Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Tár, now available on Blu-ray and 4K, is one of the three best films of 2022 in my estimation. The only question for me is whether it is better than either The Fabelmans or The Banshees of Inisherin, both of which I have previously reviewed. It well may be in the long run, but for…

I am at a loss to understand the affection certain critics and large swaths of the population seem to have for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, now streaming on Netflix after a brief theatrical run. The second film in the Knives Out franchise leaves me just as cold as the first one, which was released in…

Forget any negativity you may have heard, The Fabelmans, currently available for home viewing via pay-for-view, is one of Steven Spielberg’s very best films, a real movie-movie. My only issue with the film is a technical one. In 1952, the standard TV was a console with a 17″ screen, not those tiny early TVs as…

Several new 4K Ultra HD releases have been made available in time for Christmas gift giving including Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Adaptation., The Usual Suspects, The Company of Wolves, WALL-E, and Sony Pictures Classics 30th Anniversary Collection. Quentin Tarantino made his film debut with 1987’s My Best Friend’s Birthday, a long-forgotten comedy that went nowhere.…

Warner Archive has finally released John Huston’s 1964 film of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana on Blu-ray. Williams’ 1961 play was his last successful original Broadway production. Although many of his plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth, are still…

Florence Pugh’s two high profile films of 2022, The Wonder and Don’t Worry Darling, are both available for streaming now. The Wonder, which is the better of the two, is streaming on Netflix while Don’t Worry Darling is streaming on HBO Max and is also available for purchase on DVD and Blu-ray. The Wonder is…

The official start of the holiday season in the U.S. begins on Thanksgiving Day, which is just two days away. Holiday movies, almost all of them dealing with the lead-up to Christmas Day, have already been appearing with regularity on the Hallmark Channel and the various streaming services. You can spend your holiday viewing time…

The Crown: Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix. The popular behind-the-scenes examination of Britain’s royal family during the reign of Elizabeth II (1952-2022) began in 2016, running for two years before taking a break for one, returning with different actors for two more, then taking another year off before returning yet again with a…

Edward Berger’s German remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, now in theatres, is simultaneously streaming on Netflix where I viewed it. Although it is well made, it is unlikely to have the impact of Lewis Milestone’s Oscar-winning 1930 version of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, which follows a group of seven recent high school…

We’ve come to that time of year when the subscription streaming services start showing more of the kind of content that we signed up for in the first place – high quality films and series that either have or will go on to receive awards recognition at the Oscars, Globes, Emmys, and the like. Streaming…

I haven’t been keeping tabs on the number of DVD reports I’ve filed in the last fifteen years and seven months, but lo and behold, this is the 800th edition. When I started this weekly column in April 2007, DVDs had been on the market for ten years while Blu-rays, which had been available for…

Universal has released a 60th anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Robert Mulligan’s film of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress (Mary Badham), Black-and-White Cinematography, and Score, it won three for Best Actor (Gregory Peck), Adapted Screenplay (Horton Foote), and Black-and-White…

VCI Entertainment has released a 90th Anniversary Blu-ray Special Edition of Rain restored by the Mary Pickford Foundation. Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s 1921 short story, Miss Thompson, this was the second film version of the legendary 1922 play by John Colton and Clemence Randolph retitled Rain. The play, starring Jeanne Eagels, was so popular…

Shout Select has released a Collector’s Edition 4K UHD – Blu Ray combo pack of Oliver Stone’s 1986 Oscar winner, Platoon. Considered to be the best film about the Vietnam War by most and the best war movie of all-time by some, Platoon was at the time of its release the latest in a smattering…

New This Week Criterion has released 4K restorations of Le Corbeau and Exotica on Blu-ray. Made during the World War II German occupation of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau is both an absorbing mystery and a subtle condemnation of the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Gestapo. The plot revolves around poison pen letters menacing a…