Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

THE LAST PICTURE SHOWS

Exclusive August 21, 2026

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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…

FOUR NEW FILM BOOKS YOU OUGHT TO READ—AND OWN

Books July 31, 2026

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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…

WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN JULY

Blu-Ray/DVD July 21, 2026

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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…

WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN JUNE

Exclusive June 22, 2026

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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…

EVERYWHERE MAN: A DOC WORTH SINGING ABOUT

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews June 22, 2026

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Every now and then a show-business documentary comes along that catches my fancy and lingers in my mind for days. Such a film is Peter Asher: Everywhere Man. If you’re old enough to remember the musical British invasion led by The Beatles, you may recall a popular singing duo known as Peter and Gordon. They unseated the Beatles from the number-one position on the charts with a mournful song called “A World Without Love.” The irony is that it was written by Peter’s good friend Paul McCartney, who was then living with the Asher family. That’s just the first of many surprising and colorful stories revealed in this highly entertaining, unabashedly nostalgic film. If it makes Asher seem like the Zelig of the music world, that’s…

THE ROCKETEER SOARS AGAIN

Exclusive June 5, 2026

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Monday night a near sell-out crowd filled the El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard to see The Rocketeer on its 25th anniversary along with three of its principal creators: director Joe Johnston, production designer Jim Bissell, and executive producer Larry Franco. I was lucky enough to be asked to host a panel with this trio onstage, and each participant had warm feelings toward the movie—if not the conditions in which they had to work (cold, sometimes rainy night shoots). The panelists all have truly impressive credentials. Jim Bissell is a founder of the Art Directors Guild who could dine out on one credit alone: E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. But he doesn’t have to lean on that indelible achievement; he’s also responsible for 300, Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, and a handful of…

PROTO-NOIR AND PRIME NOIR ON BLU-RAY

Blu-Ray/DVD May 28, 2026

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THE BIG COMBO – Ignite Films Joseph H. Lewis was a prolific director of B movies and episodic television, but his latter-day claim to fame is a virtuosic film noir, Gun Crazy (1950). When I first saw that film it knocked me out and led me to seek out his second-best-known noir, The Big Combo (1955) which I’ve always thought of as The Big Disappointment. But the lavish treatment it has received in this new Blu-ray release has caused me to have second thoughts. There are no fewer than three audio commentary tracks, by the estimable Imogen Sara Smith and Philippe Garnier, which I would classify as admirably interpretive. The third is conversational and highly informative, which is what we’ve come to expect from the…