Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Earlier this year, Criterion released a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade of Destry Rides Again starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Released in New York in late 1939, the film had its Los Angeles debut in early 1940, becoming eligible for the 1940 Academy Awards, the year Stewart won his Oscar for The…

New This Week Criterion capped off a stellar month of Blu-ray releases with a director-approved two-Blu-ray special edition of Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite from a new 4K digital master. The first disc is the original theatrical release of the film with commentary by Bong and British critic Tony Rayns. The second disc is Bong’s…

New This Week Sunrise at Campobello was not only one of the first films released on DVD by Warner Brothers when they inaugurated their Warner Archive in March 2009, it was one of the best and best-known films that had failed to receive a regular release from Warner Home Video in the then-13-year-old medium. It…

New This Week Sergeant York, given a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade by Warner Archive, was the highest grossing film of 1941. Adjusted for inflation, it is still one of the biggest moneymakers of all time. When the film was being made, public opinion in the U.S. was strongly isolationist and the producers went to great…

New This Week The Chalk Garden, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, is the 1964 film version of a celebrated 1950s British play with one of the most unusual production histories of any such play. The play about the clash between the imperious dowager Mrs. St. Maugham and Miss Madrigal, the mysterious governess she…

New This Week The Elephant Man has been given a new 4K digital restoration by the Criterion Collection. Shot in gorgeous black-and-white, David Lynch’s 1980 film is told from the perspective of London surgeon Frederick Treves, played by Anthony Hopkins, who first encounters the severely deformed John Merrick, played by John Hurt, in a freak…

New This Week Never Steal Anything Small, released in 1959, is one of the most obscure films of James Cagney’s lengthy career. Released in the early days of VHS, the film was never released on DVD until now that Kino Lorber has made it available on both DVD and Blu-ray. The third and last film…

New This Week Roman Holiday has finally been released on Blu-ray thanks to a 4K film transfer from Paramount. The 1953 classic had not previously been remastered since its 2002 DVD Special Edition which was only a slight improvement over its previous release. Time has been kind to this Cinderella in reverse story about a…

New This Week Brute Force and The Naked City have received long overdue U.S. Blu-ray releases from Criterion. The films were the two biggest hits of American writer-director Jules Dassin’s Hollywood career which lasted from1940 through his blacklisting during the filming of 1950’s Thieves’ Highway. After his move to France in 1952, Dassin became an…

New This Week Death on the Nile, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, was the second of four elaborate films made from the works of Agatha Christie by the producing team of John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin whose credits ranged from 1968’s Romeo & Juliet to 1984’s A Passage to India. Home video rights…

New This Week The Sign of the Cross, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, is a historically important film from 1932 that resurrected the career of producer-director Cecil B. DeMille, made a star of Claudette Colbert, and saved Paramount from bankruptcy. The prolific DeMille, one of the founders of Paramount, hadn’t had a hit…

New This Week Tender Mercies earned Robert Duvall his only Oscar out of seven nominations for his portrayal of a broken-down middle-aged country singer on the mend. Previously nominated for The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Great Santini, and subsequently for The Apostle, A Civil Action, and The Judge, his was that rare situation in…

New This Week Gone with the Wind was pulled from HBO Max in June, a month after it was added to the streaming service, citing the need for “an explanation and a denouncement” of the movie’s depictions of race relations. It quickly went to number one on Amazon’s list of best-selling DVDs and Blu-rays. Although…

New This Week The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum began life as a novel by Nobel laureate Heinrich Bohl based on the pacifist author’s arrest by the German government and pillorying by the press for his alleged involvement in violent anti-Vietnam War protests. It was a novel to the extent that the middle-aged writer made…

New This Week Girl Crazy was the last and best of the four MGM musicals that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made between 1939 and 1943. It was the second of three film versions of the 1930 Broadway musical starring Ginger Rogers and introducing Ethel Merman. Unlike the 1940 Rooney-Garland musical Strike Up the Band,…