THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN BY MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE ALONSO DURALDE. LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM HERE. WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN AUGUST: POWER BALLAD AND SING STREET, NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, YOUR NAME, AND MORE! NEW RELEASE WALL Power Ballad (Lionsgate): John Carney (Once, Begin Again) loves to tell the origin story of a pop song, and he finds an insightful new way of doing so in his latest feature, starring Paul Rudd as a never-quite-made-it bassist and Nick Jonas as a former boy-band singer looking for a new direction in his music. The singer finds it by, essentially, stealing the bassist’s song, and when the bassist recognizes it, he begins his quest for the credit he deserves. Rudd and Jonas have a charming chemistry, and…

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Boorman and the Devil is ostensibly about the blighted and bloated production of Exorcist II: The Heretic, which was released in 1977 to a litany of horrible reviews. But as it weaves its utterly fantastic web we come to appreciate the plight of a filmmaker who finds himself caught in a maelstrom of bad omens and bad luck. The eyewitnesses who appear on camera look back on it as a unique experience in their long careers. There have been other chronicles of failed projects, notably Lost in La Mancha, the saga of Terry Gilliam and his star-crossed attempt to make a new version of Don Quixote. Filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe were fortunate enough to have Gilliam’s blessing to unfurl the whole sad story,…

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From an ingenious humor piece by Ian Frazier that ran in the New Yorker magazine twenty-six years ago, a dedicated team of filmmakers and animators have rendered an ingenious and impressive feature, blending live-action and animation à la Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It poses the question: what if Wile E. Coyote, having suffered the disastrous effects of inventions that invariably backfire, decided to sue the Acme corporation?  Director Dave Green, working from a script by Samy Burch and a story by producer James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, has crafted a movie that no Looney Tunes fan should miss. Funny at times, then unexpectedly sincere toward the end, it never ceases to be clever.   “Clever” doesn’t always generate laughs, but I cut this film a lot…

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At first glance I thought I’d seen this kind of documentary before, eulogizing the golden age of movie palaces and the rise and fall of drive-ins. But filmmaker Rustin Thompson is focused on a different and distinct kind of theater specifically located in the Western part of our country. There is a reason he incorporates footage from The Last Picture Show (1971). Peter Bogdanovich’s adaptation of the Larry McMurtry novel depicts the emblematic small-town main street bijou he honors. As its advertising promises, he covers 123 theaters in ten states, covering 10,825 miles.         Thompson finds beauty in the ordinary, and his camera lingers on streets where the movie house is not just the only game in town but the sole commercial establishment in…

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I am all too aware that I haven’t been posting very much on my site, especially when it comes to film books, which continue to proliferate. I still intend to provide an overview of what is now—and soon to be—available, but in the meantime, here are four important additions to your bookshelf. BARRYMORE: THE SPECTACULAR, TUMULTOUS LIFE OF AMERICA’S PRINCE OF PLAYERS by Terry Chester Shulman (University Press of Kentucky) One of the first show-business books I read when I was a boy was Gene Fowler’s  Good Night, Sweet Prince, a loving biography of John Barrymore. In it, he spun many stories about the famous actor, all very entertaining but only some of them true. In his welcome new book Terry Chester Shulman has doffed the…

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THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN BY MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE ALONSO DURALDE. LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM HERE.  WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN JULY: IS GOD IS, TWO PIANOS, DISCO ITALIANA, MIKE MILLS, AND MORE! NEW RELEASE WALL Is God Is (Amazon MGM): When asked to list the best films of the first half of 2026, I immediately thought of this dazzling directorial debut from playwright Aleshea Harris. Two sisters (two-time Tony winner Kara Young and Mallori Johnson) are sent on a quest by their estranged mother (Vivica A. Fox) to find and murder their father (Sterling K. Brown), the man responsible for leaving all three women with severe burns. Along the way, the siblings encounter a living-room preacher (Erika Alexander), an ambulance-chasing attorney (Mykelti Williamson), and their…

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THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN BY MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE ALONSO DURALDE. YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM HERE. WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN JUNE: SPIELBERG, ELVIS, JACKIE CHAN, PRIDE FAVORITES, LAST SUMMER, AND MORE! NEW RELEASE WALL Steven Spielberg: The Spotlight Collection (Universal): Whichever side of the Disclosure Dayreviews you might fall upon, there’s no denying that Steven Spielberg is one of this generation’s legendary filmmakers, and a new box celebrates the breadth of his career, even as it scratches the surface with just eight titles. Spanning genres (and studios), the Spotlight Collection includes Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and The War of the Worlds, with 4K versions…

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