Category: Home Viewing with Peter

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…

New This Week Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray of Mark Robson’s Bright Victory. Previously unavailable on home video in the U.S., this 1951 film was one of the most acclaimed films of its day and one which still stands out. Arthur Kennedy received the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actor over Marlon…

New This Week Sportswriter, screenwriter, and novelist Paul Gallico (1897-1976) received an Oscar nomination for the original story of 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees. He also wrote the original stories for The Clock and Lili among others. His novels included The Three Loves of Thomasina and The Poseidon Adventure, both of which made hit…

New This Week Any time of year is a good time to revisit your favorite films on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, or whatever platform you can find them on. Autumn, however, is the time of year when I tend to watch the same twenty-five films year after year as time permits. I break those film…

New This Week Dirty Dancing has probably had more home video releases than any other film over the last thirty-five years as its ownership went from Vestron to Artisan to Lionsgate among others in the U.S., 20th Century-Fox in Australia, Columbia in the U.K., and Warner Home Video in France to name just a few.…

New This Week Paramount has finally given us a U.S. Blu-ray release of Lasse Hallstrom’s 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Swedish writer-director Hallstrom scored two 1987 Oscar nominations for writing and directing My Life as a Dog, a rarity for a foreign film director. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape was only his second Hollywood film.…

New This Week Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat has had an unusual history. Released between the director’s two most critically acclaimed films, 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans and 1999’s The Insider, the film met with mixed reviews upon its initial release but later became a huge hit with younger critics. Mann, who honed his…

New This Week 1955’s The Killing was the third classic heist film of the 1950s following John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Jules Dassin’s Rififi, but it was a first in many ways. It was the first film version of a novel by Lionel White (The Night of the Following Day) and the first to…