Category: Home Viewing with Peter

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…

The Sound of Music has been released on 4K Ultra HD by Disney which now controls the 20th Century-Fox catalogue. The film of course looks and sounds better than it ever has in the format. Officially called the film’s 60th Anniversary edition, it is being released six months past its 60th anniversary which occurred in…

The Italian 4Kult has released Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon on 4K UHD, having previously released the film on Blu-ray in 2024. The release is remarkable in that the film, a co-production of Apple TV and Paramount, is the first and so far, only film controlled by the streaming giant to have been…

Kino Lorber has released 1947’s Dear Ruth and 1934’s Father Brown, Detective on Blu-ray. Both were Paramount films which became the ownership of Universal in 1948. Dear Ruth was a very popular Broadway comedy about a G.I. who falls in love with a girl through her letters to him. Unbeknownst to him, the girl, and…

Last week I focused on Hollywood films released in the period from 1941 through 1947 which covered World War II and its immediate aftermath. This week, I’m concentrating on another seven-year period, 1960 through 1966, the years in which there was a definite crack in the Production Code that had ruled Hollywood since mid-1934, leading…

This has been an underwhelming year thus far for new films and TV programming with no truly outstanding home video releases to recommend other than the occasional upgrade of a previously released film. The fall film festivals have unearthed several films worth anticipating in theatres later this year such as Hamnet and Bugonia and TV…

Warner Archive has released a rare for them Blu-ray of a classic film that had never been on DVD in the U.S., John Ford’s last film, 1966’s 7 Women. 7 Women may not be one of Ford’s masterworks but it is a fascinating film. Set in an American mission in 1935 China, the film is…

The Criterion Collection has released a beautifully restored version of Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine on 4K UHD. A seminal film of Italian neorealism filmed just after the end of World War II, Shoeshine was released in Italy in 1946 a year after Rome, Open City which had been a huge hit. However, with American films…

Film Masters Archive Collection has released a restored Blu-ray of John Cromwell’s 1938 film, Algiers staring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. The film is a scene-for-scene remake of Julien Duvivier’s 1937 French film, Pepe le Moko which MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and independent producer Walter Wanger had a bidding war over for the U.S. rights,…