Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Shout Select has released a 4K Ultra HD restoration of Oliver Stone’s 1989 Vietnam War film, Born on the Fourth of July. Nominated for 8 Oscars and winner of two for Best Director and Best Film Editing, the film with a screenplay by Ron Kovic and Stone, is based on Kovic’s 1976 autobiography originally scheduled…

1955’s The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell and 1956’s The Proud and Profane are two of the lesser-known war movies from the 1950s newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Directed by Otto Preminger, Warner Bros.’ The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, set in the post-Worl World I years, was nowhere near the success of the studio’s…

The Wizard of Oz has probably seen more home video releases than any other film. The new release, called The Wizard of Oz: 85th Anniversary Theater Edition (4K UHD + BD + DIG/Steelbook) [Blu-ray] retails for $75 but is currently on sale at Amazon for $68 vs the 2019 stand-alone 4K Blu-ray which retails for…

Josh Margolin’s Thelma is based on an episode in the life of his now-103-year-old grandmother, Thelma Post, when she was 93. Thelma was the widow of director Ted Post (Hang ‘em High, Magnum Force). She’s played in the film by June Squibb who made her Broadway debut as one of the strippers in the original…

The Criterion Collection released a DVD of G.W. Pabst’s 1929 classic Pandora’s Box in 2006. Three years later a 2K restoration of the film was made by the George Eastman House financed by Hugh Hefner. That restoration is the source of Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition which includes all the extras from the DVD release. The…

The Criterion Collection has released a 4K UHD Special Editon of Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim, two of the horror meister’s classic films from 1943. Producer Lewton, a longtime story editor for David O. Selznick, was hired to head RKO’s new horror unit in 1942 where he turned out…

Warner Archive has released three newly restored dramas from the 1940s on Blu-ray, of which one is a genuine classic while the other two are interesting footnotes on the era. The classic is 1948’s I Remember Mama. Based on the 1943 novel, Mama’s Bank Account, which takes place between 1908 and 1910 is not, as…

That Hamilton Woman, now streaming on Max, was Winston Churchill’s favorite film and it’s easy to see why. The stirring 1941 drama of the scandalous affair of Emma Lady Hamilton and Horatio Lord Nelson set against the backdrop of late 18th-early 19th English history is a film that never gets old thanks primarily to the…

All of Us Strangers, Murder on the Orient Express, and The Ladykillers are among the latest films receiving 4K UHD releases. All of Us Strangers is receiving its first U.S. home video release from the Criterion Collection in the format. Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed film is a ghost story based on Japanese writer Taichi Yamada’s 1987…

Civil War, now streaming on Max, is a dystopian action-adventure film set in a near-future U.S. Directed by Alex Garland (Never Let Me Go, Ex Machina), the highly anticipated film is a major disappointment. The biggest problem with the film is that it takes no point of view. It presents both sides of the conflict…

Sweeney Todd AKA Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the most performed Stephen Sondheim musical after West Side Story for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s music. The 2007 DreamWorks film of Sweeny Todd, originally released by Warner Bros., has been newly upgraded to 4KUHD by Paramount, its current owner.…

Albert Brooks’ 1996 film, Mother, now on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray from Criterion is, if not a masterpiece, the closest thing to one the comedian-actor-writer-director has yet to come up with. Born Albert Einstein in 1947, he changed his name for obvious reasons. His father, who collapsed and died at a Friar’s Roast for…

Every four years in the U.S. we have a presidential election. This is one of those years, which makes it the perfect time to look back at the history of American presidents on film. For our purposes, we will only go as far back as the beginning of the sound era. The first film of…

Of all the film restorations that happen every year, VCI’s Bu-ray release of 1930’s The Bat Whispers is this year’s most impressive find. Based on The Circular Staircase, the first novel of Mary Roberts Rinehart, known as the American Agatha Christie, first published in 1908, the work was a whopping success as a book, play,…

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was established in 1927 but didn’t start handing out its annual awards until 1929 when its first awards were supposed to be for films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928. I’ll explain what I mean by “supposed to be” but first,…