Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Two recent children’s films dominate this week’s new releases. Maurice Sendak’s once controversial Where the Wild Things Are had previously been filmed as an animated short in 1973 and re-released with new narration in 1988. Spike Jonze’s new film stretches the thin story to the breaking point, but nonetheless has legions of admirers. The original…

Orson Welles called it the saddest movie ever made. John Ford and Jean Renoir were impressed. George Bernard Shaw wrote him a fan letter. Paramount chief Adolph Zukor fired him because the movie didn’t make any money. Then the Academy, in its wisdom, gave Leo McCarey his first Oscar for “the wrong movie”. Not that…

Some day they may make a good movie about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, but Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel isn’t that movie. Oscar nominated for its gorgeous costume designs, the film looks pretty and is better constructed than last year’s TV movie, Coco Chanel, but is still a vacuous conceit that plays footsy with the truth.…

Joel and Ethan Coen have tried to make something profound in the guise of a black comedy with A Serious Man, one of ten films nominated for this year’s Best Picture Oscar. The film is a re-telling of The Book of Job from the First Testament, in which God sets terrible plagues upon a good…

One of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films, Mira Nair’s Amelia turned out to be one of the year’s biggest disappointments. On a technical level, the film looks great. The period detail of the period from 1928 to 1937 is letter perfect and the recreation of the planes flown by Amelia Earhart are stunning, but…

Films set outside the U.S. dominate this week’s new releases. An overwhelming sadness permeates Jane Campion’s Bright Star, the story of the brief, doomed romance of 19th Century British seamstress Fanny Brawne and dying poet John Keats. Abbie Cornish, who appears in almost every scene, received the lion’s share of the notices for her portrayal…

Canadian director Kari Skogland takes on both the murderous Irish Republican Army and the duplicitous British occupation force in 1980s Belfast in 50 Dead Men Walking, based on the true story of an Irish Catholic youth recruited by the British as a spy within the IRA. The title refers to the fifty men whose lives…

You now no longer have an excuse for not being able to find 2009’s most acclaimed film in a theatre near you. Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which has appeared on hundreds of ten best lists and won more Best Picture awards than other film this year, has been released on DVD. Although it takes…

Every year we lose a number of irreplaceable artists. 2009 was no exception. In celebration of the lives of those we bid adieu to in the year just ended, here are recommendations for films representing some of the best work of just ten of them. Bea Arthur was best known for her TV work in…

Saving the best for last, three recent DVD releases are among the year’s finest films. With the same basic plot as Avatar, South African director Neill Blomkamp’s first film, District 9, is a thrilling science fiction film given gravitas by both its documentary style flavor and its Johannesburg setting. Sharlto Copley heads the brilliant, if…

Saving the best for last, three recent DVD releases are among the year’s finest films. With the same basic plot as Avatar, South African director Neill Blomkamp’s first film, District 9, is a thrilling science fiction film given gravitas by both its documentary style flavor and its Johannesburg setting. Sharlto Copley heads the brilliant, if…

One of the year’s nicest surprises, newcomer Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer is a bittersweet charmer about a boy falling in love with a girl who doesn’t return his affections. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the former child star of TV’s 3rd Rock From the Sun continues his meteoric rise to screen fame following his critically acclaimed…

One of the year’s nicest surprises, newcomer Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer is a bittersweet charmer about a boy falling in love with a girl who doesn’t return his affections. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the former child star of TV’s 3rd Rock From the Sun continues his meteoric rise to screen fame following his critically acclaimed…

Quentin Tarantino came bursting onto the scene with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs and made an even bigger impact with 1994’s multi-award winning Pulp Fiction. His output since has been sporadic, consisting only of 1997’s Jackie Brown; 2003’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1; 2204’s Kill Bill, Vol. 2,segments of 2005’s Sin City and 2007’s Grindhouse, none of which…

Quentin Tarantino came bursting onto the scene with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs and made an even bigger impact with 1994’s multi-award winning Pulp Fiction. His output since has been sporadic, consisting only of 1997’s Jackie Brown; 2003’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1; 2204’s Kill Bill, Vol. 2,segments of 2005’s Sin City and 2007’s Grindhouse, none of which…