By John Larkin One of my favorite aspects of great filmmaking has always been the choice of music that closes out a film. The right song becomes the final statement of the story. It is the emotional conclusion and the last feeling an audience carries with them after the screen fades to black. When used well, a song that bridges the final scene into the end credits can leave a powerful and lasting impression. It shapes how the ending is remembered and gives the film a sense of

by Victoria Alexander MERCY stars Chris Pratt as a detective (Chris Raven) who has been accused of killing his wife. It’s 2029, and Chris wakes up locked in a chair after a brutal alcoholic blackout. He had destroyed a bar and fought with patrons and the police, who arrested him. Chris finds himself in the Mercy Chair. The judge (Rebecca Ferguson) is an AI-created entity. Once arrested and brought to the Mercy Chair, the accused — who is presumed guilty — has 90 minutes to pr

Purchase by clicking the image above Newly Restored Reviewed by Roy Frumkes This was an uncommonly large restoration effort by a great many skilled hands, and while the human drama of the film has diminished over time, the several expansive desert sequences have remained unsurpassed, even by 1962’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. (Interestingly, Robert A. Harris is a major player in both films. Has he been harboring something quirky about desert locales?) The cast is also exceptional, do

Review by John Larkin MARTY SUPREME is a reminder that the work of a great director is not merely technical. They do not simply assemble strong production design, confident cinematography, or skilled performances. At their highest level, they transmit something less tangible, an energy, a frequency, directly through the screen. When it works, the audience does not simply observe the film; they absorb it. Josh Safdie understands this instinctively. With UNCUT GEMS, the Safdie

Purchase by clicking the image above or clicking HERE Blu-Ray review by Roy Frumkes Smartly, as concerns the Golden and Noir ages, bundling several titles together often makes older collectibles more attractive…if the choices are shrewd. Because often these collections share a title or two, we are left to whittle down, according to your taste, which batch has the best non-overlappers, rather than having to buy them both and live with the duplicate(s). Here’s a prime example:

Purchase on DVD here! Review by Victoria Alexander Pure cinematic brilliance. Crowe mesmerizes and creates a devastating, fully committed, shocking character. The best film and performance of the decade. Makes OPPENHEIMER look like a petty squabble among ego-driven company men. Russell Crowe powerfully delivers the magnetic character of Adolf Hitler’s fanatically devoted Nazi, Hermann Göring. Crowe delivers the multi-faceted enigma of one of Hitler’s most influential and powe

Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE AWAKENINGS captures the spirit of early 1990’s New York filmmaking in a way few films of that moment did. Even though the story takes place in 1969 and 1970, the production feels steeped in the atmosphere of the city in which it was made: the outer boroughs, the institutional buildings, the scuffed linoleum floors, the light falling through aging hospital windows. Penny Marshall shot in real locations throughout Brooklyn and the Br

The Americas: Complete Limited Series 4K UHD can be purchased HERE Review by John Larkin After years spent behind a camera and staring at timelines, scopes, and screens, I didn’t realize how much distance I’d put between myself and the living world those images are meant to reflect. THE AMERICAS, narrated by Tom Hanks, reconnects me to something essential. Watching it in 4K feels less like consuming content and more like being reminded of the Earth’s scale, patience, and quie

Blu-Ray Review by John Larkin Purchase by clicking the image above This year I have been immersed in nature in a way I never expected. After spending so many years with my head down in books, movies, and laptop screens, I finally started lifting my eyes toward the natural world again. That shift has changed me. It has refreshed me and helped me process many of the daily stressors that were piling up. In that spirit, the release of OVER MAINE: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION drew me i

Review by Rocco Simonelli I’m a Springsteen fan. I was 14 when BORN TO RUN hit, and it was one of the first albums I ever purchased with my own money; the other was Dylan’s BLOOD ON THE TRACKS. All these years later I still listen to both. That’s important to note, because it’s impossible to watch the current Springsteen biopic DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE without thinking of Dylan and his biopic from earlier this year, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Springsteen was one of the many artists w

Purchase by clicking the image above. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS – SEVEN SEASONS’ WORTH OF HALF-HOUR EPISODES from 1955-1962. Review by Roy Frumkes Before Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Perry Mason, even before Dragnet, this was early for being as good as it was. There were a great many episodes, and Hitch fluttered among them to bestow his input and steerage. Some he even directed. Don’t worry; I’m not going to review them all. But

By Jay Glennie – Insight Editions, 2025 Review by John Larkin Purchase on Amazon by clicking the image above! It’s no secret that we’re very pro Tarantino here at Films in Review. In turn, it’s no secret that Tarantino’s been very pro Films in Review himself. He’s spoken often about how much the original magazine meant to him, how he devoured it growing up, and how it shaped the way he thought about film criticism and movie history. On the Video Archives Podcast, he’s mention

Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE Blu-Ray Review by Roy Frumkes If you are an Errol Flynn fan, which he adamantly wasn’t, you’ve got a smart package of six discs here representing two Technicolor adventures and four B&W war flicks. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD is a hugely important 1938 release, not so much for its story, but rather for the quality of its imagery. Technicolor was taking its first bold baby steps, and a close friend of mine who saw the film in a n

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in NO COUNTY FOR OLD MEN (2007) by John Larkin Every Halloween, the conversation turns to the familiar faces of terror: the monsters, slashers, and masked killers who have come to define the genre. But this feature takes a different path. These are performances that unsettle on a deeper level, where fear does not stem from prosthetics, reputation, or myth, but from the raw presence of the human being on screen. It is the way an actor inhabits a

Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE Review by John Larkin I first encountered THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN one crisp autumn night many years ago on Turner Classic Movies. I was struck by how refined it felt for a horror film. The lush production design, candlelit sets, and painterly compositions immediately pulled me in. It wasn’t just an old monster movie; it was something elegant and hypnotic. Over the years it has become inseparable from the Halloween season for me,

by Victoria Alexander WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! Roberts’ well-deserved 2nd Oscar, smoking is back!, and Guadagnino intentionally irks his audience. ‘Irks his audience’? You’ll know it when you hear it. Alma (Julia Roberts) is a renowned philosophy professor at Yale. She is on track for the hallowed academic state of tenure. Alma and her psychoanalyst husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) are getting ready for a party at their big apartment for colleagues and “special” doc

Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE Blu-Ray review by John Larkin Much the way THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE are comfort food for me during Halloween and Christmas, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM is my go-to comfort whenever I need to laugh. CURB and SEINFELD are my two favorite comedy shows, not by coincidence, since they both come from the same creative mind. Larry David’s world is built on neuroticism, misanthropy, and awkward honesty, mixed with a kin

by Roy Frumkes The  56th Nashville Film Festival , hosted over seven days from  September 18–24, 2025 , presented an electrifying celebration of film, music, and culture at some of Nashville’s most iconic arts venues. The festival showcased nearly 140 films from around the globe, alongside captivating Q&A sessions with filmmakers, dynamic industry panels, unforgettable parties, and plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow creatives and film fans.   During the festival,

Review by John Larkin Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE It is great to see Warner Archive putting out multi-film collections like this. For collectors, these sets make it much easier to fill in the gaps of a shelf all at once rather than chasing down individual titles. This particular lineup, subtitled Classic Tales of Mad Passions and Madder Deeds , is a strong one. If there is a small wish, it would have been wonderful to see Michael Curtiz’s MYSTERY OF THE WAX M

Review by John Larkin I went into the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER with expectations kept low, since the...

Review by John Larkin Purchase by clicking the image above or HERE Growing up, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE hovered around the edges of my childhood like a piece of family furniture that had always been there, sturdy and dependable, always present but easy to overlook. It was one of the first TV shows I can ever remember being aware of, a title that seemed to echo through the house whenever my mom tuned in. She had watched it in the 1970s during its first run and embraced it a

Review by Glenn Andreiev THE BIG HEAT Screenplay by Sydney Boehm Cinematography by Charles Lang (no relation to Fritz) Produced by Robert...

GET CARTER can be purchased by clicking the image above. Warner Archive is now clearly on a roll with their 4K releases, with this being the third release from the label. Thankfully, the results are just as great as the previous titles of THE SEARCHERS and HIGH SOCIETY. What’s exciting about this current slate is that Warner Archive seems to be curating their 4K upgrades with both historical significance and collector appeal in mind. THE SEARCHERS was a benchmark western, HIG

Review by Glenn Andreiev Cinematography by Vance Knight Produced by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Scott Chambers Based on the book BAMBI: A LIFE...

by Glenn Andreiev Spike Lee exits an airport terminal and an intrusive video journalist from TMZ suddenly takes footage of him. Spike...