Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week One of the most original and fascinating films of 2012 was Cloud Atlas co-written from David Mitchell’s award winning 2004 novel and co-directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. From 1996-2008 the Wachowskis were billed as the The Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, during which period they gave us such films as…

New This Week Sometimes it pays to see a film without knowing anything about it. Such is the case with three films I viewed this week with varying degrees of satisfaction. It was only after viewing Gangster Squad; Mama; and Safe Haven that I read the films’ reviews. I agreed with the generally excellent notices…

New This Week Director David O. Russell has a reputation for yelling a lot in real life, which may explain why his films contain so much yelling and screaming. Sometimes it flows naturally from the situation as in Flirting With Disaster and The Fighter. Sometimes it just seems like yelling and screaming for the sake…

New This Week I first saw Laurence Olivier’s version of William Shakespeare’s Richard III on the Sunday afternoon of March 11, 1956 when I was twelve years old. How do I remember the date? I don’t actually, but per the Internet Movie Database that’s the day the film was broadcast on NBC It was an…

New This Week Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, which opened on Christmas Day, 2012, was a huge box-office hit and an awards magnet, but one I just didn’t have a desire to see in theaters in the wake of the Newtown Sandy Hook massacre in which twenty six and seven year old children and six of…

New This Week One of the first post-World War II Japanese films to find international success, Teinsuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell won the Grand Prix for best film at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival and two Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design – Color. The film was noted for its outstanding…

New This Week The sparkling new Blu-ray upgrade of Hello, Dolly! looks and sounds great, but is the film good? In a word, no, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. In a making-of remembrance by Gene Kelly’s widow, we’re reminded that stars Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau and choreographer Michael Kidd were attached…

New This Week The film that goes into the Oscar race with the most nominations is generally considered the favorite. With its twelve nominations, producers Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy had every reason to expect that their film, Lincoln, would put them in the winners’ circle, just as they did The Color Purple twenty-seven years…

New This Week Most of the negative reviews of Tom Hooper’s film of the Alain Bloublil – Claude-Michel Schonberg – Herbert Kretzmer musical version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables were from people who either don’t like musicals or don’t like this particular musical. I love musicals, but all too often film versions of Broadway treasures…

New This Week One of the most eye-popping achievements of all time, Ang Lee’s Life of Pi opens with breathtaking pans of exotic animals in an Indian zoo and doesn’t let up until the final shot. This is an effects laden film for which the effects are indeed special. The heart of the film is…

New This Week If only one masterpiece were to be allotted to a director, then Schindler’s List is Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece. There were films about the holocaust before, and there have certainly been films on the subject since, but Schindler’s List, filmed documentary style in shimmering black and white, remains the one all others are…

New This Week Idiosyncratic Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most fascinating directors working in film today. Hardly a prolific filmmaker, 2012’s The Master is only his sixth film in sixteen years. Born in 1970, his father, actor Ernie Anderson was the first man on his block to own a VCR. Young Anderson grew…

New This Week Oscar winner Argo is a rousing, old-fashioned crowd-pleaser of the first order. That said, is it really a better film than similar high-flying productions of the 1960s such as The Guns of Navarone which received seven Oscar nominations and won one; The Great Escape which received only one nomination and Operation Crossbow…

Featured The bond that develops between an adult and a child who is not biologically theirs is a theme that has periodically appeared with great success throughout film history. In the 1920s we had Charlie Chaplin caring for abandoned orphan Jackie Coogan in The Kid. In the 1930s we had Marie Dressler as the housekeeper…

New This Week The first film featuring one this year’s Oscar nominated performances for Best Actor has hit the home video market. Robert Zemeckis’ Flight featuring a bravura performance by Denzel Washington is that film. Washington has always been an interesting actor and in Flight he has his most complex role since Malcolm X twenty…