This year’s Oscar nominations have been described as the most populist in years. That may be so, but there’s another thing that distinguishes this year’s nominees as being the “most” in years.

For the first time since 2019, all the Best Picture nominees have been or soon will be released on home video.

The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, and Top Gun: Maverick have already been released on Blu-ray. All but Banshees has been released on 4K Blu-ray.

Women Talking will be released on Blu-ray next week. All Quiet on the Western Front and Triangle of Sadness will be released on 4K and regular Blu-ray in April. A release date for Avatar: The Way of Water on 4K and regular Blu-ray is pending.

By contrast, last year’s CODA, which won the Best Picture Oscar, as well as Don’t Look Up, are not available on home video and may never be. Ditto 2020’s Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

There are four 2022 acting nominees whose films are only available via streaming. They are Paul Mescal in Aftersun, Ana de Armas in Blonde, Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie, and Bryan Tyree Henry in Causeway. Brendan Fraser and Hong Chau in The Whale will be out on Blu-ray on March 14. A release date for Bill Nighy in Living is pending.

By contrast, 2021 had eight acting nominees in films that are still not available on home video and may never be. They are Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, and J.K. Simmons in Being the Ricardos, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in The Lost Daughter, Andrew Garfield in tick…tick…boom!, Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Best Supporting Actor winner Troy Kotsur in CODA.

2020 had seven acting nominees in films that are still not available on home video and may never be. They are Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried in Mank, Andra Day in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman, Sacha Baron Cohen in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Glenn Close in Hillbilly Elegy, and Maria Bakalova in Borat Subsequent Film.

Although all of 2019’s Best Picture nominees have been released to home video, that year’s The Two Popes featuring the Oscar-nominated performances of Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins remains unreleased. Before that, only Mary J. Blige’s Oscar-nominated performance in 2017’s Mudbound is missing from home video release since the introduction of VHS and Betamax tapes in the early 1980s.

Further in the past, but newly released on 4K Blu-ray, 1969’s The Italian Job, from Kino Lorber, is worth discovering or rediscovering, whichever the case may be.

The caper comedy stars Michael Caine smack dab in the middle of his first two Oscar nominations for 1966’s Alfie and 1972’s Sleuth when he was at his charming best.

Caine plays a recently released British convict who leads a group of men in a daring robbery of a gold shipment intended for Italian automaker Fiat from the streets of Turin, Italy during a traffic jam. The planning, robbery, and getaway are handled with consummate skill up to the literal cliff-hanging moment of the film’s finale.

Noel Coward as a behind bars criminal mastermind shares above-the-title billing with Caine but he doesn’t have all that much to do. His billing for what is basically an extended cameo was due to his relationship with director Peter Collinson. Collinson was an orphan from the age of five in a home in London of which Coward was one of the trustees. He took a liking to the quiet boy and made him his godson. Collinson, directing his only successful film, gave the legendary actor-writer-composer his last film role at the age of 70.

The film was remade successfully in 2003 with Mark Wahlberg and Donald Sutherland in the Caine-Coward roles. Extras, imported from the 2002 DVD of the original, include an extensive making-of documentary with Caine, Collinson’s widow and son, and various others involved in the production including then Paramount chief Robert Evans who greenlit the film.

Chris Menges’ 1988 film A World Apart has also been newly released by Kino Lorber, albeit this one on regular Blu-ray only.

A World Apart was the middle of three film about South African apartheid released between 1987 and 1989. It was preceded by Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, which earned 3 Oscar nominations including one for Denzel Washington as anti-apartheid activist Paul Biko. It was succeeded by Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season, which earned an Oscar nomination for Marlon Brando as a savvy trial lawyer.

Generally considered the best of the three films, A World Apart received no Oscar recognition despite the film’s three female leads, Barbara Hershey as an anti-apartheid activist, Jodhi May as her impressionable 13-year-old daughter, and Linda Mvusi as their maid and primary caregiver for May and her younger sisters. Ironically, David Suchet received a BAFTA nomination for his supporting role of Hershey’s inquisitor. It was generally assumed that it was due to his newfound success as TV’s Hercule Poirot in what would become a long-running series based on Agatha christie’s Belgian detective.

Other noteworthy recent Blu-ray releases from Kino Lorber include yet another release of Orson Welles’ 1947 film The Lady from Shanghai starring Welles and his soon to be ex-wife Rita Hayworth; Frank Lloyd’s 1938 version of If I Were King starring Ronald Colman as the rascally poet and Basil Rathbone in an Oscar-nominated performance as the king; and Bob Hope and Lucille Ball paired for the first time in 1949’s Sorrowful Jones, the first of several remakes of 1934’s Little Miss Marker, itself due to be released by Kino Lorber next week.

Happy viewing.