Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Stanley Kramer’s message films reached their apex with 1959’s On the Beach in which the world is coming to an end in the aftermath of a nuclear war which nobody won. Based on Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, the film focuses on five main characters – the commander of a U.S. submarine docked…

New This Week Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is not only the idiosyncratic director’s best film ever, it could easily lay claim to being the best vampire movie yet made. Witty and constantly surprising, the film centers on centuries-old sophisticated vampires Adam and Eve (Tim Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) who survive on donated blood.…

New This Week One of the landmark TV miniseries, James Clavell’s Shogun, first broadcast in 1980, was an event for which mass audiences stayed home much as they had for Roots three years earlier. The nine-hour film in which the Japanese actors speak Japanese without subtitles except when translating for captured English navy Pilot/Major Blackthorne…

New This Week In the light of the success of The Hunger Games comes the first of a series of films based on another young adult trilogy about a teenage heroine. Like The Hunger Games, the last book of the Divergent trilogy will be split into two films. The plot of Divergent is similar to…

New This Week Last week two by Billy Wilder, this week two by Delbert Mann as Kino Lorber continues to release outstanding United Artists films from the 1950s to the 1970s on Blu-ray. Mann won an Oscar for 1955’s Marty as did Paddy Chayefsky for his screenplay, Ernest Borgnine for his star-making performance and the…

New This Week Agatha Christie’s international stage success, Witness for the Prosecution is expanded and improved upon by Billy Wilder in his 1957 adaptation of Christie’s deliciously twisty murder mystery. As explained to Volker Schlondorff by Wilder in an excellent 1982 interview that is included as extra on Kino Lorber’s magnificent new Blu-ray upgrade of…

New This Week From the 1930s through the early 1960s, film distribution was different than it is now. Instead of major films opening in wide release, all major films, not just a select few, would have limited initial releases followed by wide distribution in neighborhood theatres. In New York City, neighborhood theatres were primarily owned…

New This Week A number of films previously released on DVD have been given recent Blu-ray upgrades. Among them is The Time Machine, George Pal’s legendary science fiction film from H.G. Wells’ novel. Filmed numerous times and copied too many others to count, this is the definitive version of Wells’ visionary masterpiece set in 1900…

New This Week Broadway musicals made from hit movies are nothing new. Some of Broadway’s greatest hits came from such movies, many of which had their origins as straight plays or novels. The twice filmed Liliom became Carousel; Charley’s Aunt became Where’s Charley? and Anna and the King of Siam became The King and I…

New This Week The British rock invasion that began with the Beatles fifty years ago was immortalized in the 1964 film, A Hard Day’s Night in which the Beatles self-satirize themselves while at the same time advancing their legend. Filmed on a six week schedule beginning just a month after the group’s legendary appearance on…

New This Week Animated features are generally not my favorite type of film. I am more drawn away from films with “movie” in the title than drawn to them. The word in the English language I find most abhorrent is “awesome”. These are three reasons why The Lego Movie shouldn’t work for me, but surprisingly…

New This Week Not new to DVD, but of renewed interest because of last week’s Tony Awards, Small Town Girl was one of the first films released by Warner Archive when it began releasing hard to find films five years ago. Hugh Jackman opened the Tonys by hopping for four minutes along Manhattan’s 53rd St.,…

New This Week A war film with the title Lone Survivor obviously forecasts how it will end, but how it gets there is what makes the most violent and yet most moving war movie since Saving Private Ryan worth your time. Peter Berg’s film chronicles the 2005 mission of a group of Navy SEALS in…

New This Week Howard Hawks directed his first film in 1926. He was a prolific filmmaker who excelled in all genres from psychological war movies (The Dawn Patrol) to gangster films (Scarface) to screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby) to action-adventures (Only Angels Have Wings) to gender-bending remakes (His Girl Friday) to biographies (Sergeant York) to…

New This Week Two of the films that were expected to earn major Oscar nominations last year were not released until early this year making them ineligible for consideration for the 2013 awards. Will they factor into the 2014 race? Perhaps not, but they shouldn’t keep anyone from enjoying them. Held back because it wasn’t…