Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week Martin Scorsese deserves respect as one of the premier film preservationists of our time. As a film-maker himself he has had one of the longest and most successful careers of any of his contemporaries except perhaps Steven Spielberg, but if Spielberg’s limitation is, as some would say, that he pulls his punches,…

New This Week Forty years ago a film about an elaborate sting that took place four decades earlier called The Sting was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven. This year another film about an elaborate sting that takes place four decades earlier called American Hustle was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won…

New This Week Every year there are films that early on seemed to be surefire Oscar contenders that come up empty-handed when all is said and done. Two of 2013’s biggest disappointments on the awards circuit were Inside Llewyn Davis and The Book Thief, both of which are newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.…

New This Week The quality of films released theatrically in 2013 was stronger than usual, but release patterns were as bad as they have been for years, stuffing most of the must-see films into the last three months of the year. Oscar season, which runs from the major film festival dates in Toronto and Venice…

New This Week What can one say about Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity that hasn’t already been said? The film, which was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven, was by far the most commercially successful good film released last year. It’s certainly a technical marvel even if the director didn’t set out to make it…

New This Week Alfred Hitchcock was fond of saying that Foreign Correspondent was his first Hollywood film even if technically that wasn’t so. Hitchcock was brought to America by David O. Selznick as a director of hire for Selznick’s film of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca in 1939. Hitchock, who was bound by contract to make…

New This Week One of the best Blu-rays to come down the pike so far this year is the newly re-mastered edition of Chicago, the last musical to win a Best Picture Oscar. With improved picture and sound, it lives up to Lionsgate’s hype as a more visually stunning presentation than it was during its…

New This Week Films about HIV-AIDS have been few and far between. The first film on the subject was the landmark 1985 TV production, An Early Frost starring Aidan Quinn, Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Sylvia Sidney and D.B. Sweeney in a film that centered on the reactions of the family to a young lawyer’s coming…

New This Week 2013 was supposed to be the year Berlin based actor Daniel Bruhl broke through to international stardom. He had the co-lead in two major films, Ron Howard’s Rush and Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate. Unfortunately for him both films flopped at the box office. Despite its box office failure, Bruhl was still…

New This Week With most of this year’s Oscar nominations coming from films released in October 2013 or later, home video releases of the major contenders have been non-existent until now. Finally we have Captain Phillips, nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Blue Jasmine, nominated for three, released to home video. In…

New This Week To me Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a missed opportunity at best. In 1979, there was a superb 9 hour TV mini-series called Backstairs at the White House which followed the true story of mother and daughter domestics Maggie and Lillian Rogers, brilliantly played by Olivia Cole and Leslie Uggams, through eught…

New This Week Two very different comedies about sex addiction are among the new releases available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s writing and directing debut, Don Jon, is the better of the two. An often hilarious take on Don Juan filtered through Saturday Night Fever, Gordon-Levitt’s character is a hip young man living…

New This Week 2014 is the 75th anniversary of films released in 1939, often cited as the greatest year in the history of the movies. It is also the 50th anniversary of films released in 1964 and the 25th anniversary of films released in 1989. Will we see very many anniversary edition DVDs and Blu-rays…

New This Week It’s the end of the year, time to review the year in DVD. This year’s best DVD releases include both recent theatrical releases as well as a goodly share of classic film upgrades. Let’s split the best contemporary films released on Blu-ray and standard DVD this year between those released theatrically in…

New This Week It’s Christmas, so what do we get from the DVD gods? Why, films focusing on murder and mayhem, of course. There’s more mayhem than murder in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, an unsettling account of a man whose life is destroyed by false accusations in one of the films on Oscar’s short list…