Universal has released Curry Barker’s Obsession on 4K UHD and regular Blu-ray.

The horror film is the first feature length film from short filmmaker Barker. A major box-office success, pundits are already predicting a Best Picture Oscar nomination for the film as well as a possible nomination for leading actress Inde Navarette.

I thought that Michael Johnston was very good as the shy dreamer whose obsession with co-worker Navarette as were second leads Cooper Tomlinson as his jerky friend and Megan Lawless as the “nice” girl but Navarette who I have some memory of in TV’s Superman and Lois was too far out as the girl there as the girl who becomes even more obsessed with Johnston than he was with her to move me one way or another. She starts out like Ali MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus but soon resorts to weird faces and expressions to put over the most ridiculous dialogue I’ve heard in a horror film in a long time. That may be because I see so few modern horror movies that for all I know ridiculous dialogue is now the norm for the genre.

So, be it, but an Oscar nod from her fellow actors for this? I don’t think so.

Recent Oscar nominated actresses in horror movies like Demi Moore and winner Amy Madigan were veterans with careers that stretched decades behind them. Moore in The Substance wowed them because of who she is as well as the believability she brought to her highly unusual character. Navarette is nothing at all like Amy Madigan in Weapons who seemed to be having a lot of fun playing against her long-established reputation for playing salt-of-the-earth characters.

However, a Best Picture nomination would not surprise me given that not just actors but all branches of the Academy vote for that; especially if it nabs Critics Choice and other awards recognition before we get there.

Extras include a documentary with Barker and his principal actors discussing the making of the film.

Criterion has just released four classic films on 4K UHD and regular Blu-ray, one from each decade from the 1960s through the 1990s.

First up is Martin Ritt’s 1963 contemporary western. Hud featuring four extraordinary performances from Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, and Brandon de Wilde.

Newman received his third of nine Oscar nominations for his portrayal of the title character, an unscrupulous, selfish, arrogant egotistical alcoholic, losing to Sidney Poitier’s lovable handyman in Lilies of the Field. Seasoned stage and screen star Melvyn Douglas won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor on his first nomination for his portrayal of Newman’s hardworking, honest rancher-father. Patricia Neal won Best Actress for her short but unforgettable portrayal of the family’s newly hired middle-aged housekeeper. Brandon de Wilde was sadly left out of the race for his equally fine portrayal of Newman’s impressionable nephew. James Wong Howe won his second Oscar for his superb Black-and-White Cinematography. The film was also nominated for Best Director, Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Design, and Adapted Screenplay.

As the pup to Newman’s anti-hero, de Wilde plays a teenage version of his Oscar nominated ten-year-old boy who follows Alan Ladd around in Shane, as well as the characters played by Montgomery Clift and Jeffrey Hunter in similar roles in support of John Wayne in Red River and The Searchers, respectively.

The screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. (Home from the Hill, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs), was based on the novel by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Brokeback Mountain). Ravetch and Frank also wrote the screenplays for Ritt’s Norma Rae and Murphy’s Romance starring Sally Field.

Extras include a newly filmed interview with Field who also worked with Newman in Absence of Malice as well as Newman’s 1994 Actors Studio interview in which he discusses his career including his work on Hud.

Next up is Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore for which Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar for Best Actress on her third nomination behind The Last Picture Show and The Exorcist.

The film’s Oscar nominated screenplay by Robert Getchell (Bound for Glory, Mommie Dearest) provides Scorsese with a rare one in which a female is his central character. Not the first feminist film ever made, but Burstyn’s portrayal of a husband dominated woman who finds her true self after the death of her husband, was and is a template for women around the world as Burstyn herself says she only realized while making a film in Australia earlier this year.

The film’s rich supporting cast includes Diane Ladd in an Oscar nominated performance as a fellow waitress in the diner Burstyn gets a job in, Kris Kristofferson as a rancher who loves her warts and all, Alfred Lutter as her precocious son, Jodie Foster in a role that set the tone for her breakthrough role in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver two years later, and Harvey Keitel as one of his trademark brutes.

Extras include a newly recorded interview with Burstyn who is sharp as ever at 93.

The third Criterion release is David Lynch’s 1980 film, The Elephant Man for which Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) received the first two of his four Oscar nominations for both writing and directing the film.

Nominated for 8 Oscars including Best Actor for John Hurt as the real-life sophisticated man trapped in a horrific body, it failed to win any, but Hurt did win a BAFTA for his heart-rending performance. Anthony Hopkins as the doctor who rescues him from a freak show is equally fine and there are strong supporting performances from Anne Bancroft as a glamorous actress, John Gielgud as the hospital administrator, and Wendy Hiller as the head nurse. It was produced by Bancroft’s husband, Mel Brooks, a rare serious film for him to be involved with.

Extras include archival interviews with Lynch, Hurt, and Brooks.

The fourth new Criterion 4K UHD release, Neil Jordan’s 1992 film, The Crying Gane, was a sleeper hit that won Jordan an Oscar for Best Screenplay as well as a nomination for Best Director. It was nominated for Best Picture, Editing and for the brilliant performances of Stephen Rea and Jaye Davidson.

Rea plays an IRA kidnapper who befriends British solider Forest Whitmaker who he is ordered to kill but allows to escape only to be killed by a British tanker on the way to annihilate the IRA compound. Rea escapes, making his way from Ireland to London where he meets and falls in love with Whitaker’s “girlfriend” played by Davidson. Then his IRA handlers show up.

The breathtaking film looks and sounds better than it ever has, and the story still holds up.

Extras include newly filmed interviews with Jordan and Rea.

Happy viewing.