Saving Private Ryan in 4K: easily the best way to watch Spielberg's war epic

Talkin' 'bout their generation... Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan got a lot of good press when it came out, for its tribute to those who fought and died to save our western civilization from the German Nazis. It also garnered praise for its powerful and graphic depiction of what it was probably like (Hollywood influences notwithstanding) to have made that deadly but vital beach landing on June 6, 1944. This is the perfect time of year, approaching America's annual Memorial Day celebration and the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, for Paramount to reissue a 20th Anniversary edition of Spielberg's film with an absolutely spectacular conversion to 4K disc with HDR – a UHD treatment that's a very pleasant surprise, indeed. It's a pretty good movie, too, though it would have been better if they'd forgotten the "saving mission" aspect of it and just continued to document Tom Hanks' group as they fought inland after establishing their beach hold. That opening (actually the second sequence after a bit of a narrative hook) is probably the best look at the horrors – and heroes – of war that I've seen, an unforgettable bit of movie making that puts those men's sacrifices into perspective for those who've never had to endure what my father's generation did in order to make the world safe for us.