The advertising catchphrase for Marty Supreme is that it is about a young man with a dream no one respects, who goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness

Now on VOD (Video on Demand), the year’s most heavily hyped film was in production during last year’s Oscar race when its star, Timothée Chalamet was a major contender for the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, which got it plenty of press coverage, making it one of the year’s most highly anticipated releases.

Opening on Christmas Day 2025, the film was an immediate success with both critics and audiences. Nominated for 9 Oscars, it currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%, the same as that of One Battle After Tomorrow which has 13 Oscar nominations and just three points less than Sinners with its record 16 Oscar nominations.

The film has strong production values and direction by Josh Safdie, but the only Oscar that most prognosticators expect the film to win is Best Actor for Chalamet. It’s his star performance that stands out. He is, however, evenly matched against fellow nominees Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent, Michael B. Jordan in Sinners, and Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon, so much so that any one of them can win.

Chalamet is the best thing about the film. His character may be loathsome, but you can’t take your eyes off him even in scenes with his two strong leading ladies, Odessa A’zion as his on again, off again love interest and Gwyneth Paltrow in full Mrs. Robinson mode as the middle-aged former actress wife of a gangster with whom he has an affair.

A shoe salesman with delusions of grandeur, Marty sets out in the early 1950s to become the greatest ping-pong player in the world and succeeds with a combination of hard work and cunning. He gets and loses it all, seemingly learning a valuable life lesson in the end, but does he? See it and form your own opinion.

Marty Supreme releases on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray on March 31.

Newly released on Blu-Ray, Nuremberg was another film that figured in early Oscar predictions but this one ended up with none.

Directed by James Vanderbilt with a screenplay by Vanderbilt based on Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, the film looks at the Nuremberg trials from a different perspective than has been done before.

The most famous film made on the subject was Stanley Kramer’s 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg which focused on the presiding judge (Spencer Tracy) of one of the later trials and the trial itself in which Richard Widmark was the prosecutor, Maximilian Schell the defense attorney, Burt Lancaster one of the defendants, Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland two of the witnesses, and Marlene Dietrich the widow of an executed German General whose home Tracy is billeted at for the duration of the tril. Tracy, Schell, Clift, and Garland were nominated for Oscars with Schell winning.

The new film stars Russell Crowe as Hitler’s next-in-command Hermann Goring, Rami Malek as the American psychiatrist who must determine if he is sane enough to stand trial, and Michael Shannon as the future Justice of the Supreme Court who becomes the prosecutor at the first trial. These interviews, which took place over five months, go by so fast in the film that they seem to take place over a few days or weeks to get to the first trial, leaving little time for introspection.

The film is very good at providing an historical perspective but tries to cram too much into the film, which doesn’t allow much room for delving into characters’ backstories and motivations. Consequently, it comes off a bit dry with only Leo Woodall as Malek’s interpreter given a monologue that the audience can fully empathize with.

Bottom line is Nuremberg is worth seeing but it is unfortunately not the masterpiece it could have been.

Captain Blood has long been the most requested title in Warner Archive requests for upgrading from DVD to Blu-ray. It has finally been given not just a Blu-ray upgrade but a 4K UHD upgrade as well. The release surprisingly comes from Criterion, not Warner Archive, but is everything aficionados of the film could have hoped for.

Errol Flynn in his first starring role is at his very best as the young Irish doctor who treats a Monmouth rebel against King James II in 1680s England, and as a consequence is exiled as a slave to Jamaica where he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the most feared pirate of the Caribbean.

Flynn’s first major film was also his first of many opposite rising star Olivia de Havilland, and their romance is palpable. Lionel Atwill and Basil Rathbone excel as always as the film’s principal villains, but strong character performances are also provided by Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson, Robert Barrat, Hobart Cavanaugh, Donald Meek, and Jessie Ralph among others.

The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Sound. It also received then allowed write-in votes for Best Director (Michael Curtiz), Screenplay, and Score.

Masayuki Suo’s 1996 Japanese film, Shall We Dance?, released in 1997 in the U.S. was one of the best loved films of its time.

The story revolves around a successful but unhappy Japanese accountant who finds the missing passion in his life when he begins to secretly take ballroom dance lessons. The film was successfully remade by Hollywood in 2004, but that film, while fine in its own way, lacked the passion of the original film which takes place in a world where public dancing at the time was still considered something to be ashamed of.

The film has been upgraded to Blu-ray by Film Movement.

Film Masters (not to be confused with Film Movement) has released a beautifully remastered Blu-ray of Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1946 romantic thriller, The Strange Woman starring Hedy Lmarr at her best as a manipulative New England woman in the early 19th Century. George Sanders, Louis Hayward, and Gene Lockhart are among the men whose lives she destroys.

It’s worth seeking out.

Happy viewing.