Dances with Wolves

(MGM, $29.98)
MOVIE: DISC:

The Movie: Just when you thought you’d heard the last of Kevin Costner’s Academy Award–winning epic, along comes this brand-spanking-new Special Edition DVD, complete with nearly an hour of additional footage. In the years since its 1990 release, the film, the story of a white American soldier’s friendship with a tribe of Sioux in 1864, has endured a good dose of backlash; perhaps this new disc will prompt a rethinking of this remarkable picture. Made for an unimaginably low $17 million or so, it can count among its achievements dialogue spoken in the seldom-heard Lakota language, a buffalo hunt that surely ranks among the best action sequences of the past 15 years, and cinematographer Dean Semler’s heart-stopping images of the American West.

The Disc: Along with the additional footage—which is interesting without adding much to the overall experience—the disc includes an exceptionally informative commentary from Costner and producer Jim Wilson, an enjoyable making-of featurette, and a longer retrospective documentary. A second commentary, featuring Semler and editor Neil Travis, is redundant at best, and other extras are little more than filler. Extras aside, the digital format is surely the best way outside of the theater to enjoy Semler’s photography and composer John Barry’s majestic, Coplandesque score.

—Claire Evans