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 Torn Curtain, 1969’s Topaz, and 1972’s Frenzy, all of which have been upgraded from original film sources.

1954’s Rear Window, 1958’s Vertigo, 1960’s Psycho, and 1963’s The Birds were in Volume 1 while 1942’s Saboteur, 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt, 1955’s The Trouble with Harry, 1964’s Marnie, and 1976’s Family Plot were in Volume 2.

1940’s Rebecca, 1945’s Spellbound, 1946’s Notorious, 1959’s North by Northwest, and other Hitchcock films are not owned by Universal but hopefully will be upgraded as well by their owners at some point.

The jewel of the newly released volume is The Man Who Knew Too Much which has been rendered in stereo for the first time on home video with the opening and closing Vista Vision titles restored.

A remake of Hitchcock’s 1934 British film of the same name, the plot of The Man Who Knew Too Much has been improved upon but is still farfetched nonsense. None of that matters though because it is played at such intensity that you hardly notice.

James Stewart and Doris Day star as a doctor from the American Midwest and his former musical comedy star wife on vacation in Marrakesh when they witness a murder in which the dying man whispers something in Stewart’s ear. The bad guys then kidnap their young son to keep Stewart from revealing to the authorities what the dying man told him.

The international spy ring responsible for the killing brings the boy to London where he is moved from place to place until a planned assassination is set to take place. It all climaxes at the Albert Hall where the boy is being held captive in an upstairs suite as Day is brought to the stage where she plays the piano and sings his favorite song, “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera)” to let him know that she is there.

The film’s Oscar for Best Song is well earned as seldom has a film’s hit song been used so effectively in the film’s plot.

Rope, which was Hitchcock’s first color film, has been restored from the original three strip technicolor masters. Previous home video releases were derived from the combined elements. Universal restored each of the separate masters and recombined them for maximum clarity.

The film, based in part on the notorious Leopold & Loeb case, features James Stewart in his first Hitchcock film as the investigator and John Dall and Farley Granger as the killers. Hitchcock claimed the film was shot in one take, which is impossible, but he did film it in long takes, one ending where the other begins to make it look like one long take. The man was a master of deception both on and off the screen.

Frenzy, which was easily his best film since Psycho, was also his last great one. In typical Hitchcock fashion, the London police have their eyes on the wrong man for the serial necktie strangling of various women. Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey, Alec McCowen, Vivien Merchant, and Billie Whitelaw head the cast.

Both Torn Curtain and Topaz were misfires. In the former, superstars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews display a shocking lack of chemistry in a poorly scripted spy thriller set in East Germany. In the latter, Frederick Stafford and Dany Robin lead a no-name cast in another spy thriller, this one involving the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russian agents.

Now streaming on Hulu, Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice features the Actor-Director in his third outing as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

While better than Branagh’s ill-conceived remakes of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, this one is no classic either even though it’s gotten much better review from critics less familiar with the property.

It’s more stylish than the first two and Branagh seems more at home in the role, but like the other two, it’s been done better before. Christie’s Hallowe’en Party had been filmed under its original title in a 2010 production of TV’s Poirot series starring David Suchet as the retired Belgian sleuth. It was one of the series’ best.

The standouts in Branagh’s large cast are Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill again playing father and son as they had in Branagh’s Belfast in which Hill played a character based on the young Branagh.

Now streaming on Netflix, Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Nyad is the documentarians’ first narrative film, a major Oscar contender for Best Actress (Annette Bening) and Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster).

The film starts off as a documentary briefly highlighting the life and career of Olympic champion swimmer Diana Nyad, but then goes into full narrative as the now sixty-year-old Nyad, now played by Bening, rekindles her ambition to swim from Cuba to Florida, a dream she has had all her life, her first attempt having been made at the age of 28.

Foster plays Nyad’s coach, the heart and soul of the movie, who is with her every step of the way as she starts and stops, then succeeds and fails, and eventually triumphs on her fifth attempt at the age of 64.

Bening is herself facing an upstream battle to earn an Oscar on a possible fifth nomination, having previously gone home empty-handed on four occasions. Competition for Best Actress, though, is so strong this year that she might not even be nominated. Two-time Best Actress winner Foster has a clearer path in the less competitive Best Supporting Actress category this year.

Happy viewing.