I love the extravagant romanticism of "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), and I think stars Omar Sharif and Julie Christie are enormously appealing in this movie. The sets, costumes, and locations look terrific. When I watched this film on DVD recently, it looked and sounded great, and the DVD comes packaged with an impressive array of special features. Set in Russia, the film chronicles the life and loves of physician and poet Yuri Zhivago (Sharif), centering around the period of awful upheaval caused by World War I and the Russian Revolution. But Zhivago’s story is told in flashback many years later, justifying a romanticized view of terrible times past. The movie doesn’t seriously address political issues -- the focus is on what happens to people when they get swept up in a tide of events beyond their control.

Selected Special Features on the DVD: