Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Aladdin, Disney’s latest live-action version of one of its animated classics to hit the home video market, is a film I wasn’t expecting much from given its mostly negative reviews but was instead pleasantly surprised to find that I liked it. Most of the negative reviews of the film come from comparing…

New This Week Day of the Outlaw is one of those films that owes its legend to home video. Barely released in 1959 in New York, it was dumped directly into neighborhood theatres as the second half of a double bill with Robert Aldrich’s Ten Seconds to Hell, a post-World War II thriller that was…

New This Week Rocketman, the film about the early-to-middle-aged life of Elton John, was written by Lee Hall who wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Billy Elliot and the book and lyrics for Billy Elliot the Musical for which John wrote the music. It was directed by Dexter Fletcher who took over the direction of Bohemian…

New This Week Magnificent Obsession, from Lloyd C. Douglas’ best-selling novel, was a huge hit for Universal when the studio first made it in 1935 as a vehicle for Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor, directed by John M. Stahl. It became an even bigger hit in 1954 when Universal remade it as a vehicle for…

New This Week Avengers: Endgame takes place after the events of last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, but unlike that film, which left me totally cold, this one has a great deal of heart, which sustains it through the non-CGI battle scenes. The first Avengers film, appropriately titled The Avengers, in which the Marvel superheroes were…

New This Week Pokémon Detective Pikachu, The Curse of La Llorona, and Tolkien are three 2019 films new to home video for which outside knowledge may well be a factor in their enjoyment. Personally, I found Tolkein, about the formative years of writer-poet-philologist-academic author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien…

New This Week Easy Living and A Foreign Affair, two classic comedies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, have been given long overdue Blu-ray upgrades from Kino Lorber. Although both films starred Jean Arthur, they couldn’t have been more different. 1937’s Easy Living, directed by Mitchell Leisen, is among the screwiest of the screwball comedies while 1948’s…

New This Week Do the Right Thing has been given a 4K digital restoration, approved by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio Soundtrack and audio commentary from 1995 featuring director Spike Lee, Dickerson, production designer Wynn Thomas, and actress Joie Lee (Spike’s sister). The two-disc Blu-ray edition includes a documentary from…

New This Week Shazam! is a lighthearted action film about teenager Billy Batson who turns into an adult superhero when he utters the word SHAZAM – an acronym comprised of the names of the of the gods who grant him power – (Solomon – Wisdom. Hercules – Strength. Atlas – Stamina. Zeus – Power. Achilles…

New This Week Dead of Night has been released for the first time in the U.S. on Blu-ray and DVD by Kino Lorber. The granddaddy of the horror film anthology has been given a 4K restoration that does full justice to the 1945 British film that was released in the U.S. in 1946 with two…

New This Week The Aftermath is a British drama about the effects of the aftermath of World War II on the people of Hamburg, Germany and the soldiers who occupy their city. As one British officer puts it, the Russians got the wine, the Americans the views, and the Brits the ruins. Directed by James…

New This Week Dumbo is the latest live-action version of a Disney animated classic to reach home video. For eighteen years, 101 Dalmatians was the only animated Disney film to get a live-action remake from the studio. Then in quick succession we got Sleeping Beauty (as Maleficent), Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast,…

New This Week Hotel Mumbai marks the feature film debut of Australian director Anthony Maras who co-wrote the screenplay with veteran Scottish writer John Collee (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Happy Feet). This non-stop thriller is a highly suspenseful action-packed account of the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel…

New This Week RKO Classic Romances, the new Blu-ray collection from Kino Lorber, gives us five Pre-Code tearjerkers, all of them preserved by the Library of Congress and restored by Lobster Films. In chronological order, the films are Sin Takes a Holiday, released in November 1930; Millie, released in February 1931; Kept Husbands, also released…

New This Week The Man Who Laughs, the 1869 novel by Victor Hugo, has been adapted for the screen less frequently than the myriad versions of Hugo’s better-known works, 1831’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and 1862’s Les Misérables. The most famous version was Paul Leni’s 1928 silent classic, given a 4K restoration for its…