After Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks returned to the battlefields of WWII to produce the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers, and I’d wager that this collaboration is actually far superior to Ryan. Basing the 10 episodes on the book of the same name by all-star historian Stephen Ambrose, which told the stories of “Easy Company” of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the series follows the group of men from training in the U.S. and over to Europe, up until the end of the war. It’s got none of the rah-rah of Ryan, and some really outstanding performances: Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston are the constants throughout the series, but David Schwimmer puts in an impressive (and thoroughly unlikeable) performance as an incompetent captain, and if you look close you’ll find Simon Pegg in there too.

It takes a mini-series to tell even a fraction of the stories in even one company of one regiment of one division of one military power of one war. The expansiveness of the TV format allows the filmmakers to really explore the stories and characters, and there are impressively few missteps (though the episode Hanks himself directs is one of the weaker ones). Band of Brothers comes out on Blu-Ray this week, and it looks and sounds great in that format, but if you don’t have a Blu-Ray player you can still find it on DVD. It’s a real must-see, and a good indication of the quality of what was to come from HBO in the years following its 2001 debut.

Though special effects, high production values and comedy don’t always mesh too well, Ben Stiller’s mega-comedy and Hollywood parody Tropic Thunder was a well-deserved hit this summer, and now it’s out on DVD. The story of a group of vain, self-obsessed actors (Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. in blackface) who set out to make a war movie and find themselves in the middle of a real conflict, it keeps up the comedy all the way through—funny stuff.