Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week The Star Trek phenomenon is fifty years old this year. If you want to understand the phenomenon, it’s best that you immerse yourself in Star Trek – The Original Series, which ran on TV from 1966 to 1969. Failing that, you should at least familiarize yourself with Star Trek – The Motion…

New This Week Captain Fantastic, including the prestigious Cannes Un Certain Regard Directing Prize. The film, which is a modern take on Swiss Family Robinson, stars Viggo Moretensen as the father of six who is raising his children in the rugged Northwest wilderness to be self-sufficient. Home-schooled, the oldest (George MacKay) is smart enough to…

New This Week Pan’s Labyrinth has been given a new 2K mastering by the Criterion Collection and released both separately and as part of the Trilogia de Guillermo del Toro on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The trilogy also includes the previously released Chronos and The Devil’s Backbone. While del Toro’s fantasy films are generally…

New This Week The opening sequence of David Yates’ The Legend of Tarzan makes us think we’re going to see a sequel to Hugh Hudson’s excellent 1984 film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, but soon deteriorates into another unnecessary remake of a classic. In this case, an oft-filmed one. Edgar Rice…

New This Week Douglas Sirk (1898-1987) left Hollywood in 1959 just as his career was beginning to be reassessed by French critics, who like their American counterparts, had pretty much taken him for granted during his long career. Long acclaimed in retrospect for his 1950s melodramas, Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the…

New This Week The war was over, but not for the Polish nuns who were persecuted by the Germans and raped by the Russians, who left many of them pregnant in Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents set in 1945 Poland. This remarkable film is a French/Polish co-production with a female director and cinematographer, supported by other…

New This Week Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, Disney’s crowning achievement is now a quarter century old. To celebrate, Disney has released an immaculate Beauty and the Beast: 25th Anniversary Edition on Blu-ray and standard DVD, as well as a five-disc version that includes the 3D release of the film.…

New This Week Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection on Blu-ray, Universal has released Blu-ray compilations of Frankenstein: Complete Legacy Collection and The Wolf Man: Complete Legacy Collection, which expound on two of the classic monster characters. The Frankenstein collection, in addition to the original 1931 Frankenstein and 1935 Bride of Frankenstein included in the…

New This Week All the Way, the 2014 Tony winner for Best Play and Best Actor (Bryan Cranston) is now nominated for eight Primetime Emmys including Best Television Movie, Actor (Cranston), Supporting Actress (Melissa Leo), and Director (Jay Roach). Roach is no stranger to political drama made for TV, having previously won an Emmy for…

New This Week Hiroshi Teshigaha entered Japanese film as a documentarian in the early 1950s, directed his first feature film in 1962, and became the first director of a Japanese film to receive an Oscar nomination for his direction of 1964’s Woman in the Dunes. This was quite astonishing considering that Japanese masters such as…

New This Week Nothing in Otto Preminger’s filmography suggests that he would be the right director to helm one of the most sensitive films of all time, but he proves to be just that with his 1970 adaptation of Marjorie Kellogg’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. The director of Laura, Anatomy of…

New This Week Tennessee Williams won his first Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire and his second for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, two of the most frequently revived plays in modern theatrical history. The film versions of both were phenomenally successful in their day and continue to be among the most cherished…