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Let's face it: the best Christmas movies aren't complete without a good villain. In fact, for as many beloved Christmas characters as there are, more than half of them are the villains of the story. I suppose nothing gets us in the Christmas spirit more than watching it be defended from the Grinches and Scrooges of the world. So, to definitively rank them all is quite a task. Cinema's greatest Christmas villains range from the deliciously malicious to the just straight up terrifying. However, we here at /Film are up to the task.

There's an easy way to qualify for this list — be in a Christmas film — but we wanted to ask ourselves some deeper questions. When we think of the holiday season, do we think of these villains? Are the characters themselves strong or memorable? Are they embedded in the iconography of Christmas? Better yet, do they threaten the...

As the Christmas season approaches, you're probably ready to get into the holiday spirit with some on-brand movies — and if we're putting aside all but one streaming service, there are some pretty great selections on Amazon's Prime Video. I'm just as susceptible to holiday cheer as anyone else, and whether they're from my childhood or new discoveries, I like to settle in on a chilly early winter night with a holiday-themed movie. So what are some great selections on Prime Video?

This list obviously excludes anything that requires a secondary subscription — looking at you, movies available on Prime through Max and Starz — as well as anything you have to pay to rent, but there are still some pretty solid holiday movies to choose from on the online retailer's proprietary streamer. From dramatic family Christmases to a sprawling British ensemble comedy to one of the most famous (and emotional) Christmas movies in cinematic history,...

Now that they’ve set the year’s best film for a December 10 debut, the Criterion Channel have unveiled the rest of next month’s selection. John Waters’ films are inseparable from John Waters’ presence, making fitting Criterion’s decision to pair an eight-film retrospective (Multiple Maniacs to Cecil B. Demented) with his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” wherein the director extols virtues of Bergman, Chabrol, Barbara Loden, and Samuel Fuller. His own Polyester will have a Criterion Edition alongside the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back, an iconic film in its own right and, I think, fitting companion to The Unknown with Lon Chaney, also streaming on Criterion. No Country for Old Men and Election receive likewise treatment; the latter appears in “MTV Productions,” a series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Original Kings of Comedy, and (coming close to Freddy Got Fingered for least-expected 2024 addition) Jackass: the Movie.

James Stewart began his professional acting career on the stage in the early 1930s, and it wasn't the rosiest beginning. He was cast in a string of walk-on parts and stage manager positions on Broadway and was canned from several of them for missing his cues. Still in his mid-20s, Stewart even contemplated leaving acting behind and returning to school. Luckily, he landed the lead role in a play called "Yellow Jack" in 1934, and critics loved him. Encouraged to stay in showbiz, Stewart drifted toward Hollywood, where he starred in his first film, Tim Whelan's "The Murder Man," in 1935. 

From there, it was a meteoric rise for Stewart, who appeared in six feature films in 1936 alone, working for prestigious and successful directors like William Wellman and W.S. Van Dyke. Stewart's acting career would take a serious upturn in 1938 when he starred in "You Can't Take It With You,...

On July 23, 1937, MGM unveiled in theaters Saratoga, a star vehicle for Jean Harlow, who had died suddenly weeks earlier. Additional shooting was needed to complete the film, which featured the actress alongside Clark Gable. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, headlined “‘Saratoga’ Warmly Greeted … Jean Harlow’s Last Earns High Praise,” is below:

Jean Harlow’s last picture, Saratoga, cannot be reviewed unemotionally. It can only be reported.

Audience reception at a preview last evening in Glendale was unmistakably enthusiastic. Possibly surprised, but never shocked by the fact that the story is a riotous comedy, each time Miss Harlow’s name appeared on the screen and upon the occasion of her first entrance the house rocked with applause. It was more than cursory hand-clapping. The final hand was in honest appreciation of an honestly entertaining offering, splendidly performed, written and directed.

The production by Bernard H. Hyman, with John Emerson as associate producer,...

“Beverly Hills Cop” and its young exuberant star Eddie Murphy were dominant forces on the cultural landscape as soon as the action comedy opened Dec. 5, 1984 on 1,532 screens, earning over $15 million in its first five days of release. “Beverly Hills Cop” garnered nearly $235 million domestically and another $81.6 million internationally.

The comedy even earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay while Murphy hit superstar status thanks to his dazzling comedic turn as Axel Foley, a freewheeling Detroit cop who is the ultimate fish out of water when a murder investigation leads him to the by-the-book Beverly Hills police department. And the soundtrack album featuring the film’s composer Harold Faltermeyer’s hit “Axel F,” as well as the Pointer Sisters‘ “Neutron Dance” and Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

Three years later, Murphy returned in “Beverly Hills Cop II,” which made close to $300 million worldwide...

MGM celebrated its centennial on April 17th. Marcus Lowe established the studio by merging Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Boasting it had “more stars than there are in heaven,” MGM may have been the biggest studio during the Golden Age of Hollywood, it has gone through many owners and regimes over the years but seems to on terra firma since Amazon acquired MGM in 2021. In fact, Amazon MGM Studios won best screenplay Oscar for “American Fiction.” And speaking of Academy Awards, MGM has earned numerous statuettes over the years. Here’s a look at five Best Picture winners produced between 1929-1958.

“The Broadway Melody”

The 1929 musical made Oscar history by being the first talkie to win the top prize. Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote the songs which include “The Broadway Melody,” “You Were Meant for Me” and “The Wedding of the Painted Doll” but...

In 1965, Martin Scorsese was 22 and surrounded by legends when he won the Jesse L. Laskey Intercollegiate Award at the Milestone Awards dinner hosted by the then-called Screen Producers Guild on March 8, 1965. Now, almost 60 years later, the filmmaker received the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the 2024 PGA Awards in what he called a “full-circle” moment.

Guillermo del Toro introduced the Killers of the Flower Moon director and producer at Sunday’s award show, calling him an “indispensable titan.” When Scorsese, now 81, took the stage, he started to tell the story of the 1965 awards show and how he kissed German actress Elke Sommer on stage.

“On the stage, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Norman Lear, Lew Wasserman, Julie Stein, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Janel Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and David O. Selznick,” said Scorsese. “They were the people on the dais at...

Martin Scorsese accepted the Producers Guild’s David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the PGA Awards tonight and took the Hollywood & Highland Ovation Ballroom down memory lane — to about 60 years ago, when he accepted a PGA nod for his student film, It’s Not Just You, Murray! at the ripe age of 22.

Painting the scene, the Killers of the Flower Moon filmmaker said: “On the stage, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Norman Lear, Lew Wasserman, Julie SteinCary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Janel Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and David O. Selznick. They were the people on the dais at the 13th edition of this event on March 8, 1965. That dinner was called the Milestone Awards Dinner and presented at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

“At the very end of the dais was me,” Scorsese continued. “I was all the way on the end. I was receiving the Jesse L.

Drew Barrymore is a child of Hollywood royalty and a Golden Globe winning actress whose career has spanned nearly her entire life, making her first credited screen performance at the age of three. But how many of her titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Barrymore was born to a celebrated acting family though she never really knew her famous ancestors. Her grandfather was John Barrymore, star of “Grand Hotel”, “Twentieth Century” and “Dinner at Eight” among others. She is also the great grand niece of Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Lionel won one of the earliest Oscars as Best Actor for “A Free Soul” in 1931 but is probably best remembered as the villainous Mr. Potter of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His sister Ethel won the 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “None but the Lonely Heart...

Clark Gable is the Oscar-winning matinee idol who starred in dozens of films before his untimely death in 1960, but how many of those titles are classics? Let’s take a look back at 12 of Gable’s greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

After appearing in bit parts in a number of films, Gable shot to stardom with his performance in “A Free Soul” (1931) as a gangster who bewitches a young woman (Norma Shearer) whose attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) helped him beat a murder rap. From there forward, the actor’s persona as a raffish leading man who’s every guy’s best friend and every gal’s dream became cemented in a number of subsequent roles.

He won an Oscar just three years later for Frank Capra‘s screwball classic “It Happened One Night” (1934), in which he played a newspaper reporter traveling with a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert). The film...

In the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, 88 films have each received nominations for both Best Actor and Best Actress. Although there have been 19 cases of two or more movies doing so in a single year, there hasn’t been such an occurrence since 1996, when both lead lineups included performers from “Dead Man Walking” and “Leaving Las Vegas.” However, according to Gold Derby’s late-stage 2024 Oscar nominations predictions, that nearly three-decade gap is set to soon be closed by costar pairs from “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro.”

The vast majority of the Oscars prognosticators who’ve been shaping our odds all season agree that Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”) will all clinch academy mentions for their lead performances. The last such quartet consisted of eventual winners Nicolas Cage (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking”) and their respective costars,...

Mickey Cottrell, the dependable Hollywood publicist who went to bat for independent films for decades while also dabbling in acting and producing, has died. He was 79.

Cottrell died on New Year’s Day at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his friend Ian Birnie, former Lacma film curator, told The Hollywood Reporter. He suffered a major stroke in 2016.

Cottrell did PR for three Gus Van Sant-directed films: Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), where he also played the clean freak Daddy Carroll in the movie, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993).

He also repped Bagdad Cafe (1987), Earth Girls Are Easy (1987), Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm (1989), Tarnation (2003), Ballets Russes (2005), The Price of Sugar (2007), Skin (2008), Bill Cunningham New York (2010), Salt (2010) and Tab Hunter Confidential (2015), among many other films.

Films and filmmakers he represented were honored with eight Sundance jury prizes and three Oscars, he once noted.

J.J. Abrams touts Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde and Shampoo for must-see viewing as part of the January 2024 Turner Classic Movies lineup in his own TCM Picks video that dropped on Tuesday.

“They could not be more different,” Abrams says of Arthur Penn’s 1967 crime spree drama Bonnie and Clyde, which also starred Faye Dunaway, and Hal Ashby’s Oscar-winning dramedy Shampoo. Bonnie and Clyde “portrayed violence in a way that had not typically been seen in American cinema and really ushered in a new age of bold graphic storytelling in a way that you really hadn’t seen before,” Abrams says in the video.

Having made a name for himself in Hollywood with television and popular series like Felicity, Alias and Lost, you can see the grounds for Abrams’ eventual success making action tentpole movies, given his love for classic Hollywood pics.

Shampoo becomes a time capsule movie for Abrams,...

Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge in ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ (Photo by Kerry Brown / Bleecker Street)

Once again, the holidays – or is it holidaze? – are upon us, bringing with it a flurry of Christmas movies.

You have your endless parade of cartoons, specials, Christmas-themed episodes of your favorite TV shows, bad holiday comedies (1996’s Jingle All the Way and 2007’s Fred Claus come to mind), and Christmas-set horror movies (1984’s Gremlins). Then there’s the cheesy yet feel-good Lifetime and Hallmark films. And how can we forget the 24-hour marathon of 1983’s A Christmas Story (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year), beginning on Christmas Eve and ending on Christmas Day?

If those don’t do it for you, maybe these lists of Christmas movies will.

Classic Christmas Movies

You can’t go wrong with these classics, which can lighten the hearts of even the most ardent cynics.

“I’m stuck here in this mudhole for life, doing the same full work day after day,” George tells a stranger he meets while leaning over a bridge. George has come to the bridge on a frigid winter night with the intention of throwing himself off and ending it all. “Other men are leading exciting lives, but I – well, I’m just a small-town bank clerk,” he vents. “I never did anything really useful or interesting, and it looks as if I never will. I might just as well be dead. Sometimes I wish I were. In fact, I wish I’d never been born!”

You probably know the above exchange as a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1946 classic starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Henry Travers as the lovable, doddering angel second-class Clarence Odbody. But the above quotation actually comes from the short story “The Greatest Gift,...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we look at an Oscars category from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winner stands the test of time.)

We are in somewhat of a transitional period with how we think about the acting categories for entertainment awards. This, primarily, has to do with gender. We have had separate categories for female and male performers for decades upon decades, but if you really stop to think about it, there is no difference in what a female actor does compared to a male one. Why shouldn't Colin Farrell in "The Banshees of Inisherin" compete against Cate Blanchett in "TÁR"? Of course, the worry is that in our patriarchal society, men will come to dominate that category and fewer women will be nominated and win. Then you have the added issue of non-binary performers being forced to slot themselves in a particular...

Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed “Oppenheimer,” which revolves around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist considered the father of the atomic bomb, is one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer. Actually of the year. Over the decades there have been several films dealing with the Manhattan Project that culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thus ending World War II on Sept. 2, 1945.

Soon after the global conflict ended MGM, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox were rushing to be the first studio to greenlight a movie dealing with the birth of the atomic bomb that ushered in the Cold War. MGM quickly put a project in motion hiring Robert Considine to write a story . The studio was circling the likes of its “A’ stars Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Van Johnson. Meanwhile over at Paramount, producer Hal Wallis was preparing a $1.5 million atomic bomb film called “Top Secret.

Since she first appeared in "E.T." when she was just 7 years old, Drew Barrymore has been a beloved fixture in the entertainment industry. Films like "Never Been Kissed" and "Charlie's Angels" solidified her star power, and she's started a new chapter as the host of "The Drew Barrymore Show," which kicked off in September 2020.

Over the years, Drew's candid, vulnerable conversation style has helped her interviews stand out on her talk show. She's been able to connect with people like Brooke Shields about the sexualization they both faced as child stars, and in particular, Drew's openness about the struggles she faced with her parents during her youth has allowed her to bond with stars with similar backgrounds, like Jennette McCurdy.

Drew was raised by actors John Drew Barrymore and Ildiko Jaid Mako Barrymore, but she's been clear about how absent and unreliable they were during her childhood. She became emancipated...

“I want you to promise to keep this a secret, from everyone,” says Edward C. Burke, a mysterious professor played by mythic master of the macabre, Lon Chaney Sr. The line is a warning to a mourning daughter in the surviving screenplay for London After Midnight; it’s also part of the eeriest horror movies of the silent era. Unfortunately though, director Tod Browning’s 1927 classic has become one of the most inadvertently well-kept secrets of Hollywood, even as it remains one of the most influential works in horror movie history. If only we could see it.

While the film has been lost to time, the ghastly image of Chaney’s vampire in the film has lingered in the pop culture imagination, influencing everything from the earliest Hollywood Dracula film of 1931, which was originally supposed to star Chaney until his death in 1930, to seemingly this year’s recent Renfield reimagining at the same studio.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” gives you a wholesome prankish druggy chameleonic video-game buzz; it’s also a nice, sweet confection for 6-year-olds. Historically, the proverbial problem with live-action movies based on video games — and “Super Mario Bros.,” a leaden dud released 30 years ago, had the dishonor of being the very first one — is that they jam-pack the screen with tropes and fights and characters and landscapes right out of the game, but when it comes to molding all that gimcrackery into, you know, a story, they lose the electronic pulse that made the game addictive. Digital animation is, and always should have been, the true cousin of video games (which are essentially computer fantasies that you control). And “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” takes full advantage of the sculptural liquid zap of the computer-animation medium. Yet it also has a fairy-tale story that’s good enough to get you onto its wavelength.

Few names in Hollywood's illustrious history get people talking quite like Joan Crawford. The legendary actress began her career in silent films before transitioning to sound, and worked for decades, appearing in more than 80 films and television shows. However, the images conjured up of Crawford these days are rarely of her -- instead, they're of Faye Dunaway, who played a diabolical and utterly maniacal version of the actress in "Mommie Dearest," That 1981 film -- based on a shocking book from Crawford's daughter Christina -- changed Crawford's reputation forever and all-too-often erases her stature as one of cinemas greatest stars.

That is nothing short of a tragedy. Few actors could match Crawford's talent, determination, and tenacity. Indeed, even after she retired and then passed away in 1977, very few have matched her prodigious abilities. It can be difficult to look past her domineering facade (especially in a post-"Mommie Dearest" world), but...

Every year, a lot of actors win awards on Oscar night, but the ones who most often win the evening are the young stars and starlets who get to walk the red carpet. Sometimes they even win Oscar gold too. With any luck, the young star of “The Florida Project” Brooklynn Prince will make a splash at this year’s ceremony, but here are some of the cutest kids of years’ past:

Jackie Cooper – “Skippy” (1930)

Jackie Cooper was nominated for Best Actor for his role in 1930’s “Skippy.” To date, he’s the youngest boy to ever be nominated in the Best Actor category. He lost to Lionel Barrymore, who thanked Cooper in his acceptance speech. But Cooper didn’t hear it: he fell asleep on Marie Dressler’s arm during the ceremony (which started after midnight) and no one wanted to wake him.

Shirley Temple – (1934)

Shirley Temple was the...

In a rare occurrence, three of the four acting categories are still up in the air as we inch closer to Oscar Sunday. And depending on the permutation of the victorious quartet, we could have one of the oldest groups of winners ever.

Most of the top contenders in each category are over the age of 50. Ke Huy Quan, the closest thing to a lock in Best Supporting Actor, is 51. His “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-stars and fellow Screen Actors Guild Awards winners Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis are 60 and 64, respectively. Yeoh’s been neck and neck this whole time in Best Actress with Cate Blanchett (“TÁR”), who is 53. Curtis pulled off her supporting actress SAG upset over fellow 64-year-old veteran Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”). And in lead actor, SAG-AFTRA crowned 54-year-old Brendan Fraser for “The Whale.”

If any combination of these people prevail, it...

Superhero movies based on comics are currently the most successful and lucrative genre on the planet, and they have been for many years. But that's not enough for some people. For some reason, some of us have got it into our heads that films based on comics about Spider-Man and Batman also require Academy Award recognition — as though they haven't already won the ultimate popularity contest already, and they need to win this other, smaller popularity contest held exclusively by bourgeois Hollywood in order to be legitimized.

There was a bit of outrage when Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" was snubbed along with the immensely popular and populist Pixar sci-fi comedy "Wall-e," and the two movies' exclusion from the Best Picture race directly preceded the expansion of the category from five films to ten. But even though people thought the expanded Best Picture field might allow for more popular...

The silent horror film London After Midnight, which starred the legendary Lon Chaney (father of the also legendary Wolf Man star Lon Chaney Jr.) did very well when it was released in 1927, earning over a million dollars at the box office on a budget of 151,666.14. But that didn’t help the film when it came time for it to be preserved. Every known existing print of London After Midnight was destroyed, with the last copy going up in the flames in the 1965 MGM vault fire. For almost fifty years, genre fans have been wondering what it would be like to watch London After Midnight. And now film historian Daniel Titley has written an entire book dedicated to movie. Titled London After Midnight: The Lost Film, this book was released on December 28th and has quickly become a bestseller. You can pick up a copy at This Link.

London After Midnight:...

Hee-haw! Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is a holiday viewing staple for many Christmas-celebrating households. Nothing promotes Yuletide cheer like the sound of Jimmy Stewart screaming, "Merry Christmas, you old Building & Loan!" throughout the streets of Bedford Falls.

After all, it's a story in the spirit of the season. James Stewart's idealistic George Bailey is a man for whom helping others comes reflexively, to the point of putting his own ambitions on the back burner. Dreams of seeing the world are constantly delayed as life happens, and one terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day is all it takes to break poor George. His suicidal thoughts are interrupted by a literal guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers), who takes George on a scenic tour of the lives he impacted and teaches him the film's lesson, summed up in the final lines, "No man is a failure who has friends.

Some huge stars were shining bright on Sunday for an annual table read of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The celeb-packed charity event, benefitting the Ed Asner Family Center, brought out some big names to recreate the magic of director Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic classic.

Brendan Fraser was on hand to play the iconic hero George Bailey — originally portrayed the Jimmy Stewart — while Christina Applegate brought wonderful charm playing Mary Hatch, a role first inhabited by Donna Reed.

Meanwhile, Jk Simmons lent his inimitable gruffness to portray the villainous Mr. Potter (originally played by Lionel Barrymore). Also, the character of the lovable guardian angel Clarence, first played by Henry Travers, was read with charming earnestness by Seth Rogen — who admitted in a Q&a after the event that he’d never seen the film.

Additional stars included Jean Smart, Fred Armisen, Ken Jeong, Jim Beaver, Brent Spiner, Phil Lamarr,...

(Welcome to Year of the Vampire, a series examining the greatest, strangest, and sometimes overlooked vampire movies of all time in honor of "Nosferatu," which turns 100 this year.)

Vampires may be fundamentally incapable of self-reflection (seeing as how they don't show up in mirrors and all), but that doesn't mean we can't reflect on them. And so we have, all throughout 2022. The Year of the Vampire is almost over now, and these last 11 months have been an educational, blood-spattered ride through one of film history's oldest genres.

With the first 50 articles in this series, we spotlit individual vampire movies, beginning with F.W. Murnau's original "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" and ending with Werner Herzog's 1979 remake "Nosferatu the Vampyre." However, if you've been following along at all, you might know we've jumped around in time since January and analyzed over two dozen 20th-century vampire films.

This list adds to that with 20 more titles,...

Some young people look at various tweets, articles, and posts from cinephiles and film historians like myself advocating for proper film preservation and scoff, thinking that, in this brave new world of instant access streaming services and online downloads, the entire history of cinema is at our fingertips and so we shouldn't be complaining.

Of course, this attitude is not only grossly misinformed given modern cinema's unsustainable status quo, but potentially dangerous, at least when it comes to keeping the history of what is still the most preeminent artistic medium of our lifetime alive. If historians are particularly passionate about the issue, it's in part because we're aware of similar threats that menaced film preservation in the past.

One of those threats emerged in the mid-'80s, when media mogul Ted Turner made the rather glib decision to "colorize" classic black-and-white films for television broadcast. The pushback from filmmakers, critics,...

Mark of the Vampire

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1935 / 1.33: 1 / 60 Min.

Starring Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi

Written by Guy Endore, Bernard Schubert

Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning died in 1962, living long enough to see his work enjoy a resurgence on late night’s Shock Theater, a syndicated TV package featuring Universal’s classic horror films. Browning’s Dracula was one of the crown jewels of that series but if you wanted to see more of the director’s work it probably wouldn’t be on television—his most infamous films were too lurid even for the midnight hour: potboilers populated by deformed and deranged circus performers, bloodthirsty magicians, and cross-dressing ventriloquists.

1932’s Freaks was the ne plus ultra of the Browning shockers, a sawdust soap opera pitting a beautiful prima donna against unorthodox carny performers—”unorthodox” because these folks were, on the surface, strange figures whose physical abberations made them outcasts everywhere except the circus.

With certain cinematic performances, we could not possibly fathom another actor in the same part. Only Bette Davis could have played Margot Channing in "All About Eve." Only Bruce Willis could have played John McClane in "Die Hard." Only Samuel L. Jackson could have played Jules in "Pulp Fiction." Of course, the reality is this isn't true. Countless actors audition and lose out on parts they would be perfect for all the time because of a variety of random reasons completely out of their control, yet when see a transcendent performance, we still believe the actor has performed magic in front of us. The filmmakers got the one person in the entire world made to play this particular character.

For me and many others, one such performance is James Stewart's Oscar-nominated turn as the titular character in Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The notion of Stewart as a folksy,...

The lasting horror of war is the blight it leaves on the lives of those left behind. Early sound pictures tried to deal with the guilt and pain of WW1, and the great Ernst Lubitsch took time out from romantic comedies and musicals for this very grim rumination on lies and responsibility. A French soldier decides to contact the family of a German he killed in the trenches; with no clear purpose or plan, he’s apt to make things worse for everybody. Lionel Barrymore and Nancy Carroll are wonderful, but you’ll choke up in the scenes with the German mother, played by Louise Carter. The film is best known for its opening montage, in which Lubitsch openly attacks the hypocrisy of militarist patriotism. It’s an exceedingly effective, non-hysterical piece of anti-war filmmaking.

Broken Lullaby

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1932 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 76 min. / The Man I Killed / Street...

Two years ago, siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell shared in four Grammy wins for the album “When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” (Album of the Year; Best Pop Vocal Album) and its single “Bad Guy” (Record of the Year; Song of the Year). Now, they have concurrently earned their first Oscar nominations for co-writing the song “No Time to Die” for the James Bond film of the same name. If they prevail later this month, they will become the fourth brother-sister pair to both be honored by the academy and the first to win for the same film.

The first brother-sister Oscar champs and first sibling winners overall were Douglas Shearer and Norma Shearer. In 1930, he triumphed in the Best Sound category for “The Big House” while she took the Best Actress prize for “The Divorcee.” They were followed by Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore, who respectively...

Conrad Nagel, the handsome matinee idol and co-founder of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was the host of the fifth annual Academy Awards on Nov. 18, 1932. The evening marked Nagel’s second stint at Oscars host; the then-academy prez had hosted the festivities two years earlier. He turned on the charm in his sophomore outing at the glamorous banquet at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel honoring films released between Aug. 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. (Nagel would later co-host the first televised Oscars with Bob Hope in 1953.)

Eight films vied for Best Picture: John Ford’s medical drama “Arrowsmith”; Frank Borzage’s marital drama “Bad Girl”; Mervyn LeRoy’s examination of tabloid journalism “Five Star Final,” Edmund Goulding’s stylish drama “Grand Hotel”; Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musical comedies “One Hour with You” and “The Smiling Lieutenant”; and Josef von Sternberg’s luscious pre-Code melodrama “Shanghai Express,” starring his muse Marlene Dietrich.

Westerns are populated with cowboys, gunslingers, bandits, Native American, horses, cows and buffalos. But the genre is much more complex than shoot-‘em-ups. In fact, the best Westerns are Shakespearean in nature exploring such universal subjects as love, hate, revenge, greed, power and good versus evil. One of the most popular sub-genres is the “ranch” Western where the patriarch or matriarch — remember Barbara Stanwyck in “The Big Valley”– governs with a strict and often violent hand. They act like they are above the law and often take legal matters into their own hand. They are often widowers or widows and have sons who run the spectrum from hero to villain.

Jane Campion’s highly acclaimed Netflix Oscar-contender “The Power of the Dog” falls into this sub-genre. Set in Montana in 1925, the story revolves around the charismatic but sadistic Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) who relishes being the master of a cattle rancher.

The American movie business started in New Jersey.

Between 1893 and 1896 in West Orange, N.J., Thomas Edison was developing the early motion picture tech, inventing new ways to capture images in motion, and the result is that “you have the only fully operational motion picture studio facility in the world,” says Richard Koszarski, professor emeritus of English and cinema studies at Rutgers University, and expert in the early motion picture industry in New York and New Jersey.

His latest book on film history is “Keep ’Em in the East: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance.”

While companies were setting up production operations and offices in New York City, including Edison, “it’s very difficult to film in New York City. In those days, they didn’t have very good artificial lights,” says Koszarski. Making films required enormous skylights and other sources of natural light.

But over in Fort Lee,...

It’s the Gold Standard of Christmas movies and likely the oldest feature still broadcast on network TV during the holidays: Frank Capra’s sentimental favorite is his most human movie, the kind of show that convinced people that raising a family is a great idea. Although we’re now a full three generations removed from the world events that surround the story of George Bailey, his problems haven’t dated. Paramount’s anniversary disc gives us a new encoding from a 4K scan, a repressing of the older colorized version, a good making-of piece by Craig Barron and Ben Burtt, a reel of home movies from the film’s wrap picnic in the summer of ’46. . . and a set of ‘Bailey Family Recipe Cards.’

It’s a Wonderful Life 75th Anniversary

Blu-ray

Paramount

1946 / B&w + Colorized / 1:37 Academy / 130 min. / Street Date November 16, 2021 / Available from /

Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,...

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

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

When Netflix premiered the first season of Lupin last January, 70 million sheltered-in-place households ravenously binged it, making the series the most-watched non-English show for its premiere month on the streamer so far. Lupin steals a page from French literature. The hero of Lupin, Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is inspired by France’s iconic ‘Gentleman Thief’ Arsène Lupin, a fictional figure created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905.

Lupin was the subject of some two dozen books by Leblanc, who continued adding into his literary franchise until well into the 1930s. Akin to Robin Hood, Lupin stole from the rich, and often did good deeds despite his thieving capers. He was a master of deception and disguise, a lady killer who always operated with a classy panache. With a legacy spanning more than a century, there have been plenty of live-action depictions in film and TV.

The First Lupin Films are...

Recently, short Best Actor-nominated performances have been scarce at the Oscars. The average screen time of the past decade’s nominees is over 80 minutes, and only a handful of them have not reached one hour. Still, performances that fall under 60 minutes make up nearly one third of the category’s nominees, with plenty boasting much less time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest of all (and here are the 10 shortest winners):

10. Humphrey Bogart (“The Caine Mutiny”)

28 minutes, 22 seconds (22.79% of the film)

Bogart’s third and final Best Actor nomination came in 1955 for his portrayal of tyrannical Naval commander Philip Queeg. Though he is absent from the first quarter of the film and appears on screen for less than 30 minutes, he was classified as a lead. In the decades since, several actors have also been placed in the lead category for relatively short villainous roles, including Michael Douglas (“Wall Street...

7 random things that happened on this day, December 30th, in history 

Veidt, Lee, and Rickman as "Rasputin" in various projects

1916 Russian mystic Raputin, who had great influence with the Romanov family, is assassinated in his sleep. He's been portrayed dozens of times onscreen. Some famous actors who have played him include Conradt Veidt, Lionel Barrymore (Rasputin and the Empress), Christopher Lee (Rasputin the Mad Monk), Alan Rickman, and the voice of Christopher Lloyd (Anastasia). The next actors to play him will be Rhys Ifans, and maybe Leonardo DiCaprio in a biopic though Leo doesn't even make a fifth of the projects he's attached to. He's currently attached to 45 titles (!!!) according to IMDb Pro... though most are only "optioned" or in some unknown stage of development.

Miley Cyrus, Daniel Sunjata, Kiss Me Kate, Way of the Dragon, "My Way" and more after the jump...

The creation of the supporting Oscar categories in 1937 clarified the intention that the lead acting categories are meant to honor true star turns. While most Best Actor wins have aligned with that idea, there have been more than a few whose placement has been called into question due to low screen time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest winners in the category:

10. Gary Cooper (“High Noon”)

40 minutes, 57 seconds (48.35% of the film)

Five-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Cooper earned his second win in 1953 for playing morally conflicted Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon.” By appearing in less than half of the 85-minute film, Cooper made history by holding two screen time records at once. At the time, his one-hour, 30-minute, 55-second performance in 1941’s “Sergeant York” was the longest to have won in the Best Actor category. His second win broke a 21-year record for shortest, which was previously held...

The verdict is in. If you want to have success in awards’ season go to court. Over the decades, a caseload of legal movies have been judged to be Oscar worthy. And for good reason. The genre is rich with emotions, betrayals, manipulations, love, hate, violence and redemption. Who doesn’t remember Humphrey Bogart’s brilliant Oscar-nominated turn as Captain Queeg slowly losing his mind on the stand as he recounts his obsession with missing strawberries in 1954’s “The Caine Mutiny”?

“A Free Soul” (1931)

Lionel Barrymore won his only Academy Award for for his delicious over-the-top turn as a wily alcoholic attorney who gets a ruthless gangster (Clark Gable) off for murder in this juicy pre-code melodrama. Though his free-spirited daughter (Norma Shearer), who wears the slinkiest of gowns, has a boyfriend (a staid Leslie Howard), she soon realizes she loves bad boys and leaves Howard for Gable. It’s a big mistake.

Van Heflin in Tennessee Johnson (1942) is currently available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive

Tennessee Johnson provided M-g-m an opportunity to showcase the impressive talents of studio newcomer Van Heflin, who had just earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar(r) for the 1941 crime hit Johnny Eager. The studio found an ideal role for Heflin in Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee tailor-turned-senator who broke with the South, rose to the vice presidency under Abraham Lincoln and soon became – after Lincoln’s assassination – the first U.S. president to face impeachment.

With inspired direction by William Dieterle, Heflin convinces as Johnson “by the sheer sincerity and strength of his performance” (The New York Times). Studio stalwart Lionel Barrymore portrays Johnson’s nemesis, Thaddeus Stevens, and Ruth Hussey plays Johnson’s devoted wife.

The post Van Heflin in Tennessee Johnson Available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.

Hey, did you know that Tod Browning made a vampire movie in the 1930s? And that it starred Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire? And that said vampire was doggedly pursued by a professor with knowledge of vampires that stretched credibility? Oh, and did you know that I’m not talking about Dracula?

Since you’ve read the title above, I’m guessing I didn’t just make your head explode. But you can see where I’m going with this. The similarities between Browning’s quintessential vampire film and his 1935 not-so-quintessential vampire film Mark of the Vampire would make it seem like the latter is a pretty blatant attempt by MGM to cash in on his bloodsucker success. But is that indeed the case?

Well, let’s look at the premise for Mark of the Vampire. Although set in “modern day” early 20th century, the setting certainly looks familiar.

MGM’s gigantic silent sci-fi extravaganza took three years to make, by which time the talkies arrived and everything went to pieces. Lionel Barrymore emotes (Emotes!) in his early sound footage, and terrific effects take us to the bottom of the ocean where monsters and a race of Donald Duck creatures menace our heroic adventurers. And don’t forget a few sundry other elements: a Russian revolution, torture scenes, and cool steampunk nautical hardware. All this Life Aquatic lacks is Steve Zissou!

The Mysterious Island

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1929 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 93 min. / Street Date March 26, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 19.99

Starring: Lionel Barrymore, Jane Daly (Jacqueline Gadsdon), Lloyd Hughes, Montagu Love, Harry Gribbon, Snitz Edwards, Gibson Gowland, Dolores Brinkman, Karl Dane, Robert Dudley, Sydney Jarvis, Bob Kortman, Angelo Rossitto.

Cinematography: Percy Hilburn

Film Editor: Carl L. Pierson

Technical Effects: James Basevi, Irving G. Ries, Louis H. Tolhurst

Original Music: Martin Broones,...

Red Skelton Whistling Collection

DVD

Warner Archive

1941, 42, 43 / 1:33:1 / 78, 74, 87 Min.

Starring Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford

Written by Robert MacGunigle, Nat Perrin

Cinematography by Sidney Wagner, Clyde De Vinnam, Lester White

Directed by S. Sylvan Simon

One night in 1950 during an especially frenetic episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour, Jerry Lewis stepped away from Dean Martin to address the camera point blank – “You get the idea – I’m supposed to be a 9-year-old kid.” Hardly a revelation – especially to Red Skelton, the reigning king of prepubescent horseplay.

That reign was begun in 1923 and fueled by broadly played gags that were both leering and infantile – like a burlesque version of The Bad Seed. One of Skelton’s most grating characters was a wisecracking brat called the “mean widdle kid” – wearing short pants and lace collar while delivering grown-up one-liners in baby talk he was a less feral version of Joe Besser’s...

"The genius of the system" is a contradiction in terms, but it seems to have stuck as an alternative to the auteur theory in explaining how the Hollywood studio system made so many good films. Yet René Clair, specialist in comic-romantic soufflés, reported that he was offered a project developed for Fritz Lang, and where was the sense (or genius?) in that?Still, the system was maintained by men possessed, if not of genius, then of horse sense: when someone proposed that Raoul Walsh direct, as a change of pace, a tender love story, Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox swatted the idea down, saying, "Raoul Walsh's idea of a tender love story is to set fire to a whorehouse."This month, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is offering another great season of films from Fox (before it merged with Twentieth Century), including five from Walsh...

Clark Gable would’ve celebrated his 118th birthday on February 1, 2019. The Oscar-winning matinee idol starred in dozens of films before his untimely death in 1960, but how many of those titles are classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of Gable’s greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

After appearing in bit parts in a number of films, Gable shot to stardom with his performance in “A Free Soul” (1931) as a gangster who bewitches a young woman (Norma Shearer) whose attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) helped him beat a murder rap. From there forward, the actor’s persona as a raffish leading man who’s every guy’s best friend and every gal’s dream became cemented in a number of subsequent roles.

SEEOscar Best Actor Gallery: Every Winner in Academy Award History

He won an Oscar just three years later for Frank Capra‘s screwball...