A boldly glittery ‘Great Gatsby’

The Great Gatsby

Warner Bros., $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99/$49.95

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

There’s something not quite right with Baz Luhrmann’s glittery adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, though the problem isn’t in Luhrmann’s typically kinetic, excessively filigreed approach, which actually perfectly evokes the breathless rush of the Jazz Age. It’s more that Fitzgerald’s book is mostly about internal action and doesn’t work so well when it’s reduced by Luhrmann to the story of lovesick young people and their bruised feelings. But Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan are a pleasure to watch as an ersatz millionaire and his boyhood crush-object, and Tobey Maguire makes a great audience surrogate as an alcoholic writer who watches the lovers’ dreams die. This isn’t a wholly successful film, but it sure is bold. The DVD and Blu-ray add deleted scenes and a wealth of featurettes.

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Kon-Tiki

Anchor Bay/TWC, $24.98; Blu-ray, $29.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

An Oscar nominee this year for foreign language film, this Norwegian adventure is based on ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 attempt to prove his migratory theories by sailing a balsa wood raft across the Pacific, from Peru to Polynesia. Co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have created a harrowing depiction of man against the elements, plunging the audience into stormy, shark-filled seas with such white-knuckle realism that the team has just been hired to direct the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. The “Kon-Tiki” DVD and Blu-ray contain two strong featurettes: one that goes deeper into Heyerdahl’s story, and one that goes into how Rønning and Sandberg pulled off this remarkable film.

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Elementary: The First Season

Paramount, $55.98

This CBS procedural has no business being as good as it is, given that the BBC’s recently revamped take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is so brilliant that it’s hard to imagine why anyone would try to compete. “Elementary” creator Robert Doherty modernizes his Sherlock his way, by setting the series in contemporary New York City and giving it the gritty look of an urban noir. And Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu shine, playing Sherlock and Watson as a recovering drug addict and his sober companion, respectively, who provide each other with the emotional grounding brilliant loners need. The mysteries are clever, the dialogue’s lively and the tone’s just right. This deserved hit now comes to DVD, with 23 episodes plus featurettes and webisodes.

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Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder

Criterion, $69.95

Criterion’s latest budget-priced “film school in a box” Eclipse set is one of the most essential the company has yet offered: five films that the ridiculously prolific and accomplished Rainer Werner Fassbinder made during his first three years as a movie director, between 1969 and ’71. (He actually made five other films during this same period; that’s how fast he worked.) Representing his roots in avant-garde theater and the counterculture, the films in this Early Fassbinder box — “Love Is Colder Than Death,” “Katzelmacher,” “Gods of The Plague,” “The American Soldier” and “Beware of a Holy Whore” — take on a variety of genres, including the gangster picture, the socially relevant melodrama and the inside-showbiz satire.

And…

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At Any Price

Sony Blu-ray, $35.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

Pain & Gain

Paramount, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99

Available on VOD beginning Tuesday

The Walking Dead: The Complete Third Season

Starz/Anchor Bay, $69.98; Blu-ray, $79.99/$149.99

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