Ford v Ferrari was nominated for four 2019 Oscars and won two for Film Editing and Sound Editing. It was also nominated for Best Picture and Sound Mixing. As such, it falls behind 1966’s Grand Prix, which was only nominated for just three Oscars for Film Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects, but won all three.

Auto racing films have been movie staples at least as far back as 1932’s The Crowd Roars, directed by Howard Hawks and starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, and Eric Linden. They were very popular through the mid-1960s with Blake Edwards’ The Great Race starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood; and John Frankenheimer’s aforementioned Grand Prix, starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, and Toshiro Mifune, culminating in 1971 with Lee H. Katzin’s Le Mans, starring Steve McQueen. More recently we’ve had such successes as 2013’s Rush directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl; and the long-running franchise, The Fast and the Furious, which began in 2001 and was still churning out prequels and spinoffs as late as 2019.

Based on a true story, James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari is about the Ford Motor Company’s mid-1960s revenge on Italian race car champion Ferrari which its owners sold to Fiat in a bidding war with Ford. Ford spent more money developing a race car that would beat Ferrari at the racing pinnacle Le Mans than they would have spent buying the company. Carroll Shelby (played by Matt Damon) was an automotive designer and retired race car driver who was put in charge of developing the car and British race car driver Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale) was the man he picked to test the car and drive it at Daytona and eventually Le Mans. That they succeeded against the odds was never in doubt if you know the history of the Ford-Ferrari feud. What makes the story interesting is the tension between Shelby and Miles and the Ford executives who put obstacle after obstacle in front of them.

Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II and Noah Jupe as Miles’ son are the standouts in a strong supporting cast. The non-Oscar-nominated cinematography by Phedon Papamichael (Nebraska) and direction by Mangold (Walk the Line), Logan) are as worthy of awards consideration as the categories for which the film won.

Ford v Ferrari is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World brings the trilogy that began with 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon and continued with 2014’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 to a satisfying conclusion.

The animated adventure features are set in the days of the Vikings in a sort of time warp in which dragons still roamed the Earth. In the first film, dragons were considered an enemy until Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) met Toothless, an alpha Night Fury dragon, who taught him and his skeptical fellow local Vikings otherwise. In the second film, Hiccup and his father Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler) are joined by his mother Valka (voiced by Cate Blanchett) who was thought to have died years earlier. In the final film of the trilogy, Hiccup marries his longtime sweetheart Astrid (voiced by America Ferrera) and Toothless finds a mate of his own. F. Murray Abraham voices the principal villain this time around.

All three films were nominated for Oscar’s Best Animated Feature, losing to Toy Story 3, Big Hero 6, and Toy Story 4 respectively.

All three features are available on Blu-ray and DVD both separately and in a combined set in which the films, originally released by Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Universal, are all under the control of Universal.

Trey Edward Shults’ moving film about redemptive love and forgiveness, Waves is one that was appreciated by the critics more than major awards bodies. All the same, newcomer Taylor Russell did manage to receive a Spirit Independent nomination for her portrayal of the teenage girl haunted by her witnessing of her brother murdering his pregnant girlfriend.

Taylor is excellent in the film as are Kelvin Harrison Jr. (the breakout star of Luce) as her messed-up brother, Sterling K. Brown as her dictatorial father, Renée Elise Goldsberry as her heartbroken stepmother, Lucas Hedges as her boyfriend with family problems of his own, and Alexa Demie as Harrison Jr.’s girlfriend.

Waves is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Bill Condon’s thriller, The Good Liar, had early Oscar buzz for Ian McKellen as an elderly con man out to fleece Helen Mirren, but in the end it was Mirren, not McKellen, who received awards recognition, having been nominated for both an AARP and Satellite award, albeit losing one to Renée Zellweger in Judy and the other to Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story.

Both McKellen and Mirren excel in this cat-and-mouse story with McKellen at his meanest since 1998’s Apt Pupil and Mirren at her charming best. Russell Tovey stands out in the supporting cast as Mirren’s supposed grandson.

The Good Liar is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, the 2018 Oscar winner for Best Directing, Cinematography, and Foreign Language Film, has finally been released on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection with their usual consummate extras after more than a year of being available only on Netflix.

At the other end of the spectrum, Mike Flanagan’s film of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep has also been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

If you liked Stanley Kubrick’s film version of King’s The Shining, you may like this, but if you weren’t a fan of the Kubrick film, you probably should stay away.

I enjoyed King’s original novel, but hated what Kubrick did to it, nonetheless I approached this sequel of almost forty years later with an open mind. Unfortunately, it’s just a longer, more drawn out continuation of the earlier film with Ewan McGregor as Jack Nicholson’s son from that film involved with the same cult that leads him back to the Overlook Hotel.

This week’s new releases include 21 Bridges and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.