Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Oscar nominations will be announced this Thursday, January 22. Where can you see this year’s most critically acclaimed films? Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and The Secret Agent are still only in theatres as is the blockbuster Avatar: Fire and Ash. Hamnet, directed by Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, is based on the acclaimed novel about Shakespeare’s son whose…

Newly released on 4K UHD are some of the best remembered films released at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. They include 1990’s Awakenings, 1997’s Boogie Nights, 2002’s Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can, and 2005’s Jarhead. Penny Marshall’s 1990 film, Awakenings was nominated for three Oscars, Best…

The Criterion Collection has released both a 4K UHD and a standard Blu-ray upgrade of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1945 film, I Know Where I’m Going!. This release uses the 2023 restoration of the film previously released on DVD by Criterion in 2010 but imports the extras from that release including Martin Scorsese’s introduction.…

The home video business continues to putter along with Warner Archive, Kino-Lorber, and the Criterion Collection being the primary caretakers of classic films on Blu-ray and UHD 4K while the major studios release much less of their current product in the formats. The business model today is theatrical release – video on demand – streaming…

Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray upgrade of The Valley of Decision, the highest grossing film of 1945 and the most sought-after Greer Garson on Blu-ray title after the still missing Random Harvest from three years earlier. Critics of eighty years ago may have preferred The Lost Weekend, Spellbound, The Bells of St. Mary’s, The…

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third entry in the franchise, is now streaming on Netflix. Unlike the first two in the franchise, 2019’s Knives Out and 2022’s Glass Onion, neither of which I liked, Wake Up Dead Man is an absorbing murder mystery with comic undertones. More serious than silly, with…

The third of Netflix’s big four year-end Oscar contenders, Jay Kelly, has landed on the streaming service. The first of these films, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, lived up to my expectations, and the second, Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams exceeded them. Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, though, is a disappointment. The film has a catchy advertising line,…

Warner Archive has released the long sought-after restoration of 1959’s The Miracle on Blu-ray. The film, which until now has only been available in faded bootleg DVD releases if you could find them, was the Radio City Music Hall Christmas attraction in 1959, a big deal at the time. The previous year’s Christmas attraction had…

Now streaming on Netflix, Train Dreams is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist of the same name which was originally published as a short story in the author’s 2002 collection, The Paris Review. Adapted for the screen by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing) and directed by Bentley, the…

One Battle After Another, the year’s best reviewed film thus far and the presumed frontrunner for this year’s Best Picture Oscar, is now available for rental or purchase digitally from Prime Video and other sources two months ahead of its streaming and video releases. While Paul Thomas Anderson is likely to win his first Oscar…

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is now streaming on Netflix. Given just a three-week run in theatres where this majestic film should rightfully be seen, it is nevertheless now available for all who have a subscription to Netflix to see. From the director of The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Nightmare Alley…

Denmark’s Excalibur Media has released an all-region Blu-ray of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1999 film, Tea with Mussolini with English packaging, a long overdue upgrade of the director’s biographical film starring Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, and Lily Tomlin. While the film is based on Zeffirelli’s own experiences growing up in Florence, names have been…

Netflix is now streaming one of the year’s most eagerly awaited films. Unfortunately, it’s not a very good one. The idea behind A House of Dynamite may be thoughtful and well-meaning but the execution of it is awful. Films about accidental nuclear bomb launches are nothing new. In 1964, there were two, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr.…

Warner Bros. has released Zach Creggers’ Weapons on 4K UHD as well as on standard Blu-ray. The intriguing 2025 horror movie is both original and derivative of classic horror films of the 1960s fromVillage of the Damned to Rosemary’s Baby, the former in the setup of the film and the latter in its most talked…

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…