The weather outside is frightful but the availability of new film releases for your 4K and Blu-ray collection is delightful.

Newly released are 2025’s Wicked: For Good, One Battle After Another, Bugonia, Roofman, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, on 4K and Blu-ray; mystery classics Death on the Nile,Evil Under the SunThe Mirror Crack’d, and Diva upgraded to 4K; and the somewhat forgotten Goodbye, Columbus upgraded to Blu-ray.

Wicked: For Good is the eagerly awaited continuation of the film version of the 1993 Broadway musical, Wicked which was filmed at the same time as the first part released in 2024 to great success. Nominated for 10 Oscars, it won 2. Wicked: For Good was surprisingly shut out of the 2025 Oscar nominations.

It’s not that the film isn’t good, it’s that it doesn’t live up to audience expectations while Oscar voters see it as a been there, done that kind of a thing.

The film draws out scenes to fill its nearly 2½ hour run-time as it focuses on stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda, the witches, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, the real wicked witch. Erivo and Grande are as good as they were in the first part, Grande even more so. Goldblum and Yeoh are boring. The rest of the cast, including Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, are underused. Worst of all, despite the bloated runtime, the original Wizard of Oz characters of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion are sidelined for most of the proceedings. That was a problem with the original musical, but with the extended runtime of the two-part film’s runtime, it is something that should have been fixed.

See it and judge for yourself.

No shortage of Oscar nomination befell One Battle After Another which received 13, second only to Sinners’ record 16.

Leonardo DiCaprio as the film’s perplexed hero, Benicio Del Toro as his friend, Sean Penn as the film’s principal villain, and Teyana Taylor as the complicated terrorist who sets up the plot were all nominated for their performances. Chase Infinity as DiCaprio’s daughter, the film’s soul to DiCaprio’s heart, was left out of the nominations presumably because the competition in Best Actress, where she was campaigned, was too strong. She may have fared better in Supporting Actress which is where she was originally expected to compete.

The film bears repeated viewings and will undoubtedly get them.

Bugonia received 4 Oscar nominations including two for Emma Stone, one for producing and one for acting as the kidnapped victim of conspiracy theorist Jesse Plemons. Is she or isn’t she an alien? It keeps you guessing until the end, and then some. Both Stone and Plemons are at their best.

Plemons’ wife, Kirsten Dunst, is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her supporting performance in Roofman which follows the real-life adventures of the North Carolina McDonald’s bandit played by Channing Tatum in his best role in years.

The film is lowkey but surprisingly heartfelt as Channing’s escaped convict falls hard for Dunst and her two daughters. Promoted as a comedy, the bittersweet film is really a drama with chuckles.

The eagerly awaited Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, like Wicked: For Good, was another highly anticipated film that received no Oscar nominations.

Jeremy Allen White provides an excellent portrayal of Bruce Springsteen at his lowest as he suffers through a long period of depression during the recording of his 1982 album, Nebraska.
The film is almost unbearable to watch at points and is probably better suited to home video where it can be played in increments rather than having to be sat through all at once in theatres.

You may think otherwise but give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

Peter Ustinov took over as Hercule Poirot from Albert Finney in two excellent follow-ups to the 1974 version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express with 1978’s Death on the Nile and 1982’s Evil Under the Sun, both excellent whodunits with marvelous all-star casts. Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, and picture stealing Angela Lansbury are the brightest of the stars in the former as are Nicolas Clay, Diana Rigg and marvelous Maggie in the latter.

The producers of the three big Poirot adaptations also gave us a Miss Marple with 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d in which Angela Lansbury shockingly underperformed in the role in which she sits on the sidelines while Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis ham it up as the suspects.

Criticized for being overwhelming in Death on the Nile and underwhelming in The Mirror Crack’d, Lansbury got it just right in TV’s Murder She Wrote which ran from 1984-1996 and beyond in several made-for-TV movies.

The three Christie mysteries look just as stunning as the previously released Murder on the Orient Express in 4K UHD.

As its IMDb. Blurb says, two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through the intricate and stylish French-language thriller, Diva which has also been given a 4K UHD from Kino Lorber which also released the four Christies in the format.

Frédéric Andréi as the fan and Wilhelmenia Fernandez as the opera star lead the cast in the BAFTA nominated thriller.

Goodbye, Columbus, is remembered as the film in which Ali MacGraw made her screen debut opposite Richard Benjamin. Director Larry Peerce was one of ten directors nominated for that year’s DGA award. The film version of Philip Roth’s novella also hasn’t aged particularly well, nut longtime fans will be thrilled at its re-emergence.

Happy viewing.