There are lots of series and mini-series to watch on streaming, but not too many recent or new theatrical films worth delving into.

The dwindling Blu-ray and DVD releases of the last week or so are a mixed bag as well.

Best of the lot is Gregory Hoblit’s 1996 film Primal Fear, given a 4K UHD update from Paramount.

Hoblit, a 9-time Emmy award winner for directing such TV series as Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, does a good job directing this adaptation of William Diehl’s novel with a script by Steve Shagan and Ann Biderman.

Partially filmed on location in Chicago, the film is about the brutal murder of that city’s Catholic Archbishop centering on the trial of the young man accused of his murder.

Richard Gere stars as the young man’s arrogant defense attorney with a supporting cast headed by Laura Linney as the assistant D.A. prosecuting the case, John Mahoney as the D.A., Alfre Woodard as the judge, and Frances McDormand as the court-hired psychiatrist. It is, however, sixth-billed Edward Norton who carries the film as the accused young man in an extraordinary Oscar-nominated performance, one of three he gave that year. The others were in Everyone Says I Love You and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

The Paramount release also includes a standard Blu-ray of the film featuring a ton of extras.

Kino Lorber has released two other Paramount 4K UHD upgrades, one good, one not so good.

The good one is Ted Kotcheff’s 1979 film North Dallas Forty based on Peter Gent’s semi-autobiographical novel with a screenplay by Gent, Kotcheff, and producer Frank Yablans.

Although marketed as a comedy, the film is a stark drama with occasional comic moments about a veteran pass-catcher’s individuality and refusal to become part of the team family and is bitterly resented by his disciplinarian coaches.

Nick Nolte was nominated for both the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics awards for his starring performance and the film itself made the National Board of Review’s top ten.

Country singer Mac Davis, in his film debut, was responsible for most of the film’s comedy in his co-starring role as Nolte’s buddy. The cast also included Charles Durning, Bo Swenson, G.D. Spradlin, Steve Forrest, and Dayle Haddon.

Extras include various documentaries and audio commentary by Daniel Kremer and Daniel Waters, with Kotcheff.

The bad one is Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake of Richard Condon’s novel The Manchurian Candidate, with a script by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris that is a desecration of George Axelrod’s script for John Frankenheimer’s unforgettable 1962 version.

Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, and Meryl Streep are fine performers but the characters they play don’t hold a candle to the characters embodied by Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury in the previous version.

Washington starts out well but as the plot thickens, it also changes with Washington becoming part of the conspiracy instead of the lone crusader against it. Shreiber and Streep are doomed from the start. Their relationship was seen as incestuous from their first scenes together so there is no shock like there was when Lansbury planted a wet one on Harvey. Without Lansbury’s “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?” there is no gasping shock to her character’s betrayal.

Washington, Schreiber, and Streep should have passed on this one, and so should you.

Warner Archive has released three more upgrades to Blu-ray from their archives.

Raoul Walsh’s 1940 film They Drive by Night is known for advancing the careers of Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart, but the top-billed star of the film is George Raft.

Raft, stiff as usual, plays the hardworking trucker-turned-office manager of Alan Hale’s garage. Bogart is Raft’s brother who loses an arm in an accident and can no longer drive a truck. Ann Sheridan is Raft’s waitress girlfriend, and Gale Page is Bogart’s wife. Lupino is Hale’s sluttish wife who takes a fancy to Raft even going so far as murdering Hale to get his attention.

Lupino’s over-the-top performance is riveting, especially in the film’s final scenes but she and Bogart would be so much better in the following year’s High Sierra, directed by John Huston, in which Bogart replaced Raft.

George Roy Hill’s 1984 film The Little Drummer Girl was his next-to-last film, an adaptation of a bestselling novel by John le Carré starring Diane Keaton in the title role.

Keaton at 38 was way too well-known and experienced to be believable as a naïve American actress, an ingenue with a penchant for lying, who is forcibly recruited by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, to trap a Palestinian bomber, by pretending to be the girlfriend of his dead brother. The supporting cast, including Klaus Kinski, in this often-confusing tale is not any better.

Ramon Menendez’s 1987 film Stand and Deliver is best remembered for Edward James Olmos’ Best Actor nomination as real-life Los Angeles schoolteacher Jaime Escalante who inspired his prone-to-dropout students to learn calculus.

It’s nice to see a modern film in which a teacher and/or coach doesn’t revolve around winning a ball game but is otherwise a by-the-numbers inspirational drama that doesn’t really stand the test of time.

It was filmed before 1968’s La Bamba that made a star of Lou Diamond Phillips but released after it. Consequently, Phillips, who plays one of Olmos’ students, was elevated to co-star status with Olmos and helped sell the film in its initial release.

Happy viewing.