Category: Home Viewing with Peter

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…

New This Week British drama or American made films about the British have been a mainstay of film as long as film has been around. The British TV series, Downton Abbey has been a phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic for the last three years. Following the formula of the 1970s British series, Upstairs…

New This Week Olive Films has rectified the decades old problem of putting out a home video release of The Quiet Man that does picture and audio justice to John Ford’s beloved 1952 film. The previous DVD release was a direct transfer from the 1992 VHS release with its garish red faces, purple sheep, way…

New This Week I’ve always had a problem with those who outright dismiss John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley for winning the 1941 Oscar for Best Picture over Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. Despite its cinematic brilliance and storytelling bravery, Citizen Kane is at its heart a very cold movie, whereas How Green Was My…

New This Week Warner Bros. has given four of its Oscar winning classics well-earned Blu-ray upgrades. The Jazz Singer was nominated in only one category at the 1927/28 inaugural Oscars, for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the studio received a special Academy Award (they weren’t yet the Oscars) “for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding…

New This Week Ironically after compiling my list of the best recent films to come out on DVD in 2012, the very best of the lot, Looper, was released on December 31st just missing my cut-off. This is one of the most intelligent, impeccably written science fiction films of recent times, coming from a surprising…

New This Week Hollywood films typically come to DVD three to six months after their theatrical release. Since Hollywood typically saves its best for last, the best theatrical releases of one year become the best DVD releases of the following year. That was not the case this year as 2011’s year-end theatrical releases were generally…

New This Week Sometimes you just have to ignore the critics and watch a movie they don’t like on instinct. Such is the case with Trouble With the Curve, the new Clint Eastwood film that numerous influential critics have slammed, one of them even going so far as to name it one of the five…

New This Week Of the twenty-five novels credited to action/adventure author Robert Ludlum after his death at the age of 73 in 2001, only one was actually written by Ludlum himself. Those twenty-four other books are credited to Robert Ludlumtm with the name of the “real” author inside the cover of the book. The first…