Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Judy, newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD, is a musical drama about the last days of the legendary Judy Garland, or to be precise, about her five-week run of concerts at London’s Talk of the Town (now the Hippodrome Casino) in early 1969, a few months before her death in June…

New This Week The Irishman, Marriage Story, and The Two Popes are among the most critically acclaimed films of 2019 but don’t look for them on home video any time soon. These three films, all of which have figured heavily into year-end awards consideration, were given limited theatrical showings in major cities and then mass…

New This Week Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s most accessible film ever. In an era in which there are supposedly no real movie stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are real movie stars. What’s more, DiCaprio plays one, albeit one of fifty years ago, with Pitt as his friend and stunt double…

New This Week The Goldfinch was one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films until the critics got hold of it and audiences decided to give it a pass. The film version of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has its faults, but it is a film that deserves to be seen. The main criticisms of…

New This Week All About Eve and Now, Voyager, the two films containing Bette Davis’ greatest performances, have been given new 4K transfers for their Criterion Collection Blu-ray releases, both with tons of extras. All About Eve was the first film to receive 14 Oscar nominations, the most of any film through 1950. Its record…

New This Week Cold War was nominated for three 2018 Oscars, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Directing, and Best Cinematography, all of which it lost to Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, the first time two foreign language films had vied for these awards in the same year. Newly released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion, Cold War…

New This Week The Farewell was a breakout hit at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival from Asian-American director Lulu Wang that became a critical and box-office hit when it was released theatrically later in the year. Based on a story Wang has been telling since 2012, the semiautobiographical film is about a young Chinese-American woman…

New This Week Snow Falling on Cedars is a film worth discovering or rediscovering, whichever the case may be. The new 4K transfer and restoration by Shout Select was supervised by three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK, The Aviator, Hugo) who earned the fourth of his nine Oscar nominations so far for the film. Also…

New This Week The Return of Martin Guerre has been given a brand new 4K restoration by the Cohen Film Collection which reissued the film theatrically before its new Blu-ray release. The French film classic based on the real-life 15th Century case that resonated through Medieval Europe was released in France in late 1982. A…

New This Week Three Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg, newly upgraded to Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, features three of the Austrian-American director’s late silent films, 1927’s Underworld as well as 1928’s The Last Command and The Docks of New York. Underworld, which won Ben Hecht the first Oscar given for Best Original Story,…

New This Week The House of Hitchcock Collection, the newly released limited edition Blu-ray collection from Universal Home Video, is in essence a repackaging of Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Collection first released in 2012, albeit with additional material including seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Hitchcock’s TV…

New This Week Toy Story 4 is a pleasant surprise. After 2010’s Toy Story 3 provided a satisfactory conclusion to the then-trilogy of films that began with 1995’s Toy Story and continued with 1999’s Toy Story 2, I thought we had seen the last of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of Andy’s toys, but…

New This Week Spider-Man: Far from Home picks up where Avengers: Endgame leaves off, so it would be a good idea to see that megahit, or at least be aware of the events it chronicles, before you see the latest film showcasing Peter Parker AKA Spider-Man. Of the many Marvel and DC superheroes out there,…

New This Week Yesterday is Danny Boyle’s latest attempt at duplicating the success of Slumdog Millionaire. With a better script from Richard Curtis (Love Actually) he might have succeeded but the film is just too cute for its own good. Newcomer Himesh Patel is excellent as seemingly the only living person who remembers the Beatles.…

New This Week Going My Way is one of the last of the more than 90 Oscar-winning best pictures to receive a Blu-ray release. Russell Dyball, who provides the commentary on the Shout Select release, hopes that this fact will increase the film’s standing which has eroded considerably since the film’s phenomenal 1944 release. Despite…