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 Harry, and received her first Oscar nomination for Vincente Minnelli’s highly dramatic Some Came Running two years later. Two years after that she received another nomination for 1960’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, Billy Wilder’s classic dramedy, The Apartment. After being nominated for the third time for Wilder’s 1963 comedy, Irma La Douce, she did not receive another nomination until she was nominated in the documentary category for 1976’s The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir, after which she quickly received her fourth Best Actress nomination for Herbert Ross’s 1977’s tearjerker, The Turning Point, in which she went toe to toe with Anne Bancroft.

Terms of Endearment gave her another formidable actress to play against in Debra Winger fresh from her Oscar-nominated performance in An Officer and a Gentleman opposite Richard Gere.

Although most of us remember the film as a superior tearjerker, now 83-year-old director James L. Brooks still thinks of it as a comedy and is still complaining about the Golden Globes classifying it as a drama, a category that the film won in while he won for Best Screenplay. He was nominated for Best Director but lost to Barbra Streisand, whose film Yentl won the award for Best Comedy or Musical.

Based on a novel by Larry McMurtry (Hud, The Last Picture Show, Brokeback Mountain), the film follows the life of a Houston, Texas socialite played by MacLaine from the birth of her daughter through their years-long separation when the daughter (Winger) moves to Des Moines, Iowa and later Nebraska with her husband and kids, keeping in touch by phone, and ending with Winger’s tragic early death from cancer.

Both actresses were nominated for practically every Best Actress award in existence at the time, with MacLaine winning all but the National Society of Film Critics award which went to Winger.

Beyond the extraordinary performances of the two actresses, the film features fine support from Jack Nicholson, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as MacLaine’s caddish retired astronaut neighbor, Best Supporting Actor nominee John Lithgow as a kindly banker who helps Winger, Jeff Daniels as Winger’s husband, Shane Serwin and later Troy Bishop as her older son, and Huckleberry Fox as her younger one.

Extras include commentary by Brooks and others imported from previous home video releases and the newly recorded interview with Brooks.

Among the films for which MacLaine was a strong Oscar contender but failed to receive a nomination were 1969’s Sweet Charity, 1989’s Steel Magnolias, 1990’s Postcards from the Edge, 1994’s Guarding Tess, and 2005’s In Her Shoes.

Sony has newly released a Bu-ray edition of Hugh Wilson’s Guarding Tess, the weakest of those films for which MacLaine was also in contention.

Although she received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance, MacLaine was not a serious contender for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical which was won by Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies

While the film has an interesting premise with MacLaine playing a widowed former First Lady of the United States now a recluse in her Ohio abode, it isn’t much of anything beyond that premise.

Nicolas Cage stars as the exasperated Special Secret Service Agent who is happy that his three-year stint as the head of MacLaine’s assigned Secret Service team has ended and annoyed that he has been assigned back to her at her request.

She, who had been ignoring him for three years, suddenly warms to him and vice versa until she is kidnapped and is absent from most of the last part of the film as the search to find her is underway.

The film has a large supporting cast including Austin Pendleton, Richard Griffiths, Edward Albert, James Rebhorn, and Dale Dye, all of whom are wasted in throwaway roles.

The film’s trailer is the Blu-ray’s only extra.

Among films currently streaming on Netflix is George C. Wolfe’s Rustin about Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin who had to fight racism and homophobia while organizing the 1963 March on Washington.

Critics have been almost universal in their support of Colman Domingo’s portrayal of Rustin for which he is a strong contender for this year’s Best Actor prizes. They are, however, split on the overall merits of the film, which is rich in the details of putting the march together but lacking in explaining the dynamics of the interacting relationships between the well-known historical characters.

Among the supporting players worth noting are Glynn Turman, Domingo’s acting partner from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, as labor union leader A. Philip Randolph; Aml Ameen as a distrustful Martin Luther King; Jeffrey Wright as an obnoxious Congressman Adam Clayton Powell; a surprisingly subdued Chris Rock as NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins; Gus Halper and Johnny Ramey as two of Rustin’s lovers, the latter a preacher; Adrienne Warren as Ramey’s influential wife; Audra McDonald as activist Ella Baker; and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as singer Mahalia Jackson.

It might be helpful to research some of these characters before watching the film so that you understand where they fit in history as well as in the film which is a lot better than some of its naysayers would have you think.

Happy viewing.