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by James Cameron-wilson

Few films in the Swinging Sixties were as much a part of their time as John Schlesinger’s Darling. Chronologically positioned between Godard’s Breathless and Antonioni’s Blow Up, it is a microcosm of the tail end of an empire that was enjoying its last twitch of cultural significance. The Darling of the title is the extremely beautiful, self-absorbed and cosseted Diana Scott played by the It girl of the day, Julie Christie, the face of Ideal Woman magazine. And she would seem, indeed, to be the Ideal Woman, beloved of cads, intellectuals and royalty. The thumbnail premise is attributed to three men, the scenarist Frederic Raphael, the director John Schlesinger and the producer Joseph Janni, and it is Raphael who has provided the sparkling dialogue. Essentially it’s a satire of Britain in the mid-1960s, with Julie Christie the Carnaby Street...

There is a point in John Schlesinger’s swinging Sixties hit Darling when Diana, played with Oscar-winning intensity by Julie Christie, is asked why, as someone who is presented as the face of modernity, she dresses so conservatively. Herein lies the crux of the film.

Diana is a model, the Honey-glo Girl, the Happiness Girl. She’s known for her dazzling, carefree smile, and the myth of her picture perfect life is so strong that she almost believes it herself. As much an artefact of consumer capitalism as the products she represents, she is desired in the same way, and she knows it. Her relationship with respected literary journalist Robert (Dirk Bogarde) – for which he leaves his wife and children – suits them both: she is the dazzling jewel on his arm whilst he gives her the intellectual credential she has craved. Behind the scenes, however, their unmarried bliss is gradually eroded.

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This June, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the much-anticipated streaming release of Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu to all the beloved K-dramas coming to Prime Video next month. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Prime Video this month and have an 85% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 10 best films that are coming to Prime Video in June 2025 with an 85% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

12 Angry Men (June 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100% Credit – United Artists

12 Angry Men is a legal drama film directed by Sidney Lumet from a screenplay by Reginald Rose. Based on Reginald Rose’s 1954 television play of the same name, the 1957 film revolves around twelve men serving as jury members on a murder trial, but their prejudices and doubts get...

Sony’s Karate Kid: Legends and Black Bear’s The Salt Path lead new releases in UK and Ireland cinemas this weekend.

Out in front is Jonathan Entwistle’s Karate Kid: Legendsin 552 locations.The sixth entry in the franchise opens wider than its predecessor, 2010’s The Karate Kid, which debuted in 446 sites. That title, a reimagining of the 1984 original, opened on £4.9m.

Legends stars Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, reprising their roles as Mr. Han and Daniel Larusso, who must help a Kung Fu prodigy win a Karate competition.

UK dramaThe Salt Pathwanders into 525 venues for Black Bear. Gillian Anderson...

Subhash K Jha looks back at Tanuja Chandra’s 1998 film Dushman, which starred Kajol in a brilliant performance and Sanjay Dutt. We also hear from the director about the making of the film.

Tanuja Chandra’s grossly underrated film, Dushman, features Kajol in her career-best performance in a double role. When one of the twins is brutally murdered, the other takes revenge. The film was adapted from John Schlesinger’s tepid thriller An Eye For An Eye, where Sally Field avenged the death of her daughter. Several clever changes were made to the original script. In the original, it is the mother (Sally Field) who goes on a vendetta spree against her daughter’s rapist and murderer. In Dushman, it is the twin sister (Kajol) who seeks retribution, while the mother(Tanve Azmi) seeks closure to the tragedy. Dushman also added a romantic angle to the original with Sanjay Dutt...

Christie won an Oscar for her role in John Schlesinger’s film as an insouciant model caught between two lovers at the height of London’s fashion scene

Some of it feels a bit dated now, and that brittle, sophisticated chatter in the cocktail party scenes has a fingernails-down-the-blackboard screechiness that can’t have been intended at the time. But John Schlesinger’s winsome adventure from 1965 still has verve and ambition, a romantic satire of swinging London now on rerelease for its 60th anniversary.

Julie Christie plays Diana Scott, a model and actor who enjoys an insouciantly upward rake’s progress in smart-set London: an innocent, almost childlike Becky Sharp-type character, for all her dissolute encounters, and abortion and divorce are notably presented without sorrowing dismay and disapproval. The wry, Oscar-winning screenplay from Frederic Raphael imports and anglicises the influence of Godard, Resnais, Varda and the French New Wave; fashion...

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” topped the U.K. and Ireland box office in its opening weekend, debuting with a strong £9.5 million ($12.9 million), according to Comscore.

Close behind in second place, Paramount launched “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” The latest instalment in the long-running Tom Cruise franchise, with $11.5 million. The box office benefited from a three-day holiday weekend, which also marked the beginning of the May half-term school holiday.

Warner Bros.’ “Final Destination Bloodlines” slipped to third but still held well with $2.2 million in its second weekend. The horror reboot has now reached $9.3 million. Universal’s “The Phoenician Scheme” debuted in fourth with $1 million.

“Thunderbolts*” landed in fifth for Disney, taking $781,138 to push its cumulative total to $20.1 million. It was followed closely by Warner Bros.’ “Sinners”, which grossed $461,938 this weekend, for a $20.5 million total.

Altitude’s “Ocean With David Attenborough” earned $127,689 in seventh, while Vue Lumière’s “Bluey At...

Image Source: Warner Bros We cinephiles often find ourselves drawn to the forgotten corners of cinema—films that were overlooked at the time or have simply slipped through the cracks of memory. Over his more than forty-year career, Academy Award nominee Michael Keaton has carved out a remarkable path across genres. From the eccentric charm of Beetlejuice, Night Shift, and Mr. Mom, to the brooding gravitas of Batman and Batman Returns, to tender performances in Speechless and My Life, and the sharp, layered brilliance of Birdman, Keaton has never settled into one mold. He has also taken on risky roles, playing villains that range from the unapologetically sinister to the morally ambiguous. Each portrayal is marked by a compelling nuance. Carter Hayes in 1990s Pacific Heights is one of his most overlooked yet haunting roles. A quiet psychological thriller, it has Keaton channeling a different kind of menace: cold, patient,...

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its public-oriented Cinéma de la Plage sidebar at its 78th edition kicking off next week.

The sidebar will screen a selection of films, many of which have past Cannes connections, on the big screen on the beach beside the Palais des Festivals.

The titles include Terrence Malick’s drama A Hidden Life about Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, which premiered at in Competition at the festival in 2019,

Older selections include King Vidor’s 1946 classic Dual in the Sun, presented and restored by Walt Disney Studios in association with The Film Foundation, with the participation of The George Eastman Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, and the involvement of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

Further highlights include Japanese animation director Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 animated feature Angel’s Egg to mark the 40 th anniversary of its release, Oshii is best known internationally...

Julie Christie is an Oscar-winning actress who has been largely absent from movie screens this century, enjoying a semi-retirement that finds her returning for the odd performance here and there. Yet she's always finding new fans as younger generations discover her cinematic classics. Let's take a look at 20 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born on April 14, 1940, Christie rose to prominence for her work in London, starting with a breakthrough performance in John Schlesinger's "Billy Liar" (1963). She won the Oscar as Best Actress just two years later for Schlesinger's "Darling" (1965), playing a fashion model who sleeps her way to the top. That same year, she shot to stardom thanks to David Lean's romantic epic "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), which casts her as a political activist's wife who falls in love with a physician (Omar Sharif) during the Russian Revolution.

She earned a second Best Actress nomination for Robert Altman...

New York icon Martin Scorsese is revealing his go-to films set in the Big Apple.

The auteur curated the screening series “Living, Breathing New York” for the Roxy Cinema, which features screenings of four of his favorite NYC movies out of a full list of Scorsese’s 32 favorite New York movies he’s created and which IndieWire is proud to share below.

“Living, Breathing New York” is curated by Scorsese in celebration of the new release of Olmo Schnabel’s NYC-set thriller, “Pet Shop Days,” which Scorsese executive produced. The film premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York, and stars Dario Yazbek Bernal and Jack Irv as two lovers whose whirlwind romance sends them down a rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. Willem Dafoe (who starred in Olmo Schnabel‘s father Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”), Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Sarsgaard,...

Method actors are a different breed. Consider Dustin Hoffman. The notoriously intense performer habitually put his directors through their paces by hurtling himself deep into character. It wasn't enough for Hoffman to study the screenplay like it was holy writ; he had to get himself on the same emotional frequency as his characters, even if this meant endangering his physical and mental health. This is what he did on the set of John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" prior to shooting the classic torture scene wherein Laurence Olivier's Nazi dentist literally attempts to drill information out of him. Hoffman, who was already contending with a divorce at the time, not only deprived himself of sleep but made the hard-partying scene at Studio 54. By the time he was seated in front of Olivier, he was a sweaty, addled mess, which prompted the planet's greatest living Shakespearean actor at the time to ask his co-star,...

Oscar winners Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn came up in Hollywood at a time when the next generation of stars were looking to carry over the hard-hitting method acting work of ‘70s cinema. Both actors were highly engaged in three-dimensional characters with plenty of depth and relatability that felt authentic on the screen. In 1985, John Schlesinger would put their talents to the test in the controversial spy drama The Falcon and the Snowman.

The papal drama “Conclave” has been named the best film of 2024 at the Ee BAFTA Film Awards, which took place on Sunday in London.

Voters from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts spread the wealth, giving “Conclave” and “The Brutalist” four awards each and giving two to “Dune: Part Two,” “Wicked,” “Emilia Perez,” “A Real Pain,” “Anora” and “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.”

The win for “Conclave” is the most significant for the film in a season in which “Anora” has been winning most of the major awards. It also gave director Edward Berger two BAFTA Best Film wins in the last three years, following his first for “All Quiet on the Western Front” two years ago.

The only other directors to have two films win the top BAFTA award in a span of three years are Mike Nichols (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate...

There are many movies that, despite their big cast and promising plots, are not the success everyone expected. One of these films is 1996's Eye for an Eye.

The film premiered almost 29 years ago, starring Sally Field as a woman who takes matters into her own hands and gets revenge after her daughter's murder. Although the plot sounds exciting and original for almost two decades ago, the film failed to impress. However, Eye for an Eye found streaming success on Netflix, settling for tenth place for a second week in a row on the global charts, with a total of 2.4 million views, the equivalent of 4 million hours viewed for the week between Jan. 13 and 20, spending two weeks in the Top 10 in 20 countries.

Related Cameron Diaz Makes Stunning Return to the Charts With Back in Action

Back in Action was not a hit with the critics but its strong numbers prove the audience missed Cameron Diaz.

Sally Field's 1996 psychological thriller has become a global Netflix hit nearly three decades after its release. Field is a highly decorated actress whose career has spanned over six decades, starting during the 1960s with the sitcoms Gidget and The Flying Nun before transitioning to acclaimed dramatic roles. Field won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1980 for Norma Rae, her second for Places in the Heart in 1985, and earned an additional nomination for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln in 2013.

Though she's best known for starring in acclaimed dramas, Field has shown some versatility and also ventured into darker territory with roles in thrillers. This includes suspenseful projects such as Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice in 1981, in which she played a journalist entangled in an ethical dilemma. At the height of the genre's popularity in 1996, Field starred in the psychological thriller, Eye for an Eye, delivering a gripping performance...

I’ve always avoided New Year’s resolutions, but this week I happened to recall one that was brief but resolute: I resolved to quit Hollywood.

And I did. Almost.

That decision seems relevant today for reasons that require a bit of history. Consider January 1975, 50 years ago: It was a Hollywood moment that was the opposite of the present, both in numbers and nuance. It was a great time to be around – and not to be.

The audience was expanding and was determined to get scared: Jaws was a smash. But millions also were welcoming the weirdities of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. TV fans were puzzled over something new called SNL, and music fans continued to discover Elton John (still are).

As box office kept growing, opportunity was abundant. Words like “downsizing” or “contracting” were still unknown.

There were hints of quantum change, but just hints: The Hollywood...

Photos (l-r) Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger by Dustin Pittman in New York After Dark (Rizzoli) at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze, featuring work by Dustin Pittman

In the second instalment of our conversation with renowned photographer Dustin Pittman and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with the New York music scene at Cbgb and Hurrah, then go on to Andy Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, Sylvia Miles (in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy), Lana Jokel, and Bob Colacello. Dustin also had a distinguished career working with directors such as Alan J Pakula on The Sterile Cuckoo (starring Liza Minnelli), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, and is seen at a party with Bernadette Peters in James Ivory’s adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s The Slaves Of New York.

Dustin Pittman (in Edie Sedgwick...

Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Throughout his illustrious career, Emmy winner Kiefer Sutherland has collaborated with some of the industry’s finest directors, including William Friedkin and John Schlesinger. Now, he joins forces with the legendary director and actor Clint Eastwood in the film Juror #2. Having directed a few projects himself, Sutherland shared his insights into Eastwood’s directing style. Despite Eastwood’s reputation for playing tough characters, Sutherland found a surprising kindness in him off-screen. This kindness, Sutherland noted, directly influences Eastwood’s approach to working with actors while directing. (Click on the media bar below to hear Kiefer Sutherland) https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kiefer_Sitherland_Clint_Eastwood_Juror_2_.mp3 Juror #2 is now playing in select theaters.

The post Beyond the Tough Guy: Kiefer Sutherland Reveals Clint Eastwood’s Gentle Side In ‘Juror #2’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

New styles, new technology and new voices changed the film industry throughout the 1960s and left the 1970s a brave new frontier for movies. As on-location shooting and lower-budget film making grew in popularity, it allowed for new kinds of stories to be told. Thriller films as we know them were born in this era, with many of the best coming from it. Smaller cameras and experimentation with editing expanded the realm of what was possible when creating these types of stories.

Legendary directors of the 1970s like Steven Spielberg, Sidney Lumet, and Francis Ford Coppola cut their teeth in this genre and helped establish the language for thrillers yet to come. The decade was amazing for thrillers of all genres and is still hard to stack up against, especially when comparing the quality of stunts and editing.

The Driver (1978) Directed By Walter Hill

The Driver is action legend Walter...

For anyone assuming that Marathon Man is a film about Dustin Hoffman training for a big race, guess again. The thriller offers something far more intense, combining elements youd never think would go together. Directed by John Schlesinger, the film starts out as mundane as they come. Hoffman plays your run-of-the-mill innocent grad student, who, through no fault of his own, gets tangled in some nasty business. He finds himself entangled in a dangerous game with a sadistic Nazi war criminal-turned-dentist played by Laurence Olivier. Throw in Roy Scheider as Hoffmans secret agent brother, and youve got the makings for a suspense-packed story.

Rupert Everett is opening up about his relationship with Madonna.

The 65-year-old My Best Friend’s Wedding star reflected on his time in Hollywood, including working on the 2000 film The Next Best Thing with the 65-year-old pop icon, in an interview on How to Fail With Elizabeth Day.

“Friendships and failure in Hollywood are very difficult things to keep going,” he began.

Keep reading to find out more…

He added that the film “was definitely a strain” on their friendship.

When asked if they’d ever reconnect, he said: “Well, possibly. I don’t know.”

“I think it’s very difficult for her to be in films because everyone has such a preconception. And I don’t know how she could ever be good enough to make people say, ‘Oh, God, that’s really good.’ I think it was great having her in the film,” he went on.

In The Next Best Thing,...

Rupert Everett is looking back at how his friendship with Madonna was strained due to The Next Best Thing movie flop.

The My Best Friend’s Wedding actor recently appeared on the How to Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast, where he reflected on the 2000 John Schlesinger-directed romantic comedy, which starred Everett, Madonna and Benjamin Bratt.

“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days — Madonna sold a lot of videos — but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” he explained.

The Next Best Thing follows Abbie (Madonna) who has a one-night stand with her gay friend Robert (Everett) and they agree to raise the resulting baby together. But things get complicated when Abbie starts dating Ben (Bratt).

According to Everett,...

While 2000’s The Next Best Thing was a critical flop, another more personal tragedy happened behind the scenes.

Rupert Everett recently reflected on starring in the John Schlesinger-helmed romantic comedy and how it put a “strain” on his friendship with co-star Madonna, which is why he now looks “the other way” when the film is on TV.

“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days – Madonna sold a lot of videos – but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” Everett said on the How to Fail podcast.

Written by Tom Ropelewski, The Next Best Thing starred Madonna as Abbie and Everett as her gay best friend Robert, with whom she has a baby after a drunken night of intimacy.

It's hard to think of a sitcom that typecast its actors more severely than "Gilligan's Island." Even though it only aired for three seasons, the slapstick comedy series about seven castaways marooned on a desert island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean proved inescapable professionally for its entire ensemble.

This was partly due to the albatross of syndication. After its cancellation, "Gilligan's Island" quickly became a favorite with undiscriminating couch potatoes, who got off on the show's laughably simple formula, inane gags, and colorful locale. They loved watching Bob Denver's blundering Gilligan repeatedly sabotage every single effort to get off the island, Ginger doing just about anything, and the Howells somehow living in the lap of bamboo luxury.

The show's enduring popularity was understandably bad news for the future endeavors of its younger performers, particularly Denver, Tina Louise, and Dawn Wells, all three of whom lacked a strong enough pre-...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

As the career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective continues, a Samuel L. Jackson series includes Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Jungle Fever on 35mm.

Bam

A Duras-Akerman double bill plays Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

NYFF Revivals continues with films by Robert Bresson, Raymond Depardon, and Clive Barker, Compensation, and more.

Film Forum

A George Stevens retrospective begins; restorations of The Devil, Probably and Lancelot du lac continue; Shane screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

“Kill Yr Landlords” includes work by John Schlesinger, Hal Ashby, and Nikos Papatakis; films by Dovzhenko and Dreyer play in “Essential Cinema.”

Roxy Cinema

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut plays Friday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A Frank Oz retrospective begins; Burden of Dreams and Fitzcarraldo both screen.

Metrograph

Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, Lolita, and...

It might be hard to fathom in a post-Austin Powers world, but there was a time when the swinging '60s wasn't merely a subject of ridicule. London was a happening place during the decade of free love, especially when it came to cinema. Exciting young filmmakers like John Schlesinger (Darling), Lindsay Anderson (If...), and Tony Richardson (Tom Jones) made up what became known as the British New Wave, which sought to replicate the shot-on-the-streets reality and fourth-wall-breaking reflexivity of the French Nouvelle Vague. Surprisingly, the film that most faithfully captured the mod culture of the moment wasn't directed by a Brit, but by an Italian: Michelangelo Antonioni's elusive thriller Blow-Up. And like many of Antonioni's films, it's less a celebration of trendy London and more an existentialist study of ennui and isolationism.

Full Metal Jacket to Oppenheimer; West Wing to Stranger Things, Modine is a showbiz hard worker whose latest role is as a cycling coach. Ask your questions in the comments

Matthew Modine has worked with lots of the greats: Stanley Kubrick, as wise-cracking marine Jt “Joker” Davis in Full Metal Jacket; Jonathan Demme, as a goofy FBI agent in Married to the Mob; John Schlesinger, as a hapless landlord in nightmare-tenant thriller Pacific Heights; Alan Parker, as the avian-obsessed kid in Birdy; and Robert Altman (twice) in Streamers and Short Cuts. More recently he’s had a couple of turns for Christopher Nolan: the Batman-wary deputy commissioner of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises and American engineer Vannevar Bush in Oppenheimer.

On the small screen, he has played a womanising real estate developer in Weeds, a billionaire inventor in Proof and the evil – no, wait! – saviour doctor who tries...

The famous "I'm walkin' here" scene in Midnight Cowboy, where Dustin Hoffman nearly gets hit by a cab, has become one of the most quotable lines in movie history. Hoffman claimed that the scene was improvised, but the film's producer and director suggest that it was filmed with an extra in the cab. While the truth about whether the line was improvised or not remains unclear, there are several factors that help explain the discrepancy and what likely occurred.

Movie Legend: Dustin Hoffman improvised the famous "I'm walkin' here" scene in Midnight Cowboy.

The 1969 film Midnight Cowboy was a watershed moment in American cinematic history, being the first (and only) X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The success of the film, about a nave male prostitute from Texas and a hustler he met in New York City (played by Dustin Hoffman), helped to change the way...

When it comes to Hollywood and the history of film, various decades have been defined by particular genres, whether it was the dominance of slashers during the 1980s or superhero blockbusters during the 2010s. The 1970s was a decade mostly defined by the growth of gritty, well-written thrillers, which surpassed Westerns as the go-to source of entertainment for mature audiences.

The 1970s quickly garnered a reputation for breaking Hollywood taboos, exploring morally ambiguous protagonists, and dark conspiracies, and exploring the crime wave of its era. 1971 alone is often cited as the single greatest film in cinematic history, and this is especially true when it comes to the thriller genre. While the decade may have produced some of the most bleak endings in the genre, these stories are still some of the best told.

Marathon Man Is A Gripping Conspiracy Thriller

Director

John Schlesinger

IMDb Rating

7.4

Marathon Man focuses on Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy,...

To a Land Unknown.When Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown (2024) premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight, its rapturous reception was a rare moment of solidarity in a festival environment that otherwise sought apoliticality. The only Palestinian film to be selected across all sections of the Cannes Film Festival, To a Land Unknown offered a vital link to an ongoing, real-world crisis, breaking the bubble of the festival landscape. Palestinian flags soared inside the theater at the film’s debut screening, while down the Croisette at the Théâtre Debussy, several journalists were asked to remove pin badges expressing their political commitments, some to the Palestinian cause and others to the labor activity of the festival workers. What use can a festival have in a time of genocide if it neither acknowledges political struggle nor centers stories by and about oppressed peoples? The story of two refugees, Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and...

If being a Hollywood star consists of having either major box office clout or a few Oscar nominations (and, preferably, at least one win), the great Donald Sutherland never had any of those. Then why, since his death last Thursday at age 88, has he been celebrated the world over as one of the true legends to grace the modern screen?

The reason is simple: the Canadian-born Sutherland, whose incredibly prolific and versatile career kicked off in 1964 with the Italian horror flick, The Castle of the Living Dead, possessed the extremely rare quality — call it a kind of alchemy — where he could disappear into a role and yet somehow remain Donald Sutherland at the same time.

Whether he was playing a sinister Nazi spy (The Eye of a Needle), a boozy G.I. medic (M*A*S*H), an existentially lovesick detective (Klute), the benevolent English patriarch of a classic 19th...

Legendary Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who died on Thursday after a long illness and a celebrated Hollywood film and TV career, revealed why he never sought dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship by acquiring an American passport.

“Because we don’t have the same sense of humor. It’s true. We don’t. I’m a Canadian through and through,” Sutherland told the CBC radio show Q with Tom Power in March during one of his last media interviews.

Sutherland, who had been living in recent years in Quebec, around 12 miles from the U.S. border, recalled giving that answer to an American border guard who asked why the Canadian actor, who already had a green card to work stateside, didn’t get an American passport to more quickly cross the border to complete errands.

“Anyway, I love the country. I’m very, very proud that they gave me a stamp,...

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...

We're very sad to report that Donald Sutherland has passed away at the age of 88 after a long illness.

Sutherland appeared in countless movies and TV shows over the course of his six-decade career, taking on a wide range of roles. Early standouts include Pvt. Vernon Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in M*A*S*H (1970), hippie tank commander Sgt. Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes (1970), and the titular private eye in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971).

Though he often played heroic characters, Sutherland also brought life to his share of villains, including a ruthless Nazi spy in Eye of the Needle (1981), and President Snow in the Hunger Games movies. He is also known for his devastating turn as a grieving father in Nicholas Roeg's sinister horror/thriller Don't Look Now (1973), which featured an infamously graphic (for its time) sex scene with Julie Christie.

The prolific actor's résumé also includes:...

Donald Sutherland, the tall, lean and long-faced Canadian actor who became a countercultural icon with such films as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Mash,” “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now,” and who subsequently enjoyed a prolific and wide-ranging career in films including “Ordinary People,” “Without Limits” and the “Hunger Games” films, died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, CAA confirmed. He was 88.

For over a half century, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor, who received an honorary Oscar in 2017, memorably played villains, antiheroes, romantic leads and mentor figures. His profile increased in the past decade with his supporting role as the evil President Snow in “The Hunger Games” franchise.

Most recently, he appeared as Judge Parker on the series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” and in the “Swimming With Sharks” series in 2022. His other recent recurring roles include the series “Undoing” and “Trust,” in which he played J. Paul Getty, and features “Ad Astra” and “The Burnt-Orange Heresy.

How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

Hollywood actor, artist, director, and screenwriter Daniel Stern has bagged a ton of hilariously iconic roles in comedies throughout his career and has managed to land a spectacular performance in nearly every single one of them. As fans must have already understood after watching him in the Home Alone film series, he is immensely dedicated to his work to the core.

Daniel Stern. | Credit: @therealdanielstern/Ig.

That said, this tremendous commitment once almost had him losing his life while working on his comedy-action from 1981, Honky Tonk Freeway. And, ironically enough, Stern didn’t risk his life this badly while shooting an action scene, but rather, this happened while he was shooting a simple scene, for he accidentally consumed real drugs on set instead of using substitutes!

Daniel Stern Underwent a Life-Threatening Accident During Honky Tonk Freeway

Home Alone actor Daniel Stern had only just started his professional career as an...

As the Cannes Film Festival celebrates its parties and standing ovations, audiences in Hollywood and New York prepare to wallow in despair. And they’ll enjoy it (almost).

The festival called Bleak Week this week will deliver 43 films to an expected audience of 10,000 at theaters including the restored Egyptian in Hollywood, the Aero in Santa Monica and the Paris in New York.

Created by the American Cinematheque, Bleak Week will feature celebrities and Q&a sessions explaining why their projects deal with existential dread, nihilism and “uncomfortable truths,” as Bleak Week creative director Grant Moninger puts it.

Not surprisingly, there surely also will be post-screening alcoholic consumption for filmgoers seeking to ease the pain.

As the Cinematheque details it, Bleak Week was not prompted by Gaza, student protests, geomagnetic storms or the possible loss of yet another studio (Paramount).

Rather, its announced purpose is to honor an important if long-ignored...

Gloria Stroock, who played Rock Hudson’s secretary on McMillan & Wife and appeared in films including Fun With Dick and Jane, The Competition and The Day of the Locust, has died. She was 99.

Stroock died May 5 of natural causes in Tucson, Arizona, her daughter, Kate Stern, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stroock was married to Emmy-winning writer-producer Leonard B. Stern (Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, The Phil Silvers Show, The Honeymooners, Get Smart and much more) from 1956 until his death in 2011 at age 87.

Her late younger sister was Geraldine Brooks, a Tony nominee and Warner Bros. contract player (Cry Wolf, Embraceable You).

Stroock recurred as Maggie, the secretary of Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan, on the final three seasons (1974-77) of McMillan & Wife, the NBC series created by her husband.

She portrayed the wife of Richard Dysart’s art director in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust...

If Criterion24/7 hasn’t completely colonized your attention every time you open the Channel––this is to say: if you’re stronger than me––their May lineup may be of interest. First and foremost I’m happy to see a Michael Roemer triple-feature: his superlative Nothing But a Man, arriving in a Criterion Edition, and the recently rediscovered The Plot Against Harry and Vengeance is Mine, three distinct features that suggest a long-lost voice of American movies. Meanwhile, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Antiwar Trilogy four by Sara Driver, and a wide collection from Ayoka Chenzira fill out the auteurist sets.

Series-wise, a highlight of 1999 goes beyond the well-established canon with films like Trick and Bye Bye Africa, while of course including Sofia Coppola, Michael Mann, Scorsese, and Claire Denis. Films starring Shirley Maclaine, a study of 1960s paranoia, and Columbia’s “golden era” (read: 1950-1961) are curated; meanwhile, The Breaking Ice,...

Dianne Crittenden, casting director on the original Star Wars who also worked on Pretty Woman, Spider-Man 2 and dozens of other films during a 40-year career, died March 19 at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 82.

Her friend and colleague Ilene Starger confirmed her passing to Deadline.

Born on August 6, 1941, in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, NY, Crittenden got her start in the entertainment industry working with Howard Zieff, a photographer and director. They worked on advertising campaigns, TV commercials and films.

Her first project as casting director was Terrence Malick’s 1973 drama Badlands, starring Martin Sheen-Sissy Spacek, on which Bruce Springsteen based his song “Nebraska” a decade later. Crittenden worked on a few other films and TV shows, including the Emmy-winning 1976 Sally Field miniseries Sybil, before land the casting-director role of a lifetime — a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

After working with George Lucas on the iconic Star Wars,...

It’s Cape Fear meets ‘The Burbs in director John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights. Although you might be fooled by Hanz Zimmer’s score, which sounds a lot more like you’re watching Sexy Beetlejuice than a ’90s thriller. This is pure irony, of course, considering the film stars Beetlejuice himself, Michael Keaton, as a conman who is six feet from the edge and thinking maybe doing murder isn’t so far down.

For those of you arguing silently in your heads that Pacific Heights is not a horror movie, let me go ahead and agree with you. It’s a pure thriller. But imagine this for a moment; imagine somewhere out there is a fresh-off Batman Michael Keaton, sitting in a dark room twirling both a razor blade and a large cockroach through his fingers like some sort of emo fidget spinner, plotting you and your significant other’s demise.

Martin Scorsese was at the Berlinale this week for the first time in a decade. His presence to collect an honorary Golden Bear was a reminder of the festival’s glories of yesteryear.

In decades past, Scorsese touched down in Berlin with major works such as Raging Bull (1981), Cape Fear (1992); Gangs of New York (2003 ), Shine a Light (2008) and Shutter Island (2010). It feels a long time since the event — traditionally one of the world’s great cinema showcases — has attracted such movies. In recent years the studio splashes have dried up.

So have memorable movies from A-list arthouse filmmakers. Scorsese this week sang the praises of the event for the encouragement it had given him as an emerging filmmaker. Citing Brian de Palma’s Silver Bear win for his second film Greetings in 1969, Scorsese said the prize had marked a turning point for unknown, independent American directors such as himself, de Palma,...

The New Hollywood revolution was raging in 1971, and studios were rapidly transitioning from old-school leadership to boat-rocking up-and-comers who seemed to have the pulse of the Baby Boomer-driven counterculture. The age of star-studded mega-musicals and old-fashioned oaters was over; movies didn't necessarily need a serrated edge to slash into the zeitgeist, but even a weepie like Arthur Hiller's "Love Story" boasted a lived-in verisimilitude. These films, shorn of backlot artifice, were happening in the real world.

Young moviegoers weren't the only ones craving authenticity. John Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy" couldn't have been voted Best Picture of 1969 without significant support from gray-haired Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members. This was a film that plunged viewers into the seamiest iteration of New York City ever captured by a studio movie, that dealt with issues of sex work and homosexuality so unflinchingly that the MPAA (now known as MPA) gave it an X-rating.

I Heard Her Call My Name upcoming event: Lucy Sante with Griffin Hansbury at Rizzoli in New York on February 12.

In the first instalment with author, critic, and artist Lucy Sante, music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman joined us. In this second instalment we discuss Lucy coming from Belgium as a young boy to New Jersey; fighting to survive school in Manhattan, dandyism, and the unattractive prospect of masculinity; her book Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation And The Promise Of Water for New York City (published by Experiment in 2022), and touch upon Nancy Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy and Jon Voight’s boyishness as Joe Buck in John Schlesinger’s film.

Lucy Sante with Anne-Katrin Titze on going to an all-boys Jesuit high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan: “I really did not fit in.”

Lucy Sante is...

The BBC is celebrating the art of the literary adaptation by screening a variety of classics on BBC Four. More details here.

The BBC is quite rightly celebrated for its rich history of book to screen adaptations, such as the iconic 1995 version of Jane Austen’a Pride And Prejudice to Cbbc’s hugely successful adaptation of Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy Beaker series.

It has now put together a season of 14 adaptations from the BBC archive, some of which have rarely been seen since their original broadcast.

The dramas are:

The Great Gatsby

Toby Stephens, Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd lead the cast in this 2000 BBC adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel on the American dream in the jazz age.

Small Island

Naomie Harris, Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ashley Walters star in this 2009 TV version of Andrea Levy’s novel focusing on the lives and...

The 1970s were an incomparable decade within cinematic history that produced countless classics that are still heralded to this day. While it ended with the emergence of blockbuster films like Jaws and Star Wars, many of the best films of the decade were political thrillers that responded to the fraught state of American politics. John Schlesinger's 1976 thriller Marathon Man ranks as one of the very best of this genre; the film presents a terrifying depiction of resurrected fascist conspiracy groups determined to rise in prominence. Marathon Man is as scary and effective as it is thanks to the incredible villainous performance by the great Laurence Olivier. While the performance would eventually earn him an Academy Award nomination, Olivier fought through a battle with cancer while filming one of the most iconic roles of his career.

Adapted from Nathanael West’s scabrously funny 1939 novel, The Day of the Locust reunites the creative triumvirate of producer Jerome Hellman, director John Schlesinger, and screenwriter Waldo Salt, who had previously teamed up for Midnight Cowboy. Superficially, the two films would seem to be quite different. One is a contemporary tale shot documentary-style on the mean streets of late-’60s New York. The other is an exquisitely detailed period piece filmed largely on Paramount soundstages in L.A. Midnight Cowboy favors gritty realism, while The Day of the Locust descends into a kind of deranged surrealism. But the films are linked since they both focus on loners and outcasts, salaciously prod the seedy underbelly of their milieus, and expose the unforgiving flipside of the American Dream.

The biggest difference between the two films is that Midnight Cowboy mitigates its ultimately tragic denouement with a certain tenderness between its damaged protagonists.

Shirley Anne Field, the British leading lady who starred alongside Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Kenneth More in Man in the Moon — all in 1960 — has died. She was 87.

“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.

“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”

For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.

“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.