My Two Cents

All right, we’ve got some great release news and more new disc reviews for you today to start the new week off right!

Let’s get to those reviews first…

Tim has turned in his thoughts on the Warner Archive Collection’s excellent Tom & Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology (1940-1958) Blu-ray release, which is well worth your time for classic animation fans!

Dennis has offered his take on Richard Fleischer’s The Narrow Margin (1952) also in Blu-ray also from the Warner Archive Collection.

And Stephen has delivered his look at Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva (1981) in 4K Ultra HD from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

As expected, we’ve got a great line up of new Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD reviews coming every day this week, so you’ll definitely want to keep checking back daily for those.

Now then… the big news today is that Variety has just revealed that Netflix has licensed two more titles to the Criterion Collection, including Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) and Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’s animated hit K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) from Sony Pictures Animation! This means both films are likely to be released on both Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD later this year. [Read on here...]

I wanted to do something a little different here at The Bits today.

This being a Friday afternoon, and with the recent passing of Robert Duvall much on my mind, I wanted to call your attention to a film that I think features one of his finest performances.

But the sad reality is, thanks to studio apathy and/or a dispute between the film’s director and distributors (as reported here back in 2019), some of you may not even be aware of it.

First though, a bit of regular site business: We’ve got three more new disc reviews for you to enjoy here at the site today, including…

Dennis’ look at Don Siegel’s The Verdict (1946) on Blu-ray from our friends at the Warner Archive Collection.

Stuart’s thoughts on Mabel Cheung’s An Autumn’s Tale (1987) on Blu-ray from Imprint Asia and Via Vision.

And finally, Tim’s review of Roy Ward Baker’s Scars of Dracula (1970) in 4K Ultra HD from Hammer Films via the good folks at Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

More reviews are on the way for next week (including one or two from yours truly), so be sure to check back for them.

All right… with that aside, let me tell you about a little gem of a film called Open Range (2003).

Based on the 1990 Western novel The Open Range Men by Lauran Paine, and featuring a screenplay by Craig Storper, this Kevin Costner-directed project was both a critical and box office success, if a modest one, and it currently holds a respectable 79% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes (with an audience rating of 84%). [Read on here...]