Battle of the Best Pictures: CODA v. Cuckoo’s Nest 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review

The Best Picture Oscar winners from 1975 and 2021 are arriving on 4K disc for the first time just a week apart, bringing us two quite different dramas that allow us to revisit the best of the best.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of only three films to win all five “major” awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director (Miloš Forman), and Best Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman), a feat first accomplished by 1934’s It Happened One Night and not again until (and not since) 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. First a book by Ken Kesey and then a stage play by Dale Wasserman on its way to the screen, Cuckoo’s Nest depicts the lives of the mentally ill in a way most had never seen before, often uncomfortably so, but infused with a humor that only the wild card Nicholson could provide. A revelation and an indictment, the movie is not so much a statement about the undefeatability of the human spirit, rather asking, can the human spirit truly be broken?

Filmed mostly on location in Oregon, including at an operational mental hospital, beneath overcast skies, the movie certainly isn’t pretty, nor should it be. D.P. Haskell Wexler shot it soft, and a light, consistent grain remains in this 2025 restoration by the Academy Film Archive from the original camera negative. Skintones are varied and often pasty, and as with the acting, there is a naturalistic, fly-on-the-wall quality to the proceedings. Shadow detail is remarkably strong for a movie from this era.

The disc defaults to a remastered 5.1 lossless remix, and the main beneficiary of this multichannel presentation is the musical score (see more, below) which extends gently into the rears. But for a few brief exchanges, dialogue is clear, and there is one pleasant, modern-sounding “surround” moment as a Coast Guard helicopter flies by during the fishing sequence. The original theatrical mono is also included, in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 configuration.

Cuckoo’s Nest is a different story. Charles Kiselyak’s outstanding 86-minute documentary Completely Cuckoo, from his Pioneer Special Editions laserdisc, is ported over here, along with five deleted scenes. Missing however are both versions of the Forman commentary that have appeared on discs over the years, which is a real disappointment. Two new featurettes have apparently been culled from a Zoom call between producer Michael Douglas and co-stars Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Brad Dourif, one with general reminiscences of the production and the other focusing on the acting.

Something old, something new, but if you still want more Cuckoo:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Original Soundtrack 50th Anniversary LP by Jack Nitzsche (Varèse Sarabande/Craft Recordings)

Composer/Arranger Jack Nitzsche might not have taken the Academy Awards stage those 50 years ago (he was nominated, and later won as co-writer of the song from An Officer and a Gentleman), but his contributions were no less essential to the movie’s enduring impact. Utilizing outside-the-box styles and influences, including a musical saw played with a bow and an occasional Native American undercurrent, he captured many moods of the experience: the highs (“Bus Ride to Paradise”), the lows (“Act of Love”), and the ward’s absurd juxtapositions (“Medication Valse”). Varèse/Craft’s limited edition vinyl reissue faithfully recreates the vintage LP, its eleven tracks newly AAA-remastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, housed in a gatefold jacket.

CODA (it’s an acronym) is something of a miracle in that it manages to avoid maudlin coming-of-age tropes and/or any melodramatic challenges of being deaf. Instead, this story of young Ruby (Emilia Jones: why wasn’t she even nominated?), the one hearing member of her family, is undeniably powerful in its honesty and also unexpectedly funny. The directing is top-notch, but the fresh characters and sincere performances across the board are what give CODA its heart.

The foursome on the cover is a family of fishermen, and so we are treated to some achingly beautiful shots on the open water that offer brilliant specular highlights, in Dolby Vision. The true 4K master born of a 6K digital source surrenders effortless detail, down to the pilly texture on the clan’s working-man’s wardrobe. Leaves, blades of grass, floorboards, and brick walls in the distance are remarkably precise, the greens in particular are quite lovely and a mild pinkish hue imparts a touch of romantic warmth to the 1.85:1 image.

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack skillfully establishes the worlds of the hearing and the deaf, establishing the dichotomy and unavoidable chasm faced by Ruby, her brother and her parents. All sonic elements are as crisp as we would hope, the live musical performances have all the full-bodied presence we would hope for, especially the last one… damn. The height channels are employed for some gentle, welcome atmospherics, although one of the most memorable scenes is, in fact, completely silent.

Only a few years late, CODA has arrived on disc here in The States. The movie is an Apple Films Original—and quite the coup, ultimately snagging that top Oscar—so they no doubt wanted to keep it exclusive to Apple TV+ as long as possible. So, what extras does this 4K drop deliver? None. No digital copy, for the reason just mentioned, no bundled Blu-ray, no featurettes (although there are two very brief snippets available when we stream the movie), not a trailer nor even a slipsleeve.

Chris Chiarella