L.A. Confidential (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2008)

Director Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential is a modern masterpiece of Los Angeles crime films — more morally complex than James Ellroy’s gleefully cynical source novel. The movie shoved Crowe into star status, and nearly every performance — from Graham Beckel’s boozy, corrupt cop to Guy Pearce’s straight arrow — is grungily superlative. This new edition is loaded with hours of extras, the best of which was on the '98 DVD: ''Photo Pitch,'' in which Hanson explains how he sold producers on the film by showing them not the script, but atmospheric shots of early-'50s L.A. The commentary is bogged down by no fewer than 13 voices yammering; and while it’s fun to see the 2000 pilot for a Confidential TV series with Kiefer Sutherland, the show was a tame dog compared with Hanson’s snarling beast. A–