Project Hail Mary, the year’s biggest hit film thus far, is currently streaming on video-on-demand. The film, which opened in theatres in March, is not expected to be released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD until August 11, so if you want to see it before then, video-on-demand is the way to go.

The critically acclaimed film stars Ryan Gosling as a middle school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship. As his memory returns, he finds that he is the only person still alive on a mission to stop a mysterious substance slowly killing the sun.

As the film evolves, he finds that an alien creature that looks like a giant rock, who he names Rocky, is the only survivor of his planet’s spaceship as well. The two work together to save the sun and their own planets.

If the plot sounds a bit hokey, it isn’t. Based on a novel by Andy Weir (The Martian), the film is very much of the same cloth as Ridley Scott’s 2015 film of that novel. It’s directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) from a screenplay by Drew Goddard who also adapted The Martian.

Gosling commands the screen all by himself or much of the film as Matt Damon did in The Martian. While the film features a large supporting cast, only two cast members, Sandra Hüller as the mysterious woman who hired him for the mission and James Ortiz as the voice of Rocky have substantial roles.

It is surprisingly funny and very touching. No wonder critics and audiences have embraced it more than any other film released so far this year. Don’t be surprised if it is nominated for numerous Oscars at the end of the year including one for Godling whose performance reminded me more of his early work in Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl than any of his recent work. It’s that fresh.

At the other end of the spectrum of 2026 releases, Emerald Fennell’s critically lambasted version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has been released simultaneously to streaming on HBO Max and home video on Blu-ray and 4k UHD.

The film which concentrates on Bronte’s two main characters is overlong and often silly rather illuminating. It would have benefitted from a tighter script and more controlled direction.

I like Ferrell’s previous films, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn but those were original works not adaptations of literary classics. The many characters in those films were interesting, not so what she has done here.

Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff alternately command the screen and look lost. Third-billed Hong Chao is fine as the housekeeper but Shazad Latif and Alison Oliver, the actors playing Edgar and Isabella, are left adrift. Katif is directed to play Edgar (Cathy’s husband) almost as a zombie and Oliver (Edgar’s sister and Heathcliff’s eventual wife) is directed to play Isabella as a simpleton.

For no apparent reason, Isabella is supposed to be Edgar’s ward who is “more like a sister” in this version, than his actual sister. Cathy’s mean brother is completely missing in this version, and as with most film versions of the novel it only covers the first part of the novel.

Martin Clunes (TV’s Doc Martin) does a decent job of playing a mean drunk as Cathy’s father.

There is also one other memorable, if limited, performance, and that is of Owen Cooper, the multiple award-winning young star of TV’s Adolescence, who plays Heathcliff as a child.

The best version of the novel remains William Wyler’s 1939 Hollywood production starring Merle Oberon as Cathy, Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, David Niven as Edgar, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Isabella, and Flora Robson as the housekeeper with Cecil Kellaway as Earnshaw and Donald Crisp and Leo G. Carroll as characters absent from this version.

The most complete version is British director Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 version starring Juliette Binoche as Cathy, Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff, and Janet McTeer as the housekeeper. That version was never shown theatrically in the U.S. and was instead shown as a TV movie in early 1994 after Fiennes had become an overnight sensation as the Nazi commandant in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. It was his intense performance as Heathcliff that drew Spielberg’s attention to him in the first place.

After watching Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights, you may want to watch something light and tuneful. I chose 1967’s The Happiest Millionaire, the last film that Walt Disney produced before his death.

The roadshow version of the film was released by Disney on DVD but never upgraded to Blu-ray, one of the many sins against the studio’s classics by the successors to Disney.

It’s not a classic, but it is a charmer based on the autobiographical book of philanthropist Cordelia Drexter Biddle and her family. It had been done as Broadway play with Walter Pidgeon as her father in the mid-1950s. The Sherman Brothers, fresh from Mary Poppins, added a bouncy musical score.

The story is told from the perspective of a new butler for the family played by Tommy Steele. It featured the last starring role of Fred MacMurray as the father, as well as the last big-screen performance of Greer Garson as the mother, and the last Hollywood film of Gladys Cooper as MacMurray’s aunt. Lesley Ann Warren, two years after her breakout role in the 1965 version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, played Cordelia. John Davidson played her husband-to-be, Angier Duke, and Geraldine Page played his mother.

Musical highlights include Tommy Steele’s “Fortuosity”, John Davidson’s “Detroit”, the counterpoint duet of Gladys Cooper and Geraldine Page to “There Are Those”, and Greer Garson and Fred MacMurray’s “It Won’t Be Long ‘Til Christmas” which was excised from the film’s general release but restored for the DVD.

Happy viewing.