Category: Home Viewing with Peter

Three box office hits from the 1990s have been newly released in spectacular looking 4K UHD editions, all three of them being successful follow-ups to the even the bigger hits of their stars – Kevin Costner, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, and Leonardo DiCaprio. 1991’s JFK was the passion project of director Oliver Stone fresh on…

At the end of a year or the beginning of the next one is a time to look back over the previous year’s crop of releases. Traditionally for me, that means two things. The first is looking over the past year’s home video releases which have dwindled to a precious few and have been covered…

One of the most highly anticipated films of 2023, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, now streaming on Netflix, has been in the works for years. Actor-writer-producer-director Cooper first became enamored of conducting an orchestra at the age of 8, 40 years ago. He co-wrote the screenplay about the most famous of modern conductors, Leonard Bernstein (1918-2000), with…

The Home Video Santa has been busy. The Criterion Collection has released Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio on 4K UHD a year after the film released briefly in theatres and then on Netflix. Fortunately, unlike most films that go straight to Netflix with or without a brief theatrical showing, this one has earned a much-deserved Criterion…

Three classics from the 1970s through the 1990s have just been released on 4K Ultra HD while a fourth, recently given a 4K restoration, has been newly released on standard Blu-ray. Nominated for 14 Oscars, tying All About Eve’s then 47-year-old record, winning 11, tying Ben-Hur’s then 38-year-old record, James Cameron’s 1997 film, Titanic, also…

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is currently streaming on pay-for-view where you can find this highly anticipated film that takes place at a Massachusetts prep school during Christmas break in December 1970. Although the film received mostly glowing reviews from the critics, some objected to the film as not being indicative of a 70s movie, which…

Universal has released Oppenheimer on 4K UHD, standard Blu-ray, and DVD. The 2023 film is a rare intellectual thriller that was also a box-office phenomenon. Although the biographical film presents an overview of the American theoretical scientist’s life, it concentrates on his time as director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War…

Five months before her 90th birthday, Paramount has released a 4K UHD Blu-ray upgrade of 1983’s Terms of Endearment, the film for which Shirley MacLaine won her only Oscar on her sixth and final nomination to date forty years ago. The legendary actress made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 comedy-thriller, The Trouble with…

With so many of this year’s films coming up short, it’s nice to find one that exceeds expectations. Such is the case with Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s The Miracle Club which stars Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, and Maggie Smith all doing their best big screen work in years. It’s out now on Blu-ray and standard DVD. O’Sullivan,…

The only Alfred Hitchcock films that have been released so far in 4K UHD have come from Universal which owns fourteen of his films. Universal has now released Volume 3 of The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection in the format. Featured in this concluding set are 1948’s Rope, 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1966’s…

It’s Halloween, time for a ghost story. The Criterion Collection obliges with a first-rate 4K UHD upgrade of Alejandro Amenabar’s 2001 horror classic, The Others. Reminiscent of Jack Clayton’s The Innocents of forty years earlier, based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, as well as Robert Wise’s 1963 version of Shirley Jackson’s The…

Less than two months after its U.S. theatrical release, three months after its Israeli release, Golda has been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD. I wish I could say that this film about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier during 1973’s Yum Kippur War is something to shout about, but unfortunately it isn’t. The film, which…

Streaming pioneers Amazon Prime and Netflix have begun to roll out their fall releases. Now streaming on Amazon Prime is The Burial starring Oscar winners Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones. Set in the mid-1990s, this comedy-drama is based on the true story of a funeral director’s suit against a conglomerate for breach of contract…

1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has been given a 4K UHD upgrade by Disney. As the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the most successful, it was expected to be the first Disney film to be released in the higher resolution format, but Disney for whatever reason gave…

Kino Lorber has released both 1964’s The Train and 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot on 4K UHD, while Criterion has released 1973’s Don’t Look Now in the format. The Train was conceived by recent Oscar nominee Arthur Penn to be his follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Miracle Worker. He directed the first day’s filming but was…