10 NEW TO NETFLIX
“The Black Phone“
“Blue Moon“
“Colossal“
“East of Wall“
“Ema“
“Fall“
“How to Train Your Dragon“
“The Iron Claw“
“Mississippi Grind“
“Triangle of Sadness“
12 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD
“3:10 to Yuma” (Criterion)
Often undervalued when it comes to discussion of the best Westerns of all time, Delmer Daves’ 1957 banger was resurrected by James Mangold’s remake in 2007 with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Five years later, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and Criterion added it to their collection a year later in 2013. This great film adaptation of a short story by Elmore Leonard stars Glenn Ford and Van Heflin in the story of a rancher who tries to get a notorious criminal to the titular train so he can go on trial in Arizona. It’s gorgeously framed, perfectly paced, and now it’s the 4K section of the Criterion Collection.
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Interviews with author Elmore Leonard and actor Glenn Ford’s son and biographer, Peter Ford
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones
“Cloud“
One of the best living filmmakers, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, released this thriller quietly in 2025, which means most of you probably haven’t seen it. Criterion has spotlighted the film through their Janus Contemporaries brand, giving it a slight but effective release. The important thing is not the special features but that you see this great film, one of my favorites of 2025, and one that seems timelier every day. It’s about a guy named Yoshii who crosses paths with the wrong people during one of his online retail scams. Kurosawa has made a smart thriller that embeds its social commentary in riveting suspense. It’s great.
Special Features
- Meet the Filmmakers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a Criterion Channel original interview
- Trailer
- Notes by critic Sean Gilman
Angus MacLachlan’s “A Little Prayer” premiered at Sundance 2023, but then fell down a rabbit hole of licensing and distribution issues, getting stuck in the pipeline for every two years. Finally getting released in Summer 2025, it also played Ebertfest and the Chicago Critics Film Festival that year, with the wonderful MacLachlan and Levy as a guest at the latter. MacLachlan also made the journey to Ebertfest, and that panel is included on this Blu-ray, co-moderated by yours truly. The “Junebug” writer/director returns to a world he knows in this tender character study of a man who discovers that his son may not be a decent person, and what that means for his relationship with a daughter-in-law he now sees as his own child. It’s smart, moving, and wonderful.
Special Features
- Audio Commentary by Director Angus MacLachlan
- Inside the Arthouse with Angus MacLachlan and Jane Levy
- Panel Discussion from EbertFest 2025
- Image Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
“The Man Who Wasn’t There” (Criterion)
The Coen brothers loved to switch up genres, jumping from “O Brother, Where Art Thou” to this noir that couldn’t be more different if it tried. One of the more underrated films in the Coen filmography, this 2001 noir stars Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, a California barber who devises a plan to blackmail his wife’s lover. Featuring some of Roger Deakins’ most striking cinematography, this one also has a great Coen ensemble that includes Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, Scarlett Johansson, James Gandolfini, and a standout turn from Shalhoub. The Criterion release includes not only a previously-available commentary by the Coens but a new conversation with the brothers and the phenomenal author Megan Abbott, a writer who knows about the James M. Cain influence on this gem.
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director of photography Roger Deakins, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen and actor Billy Bob Thornton
- New conversation between the Coens and author Megan Abbott
- Archival interview with Deakins
- Short making-of documentary and deleted scenes
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Laura Lippman
Steven Spielberg has arguably the best 2-movie year in history with 1993’s “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List,” but another candidate for consideration if one was making a listicle of such things would be his similarly distinct 2002: “Catch Me If You Can” and “Minority Report,” which made its 4K debut this month. The special features remain the same, but this is a film to own in 4K, one of the best sci-fi features of the 2000s, a prescient story of how technology and surveillance would impact the world. It’s a movie that gets better every time I see it.
Special Features
- The Future According to Steven Spielberg
- Inside the World of Precrime
- Philip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg, and Minority Report
- Minority Report: Future Realized
- Minority Report: Props of the Future
- Highlights From Minority Report: From the Set
- Minority Report: Commercials of the Future
- Previz Sequences
- From Story to Screen
- Deconstructing Minority Report
- The Stunts of Minority Report
- ILM and Minority Report
- Final Report
- Production Concepts
- Storyboard Sequences
- Original Trailers
“Network” (Criterion)
This November marks the 50th anniversary of a movie that feels like it should be necessary watch in a time when journalism is under attack. As newspapers cut staffs and networks are increasingly under the control of outside forces, go back and watch Paddy Chayefsky’s devastating prediction of where the world was headed. Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, who has a total breakdown on live TV, revealing how much people love to watch personal demons made public. Roger understood the power of the film, and Sidney Lumet’s underrated work on it, writing in his Great Movies essay: “In “Network,” which is rarely thought of as a “director’s picture,” it is his unobtrusive skill that allows all those different notes and energy levels to exist within the same film. In other hands, the film might have whirled to pieces. In his, it became a touchstone.”
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring director Sidney Lumet
- Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words (2025), a feature-length documentary about the screenwriter by Matthew Miele
- The Making of “Network” (2006), a six-part documentary by Laurent Bouzereau
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by political commentator and New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie
“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t“
If you’re wondering how a sequel got made to a 2016 movie that most people forgot, two words for you: International audiences. These movies are shockingly huge around the world, proving that the language of magic is universal, I guess. The second film made over $330 million; this one only about $230 million, but still well in the black on the profit sheet. Why the decrease? The lengthy wait between films didn’t help, but this is also a pretty lazy flick, a movie that uses cheap effects to tell a familiar story with an overcrowded cast. On the one hand, it’s a serviceable distraction on a rainy Saturday if you don’t want to be challenged more than that. On the other, it’s kind of a waste of time. Although it is worth noting that Lionsgate has given it a pretty robust Blu-ray with commentary, featurettes, and deleted scenes. They know about that international physical media dollar, too.
Special Features
- Audio Commentary with Director Ruben Fleischer and Producer Bobby Cohen
- Lord of Illusions
- Now You See Me… Again
- Heart of Stone
- Quick Change
- Nothing Up My Sleeve
- The Magic Castle
- Deleted and Extended Scenes
- Original Trailer
Everything old was new again in Fall 2025 with a reboot of “The Running Man,” the sequel “Tron: Ares,” and this standalone “Predator” action flick, easily the best of the bunch. Matt Zoller Seitz’s 4-star review at this site was one of our most divisive of last year. I can’t quite go that far, but I get it. This is such an original, fun movie, the right way to build on an existing property instead of just remaking what worked before. Director Dan Trachtenberg’s love for this world is palpable, and Elle Fanning is legitimately great, as she so often is. It also looks incredible with some of the best sci-fi cinematography of last year from Jeff Cutter, even more vibrant in 4K.
Special Features
- Audio Commentary: Watch the film with audio commentary by Director Dan Trachtenberg, Producer Ben Rosenblatt, Director of Photography Jeff Cutter and Stunt Coordinator Jacob Tomuri.
- Deleted & Pre-Visualization Scenes with Optional Audio Commentary:
- Sand Trap – An early animatic version of Dek’s very different first encounter with Thia.
- Squirt Canyon – The full version of Dek and Thia traversing the water-filled trench while trying to survive Genna…and each other.
- Tessa vs. Abe – Tessa faces off against a superior synth in this deleted scene and storyline.
- Razor Grass – The original previsualization of Dek, Thia, and Bud’s first hunt together…sort of.
- The Outpost – Thia takes Dek to a small Weyland-Yutani field facility where they experience a few things that ended up being used elsewhere in the final film.
- Super Power Loader Extended – Special additional moments during Dek’s climactic final battle with the Super Power Loader and the Kalisk.
- Featurettes:
- Embodying the Predator – Meet the talented team of designers, performers, and effects artists responsible for bringing one of cinema’s most terrifying creatures to life on screen in ways we’ve never seen before!
- Authentic Synthetics – Get up close and personal with synths Thia and Tessa as star Elle Fanning walks us through the process of crafting two characters who may look the same but have evolved in surprisingly unique ways.
- Building the Badlands – With razor sharp grass, killer trees, and terrifying animals, never has a planet been more deadly than Genna. Uncover how a team of artisans built this threatening landscape, transforming real locations into the dangerous environments seen on screen.
- Dek of the Yautja – For the first time ever, director Dan Trachtenberg has given audiences an extended peek at Predator culture. Follow the evolution as filmmakers reveal the process behind developing the Yautja’s home world, spacecraft, and family dynamics.
A relative hit on the fest circuit, this dramedy seemed to die in a crowded awards season. It’s too bad because there’s enough to like here to warrant a look. Brendan Fraser stars as an American actor who gets a job pretending to be real people, such as a mourner at a funeral. When he’s asked to pretend to be the estranged father of a little girl, he goes along with it, leading to inevitable heartbreak. “Rental Family” is unapologetically melodramatic, but so are the real-life actors it centers. It needs to be pitched to an emotional 11, and there are strong supporting performances from Akira Emoto and Mari Yamamoto that help ground it when Fraser’s puppy-dog look gets a bit too saccharine.
Special Features
- Featurette: Rental Family Revealed — Go behind the scenes with Brendan Fraser, director HIKARI, and the Japanese cast as they explore friendship, culture, found family, and filming in Japan in this intimate look at the making of Rental Family.
- Deleted/Extended Scenes:
- Columbus
- Crying Session
- Apology
- Aiko’s First Client
- Clearbright
- Tickets
- Audition
- Phone Call
- Final Montage
The best action movie of 2025 that you probably haven’t seen is now available on streaming and Blu-ray. Jorma Tommila returns as Aatami Korpi, who has become something of a legend for his skill dispatching Nazis from the first film. Joined by great character actors Richard Brake and Stephen Lang, “Sisu: Road to Revenge” is like Looney Tunes meets “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a ludicrously enjoyable action flick that really should have a huge fan base. If just because I want to see another one.
Special Features
- Upping The Ante
- Alternate Ending
It’s kind of funny that the big biopics of 2025 like “Springsteen: Road to Nowhere” flopped this awards season and the movie that’s about Neil Diamond but not really about Neil Diamond landed an Oscar nod for Best Actress. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson star in the story of Lightning and Thunder, a Diamond cover duo that made it big enough that they opened for Pearl Jam. They’re effective, and the music rules, but the film is pretty standard melodrama without much true character development or visual language at all. Still, you could do worse for a bit of unexpected Oscar bait, especially if you’re trying to see all of this year’s nominees.
Special Features
- FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR CRAIG BREWER
- EXTENDED PERFORMANCES:
- Crunchy Granola Suite
- Sweet Caroline
- ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS THREE – There is no Lightning without Thunder. Watch as Hugh and Kate reminisce on their characters’ love story, co-dependency, and their undeniable electricity.
- LIGHTNING IN THE BOTTLE – A love letter to the small-time performers, go behind the scenes with Writer/Director Craig Brewer to see how he brought SONG SUNG BLUE to life.
- EYE FOR STYLE – In this featurette, Costume Designer Ernesto Martinez reveals the art of storytelling through stitch and style.
“A Woman Under the Influence” (Criterion)
When people ask me the best performance of all time, I give one of two answers: Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon” or Gena Rowlands in this John Cassavetes masterpiece, now upgraded to 4K by the Criterion Collection. Her Mabel Longhetti is unforgettable, a simmering cauldron of emotional upheaval. As Roger wrote in his Great Movies review, “Her madness burns amid the confusions of domestic life. Nothing goes easily.” What a great line for a great movie.
Special Features
- High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary by sound recordist and composer Bo Harwood and camera operator Michael Ferris
- Conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
- Archival audio interview with director John Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson
- Trailer
- Stills gallery featuring behind-the-scenes production photos
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and an interview with Cassavetes from 1975