No Time to Die, the 25th official James Bond film, is one of the best of the series that began in 1962.

In full disclosure, I have never been a big fan of the series. Although I’ve seen all the films, I only remember bits and pieces about most of them. There are just five that I have distinct memories of.

I remember the first three with Sean Connery, the original Bond, Dr. No, Goldfinger, and From Russia with Love, although it’s not Connery I remember so much as the supporting players – Ursula Andress and Joseph Wiseman in the first, Gert Frobe, Honor Blackman, and Shirley Eaton in the second, and Lotte Lenya and Robert Shaw in the third.

The fourth Bond film I distinctly remember is 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. George Lazenby, who played Bond just the once in that film, is the actor whose performance I best remember as Bond opposite the great Diana Rigg. The rest of the Connery films, and all the Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan films, get mixed up in my head.

The fifth one that stands out for me is 2012’s Skyfall, not because of Donald Craig, but because of Judi Dench, who did more than sit behind a desk as Bond’s control, M, in this one.

No Time to Die is, in essence, a sequel to 2015’s Spectre, which I have very little memory of. It is also similar in theme to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which may be why I appreciate the performances of Craig and his leading lady, Léa Seydoux, as much as I do.

Without giving away any of the details of the intricately detailed plot, let’s just say everyone here, including Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, Naomie Watts as Moneypenny, Lashana Lynch as a new operative, and Jeffrey Wright as an old friend of Bond’s, do well as the principal good guys while Rami Malek, Christoph Waltz, and David Dencik stand out as the bad guys. The director was Cary Joji Fukunaga, whose Sin Nombre from 2009 and Beasts of No Nation from 2015 were equally impressive.

No Time to Die is available on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Blu-ray.

Kino Lorber has released several films on Blu-ray that were never released on DVD in the U.S.

Historically notable as one of the worst films ever made, producer Howard Hughes made Jet Pilot between December 1949 and February 1950 in order to showcase the latest in aircraft technology, but by the time the film was released in the fall of 1957, that technology was obsolete.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express), whose last released film it was, it starred John Wayne as an American pilot who is seduced by Janet Leigh as a Russian pilot whose job it was was to lure him to the Soviet Union. Both actors considered it silly. It was.

Recommended only for von Sternberg completists.

John Huston’s 1962 film Freud, starring Montgomery Clift as renowned Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, was one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films. Opening in December, it floundered at the box office while Frank Perry’s modern psychological drama David and Lisa, starring relative unknowns Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin, was a huge box-office hit.

Despite its mixed reviews and box office failure, Freud was prestigious enough to be nominated by the WGA for Best Written American Drama; the DGA for Huston as one of sixteen nominees for Best Director that year; and the Golden Globes for Best Director where Huston was one of eleven nominees, Best Actress Drama where Susannah York as a patient was one of ten nominees, and Best Supporting Actress where Susan Kohner as “Siggy’s” wife was also one of ten nominees. It was nominated for Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Score.

Released at 120 minutes, the film was restored to its original 140-minute length on its U.K. DVD carried over to Kino’s Blu-ray. Film historian Tim Lucas provides insightful commentary.

Longtime TV director Ralph Levy made his film debut with 1964’s Bedtime Story, a popular if off-putting comedy about two con men played by Marlon Brando and David Niven who sweet-talk wealthy women out of their money. Shirley Jones is their latest victim. The plot was reworked for the better-known 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, directed by Frank Oz (In & Out, Death at a Funeral) with Steve Martin, Michael Caine, and Glenne Headly, which was made into the Tony-winning 2005 Broadway musical of the same name.

Film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson provide a rambling commentary.

Harry Keller’s 1964 film The Brass Bottle provided a change of pace for the journeyman director of The Unguarded Moment and The Female Animal. Tony Randall, Burl Ives (as the genie), and Barbara Eden star in a modern tale of genies and wish granting. No Thief of Bagdad or Aladdin, this amusing at best fluff did advance the career of Ms. Eden who went directly into the long-running TV comedy series I Dream of Jeannie in which she played the genie.

Kino’s Blu-ray includes commentary by film historian Lee Gambin and a new interview with Barbara Eden.

Jerry Schatzberg’s 1979 film The Seduction of Joe Tynan was like most of the director’s films, including The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow: well-intentioned but only sporadically interesting.

Alan Alda, still riding high form TV’s M*A*S*H had the title role of a senator with presidential ambitions. Second-billed Barbara Harris played the wife he cheats on, but third-billed Meryl Streep, in the same year as Kramer vs. Kramer and Manhattan, had the showier role as the political activist he is having an affair with. Melvyn Douglas, in the same year as Being There, has a key supporting role as an elderly senator who is losing his mind. Douglas and Streep swept year-end awards for their multiple performances going on to win Oscars for their singular work in Being There and Kramer vs. Kramer respectively.

A commentary by journalist and author Byron Reisman is included on the Blu-ray.

This week’s new Blu-ray releases include The French Dispatch and Glass.