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Once upon a time in Hollywood, the charismatic heavy with smarts and a heart was a familiar archetype in mainstream cinema — think Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, or James Coburn — but the recent passing of Michael Madsen, at the age of 67, could well mark the end of that particular chapter in movie history. Though he made his breakthrough as the psychotic, ear-slicing Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs, Madsen was capable of much, much more, although it’s fair to say that only his work with Tarantino ever made the most of that soulful talent. Which other tough guy could have delivered the line, as he did so memorably in Kill Bill Vol. 2, “That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die” and sound like they meant it?

The following interview took place 10 years ago in February, high in the mountains of Telluride during...

Exclusive: Filmmaker Joshua Coates has secured rights to the life story of Abraham Bolden, the subject of the 2008 autobiography The Echo of Dealey Plaza. Bolden made history as the first Black U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail, where he guarded President John F. Kennedy who had personally appointed him in 1961.

Coates has written the screenplay for the movie The Unseen Shield and will also direct the film, which is currently in pre-production with his producing partner Fetteroff Colen.

Bolden, a U.S. Secret Service agent stationed in the Chicago office, first met Kennedy while on assignment in that city. Bolden had played a key role in thwarting an assassination plot in Chicago months before JFK was tragically assassinated in Dallas. Thanks to Bolden’s investigation, Kennedy canceled a planned trip to Chicago, where he was set to address supporters of his 1960 election campaign.

“For many years,...

When audiences think of war films, there are certain expectations that come with the genre. Notably, epic battles, heroic soldiers and intense drama. Films like Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day fit that mold perfectly. They’re about sacrifice, friendship and the bleak realities of war. But The Dirty Dozen took a completely different approach.

Released in 1967, The Dirty Dozen didn’t follow the usual path of praised soldiers and noble bravery. Instead, it focused on twelve convicts sent on a suicide mission. A group of outcasts thrown together for one last chance at redemption. The film mixed dark humor with war action, challenging the clichés that defined other World War II films. By doing so, The Dirty Dozen became an iconic entry in the genre, standing out from the pack of more conventional war films.

The Dirty Dozen Tells a Redemption Story Set in WWII

Set in the months leading up to D-Day,...

In 1969 the master of the American western, Sam Peckinpah, directed a stellar cast in The Wild Bunch, a controversial film that breathed new life into the genre and broke ground in the realistic portrayal of screen violence. Receiving two Academy Award nominations, this bitter, brutal story of magnificent losers in a dying West remains one of the screen’s all-time classics. An explosive adventure drama about the last of the legendary lawless breed who lived to kill – and killed to live. The cast included William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien. Warren Oates and Ben Johnson.

Now comes a bunch of a different kind. the Thunderbolts* – an unconventional team of antiheroes – Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker. The cast features Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and also includes newcomers to the MCU – Lewis Pullman...

Cinematic legend John Wayne is known widely for his roles in Western films, but the iconic leading man also specialized in war films. Many of the same qualities that help Wayne define the cowboy archetype make him the ideal candidate to play a military man. He's able to maintain a tough exterior while exuding quiet empathy.

In Wayne's renowned war films, he portrays several different kinds of soldier. He plays characters in the Army, Navy, and Air Force, but every one of these men has the same thing in common: they believe in a cause bigger than themselves. Wayne's war films frequently celebrate the fighting spirit of an underdog and spotlight the nobility good people show in times of great tragedy.

Wayne Grapples With the Legacy of Pearl Harbor In Harm's Way (1965) Image via Paramount Pictures

Set in Honolulu in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, In Harm's Way...

Now that Kraven the Hunter has ended its disastrous theatrical run, the Marvel film is getting its second wind during its streaming debut. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the title character, it earned a total gross of $24 million domestically and $60 million globally against a speculated budget of $110 to $130 million.

Recently, however, Kraven the Hunter's official X account revealed that the movie had topped the charts on Apple TV:

It’s clear… the kravin’ for Kraven is real. 😋Thank you for making #KravenTheHunter the #1 movie on @AppleTV! Watch Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the world’s greatest hunter this weekend – now on Digital.https://t.co/A5bdWyz1UW pic.twitter.com/S06JubgtnK— Kraven The Hunter (@KravenTheMovie) January 18, 2025

Kraven the Hunter 5/10

Kraven the Hunter explores the origin story of Sergei Kravinoff, known as Kraven, as he navigates his tumultuous relationship with his father, Nikolai. This path of vengeance sets Kraven...

Newly released concept art showcases a scrapped sequence from Kraven the Hunter that would have tied in with the Venom trilogy. Initially, Kraven the Hunter was set to debut before Venom: The Last Dance, which may have partially contributed to the scene being removed from the final cut of the film.

Image By Jules Darriulat"">

Image By Jules Darriulat

Shared to ArtStation by Jules Darriulat, the image shows dead symbiotes on a desolate landscape. Though the details of the sequence are unknown, it appears to be the site of a battle on an alien planet. The artist captioned the picture: "Here's an environment shot done for a canceled sequence from Kraven the Hunter. [It] was a lot of fun working on this sequence with the Framestore's art department team!"

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Kraven the Hunter 5/10

Kraven the Hunter explores the origin story of Sergei Kravinoff,...

Music blares as the CinemaScope logo fades—a train guns across the Mojave. It is like a gut punch. The camera flies over the modern streamliner, shooting like a bullet through the desert. Unexpectedly, its horns blow and it halts to a stop in a little nowhere place. The whole...

There have been many great Marvel and DC movies over the years, but it is true that some films missed the mark, though even a few of those who did not succeed still featured exciting fight scenes. Marvel and DC have a bright future ahead. The McU's upcoming movies include a pair of Avengers films, Spider-Man 4, and more. As for DC, James Gunn's DC Universe has films like Superman, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and more on the way.

However, both franchises — and others — have produced a number of projects that did not work quite as expected. From the Spider-Man franchise to the old Dceu to more, both Marvel and DC have had their fair share of films that struggled at the box office or with critics. Thankfully, some of them had redeeming qualities, even if they were not among the best Marvel movies or the most exciting DC films,...

Now that Kraven the Hunter has hit theaters, Aaron Taylor-Johnson has addressed the possibility of reappearing in a future crossover movie within Sony's Spider-Man Universe. Kraven the Hunter is one of the foremost figures in Spider-Man's iconic rogues' gallery and the latest to be given a live-action origin story by Sony in Kraven the Hunter. Sony's Spider-Man movies are ostensibly interconnected, teasing the notion that Venom, Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven will at some point band together and finally star opposite the web-slinger himself.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson remains hopeful that this is a possibility, stating in an interview with CinePOP that he would love to star alongside other villains in a Sinister Six adaption. This team-up was first teased in the Morbius post-credits scene as the McU's Adrian Toomes/Vulture approaches Morbius and suggests a team-up. Taylor-Johnson also reiterates his long-held desire to adapt the "Kraven's Last Hunt" comic, which...

Kraven the Hunter bursts into theaters as the next installment in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, before the movie makes its way to digital and streaming releases. Kraven the Hunter depicts an origin story for the eponymous Spider-Man foe, brought to life by MCU alumni, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The movie boasts the villain’s live-action debut, and the pressure is certainly on. Following the disappointing performances of Morbius and Madame Web, much of the Ssu’s future hinges on Kraven the Hunter’s box office performance.

The Ssu’s Kraven the Hunter follows Sergei Kravinoff, whose complicated relationship with his father compels him into becoming the greatest and most feared hunter the world has ever seen. While the character is known in the comics as a big game hunter, Taylor-Johnson has specified that this rendition of the character is not a poacher, but rather an apex predator on a mission to protect...

Aaron Taylor-Johnson isn't new to superhero movies, having played the McU's Quicksilver in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, but Kraven the Hunter is his first opportunity to lead one, and while he turns in an entertaining performance, the latest installment of Sony's Spider-Man Universe never lives up to its potential. Previously, the movies in Sony's Spider-Man Universe have been a mixed bag. While Tom Hardy's Venom films have been generally well-received and done solidly at the box office, Jared Leto's Morbius and Dakota Johnson's Madame Web bombed in every way a movie possibly can.

For Kraven the Hunter, director J.C. Chandor took some big swings. The movie is violent enough to earn an R rating, which already puts it at odds with typical superhero fare. Most movies might earn a PG-13 rating for sci-fi violence, but ultimately they remain relatively family-friendly. Kraven the Hunter, however, features...

A fan-favorite Western film starring the iconic Burt Lancaster will arrive on Prime Video soon. 1971's Lawman will hit the streaming platform on December 1.

Directed by Michael Winner, Lawman follows Lancaster's Jared Maddox, a marshal from Bannock trailing five cowhands from Sabbath, who shoot up his town, leading to the death of an elderly citizen. Maddox demands Sabbath's Sheriff hand them over, threatening to murder them in cold blood if they fail to surrender to him in twenty-four hours. However, the culprits work for one of the town's wealthiest men, Victor Bronson, who attempts to pay off Maddox. The Bannock marshal cannot be bought, inevitably leading to an epic showdown only the best Westerns can deliver.

Related Patrick Swayze's Historic 40-Year-Old War Film Comes to Prime Video Next Month

Patrick Swayze's epic war film with Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell will arrive on Prime Video next month.

Alongside Lancaster,...

The actor was the real deal, whether as a cherubic psychopath in Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, or playing second fiddle to Barbra Streisand in the smash hit A Star Is Born

If Kris Kristofferson had never sung a single note, he would still have been remembered as a terrific screen actor in the Hollywood tradition of tough frontier masculinity, a movie star who worked with Scorsese, Peckinpah, Cimino and Sayles. He had a natural, unforced charisma in the rugged, take-it-or-leave-it tradition of Robert Ryan or John Wayne, or the newer style of Jeff Bridges and Sam Elliott.

Actually, without his recording career, he might have made it higher in the pantheon of screen legends, and his movie work was perhaps one of the casualties of Michael Cimino’s colossal folie de grandeur epic Heaven’s Gate from 1980, which damaged the prestige of everyone involved – Kristofferson was cast, or even miscast,...

Historian John McManus weighs in on the accuracy of the Henry Fonda movie Battle of the Bulge. The 1965 film depicts the World War II battle of the same name that became the last major offensive by Axis forces on the Western Front. Battle of the Bulge was directed by Ken Annakin, and Fonda's co-stars included Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, and Dana Andrews. The movie received only mixed reviews from critics, largely due to its historical inaccuracies.

It seems historian John McManus agrees with the critical assessment at the time. In a video for Insider, he shared his take on Battle of the Bulge and pointed out its many inaccuracies. His full quote and the video are below:

Oh boy. Where to start? You're portraying tank battles. Maybe you ought to get your hands on some real World War II tanks rather than post-war and sort of end-of-war Chaffees on the...

What are the defining traits of a character actor? Why is a shapeshifting virtuoso like Daniel Day-Lewis considered a full-blown movie star, while a chameleon-like genius like Giancarlo Esposito is routinely relegated to supporting player status? As previously discussed here at /Film, there are multiple factors at play: box office, deeply ingrained cultural notions of physical attractiveness, distinctive utility, and the Borgnine Paradox.

It should come as no surprise that my solo endeavor to arrive at a solid-ish definition of "character actor" is not the first in the history of the written word. There have been many, many attempts by whole groups of esteemed journalists to get at some kind of reasonable understanding of this term/concept, and, having read more than a few of them, I can assure you that there is no hard-fast rule. You could call just about everyone outside of Britney Spears a character actor --...

The Longest Day boasts one of the most iconic war movie ensembles ever assembled, rivaling even modern blockbusters like Saving Private Ryan. Featuring a star-studded cast with international talent, this 1962 film captures the intensity and historical significance of the D-Day landings. The camaraderie and talent displayed in The Longest Day's cast is a cinematic achievement that may never be replicated in today's film industry.

John Wayne's classic war movie The Longest Day still has one of the most war movie ensembles ever assembled. The Longest Day is often considered one of the greatest war movies about D-Day ever made and is right up there with other World War II classics such as Saving Private Ryan (1998). At 2 hours and 58 minutes long, The Longest Day offers a phenomenal depiction of the infamous D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, a day that will always be remembered in American history.

While The...

Spencer Tracy leads a stellar cast in Bad Day at Black Rock, mixing film noir with western vibes. The all-star ensemble includes multiple Oscar winners and iconic actors like Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The film captures post-wwii tensions in an isolated town, combining the mystery of noir with vast western landscapes.

Bad Day at Black Rock is an intriguing blend of film noir and neo-western featuring one of the greatest ensemble casts Ive ever seen led by the great Spencer Tracy. Throughout his storied Hollywood career, Tracy shared the screen with many legendary actors. In his feature film debut, Up the River, he co-starred with Humphrey Bogart. In Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, he co-starred with Sidney Poitier and his real-life spouse Katharine Hepburn. In Judgment at Nuremberg, he co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift.

Tracy appeared in the all-star ensemble of Its a Mad,...

Actor Martin Delaney has stepped into the shoes of a tech visionary in the new film “The Man Who Saved the Internet With a Sunflower.”

Delaney portrays Robert Ryan, the founder of Ascend Communications who played a crucial role in the early days of the internet. The film has already garnered critical acclaim, recently winning the Competition Features Audience Award at the Dances With Films festival.

The film chronicles Ryan’s journey from humble beginnings to becoming a key player in Silicon Valley during the 1980s and ’90s. It focuses on Ryan’s development of the “pizza box” modem, which revolutionized internet access by offering faster speeds at half the price of competitors. This innovation allowed struggling internet service providers to stay afloat and ultimately led to Ascend’s meteoric rise in the tech industry, culminating in its sale to Lucent Technologies for $24 billion in 1999.

“I was intrigued by Rob’s story,...

Quick Links What Is The Wild Bunch About? Why Was The Wild Bunch So Controversial? How The Wild Bunch Holds Up in 2024

Celebrating its 55th anniversary in June 2024, Sam Peckinpah's iconic, genre-twisting Western The Wild Bunch withstands the test of time more than most. Although the film drew controversy at the time for its unsettling graphic depiction of violence and unglamorous portrayal of the American frontier, it has endured as one of the most influential Westerns ever made and one of Peckinpah's crowning achievements.

Yet, in keeping with the revisionist theme of the movie, The Wild Bunch drew mixed reviews in 1969 before slowly being praised in retrospect. Today, The Wild Bunch is unanimously hailed as the true masterpiece it deserves to be. Now that it's more than a half-century old, a fond look back at The Wild Bunch is necessary to determine why it was so polarizing at the...

He was initially an ambassador from the Hippie Nation, a force of irreverence armed with a sharp wit and a what-me-worry smile. Which is why, in the late 1960s, right when Flower Power was beginning to bloom in full and the escalating situation in Vietnam galvanized the youth generation, Donald Sutherland started to make a name for himself in… war movies. It’s funny to think of that factoid now, given the six decades of incredibly versatile work the late, great actor left behind when he died Thursday at the...

The film industry lost another legendary actor as Hunger Games actor Donald Sutherland passed away on Thursday. Sutherland rose to prominence in the ’70s with the roles in The Dirty Dozen and M*A*S*H. However, he had a less prominent role in the former until one actor’s refusal to do a scene landed him a bigger part and the main role in the latter.

Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H | Ingo Preminger Productions

Sutherland had nearly 200 films to his name in his career and the role of Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H always had a special place in the audience’s hearts. Unfortunately, the actor never received an Academy Award in his lifetime, but received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017.

Donald Sutherland Should Thank One Unexpected Scene In The Dirty Dozen For His M*A*S*H Role...

In Robert Aldrich's 1967 World War II film "The Dirty Dozen," an ambitious army Major named John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is tasked with assembling 12 American soldiers who have all been thrown in military prison for their insubordination and tendencies toward violence. His job is to whip them into shape, as he intends to send them on a particularly dangerous mission: infiltrating a Nazi stronghold. It's easily one of the manliest films ever made, something Aldrich was good at; he also directed "Kiss Me Deadly," "The Longest Yard," and "The Flight of the Phoenix." It's a testament to Aldrich's talent that he also made famously femme films like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," and "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte."

The second member of the Dirty Dozen was a character named Vernon L. Pinkley, played by the late, great Donald Sutherland. There is a scene wherein Reisman asks Pinkley -- at the last...

Several top stars put their careers on hold and their lives on the line to serve during World War II including Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Robert Taylor, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Robert Ryan and Robert Montgomery. And numerous young men who weren’t yet actors during the global conflict including Lee Marvin and Charles Durning saw action and suffered severe injuries.

With the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which was the largest amphibious invasion in military history with five naval assault divisions invading the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, let’s look at some actors who participated in the massive operation.

Charles Durning

The versatile character actor, who earned supporting actor Oscar nominations for 1982’s “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and 1983’s “To Be or Not to Be” and nine Emmy nominations, was just 21 when he was one of the first group of soldiers to land and...

The days are getting longer everywhere, except Palm Springs, where darkness is on the ascent each May. That’s when the city plays host to the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary May 9-12 with a program of a dozen classic films from the 1940s and ’50s. Great directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Rossen, Andre de Toth and Anthony Mann and stars like Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan will have desert dwellers and visitors alike eager to blot out the sun for four days, culminating in the festival’s customary Mother’s Day crime spree.

As always, the festival is curated and hosted by a face familiar to any serious modern-day noir aficionado, Alan K. Rode, one of the principals of the Film Noir Foundation and a co-host of the Noir City festival every April in Hollywood. Rode’s Noir City cohort,...

Edgar Lansbury, the Tony-winning producer and younger brother of famed actress Angela Lansbury who guided the Broadway and big-screen versions of The Subject Was Roses and Godspell, has died. He was 94.

He died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, his son David Lansbury told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lansbury also produced the popular 1974-75 Broadway revival of Gypsy that starred his sister in a Tony-winning turn and worked on other films including The Wild Party (1975), directed by James Ivory.

Angela Lansbury, winner of five Tony Awards and star of Murder, She Wrote, died on Oct. 11, 2022, at age 96. His twin brother, TV producer Bruce Lansbury, died in February 2017 at age 87.

Lansbury’s first Broadway production, the intense family drama The Subject Was Roses, opened in 1964, ran for two years, and won a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony for best play. Written by Frank Gilroy and directed by Ulu Grosbard, it starred Martin Sheen...

It is the spring of “Baby Reindeer.” Netflix’s addictive limited series about a struggling comedian (Richard Gadd) working at a bar who makes the biggest mistake of his life when he gives a lonely woman (Jessica Gunning) a cup of tea on the house is the most watched series currently on the streamer and viewership is growing. And the fact that it’s based on a true story, makes “Baby Reindeer” even more creep and chilling. It’s a must-see voyeur thriller.

The same was true in the fall of 1987 with Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction.” Audiences flocked to the hard R-rated thriller which starred a wild-haired Glenn Close as an editor with a publishing company who has one-night stand with a happily married attorney (Michael Douglas) whose wife and daughter are out of town. Though it’s “understood” that it’s just a fling, Close’s Alex just won’t let go.

Chris Pine, Cynthia Erivo, Kieran Culkin, Sharon Stone and Rosie Perez celebrated Jeff Bridges’ seven-decade career at the 49th annual Chaplin Awards Gala in New York City on Monday night. But the Big Lebowski star almost chose a different career path.

During his acceptance speech for the Film at Lincoln Center‘s prestigious honor, the True Grit star shared that he originally “resisted” the idea of pursuing acting full-time for a few different reasons.

“It made me nervous, anxious, and I had other things I wanted to do,” he told the full auditorium at Alice Tully Hall. “I was very much into music. I loved ceramics, painting, and who wants to do what their parents do anyway?”

He recalled his father, actor Lloyd Bridges, explaining to him that he could do all of those things in this career path and use them all to some degree, which was one of the beauties of the job.

When Tony Scott died in 2012, he left behind more than a few unfinished projects, including a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s iconic Western, The Wild Bunch.

L.A. Confidential screenwriter Brian Helgeland was attached to write the script for the remake of The Wild Bunch for Tony Scott, and he spilled a few details about the project while speaking with Inverse, including that it would have been set in the modern day.

“I also wrote 45 pages of The Wild Bunch for Tony to direct before he died. Sadly, I always say that I’m still on page 45 of that project,” Helgeland said. “It’s pretty violent and set in the modern day. The plot revolves around L.A. rampart cops that were being sent to prison, but during the trial, they’re still technically free. So, they decide to head down to Mexico and rob a bank before scattering to the...

When screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides was asked about the complex layers of meaning running through his adaptation of Mickey Spillane‘s classic crime novel “Kiss Me Deadly,” he denied having any conscious intention of exploring the post-wwii anxieties that gave the film its jittery core. “People ask me about the hidden meanings in the script,” he told an interviewer. “About the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only say that I didn’t think about it when I wrote it . . . I was having fun.” Bezzerides may have been just “having fun,” but in the process, he and director Robert Aldrich crafted one of the greatest noirs of all time, an apocalyptic detective story that looks into the heart of 1950s America and sees annihilation.

It’s one of several stone-cold masterpieces written by the novelist-turned-screenwriter, whose work is being properly acknowledged by the...

After decades of diminished popularity, the Western genre appears to have undergone a renaissance of sorts in recent years. High-profile Westerns such as True Grit, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and The Revenant have each managed to draw in large box office numbers while also earning critical acclaim. Taylor Sheridan has single-handedly played a significant role in this Western resurgence with films such as Hell or High Water and Wind River and television shows such as Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923.

When discussing the greatest works of the Western genre, films bound to come up in conversation typically include The Searchers, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Unforgiven. However, there exists a multitude of Western genre classics that most people have never even heard of. As a result of poor box office performance, failure to win any major awards, and having a minimal amount of ratings on movie websites such as Letterboxd,...

Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow came along at the tail end of film noir’s steady decline in popularity in the 1950s and just before the civil rights movement reached its peak in the ’60s. The quintessential male icons of these two distinct eras clash in the film through the extremely confrontational yet mutually beneficial collaboration between a virulently racist ex-con, Earle (Robert Ryan), and a slick, Black jazz musician, Johnny (Harry Belaafonte).

The unlikely pair are brought together by a disgraced retired cop, Burke (Ed Begley), who caught wind of a robbery that’s a sure thing. If something sounds too good to be true in a noir, it always is, but the weaselly Earle’s too macho to let his doting wife, Lorry (Shelley Winters), continue being the breadwinner. Meanwhile, Johnny’s gambling debts have caused him to be estranged from his wife, Ruth (Kim Hamilton), as...

Courtesy of Kino Lorber

by Chad Kennerk

Considered the first film noir to feature a leading black protagonist, Odds Against Tomorrow is a vital entry in the noir canon. Directed by legend Robert Wise and produced by star Harry Belafonte’s HarBel Productions, the gritty look at racial tension is also one of cinema’s most important films about prejudice. Created amidst growing disquiet in America, the film heralds the explosive events to come at the dawn of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement.

The screenplay was based on the novel by William P. McGivern (The Big Heat) and secretly written by Abraham Polonsky, who penned the screenplays for films such as Body and Soul and Force of Evil. Polonsky had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, so Belafonte approached black novelist and friend John O. Killens to serve as the credited screenwriter. It would take until...

The western genre has produced some of the greatest ensemble casts in cinema history, with star-studded lineups featuring screen icons like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Charles Bronson. Filmmakers have often teamed up famous actors who were capable of leading their own movies, creating captivating cinematic dynamics on-screen. Movies like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Magnificent Seven," and "The Hateful Eight" showcase the power of ensembles, bringing together multiple renowned actors to create memorable performances.

Since the western was Hollywood’s favorite genre for most of the 20th century, there are a ton of classic westerns with star-studded ensemble casts full of screen legends. The western genre launched the careers of screen legends like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Charles Bronson, and once those careers had been launched, the studios had fun teaming them up in star-studded ensemble casts. Some of the greatest westerns ever made have taken...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on Ian Simmons Vodcast, Kicking The Seat, talking the 1973 first JFK conspiracy film “Executive Action” … it’s 50th Anniversary. Why was this particular anniversary film chosen? Because today … November 22nd, 2023, is the 60th Anniversary of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

At a gathering in June 1963, shadowy industrial, political and U.S. intelligence figures discuss their growing dissatisfaction with the Kennedy administration. The most powerful, a geopolitical oil mogul, is Ferguson (Will Geer). The rest of these figureheads include Foster (Robert Ryan) and Farrington (Burt Lancaster), a black ops expert. When the green light is lit on the operation, Farrington recruits a team of shooters and a fall guy named Lee Harvey Oswald. Their destination? Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, and the presidential motorcade of destiny.

‘Executive Action’ on Kicking the Seat, Hosted by Ian Simmons

Photo credit: Patrick McDonald

Kicking The Seat is...

Film noir was a popular genre in Hollywood during the 1940s and '50s, known for its crime-centered plots and morally gray characters. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Barbara Stanwyck are among the iconic actors who became synonymous with film noir due to their influential and defining work in the genre. Among the other iconic film noir actors are Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, John Garfield, Robert Mitchum, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Ryan, and Sterling Hayden.

Film noir isn't defined simply by the elements of crime or the atmosphere, it's also defined by the actors who bring it to life, many of whom were staples in the genre throughout the 1940s and '50s. There are certain actors who spent so much of their careers playing the characters who catch the bad guys, or play the villains being tracked, they have become synonymous with the genre. In order to become familiar with the genre,...

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential and distinctive filmmakers of our time. His movies are known for their stylish violence, witty dialogue, eclectic soundtracks, and homages to various genres and eras of cinema. He has also been vocal about his admiration for other filmmakers and their works, often citing them as inspirations or influences for his own projects.

In a recent interview, Tarantino revealed his list of seven perfect movies that he considers flawless and masterful in every aspect. He said that these movies are “the ones that I go, ‘Ok, this is as good as a movie can get.’ And I don’t think I can do any better than that.”

CineArticles decided to rank these seven perfect movies according to their own criteria and preferences. Here is their list, from the least to the most perfect movie picked by Tarantino:

7. The Wild Bunch (1969) The Wild Bunch...

Edward L. Rissien, who produced the Burt Lancaster-starring war film Castle Keep and served as an executive at ABC, Bing Crosby Productions, Filmways and Playboy Productions, has died. He was 98.

Rissien died April 8 of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, his nephew, Emmy-nominated director Michael Zinberg (The Bob Newhart Show, The Good Wife, NCIS), told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Eddie was a well-respected man who had beautiful taste in material,” Zinberg said. “He was always looking for something that would make a difference.”

An Iowa native who started out as a stage manager on Broadway, Rissien helped set up Harry Belafonte‘s HarBel Productions after acquiring the film rights for Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), the Robert Wise-directed drama that starred Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters.

He also produced Snow Job (1972), starring legendary French skier and Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy as a thief in his only feature role,...

The star with the gorgeous calypso voice was also a naturally passionate actor who appeared in heists, colonial confrontations – and even the last love triangle on Earth

In the middle of the 20th century, Harry Belafonte was at the dizzying high point of his stunning multi-hyphenate celebrity: this handsome, athletic, Caribbean-American star with a gorgeous calypso singing voice was at the top of his game in music, movies and politics. He was the million-selling artist whose easy and sensuous musical stylings and lighter-skinned image made him acceptable to white audiences. But this didn’t stop him having a fierce screen presence and an even fiercer commitment to civil rights. He was the friend and comrade of Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King Jr – and his crossover success, incidentally, never stopped him being subject to the ugliest kind of bigotry from racists who saw his fame as a kind of infiltration.

Harry Belafonte, the actor, producer, singer and activist who made calypso music a national phenomenon with “Day-o” (The Banana Boat Song) and used his considerable stardom to draw attention to Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights issues and injustices around the world, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte, recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2014, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home on the Upper West Side with his wife, Pamela, by his side, longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine told The Hollywood Reporter.

A master at blending pop, jazz and traditional West Indian rhythms, the Caribbean-American Belafonte released more than 30 albums during his career and received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2000.

Calypso, which featured “Day-o” and another hit, “Jamaica Farewell,” topped the Billboard pop album list for an incredible 31 weeks in 1956 and is credited as...

Warner Bros. has already celebrated its centennial with a segment during the Academy Awards, the publication of a studio-supported book (Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling) and, most recently, a barrage of festivities emanating from Turner Classic Movies. TCM’s programming for all of April is being devoted to Warners films, and at the 14th annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, running April 13-16, many studio masterpieces, some recently restored and remastered, will be shown on big screens around town. Here are 10 that this THR Hollywood history buff highly recommends.

Footlight Parade (1933)

Ninety years ago, during the depths of the Great Depression, Americans sought escape from their troubles with light movies like this backstage musical. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and highlighted by some of choreographer Busby Berkeley’s most kaleidoscopic dance numbers, it was a giant hit at the box office.

Robert Aldrich's great war film "The Dirty Dozen" wasn't the first men-on-a-mission movie, but it is generally held up today at the apotheosis of the form. The tale of the U.S. Army's most vicious convicts getting assigned to a suicide mission deep behind enemy lines during World War II, with the promise of a pardon should they survive, is stocked with the toughest of the tough guys of the late 1960s. Lee Marvin heads up the brass-knuckle ensemble as the no-nonsense Major John Reisman, who's stuck with the unenviable task of shaping up a unit of anti-authoritarian malcontents or straight-up psychopaths. With troublemakers and nose-breakers like Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, Jim Brown, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, and John Cassavetes along for the ride, "The Dirty Dozen" became more than just the perfect "men-on-a-mission" movie: it was the ultimate guy flick.

We call them "Dad Movies" nowadays. They're the...

Daniel Day-Lewis is a method actor's method actor. He burrows so deep into his characters he becomes them for a time. When he portrayed Abraham Lincoln, he would text Sally Field, who played Mary Todd Lincoln, in the voice of the Great Emancipator. Given his knockout good looks and palpable screen presence, Day-Lewis could've made a killing as a movie star, but he understood his value as a performer, and carefully called his shots after winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor as artist Christy Brown, who famously created while having cerebral palsy, in Jim Sheridan's "My Left Foot."

Over his 20 credited performances, Day-Lewis has only made two movies that could be considered pure genre efforts: Michael Mann's frontier adventure "The Last of the Mohicans" and Rob Marshall's godawful adaptation of the musical "Nine." But even these are deep-tissue immersions. Day-Lewis has resisted the temptation to be Day-Lewis.

A late era noir which sets aside the femme fatales and short-lived husbands to focus on the simplest of crimes – robbery carried out for sake of accessing some ready cash – Odds Against Tomorrow taps into Fifties America’s deep social unease, finding the same problems amongst the criminal fraternity that exist elsewhere, and highlighting the damage they do to all concerned. It was produced by Harry Belafonte, who also stars in it as nightclub singer Johnny Ingram, a man whose gambling addiction forces him to go to desperate lengths. Still working at 96, Belafonte is now the only surviving member of its core cast, but it retains a fan following, as a screening in the Gloria Grahame strand at the 2023 Glasgow Film Festival made clear.

Grahame plays Helen, not quite a femme fatale but certainly a complicating influence in the life of career criminal Earle Slater (Robert Ryan),...

Wow, a ‘new’ Sam Peckinpah western! While we await the rumored Blu-ray of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to surface (or was Alex Cox misinformed?), correspondent Darren Gross has come across a watchable web encoding of a Peckinpah TV drama that seems to be more or less ‘lost.’ Good star performances and intense characterizations prove once again that Peckinpah could deliver superior dramatics. The home video companies should do some investigating — there’s a market out there for this one.

The Lady Is My Wife

TV episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater

CineSavant Revival Screening Review

1967 / Color / 1:33 TV / 47 min. / first Aired February 1, 1967 / Not on Home Video

Starring: Jean Simmons, Bradford Dillman, Alex Cord, Begoña Palacios, L.Q. Jones, Roberto Contreras, Alan Baxter, Jim Boles, Billy M. Greene, E.J. André, Billy M. Greene.

Cinematography: Dale Deverman

Art Director: Lloyd S. Papez

Costumes: Kay Hayden

Film Editor: Edward Biery...

When Quentin Tarantino first announced he was working on a "men on a mission" World War II movie called "Inglorious Bastards" (no one knew he would intentionally misspell the title at the time), the internet went into fan casting overdrive. What would a 2000s version of Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" directed by Tarantino look like? Is Bruce Willis in the Lee Marvin role? Robert Forster as Robert Ryan? Some athlete-turned-actor (Mike Tyson?) taking up Jim Brown's mantle?

As we've learned is often the case with Tarantino, the vaguely pitched project never lands anywhere close to fan expectations. Once the two-time Academy Award winner sits down to bang out the screenplay, it takes on a convention-bending life of its own. Tarantino may adore "The Dirty Dozen", but there will be no fan service. You're not going to get what you want.

Nor will Tarantino. At least not when...

Dore Schary’s post-MGM personal production is a class act in every respect — Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan and Myrna Loy are well cast in a story of intimate emotional cruelty. It’s from a play derived from Nathanael West’s soul-crushing novella, and despite the talent involved, it can’t shake the feeling of an overheated TV drama. The acting and characterizations are riveting. Young Dolores Hart is a beacon of light amid the gloom and misery, and in her first movie, Maureen Stapleton’s’ fireball of anxiety and malice all but steals the show. The fine cinematography is again by the great John Alton.

Lonelyhearts

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1958 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date October 25, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Dolores Hart, Maureen Stapleton, Jackie Coogan, Mike Kellin, Onslow Stevens, Frank Maxwell, Frank Overton, John Gallaudet, Don Washbrook, Johnny Washbrook,...

Quintessential ’40s leading man Dana Andrews excels in perhaps his finest performance as another brutal cop who can’t control himself (shades of Robert Ryan and Kirk Douglas!) in Otto Preminger’s gripping, corrosive noir classic–the flip side of the sensitive cop Andrews played for him in Laura.

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Venetia Stevenson, a model, actress and daughter of Hollywood luminaries who appeared in films including Darby’s Rangers, Island of Lost Women and Horror Hotel after being labeled “the most photogenic girl in the world,” has died. She was 84.

Stevenson died Monday at a health care facility in Atlanta after a battle with Parkinson’s disease, her brother, actor and photographer Jeffrey Byron, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stevenson’s parents were Robert Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated director of Mary Poppins who earlier helmed King Solomon’s Mines and Jane Eyre, and her mother was Anna Lee, who starred in How Green Was My Valley and portrayed the matriarch Lila Quartermaine for a quarter-century on General Hospital.

The screen siren was married to actor Russ Tamblyn from Valentine’s Day 1956 until their divorce in April 1957 and to Don Everly of The Everly Brothers from 1962-...

Antonio Campos, creator of the new HBO Max miniseries The Staircase, walks hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante through his favorite films noir.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Afterschool (2008)

The Devil All The Time (2020)

Rashomon (1950) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (1996)

Raw Deal (1948) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

T-Men (1947) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)

House of Bamboo (1955) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Pickup On South Street (1953) – Sam Hamm’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Reign of Terror (1949)

Detour (1945) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Scarlet Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Killing (1956) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary

Kiss of Death (1947) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Kiss of Death...