Like Susan Hayward, Paul Newman and Geraldine Page before her, Julianne Moore had so many Oscar nominations over such a long period of time that it seemed inevitable she would finally take home an Oscar last January.

Hayward was on her fifth nomination when she won for I Want to Live!, Newman his seventh when he won for The Color of Money, and Page her eighth when she won for The Trip to Bountiful. Moore, who had previously been nominated for Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair, Far from Heaven, and The Hours was on her fifth nomination in eighteen years when she finally won for Still Alice.

Like Hayward, Newman and Page, it can be debated whether Moore won because she gave the best performance of the year in her category, or because she was deemed overdue for a win, but like those three before her, it was indisputably a good one. It also had a great back story. Co-written and directed by Richard Glatzer and his husband Wash Westmoreland, from a book by Lisa Genova, making the film was the dying wish of Glatzer who succumbed to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) A.K.A. Lou Gehrig Disease in March. Much of what he was going through was applied to the script for Moore’s character who is diagnosed with familial early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Both diseases involve the disintegration of vital functions.

Moore plays a linguistics professor at Columbia University who must not only cope with a dread disease but inform her three children (Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, and Kristen Stewart) that they may have inherited the disease as well. She must also cope with the fading interest of her once loving and supportive husband (Alec Baldwin) who leaves her behind when he takes a job in another state. Moore is heartbreaking as the highly intelligent professional who slowly loses the ability to function before our eyes.

Like Still Alice, Moore’s other 2014 film, Maps to the Stars, was also given a will-they-or-won’t-they last minute Oscar qualifying run (Editor’s note: the film does not appear on the Academy’s list of eligible productions, therefore would not have been eligible for the 2014 Oscar). Unlike Still Alice, however, this one does not have Oscar written all over it.

Maps to the Stars is one of director David Cronenberg’s (Dead Ringers, A History of Violence) most bizarre films. That’s not to say it isn’t good, it is in an odd way, but it slings so much mud at Hollywood that it’s difficult to believe that it would get much support from the Academy.

Moore gets top billing as a minimally talented aging actress so desperate for a part that she campaigns for a role in a remake of a film that once won her better and better-known late actress mother an Oscar. The central characters, however, are Mia Wasikowska as a disfigured young woman who comes to Hollywood at the invitation of Twitter friend Carrie Fisher (who plays herself), and Evan Bird as a seriously disturbed child star. John Cusack plays Bird’s self-help charlatan father and Olivia Williams plays his mess of a mother. Robert Pattinson as a limousine driver and Jonathan Watton as Moore’s quirky lover co-star.

Another film given a brief Oscar qualifying run was Daniel Barnz’s Cake, a failed attempt to land Jennifer Aniston an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The Friends star received so much publicity for appearing without makeup and her hair a mess that pundits were skeptical of her actual performance. The truth is that it is a good one. She convincingly plays a woman who battles chronic pain with stolen pills until she hits rock bottom and then goes cold turkey in order to rid herself of her demons.

Adriana Barraza also provides a strong performance as Aniston’s faithful housekeeper and Sam Worthington is fine as the young widower she pursues in order to get her hands on his late wife’s pills, but Anna Kendrick as Worthington’s wife’s ghost is wasted in a nonsense role. William H. Macy is also wasted in his one scene as the man who caused the accident that disfigured Aniston and killed her son. Macy’s wife Felicity Huffman fares slightly better as Aninston’s fed-up therapist.

Kendrick fares better in Richard LaGravenese’s film of Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last 5 Years. She and Jeremy Jordan are superb as the young couple whose five-year relationship is chronicled in song. The problem is that what works on stage doesn’t necessarily work on screen. It’s a two-character musical with songs that are only moderately good from a composer who has often done brilliant work as witnessed in Parade and The Bridges of Madison County.

Still Alice, Map to the Stars, Cake, and The Last 5 Years are available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Making their Blu-ray debuts are Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow and Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn.

1947’s Make Way for Tomorrow earned huzzahs from the critics and McCarey’s fellow directors upon its initial release but was a commercial failure. McCarey was so dismayed by the film’s failure that when he won the Oscar for the same year’s The Awful Truth he actually said “thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”

Among the film’s greatest admirers were John Ford, Jean Renoir and Yasujiro Ozu. Both Ford and Renoir were so taken with Beulah Bondi’s multi-faceted portrayal of 70-year-old Lucy Cooper that they both wanted to use her in similar downtrodden roles. Ford cast her as Ma Joad in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, but Darryl F. Zanuck overruled him and replaced the independent actress with loyal contract player Jane Darwell who won an Oscar for the role. Renoir cast her as Zachary Scott’s cantankerous grandmother in 1945’s The Southerner, which became another of Bondi’s most beloved performances. Ozu more or less remade the film as 1953’s Tokyo Story, which, like Make Way for Tomorrow, was rediscovered in the 1970s, and like Make Way for Tomorrow, has since been on smart critics’ lists of the greatest films ever made.

Bondi and Victor Moore play an elderly couple who lose their home in foreclosure and must be split up between two of their five children until other accommodations can be made. The film takes no sides in their plight, allowing for understanding, if not altogether sympathetic portrayals of other family members. Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter stand out as the son and daughter-in-law with whom Bondi must stay. Louise Beavers as Mitchell and Bainter’s maid, and Maurice Moscovitch as Moore’s friend are also terrific in key supporting roles.

1939’s Jamaica Inn was Hitchcock’s last British film, co-produced by Charles Laughton and Paramount Pictures. Hitch made the film in order to secure author Daphne du Maurier’s support for his direction of his first Hollywood film, 1940’s Rebecca. He would later also direct the film of her other major literary success, 1963’s The Birds.

Hitchcock hated working on Jamaica Inn. He hated that Paramount forced him to make changes to the script including changing Laughton’s character from that of a corrupt parson to a corrupt squire. He hated that he had no control over Laughton whose hammy performance is one of his worst. Eight years later he would direct Laughton to great effect in one of his more controlled performances in The Paradine Case.

Maureen O’Hara (in her film debut), Robert Newton, Leslie Banks and Emlyn Williams, on the other hand, give riveting performances in this swashbuckler, and the film consigned too long to public domain hell, looks ravishing in Cohen Media Group’s 4K restoration.

This week’s new releases include American Sniper and the Blu-ray upgrade of The Rose.