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 in September to the Oscar presentation itself, now lasts half a year. With Oscar nominations and wins adding to a film’s eventual box-office take and subsequent home video sales, far too much mud is slung from the various contenders’ publicists, much of it in whispers and lies.

The rap on this year’s Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave was that it was difficult to watch, that the over-60 crowd that makes up the majority of the Academy wouldn’t watch it. Obviously they did.

Of course a realistic film about slavery is not going to be pretty, but the film’s violence is kept mainly off-camera with the few violent on-camera scenes photographed in long shot. There’s more blood and violence in your average TV police procedural.

Based on Solomon Northup’s book about his kidnapping and sale into slavery (1841-1853), the film is a far cry from the portrayal of contented slaves in Gone With the Wind. Its depiction of slavery more closely resembles that depicted in the 1977 TV mini-series Roots, the difference being that Northup’s situation was different than that of most slaves who were either captured in Africa or the descendants of the original slaves. Northup was born a free man in New York in 1808. He was a married Boston businessman with a family who was drugged, captured and sold into slavery at the age of 33, finally earning his freedom at the age of 45 with the help of a Canadian abolitionist.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things; Kinky Boots has the role of a lifetime as Northup and director Steve McQueen’s muse, Michael Fassbender is equally brilliant as his cruel owner. He heart of the film, however, is newcomer Lupita Nyong’o’s portrayal of the fiercely proud Patsey, a slave who picks five times the amount of cotton as the male slaves yet is beaten nearly to death at the whim of her owner’s harsh wife (Sarah Paulson). Benedict Cumberbatch also makes a strong impression as Northup’s first owner, a more compassionate man who believes Northup’s story but refuses to do anything about it because he can’t afford to lose the money he will get for selling him.

The film earned its Oscars for Best Picture, Supporting Actress (Nyong’o) and Adapted Screenplay by John Ridley.

12 Years a Slave is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Oscar nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster comes to Blu-ray and standard DVD in the 108 minute U.S. release version with audio choices between English and Chinese with English subtitles. The original version is 130 minutes and the international release version 122 minutes.

It’s difficult to imagine what has been cut by the Weinstein Company to fit into 108 minutes because this tale of legendary Kung Fu master Ip Man seems full and complete. It follows Ip Man (played by Toney Leung) from Southern China to the North where he opens a school that will eventually close as his wife and daughter starve under the Japanese occupation of the 1930s. It follows him to Hong Kong where Chinese immigrants help him open a new school whose students include Bruce Lee. It also offers a thrilling romance between Leung and Zhang Ziyi as the daughter of the northern master he beat in competition at the start of the film and reunites with in Hong Kong.

The Grandmaster is a pictorially splendid film in which the plentiful scenes of martial arts do not detract from the profound biographical drama at hand.

The middle film in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire comes to Blu-ray and standard DVD as the second of four films made from the novels – the third will be split into two parts to be released late in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Catching Fire is pretty much a place filler between the first film and the last two, which isn’t to say that it’s not as good as the first. It is despite the fact that nothing really gets resolved in this entry, the emphasis being more on character development than action and that’s a good thing. Jennifer Lawrence gives another strong performance as Katniss Everdeen, the series’ protagonist, ably assisted by Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Sam Clalfin, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Lenny Kravitz and Stanley Tucci among others. .

I like time travel films as much as anyone but Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time, newly released on Blu-ray, has never been one of my favorites. I have to admit, however, that I see the film takes in a different light in the wake of star Christopher Reeve’s death, which it’s hard to believe was ten years ago this year.

The film, which opened to scathing reviews during the actor’s strike of 1980 during which the actors were forbidden to publicize the film, was a flop that became a cult favorite when it was shown on cable TV and later when it was released on home video for the first time. Reeve, fresh from the first Superman seemed too young, too athletic to convince as a nerdy playwright who spends the first forty-five minutes of the film obsessed with a picture on a wall of Jane Seymour. The delayed romance, though, once it is allowed to blossom, was always captivating. Reeve’s tragic horseback accident, his ensuing paralysis and early death have added poignancy to the film’s ending that was lacking when the film was first shown.

Seymour, a terrific actress in many of her TV appearances (Captains and the Kings; East of Eden) had the film role of a lifetime as the long-ago actress who attracts Reeve’s attention. Christopher Plummer is strong as her manager and the great Teresa Wright does what she can with her brief role as Seymour’s character’s companion in her later years.

The film’s greatest asset is the haunting score by John Barry ( The Lion in Winter; Midnight Cowboy) which he wrote in the wake of his parents’ deaths within weeks of each other. It was played during the In Memoriam segment at last week’s Oscars.

Another film which didn’t receive a lot of respect from the critics, but which has done well in previous home video releases and is now available on Blu-ray is Ron Howard’s 1992 film, Far and Away starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in one of their best on-screen pairings. Thomas Gibson (TV’s Criminal Minds co-stars in this lushly filmed romantic epic that takes its star-crossed lovers from Western Ireland to Boston and eventually to the Oklahoma Territory.

I think the main problem with the film was its marketing emphasis on the Oklahoma land rush that gave audiences the impression that the Irish scenes would be a preamble to the Oklahoma segment when in fact the film spends almost all its time in Ireland and Boston, with the land rush segment is presented almost like a coda.

John Williams’ lush and lovely score failed to earn him one of his 52 Oscar nominations.

This week’s new releases include Oscar nominees Inside Llewyn Davis and The Book Thief.