Looking for Mr. Goodbar has not been seen on home video in its original 1977 release version due to music rights issues until now. Fully restored from its original camera negative, the film is now available in limited release from Vinegar Syndrome in 4K UHD and Blu-ray. It will be given a standard release in late January.

The film has been missing from public view for so long now that legend has it that the film was a flop when first released. Nothing could be further from the truth. The film may not have done the same level of business as its contemporary, Star Wars, and may not have done as well with the critics overall as Diane Keaton’s other film that year, the Oscar-winning Annie Hall, but it was far from a flop.

Keaton may have been at her comedic best in Annie Hall, but she was at her dramatic best as the good/bad Bronx Catholic girl in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Keaton should have been nominated and won an Oscar for that, not for playing herself in Annie Hall.

The bestselling novel that the film is based on is itself based on the real-life murder of a teacher of the deaf, played by Keaton. The novel opens with the confession of her killer. Richard Brooks, the film’s director, took a different approach. He begins with Keaton as a college student having an affair with a married professor while spending Christmas alone with her family. As the film progresses, the professor dumps her, and she seeks one-night stands with ever increasingly dangerous men.

The film received Oscar nominations for Tuesday Weld’s performance as Keaton’s airline stewardess sister and William A. Fraker’s cinematography which seamlessly combines Los Angeles, Chicago, and Bronx locations into one unnamed city. This I think was a major flaw. The novel was such a New York novel that expanding it beyond the city’s limits robs it of its unique character. It was, however, necessary as filming in New York costs at the time were prohibitive.

The film should also have gotten nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress (as noted above), and Supporting Actor (Richard Kiley as Keaton’s tyrannical father). The film also featured strong supporting performances by William Atherton, Richard Gere, and Tom Berenger as three of the men in Keaton’s life.

This was the last great film written and directed by Brooks whose previous works included Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and In Cold Blood.

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Martha Coolidge’s 1991 film, Rambling Rose based on Calder Willingham’s novel about an exuberant young woman who moves in with a Southern family to take care of their three children.

The film plays like Tennessee Williams-light. There are four main characters, the girl (played by Laura Dern), the father of the family (Robert Duvall), the mother (Dern’s real-life mother, Diane Ladd), and the impressionable 13-year-old eldest child (Lukas Haas). Dern and Ladd received Oscar nominations for their performances, but only Ladd was truly deserving. Dern’s performance is too erratic to be fully enjoyed.

Extras include two commentaries, one by director Coolidge prepared for the previous DVD release.

Warner Archive has released a beautifully restored Blu-ray of 1974’s That’s Entertainment, a box-office bonanza in the pre-home video days. Focusing on the MGM musicals of 1929-1958, the film was released at the time of MGM’s takeover by Las Vegas interests which demolished the studio’s backlots and soundstages and sold off its remaining artifacts at auction. It was not a happy time for the studio.

In a sort of a last hurrah for MGM, segments of the film are introduced by the then cream of the crop of surviving stars of the films: Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Liza Minnelli, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor.

With clips of everything from Broadway Melody to The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain to Gigi and most of what was produced in-between, earlier home video releases used the same timeworn clips, many of which have since been upgraded over the years by the re-release of the films themselves on Blu-ray. The remastered edition utilizes clips from the remastered editions of those films as well as the remastering of just the clips shown from films that haven’t been fully remastered. The result is stunning.

Extras include several making-of documentaries.

Warner Archive has also released a Blu-ray upgrade of Jean Negulseco’s 1946 film, Humoresque based on Imitation of Life author Fannie Hurst’s novel previously filmed in 1920 in which the main character was the mother of the boy who grows up to be a famous concert pianist. In the 1946 version of the story, the violinist’s wealthy patron played by Joan Crawford gets top billing over John Garfield as the violinist. Ruth Nelson as the mother is reduced to supporting status behind Oscar Levant, J. Carrol Naish, and various other actors.

To her credit, Crawford looks as good as she ever did on screen and emotes flawlessly within the bounds of the character she is playing, but she is not the focus of the film. That remains on the violinist played flawlessly by Garfield at his best. The virtuoso violin work is performed by Isaac Stern and Garfield as a boy is winningly played by a young Robert (Bobby) Blake.

Extras include a featurette on the music used in the film and several cartoons.

The best new film recently released on 4KUHD and standard Blu-ray is DreamWorks Animation’s flawless rendering of Peter Brown’s award winning bestseller, The Wild Robot voiced by Lupita Nyoung’o and Pedro Pascal.

Extras include Feature commentary and an alternate opening.

Happy viewing.