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Cora Sue Collins, the charming child actress of the 1930s and ’40s who worked alongside such legends as Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Irene Dunne and Merle Oberon during her brief but sensational career, has died. She was 98.

Collins died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills of complications from a stroke, her daughter, Susie Krieser, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Collins played younger versions of Colbert in Torch Singer (1933), Frances Dee in The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932) and Keep ‘Em Rolling (1934), Loretta Young in Caravan (1934), Oberon in The Dark Angel (1935) and Lynn Bari in Blood and Sand (1941).

“I must have the most common face in the world,” she said in a 2019 interview. “I played either the most famous actresses of the ’30s as a child or their child. They made me up to look like everybody.”

The MGM contract player also was William Powell and Myrna Loy’s...

If Jane Austen were alive today, and if for some baffling reason she wrote film criticism instead of brilliant novels, she'd probably say it is a truth universally acknowledged that a film that makes a fortune must be in want of a sequel.

Sure enough, no matter how much the industry changes, the desire to capitalize on a hit film by making another one just like it, rubber-stamped for audience familiarity, must be overwhelming. The history of cinema is littered with sequels and for each one that audiences remember — for better or worse — there's at least one that's almost completely forgotten, even if they're the sequel to a film that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Indeed, there are more forgotten Best Picture sequels than you might expect. George C. Scott reprised his Oscar-winning role as General George S. Patton 16 years later, in the TV movie "The Last Days of Patton.

Make room for a genuine rarity, come back from the cinema graveyard in excellent condition: a lavish color musical extravaganza from 1930 that’s been effectively Mia for generations. Universal undertook a daunting restoration of this ‘revue-‘ style spectacle, which includes a full presentation of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its original orchestration.

King of Jazz

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 915

1930 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 98 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 27, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Bing Crosby (unbilled),

Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff, Glenn Tryon, Wiliam Kent, Slim Summerville, The Rhythm Boys, Kathryn Crawford, Beth Laemmle, Stanley Smith, Charles Irwin, George Chiles, Jack White, Frank Leslie, Walter Brennan, Churchill Ross, Johnson Arledge, Al Norman, Jacques Cartier, Paul Howard, Nell O’Day, The Tommy Atkins Sextette, Marion Stadler, Don Rose, The Russell Markert Girls.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr, Jerry Ash, Ray Rennahan

Film Editor: Maurice Pivar, Robert Carlisle...

One of the quirks of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna's annual jamboree celebrating restored or rediscovered movies, is that expensive products of the Hollywood studio system can be just as obscure and hard-to-see as low-budget oddities, foreign arthouse affairs and forgotten silents from a hundred years ago. Dave Kehr's retrospective of neglected items from Universal's vaults demonstrates this clearly.James Whale always liked to say By Candlelight was his favorite of his own films, bypassing the more celebrated Frankenstein films. It's a romantic comedy of confused identities and it's no surprise that P.G. Wodehouse had a hand in the stage source.But in this movie, when a butler impersonates his master in order to seduce a wealthy lady who turns out to be a maid impersonating her mistress, all the irony of Wodehouse's inversion of traditional ideas about class has gone. All right, so George Orwell argued persuasively that Wodehouse...

The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.

His Girl Friday / The Front Page

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 849

Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96

His Girl Friday:

1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.

Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.

Cinematography Joseph Walker

Film Editor Gene Havelick

Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills

Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

The Front Page:...

Wow! Fritz Lang's second western is a marvel -- a combo of matinee innocence and that old Germanic edict that character equals fate. It has a master's sense of color and design. Robert Young is an odd fit but Randolph Scott is nothing less than terrific. You'd think Lang was born on the Pecos. Western Union Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1941 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Virginia Gilmore, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Slim Summerville, Barton MacLane, Victor Kilian, George Chandler, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody, Jay Silverheels. Cinematography Edward Cronjager, Allen M. Davey Original Music David Buttolph Written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey Produced by Harry Joe Brown (associate) Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...

Pat O'Brien movies on TCM: 'The Front Page,' 'Oil for the Lamps of China' Remember Pat O'Brien? In case you don't, you're not alone despite the fact that O'Brien was featured – in both large and small roles – in about 100 films, from the dawn of the sound era to 1981. That in addition to nearly 50 television appearances, from the early '50s to the early '80s. Never a top star or a critics' favorite, O'Brien was nevertheless one of the busiest Hollywood leading men – and second leads – of the 1930s. In that decade alone, mostly at Warner Bros., he was seen in nearly 60 films, from Bs (Hell's House, The Final Edition) to classics (American Madness, Angels with Dirty Faces). Turner Classic Movies is showing nine of those today, Nov. 11, '15, in honor of what would have been the Milwaukee-born O'Brien's 116th birthday. Pat O'Brien and James Cagney Spencer Tracy had Katharine Hepburn.

Chicago – It has been an Amazing year for catalog Blu-ray releases already and the Universal 100th Anniversary Collection promises to be one of the most important and essential series of 2012. Already this year, “Notorious,” “Rebecca,” “Annie Hall,” “Dead Poets Society,” “Wings,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and much more have joined the format. Universal kicked off their series, which will eventually include “Jaws” and “E.T.- The Extra-Terrestrial,” with “To Kill a Mockingbird” last month and continue it this month with the beloved “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Why should young audiences care about an 80-year-old war movie? Not only does the film hold up remarkably well but it is an incredible experience when one consideres the context of its time. They didn’t make anti-war movies then like they do now. And war was a distant, horrible thing in 1930 that people didn’t see every night on the evening news.

All Quiet On The Western Front (1930) Direction: Lewis Milestone Cast: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, Russell Gleason, John Wray, William Bakewell, Raymond Griffith, Beryl Mercer, Ben Alexander, Slim Summerville, Yola D'Avril Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews; from Erich Maria Remarque's novel Oscar Movies Highly Recommended Lew Ayres, All Quiet on the Western Front Synopsis: World War I: A group of German schoolboys soon learn that war has absolutely nothing to do with either glory or heroics. Pros: More than eight decades after its release, Lewis Milestone's unflinching film version of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front remains the greatest war movie ever made. Or rather, the greatest anti-war movie ever made. In its simple, straightforward manner, All Quiet on the Western Front manages to be infinitely more powerful than all other loftier (and widely acclaimed) war dramas I've seen, including Terrence Malick...

Jedi, goofy flight attendants, a possessed young girl, and two journalists on the brink of discovery are among the characters to be honored for film preservation. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Among the films to be preserved are George Lucas' "Return of the Jedi," "Airplane," William Friedkin's "The Exorcist," and Alan J. Pakula's "All The President's Men." This year.s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 550.

Each year, the Librarian of Congress, under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be preserved for all time. In other words, these films are certainly not the "best" (but we can argue that each movie truly represented high quality) but they are works of art...