House of Gucci was one of 2021’s most eagerly anticipated films. Despite mixed reviews and an indifferent box-office, it started off well with year-end awards, winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Lady Gaga. Gaga was then nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Actress-Drama which she lost to Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos.

The film fared better with the Broadcast Critics who nominated it for four pending awards including Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto), Hair & Makeup, and Costume Design. The Screen Actors Guild nominated it for three awards, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Cast. BAFTA then nominated it for Best British Film, Actress, and Hair & Makeup. Then Oscar surprisingly nominated it just for Hair & Makeup. With the Blu-ray and DVD releases of the film, you can now see where you fall on the film’s merits.

For me, the big problem with the film is that it is skirts around the fact that Gaga is playing a convicted murderer, something that is common knowledge to just about anyone with interest in the film. This is one film that would have benefitted by showing the conviction first, and then showing what led to the killing, rather than to bring it in as a late development. Nevertheless, I found it a highly watchable film that will require more than one viewing to take it all in.

Lady Gaga is quite good as the social climbing daughter of the owner of a trucking company who worms her way into the Gucci family by pursuing naïve Adam Driver who she marries in 1978. Driver’s father, Jeremy Irons, is co-owner of the Gucci fashion empire with his brother Al Pacino. Other members of the vast Gucci family are ignored by the screenplay.

Pacino runs the business at the start of the film while the terminally ill Irons is content to live holed up in his mansion with his fading memories. Jared Leto is Pacino’s only son, a talentless hack, played for laughs by the actor. Little by little, the ambitious Gaga wrests control of the company for herself and the no longer naïve Driver who ultimately tires of her treachery. Their falling out will lead to Gaga’s murder-by-hire of Driver in 1995, for which she was convicted in 1998. Initially sentenced to 29 years, the sentence was reduced on appeal to 25 years in 2000. She was released in 2016 for good behavior, having served 18 years of her sentence.

A scroll at the end of the film lets you know that no member of the Gucci family is involved in the still thriving business that has had several changes of ownership in the intervening years. Salma Hayek, wife of the current CEO of the company that owns it, has a colorful supporting role as a TV fortune teller who befriends Gaga’s character.

Gone are the days when most films, especially those with strong Oscar potential, were routinely released on home video after completing their theatrical run.

House of Gucci is one of only a handful of this year’s Oscar nominees to have been given a release on home video. Others that are available include Dune, King Richard, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Spencer, No Time to Die, Cruella, Encanto, Luca, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised, Four Good Days, and Free Guy.

Belfast and Flee are being released this week. Coming 2 America is due next week. West Side Story is due in two weeks and Nightmare Alley in three. That brings us to the Academy Awards on March 27.

Following the Oscars, Parallel Mothers will be released on April 5 and Spider-Man: No Way Home will be released on April 12. A release date for Licorice Pizza is imminent. Release dates for Cyrano and The Worst Person in the World are also anticipated.

A number of this year’s Oscar nominees are available via streaming services with no planned Blu-ray or DVD releases. These include Best Picture nominees Drive My Car, which begins streaming on HBO Max tomorrow (March 2), Don’t Look Up and The Power of the Dog (Netflix), and CODA (Apple TV+).

Also available on streaming are Being the Ricardos (Amazon Prime), The Hand of God, tick…tick…Boom!, and The Lost Daughter (Netflix), The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple TV+), and Ascension (Paramount+).

Will any of the films now being streamed ever be available for purchase on DVD or Blu-ray? If it’s streaming on HBO Max, it will likely be released on home video by Warner Bros. Amazon Prime also has a mixed record of releasing films in home video. Hulu sometimes does as well. Netflix seldom does, but there have been exceptions as with The Irishman and Marriage Story from 2019 and One Night in Miami… from 2020, all three of which were released as Criterion Special Editions.

This week’s new releases, as mentioned above, include Oscar nominees Belfast and Flee.