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When I first walked out of The Many Saints of Newark, my initial reaction was to call it a B-movie. What I didn’t say at the time, however, was how much I love B-movies. While I saw the flaws in the film and couldn’t wholly endorse it to cinemagoers spoiled by the perfection of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and New Jack City, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to people like me. Those who appreciate the low-budget gangster movies sometimes because of their warts. A majority of fans of The Sopranos will have the same reaction: Meh, The Many Saints of Newark could have been better. So when’s it playing next? I plan to see it again, more than once, on the big screen.

In one of the film’s quieter moments, the Soprano family is gathered around a TV set, watching the classic Key Largo (1948). The specific scene...

There are many actors who might get a 24-film set released which would make for a collection of great and/or important films, but few would be so filled with legendary efforts. This is not only true today, as The Humphrey Bogart Essential Collection makes its way to stores, but it will probably always be true. The combination of talent, charisma, and timing is unlikely to come together in such a way again, and no matter what actors come along, none of them will exist in the right decade.

Certain films may leap to mind, of course, like – Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, etc. – and these giants are wonderful to own, but the collection really gets its value from some of the films that aren’t on the short list of titles that everyone automatically thinks of when they hear his name.