet charms the small-town folk because, as he says, "I know what it's like to be misunderstood." Features two commentary tracks and two featurettes.