Category: Home Viewing with Peter

New This Week 1962’s The Counterfeit Traitor might not be William Holden’s best-known film, but it’s a very good one that contains one of his best performances. Known for such films as Sunset Boulevard, Picnic, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, Holden plays real-life Eric Ericson, an American-born oil trader of Swedish descent who…

New This Week Singin’ in the Rain, newly upgraded to 4K Ultra High Definition by Warner Bros., is referred to in some quarters as the best Hollywood musical of all time. That, however, is something of an over-statement. Fans of The King and I, South Pacific, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of…

New This Week The Criterion Collection’s newly released Blu-ray of Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan is the 4K restoration of the 1951 film that was rereleased theatrically in France and Italy in 2019 and subsequently throughout the rest of world, reaching the U.S. in February 2022. This unique film was originally written by De…

New This Week Spider-Man: No Way Home, newly released on Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, and DVD by Sony, was the first film released to theaters during the Covid-19 pandemic to earn more than $1 billion at the box-office. The emotionally riveting superhero movie was the 15th Marvel film nominated for a Best Visual Effects Oscar,…

New This Week 2022’s Death on the Nile is Kenneth Branagh’s second film version of an Agatha Christie novel, one that works much better than his 2017 version of Murder on the Orient Express. The actor-writer-director plays Christie’s mythical detective, Hercule Poirot, in both films. With both having been filmed to better advantage in the…

New This Week Ordinary People has finally been given a U.S. release on Blu-ray by Paramount. One of the most emotionally charged Oscar winners ever, it still seems odd to me that Kramer vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment, two other emotionally charged films from the same era, are more often referred to by film…

New This Week Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1941 version of Fannie Hurst’s Back Street starring Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer, some months after releasing the 1961 version starring Susan Hayward and John Gavin. Still missing in the format is the original 1932 version starring Irene Dunne and John Boles. Back…

New This Week Guillermo del Toro’s 2021 version of Nightmare Alley is the fifth and last of the year’s ten Best Picture Oscar nominees to be released on DVD and Blu-ray prior to the awards being given out next Sunday. It follows the releases of Dune, King Richard, Belfast, and West Side Story. Licorice Pizza…

New This Week With the DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases of Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version of West Side Story, this is a good time to take a look at Spielberg’s Oscar history, his many nominated and award-winning films having long been available on home video. Spielberg is the most successful of living producer-directors. He…

New This Week As the horrors of life in the time of senseless war unfold before our eyes in the ongoing TV and social media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two films new to home video deal with those issues in a muted way. Belfast, nominated for seven Oscars, and Flee, nominated for…

New This Week 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…

New This Week The Criterion Collection has released a 4K digital restoration of Leo McCarey’s Love Affair by the Museum of Modern Art on Blu-ray. Long consigned to public domain hell, release prints of the film until now have all been regretfully dismal. McCarey liked the story so much he filmed it twice. His 1957…

New This Week Few films have seen as many DVD and Blu-ray releases as Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The 2001 DVD release from MGM, the initial Blu-ray release from Warner Brothers in 2011, and the Criterion Blu-ray from November 2018, sourced from…

New This Week Criterion has finally released a Blu-ray upgrade of Douglas Sirk’s 1956 film Written on the Wind after most of Sirk’s other films have long been available in the format. What is odd about the delay in the release is that Written on the Wind, long available on standard DVD, is the only…

New This Week Jane Campion, who is the presumptive frontrunner for this year’s Oscar for Best Director for The Power of the Dog is already an Oscar winner. She won her first Oscar for her screenplay for 1993’s The Piano, which has been given a transformative new release from Criterion on UHD 4K and Blu-ray.…