DVD

Ace in the Hole (Criterion Collection). Now available on home video for the first time ever, Billy Wilder’s scaldingly cynical film about a washed-up newspaper reporter (Kirk Douglas) who gets hold of a Floyd Collins-like exclusive, blows it up into a media event avant la lettre, and loses what’s left of his soul along the way. Rarely has Hollywood made such films, and this one, not surprisingly, was the box-office flop of 1951. Fifty-six years later, it looks more like a cold-eyed peep into the future of electronic journalism (TT).