Frank Sinatra: 5-Film Collection

Four colorful musicals (and one colorful caper film with a couple of musical numbers) featuring Frank Sinatra are collected in this five-disc Blu-ray set, which includes three films making their Blu-ray debuts. Sinatra costars with Gene Kelly in their two "singing sailor" films. In director George Sidney's Anchors Aweigh (1945), gawky young Hollywood neophyte Sinatra tags along with ladies' man Kelly while on leave in Hollywood, where they end up in a big tribute concert and Kelly dances with the animated mouse Jerry (of Tom and Jerry fame). In On the Town (1949), co-directed by Stanley Donen and star Kelly, the song-and-dance sailors are joined by Jules Munshin, looking for girls while on 24-hour leave in the Big Apple—a Technicolor fantasy of New York that is painted in primary colors, sculpted with high energy choreography, and softened by small-town romanticism. A classic original movie musical, On the Town was later turned into a Broadway hit. Filmmaker Gordon Douglas's Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) replays the Robin Hood story as a gangster tale in Depression-era Chicago, with Sinatra as a philanthropic mob boss and Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bing Crosby as costars. Filling out the collection are two titles previously available on Blu-ray: director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's musical Guys and Dolls (1955), a Damon Runyon tale of gambling and romance starring Sinatra, Jean Simmons, and Marlon Brando; and filmmaker Lewis Milestone's lighthearted caper film Ocean's 11 (1960), in which Sinatra teams up with Las Vegas Rat Pack buddies Martin, Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. Extras include audio commentaries, vintage featurettes and cartoons, and bonus musical numbers. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)