Clint Eastwood made not one but two of last year's best films, both focused on one unforgettable episode: the Battle of Iwo Jima. "Flags of Our Fathers" (DreamWorks) was based on the book of the same name that used the historic photo of the raising of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi to examine the impact it had on the soldiers in the photo and the country. "Letters From Iwo Jima" (Warner) was a more personal look at the battle from the side of the enemy.

Though the movies are stylistically and structurally different, they are still all of one piece. In acknowledgement of that, and in a rare instance of studio cooperation, DreamWorks and Warner Brothers have teamed to produce a "Commemorative Edition," a five-disc box set that contains the extras-packed, two-disc "Special Editions" of "Flags" and "Iwo Jima." The fifth disc contains a History Channel special featuring "Flags" author James Bradley, whose father was in the famous photo.

The Memorial Day holiday — coupled with the continuing celebration of the centennial of John Wayne's birthday — account for an abundance of testosterone in the week's releases. "The Good German" (Warner) is director Steven Soderbergh's stylish, black-and-white post-WWII drama starring George Clooney as a military journalist in Berlin.

An homage to "Casablanca," "German" is gorgeous but always feels artificial and forced; it's more experiment than movie.

John Wayne plays a WWI flyer in France, giving comfort to Joan Crawford in 1942's similarly styled "Reunion in France," which is one of five films in "The John Wayne Collection" (Warner). Also included is 1946's "Without Reservations"; 1953's "Trouble Along the Way"; 1947's "Tycoon"; and 1939's "Allegheny Uprising."

The best Wayne of the week is found in remastered "Special Editions" of two of his greatest films: 1959's "Rio Bravo" (Warner), in which he plays a sheriff attempting to protect a killer in his jail. Director Howard Hawks loved this rollicking action-comedy so much he essentially remade the film with Wayne twice, as "El Dorado" and "Rio Lobo," and it was most recently reset in contemporary Detroit as "Assault on Precinct 13."

Finally, there's 1969's career-capping "True Grit" (Paramount), with Wayne as a one-eyed drunk of a U.S. marshal who hunts the men who killed the father of young Kim Darby. Wayne made films after this, but never one better.

ALSO NEW

"Apocalypto" (Touchstone) failed to make much of a box-office impression last year, a result of mixed reviews, public antagonism for director Mel Gibson and the film's graphic violence. Yet this story of Mayans whose culture is corrupted and whose families are endangered by brutal warlords is a brilliantly made action-adventure film. And since it was filmed digitally, it looks great on HDTV, and probably even better on BluRay.

As "Citizen Kane" is to American movies, Carol Reed's "The Third Man" is to British film, usually considered the best movie produced by that country's film industry, even though it is famously set in Vienna. Joseph Cotten is the writer who goes there to work for old-school pal Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to learn upon his arrival that Lime is dead; his attempt to solve the mystery of the death leads him, and us, to unexpected places. The Criterion Collection has upgraded "The Third Man" as a two-disc set, giving it a brand-new digital transfer and Dolby 1.0 audio clean-up, and adding a new commentary track by director Steven Soderbergh and writer Tony Gilroy to complement the original one by film historian Dana Polan and much more.

TV ON DVD

"Mission: Impossible — The Complete First Season" (Paramount)

"Scrubs — The Complete Fifth Season" (Touchstone)

"The O.C. — The Complete Fourth Season" (Warner)

"Perry Mason — Season 1, Vol. 2" (Paramount)

FAMILY PICK

When the TV miniseries adaptation of author Alex Haley's best-selling re-creation of his ancestry, from Africa through slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and up to the (1970s) present, aired in 1977, it became a national event: Nielsen ratings indicated that at least half of Americans — 130 million at that time — saw some or all of the 12-hour saga.

The phenomenon is recounted in "Crossing Over," a new documentary included with the four-disc "Roots: 30th Anniversary Edition" (Warner), as well as new interviews with original cast members. Though it was later revealed that some of the late Haley's research was fictionally embellished, this remains a powerful and important piece of storytelling and Americana, and while some of this, notably the depictions of slave-era brutality, might be too disturbing for very young children, it has rarely been bested as a family viewing experience.