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Kenneth Turan’s DVD picks of the week: Pictures that talk

Kenneth Turan’s DVD picks: “The Front Page” and “A Room with a View.”

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Movies have been talking for decades, but not all talk is created equal. Here are two new DVDs in which the use of the English language is enough to make anyone sit up and take notice.

The snappy patter of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur stage play “The Front Page” has been filmed several times, most famously as the Cary Grant-starring “His Girl Friday,” but this 1931 version starring Pat O’Brien and Adolphe Menjou (and newly released by Kino Lorber) can hold its own with any of them.

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A very different but equally amusing command of the English language is on view in “A Room With A View,” the delightful Merchant Ivory production of E.M. Forster’s romance starring Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis and Julian Sands. This 1986 film is a treat to revisit as it gets the full Criterion Collection treatment.

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