Alliance Entertainment has released Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray.

Arguably the best film made from a Stephen King story, this one is not a horror movie but a look at a life in which horrible things happen to a good man and those around him, a sort of reverse It’s a Wonderful Life.

The film was a huge success at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award. Unfortunately, the film did not receive distribution until June 2025 when it was picked up by Neon. Sadly, the film’s late release did not duplicate its initial success in Toronto.

The story is told in three segments in reverse of the life of the title character who dies of a brain tumor at 39.

In Act 3, which is the first act shown, the world is coming to an end as seen through the eyes of one of Chuck’s former teachers, brilliantly played by Chiwetel Ejiofor who barely remembers him. Tom Hiddleston, who dominates the middle section of the film, is a secondary character in this section.

Hiddleston rises to full glory as a buttoned-down accountant who suddenly has an urge to sing and dance in Act 2. It is the final act, Act 1 in the life of Chuck, however, that grabs our attention and fills our hearts with song as 10-year-old Chuck played by newcomer Benjamin Pajack takes center stage. In this sequence, Chuck has already survived the deaths of his parents in a car crash and his beloved grandmother from a heart attack. It was his grandmother who introduced him to movie musicals from which he gets his inspiration to dance, which is brought to fruition by a teacher and a girl three years older than him in his dance class.

Mark Hamill is also outstanding in this section as Chuck’s grandfather.

Newcomer Pajack first came to the public’s attention as Winthrop in the 2022 Broadway revival of The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.

Extras on the release include interviews with Hiddleston, Chiwetel, and Hamill and full-length commentary from writer/director Flanagan.

October 16 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Angela Lansbury who died three years ago five days before what would have been her 97th birthday.

Lansbury had the most unique and longest lasting career of any actor of the last 100 years. What makes it so unusual is that unlike most careers which either begin with success on stage or television, hers began in the movies and expanded to Broadway before she achieved her greatest success on television.

Although she was trained for the theatre where she had minor success as a child along with her contemporary and classmate Glynis Johns who lived to be 100, it was the movies that brought Lansbury to the attention of the general public at the age of 18 in 1944’s Gaslight for which she received her first Oscar nomination, quickly followed by National Velvet and The Picture of Dorian Gray, for which she received her second nomination.

On screen for the next twenty-one years in mostly supporting roles, she received a third Oscar nomination for 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate in which she gave one of the most chilling performances of all time as the manipulative mother of a brainwashed soldier being groomed to assassinate the would-be next president of the United States.

After years of playing women old enough to be her mother on film, Lansbury turned to the stage where in 1966 she gave one of the most iconic performances of any actress in the history musical comedy in the 1966 production of Jerry Herman’s Mame. With occasional time out for movie roles in such films as 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks and 1978’s Death on the Nile, she spent the next decade and a half on the Broadway stage for which she earned four Tonys beginning with Mame and extending through 1969’s Dear World, the 1974 revival of Gypsy and 1979’s Sweeney Todd.

In 1984, just short of her 60th birthday, the actress achieved her greatest success as the star of the TV series, Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996) for which she received 12 Emmy nominations, one for each year of the show’s run, during which she also gave one of her most iconic screen performances as the voice of Mrs. Potts, the teacup in Beauty and the Beast in which she sang the Oscar-winning title song.

Lansbury received another six career Emmy nominations, a fifth Tony for the 2009 revival of Blithe Spirit, and an honorary Oscar in 2014 at the age of 89. Her last screen appearance was in 2022’s Glass Onion, released posthumously.

In June, Universal released a beautifully restored Blu-ray set of the complete Murder, She Wrote collection, including the three TV movies that followed the series.

Like Lansbury’s career itself, her character Jessica Fletcher and the world around her changed over the run of the series. It began with her as a retired schoolteacher in the fictitious Cabot Cove, Maine where she achieved success late in life as a mystery writer. Her research in writing fictitious mysteries gave her the wherewithal to solve real-life mysteries that popped up wherever she happened to be.

In the early years of the series, Jessica would visit towns and cities all over the country where she would have a relative in peril. Her extended family even included a British musical comedy star played by Lansbury in a dual role. Later, having run out of relatives to visit, she would visit friends all over the world. Beginning with series 8, Jessica would rent an apartment in New York City which she would alternate with time spent in Cabot Cove as well as around the country and seemingly, the entire world.

The series’ guest list included many famous players, too many to name here, but it was Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher who was the heart and soul of the series. Even an episode in which Lansbury as Jessica’s cousin was on screen throughout, audiences missed Jessica.

During the run of the series, her omnipresent typewriter would turn to a computer, and her constantly ringing house phone would become a cell phone. Technology would also change, with DNA replacing blood type and even fingerprints as proof positive for catching a killer.

Watching Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote on Blu-ray is the perfect way of celebrating her centenary.

Happy viewing.