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Count me one of the multitudes who adore the Netflix limited series “The Diplomat,” commandeered by “The West Wing” and “Homeland” alumnus Debra Cahn, which just launched Season 2 last week. I gulped down the six episodes as fast as I could.

The delicious center of her series is not the behind-the-scenes diplomacy engaged by two experienced U.S. envoys, Kate Wyler, the current U.S. Ambassador to England (Keri Russell) and her adoring husband Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) — it’s their relationship, from bathroom and bedroom banter to all-out physical warfare, often followed by passionate sex. This married couple play out fascinating male-female power dynamics.

Russell and Sewell display a convincing intimacy that is great fun to watch. I spoke to Sewell on Zoom, and learned a few things you may or may not know about him and the show.

1. He is a respected British stage and television actor. In “The Diplomat,...

Albert Finney as Kilgore Trout with Bruce Willis as Dwayne Hoover in Alan Rudolph’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions

In the second instalment of my conversation with Alan Rudolph on his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast Of Champions, shot by frequent collaborator Elliot Davis (Equinox; Mortal Thoughts; Love At Large), we start out with what his friend, the novelist Tom Robbins, who has a cameo (as Pesky Weber), told him after the film was finished.

Alan Rudolph with Anne-Katrin Titze on the influence of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée on final scene: “Probably not directly, but you know, every little drop of water feeds the plant.”

The director/screenwriter has assembled the perfect cast of accomplices, including Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Glenne Headly, Barbara Hershey, Omar Epps, Lukas Haas, Owen Wilson, Buck Henry, plus a hyperactive Bruce Willis starring as Dwayne Hoover, the ringleader of what goes on in Midland City.

Alan Rudolph with Anne-Katrin Titze on Robert Altman considering Johnny Carson and Peter Falk to be cast as Dwayne Hoover (played by Bruce Willis) in Breakfast Of Champions: “He would cast his movies before they were written.”

In the first instalment with Alan Rudolph, we discuss Robert Altman’s early connection to Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast Of Champions, the roles played by Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, and Owen Wilson, plus working with Willis and Demi Moore on Mortal Thoughts. Now, with the help of Ron Mann, director of What We Like, producer David Blocker, cinematographer Elliot Davis and Shout Factory, there is a 4K Digital Restoration of Breakfast of Champions available to screen in cinemas, on streaming platforms and Blu-ray DVD for the 25th anniversary of this very prescient film. Alan Rudolph was an assistant director on Altman’s Nashville, California Split, The Long Goodbye, and appeared as himself in The Player.

25 years ago, writer/director Alan Rudolph realized a decades-long dream when he finally got to make his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut‘s “Breakfast of Champions” with a cast that included Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, and Barbara Hershey, all operating at the peak of their talents. The tale of a smiling car dealership mogul (Willis) in the midst of a breakdown, “Breakfast” was one of Rudolph’s best films, a hilarious, prescient, and audacious portrait of not just a man, but a country losing its mind.

“Breakfast of Champions” was a deeply personal, fully realized work from one of the most interesting American filmmakers of his era. It was also a complete flop with audiences and critics.

“The film came out for two or three days and was radioactive,” Rudolph told IndieWire. “Breakfast” was so buried by the studio that released it that even its director couldn’t get...

Peter Yates' "Bullitt" is one of the most stylish cop flicks ever made. Those multi-screen opening credits designed by the great Pablo Ferro, that jazzily urbane Lalo Schifren score, those wildly cool outfits donned by Steve McQueen at the height of his laconic sexiness (some inspired by the suits sported by real life detective Dave Toschi) –- it's a stone groove punctuated by spasms of violence and, of course, a raucous car chase through the hilly streets of San Francisco. It's so ineffably pleasurable, you don't mind that the narrative is a sketchily plotted afterthought. Who needs an intricately structured story when you're watching, as Quentin Tarantino wrote in his book "Cinema Speculation," "one of the best directed movies ever made?"

You throw on "Bullitt" for the 1968-ness of it all (it's the apolitical flip-side of the coin to Haskell Wexler's roiling docudrama "Medium Cool"), as well as the...

Courtesy of StudioCanal

by James Cameron-wilson

An Inspector Calls, freshly minted with a pristine print of pin-sharp clarity, was originally written as a play by J.B. Priestley and remains a damning indictment of England’s hypocritical upper middle-classes. Set in 1912 in the north Midlands, the play premiered in 1945 in Moscow of all places, before coming to London a year later and to Broadway a year after that. I can’t tell you who was in the Russian version, but in the West End the titular character was taken by Sir Ralph Richardson, with Margaret Leighton, Harry Andrews and, in the Bryan Forbes part, none other than Alec Guinness. Imagine seeing that bunch on the London stage! I say the Bryan Forbes part, as it was he who had one of his best roles as Eric Birling in the 1954 film, running the gamut from embarrassing drunk to tipsy flirt to indignant...

Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton existed on opposite ends of the filmmaking spectrum when the latter burst onto the scene in the 1980s. The former was no stranger to tales of terror in the suburbs, having been involved with "Poltergeist" and "Gremlins" by then. (Even "E.T." adapts the stylings of a horror flick in the scene where government agents in spacesuits invade the Taylor family's home in search of the titular alien.) However, the suburbs themselves were cozy and comforting in Spielberg's films; it was usually exterior forces that threatened their domesticity. Burton's movies, on the other hand, depicted the suburbs themselves as being unnerving and baffling. His sympathies laid with outsiders like Pee-wee Herman and Edward Scissorhands, who were content to lead their strange, loner existences until others insisted on intruding upon them.

Burton's adoration of death lay in equally stark contrast to Spielberg's sentiment, so...

Maggie Smith was a constant in the life of producer Robert Fox for half a century. She could “make grown men cry,” says Fox, because “if you weren’t 100 percent on top of your game, you were dead in the water, and she was right.”

Fox produced Dame Maggie in some of her greatest stage hits from Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage to David Hare’s The Breath of Life, in which she and her best friend, Judi Dench, shared top billing at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Dame Judi got the No. 1 dressing room. “But Maggie wasn’t fussed because she joked that Judi, she’d say, “had all those people in from Surrey to see her, so she needs the space.’ She wasn’t at all unhappy about it. She’d watch all of Judi’s guests troop in to see her. She’d say: ‘Look, there they go.

The idea of a non-linear time-spanning look at a marriage is not new. The absolute pinnacle of the idea still to me is director Stanley Donen’s and writer Fredric Raphael’s wonderfully sophisticated 1967 comedy Two For the Road, in which Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney flip back and forth in the course of their 12-year marriage. It was so ahead of its time, not just with the idea but in the editing technique used throughout. An absolute classic that didn’t get its full due in its day.

Now the latest in this subgenre is We Live In Time, the romantic comedy from director John Crowley and writer Nick Payne, which attempts to chronicle the decade-old relationship and marriage between Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield). The style isn’t as tricky as Two For the Road’s, but what it undeniably shares in common...

Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.

Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.

Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.

Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...

On Thursday 5 September 2024, Sky Arts broadcasts Classic Movies: The Story Of!

Murder on the Orient Express Season 2 Episode 5 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode of “Classic Movies: The Story Of” on Sky Arts will delve into the iconic film “Murder on the Orient Express.” This episode will explore the brilliance behind the definitive adaptation of Agatha Christie’s famous novel. Viewers can look forward to an in-depth analysis of how this classic mystery was brought to life on screen.

The episode will highlight the stellar cast, including the talented Albert Finney, who takes on the role of the famous detective Hercule Poirot. As Poirot navigates a train full of intriguing suspects, viewers will gain insights into the film’s production and the creative choices that shaped its success.

By unraveling the genius behind this adaptation, the episode aims to celebrate both the film’s artistry and its connection to Christie’s original work.

Ian Nathan explores the 1974 film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express in this episode of Classic Movies: The Story of… The film boasts a distinguished cast of train-bound suspects and stars Albert Finney as the iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Based on the iconic 1934 novel by Agatha Christie, “Murder on […]

Classic Movies: The Story of… Murder on the Orient Express...

At a time when Hollywood's long-term survival is in question and directors like Joe Russo are welcoming the arrival of an AI-driven garbage future with open arms, it might seem as though Rotten Tomatoes rankings are the least of our concerns. Quite honestly, they are. Whether a film receives the coveted "Fresh" rating or the dreaded splat really isn't all that consequential in the grand scheme of things. But for whatever reason, the Tomatometer still holds sway over our collective movie tastes, and now that movies' Rt scores are baked into many of our favorite streaming services' interfaces, it's harder than ever to avoid the all-powerful review aggregator.

It's fair to say, then, that Rotten Tomatoes is doing alright for itself, which in turn means it's probably okay to point out some of its shortcomings. As such, let me point your attention towards Rotten Tomatoes' contention that there are only...

It’s New York City, 1989. Susan Seidelman is in the delivery room, in labor with her son. “Siskel and Ebert” plays on the TV, and in between contractions, the two critics are tearing apart her new movie “She-Devil.” “Watching them review my film literally with the doctor’s hand inside of me telling me to push was very strange,” Seidelman recalls.

That surreal scene is just one of the memorable moments the trailblazing director recounts in “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls.” By turns reflective and celebratory, the book covers the surprises and setbacks of a career carved out at a time when women filmmakers were a rarity.

When Seidelman first realized she could aspire to become a movie director, she could barely find a role model. Outside of Elaine May, there was only a small handful of women directing. But Seidelman kept at it,...

Sidney Lumet was the Oscar-nominated director who proved incredibly prolific during his career, directing over 40 movies in 50 years, from his feature debut “12 Angry Men” (1957) through his cinematic farewell “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007). But how many of those titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 20 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born on June 25, 1924, Lumet got his start as a child actor, appearing in “One Third of a Nation” (1939) when he was 15 years old. After serving during WWII, he quickly began directing Off-Broadway plays before moving into the burgeoning medium of television, where he helmed hundreds of live teleplays. While working on episodes of “Playhouse 90,” “Kraft Theater” and many more, he honed his abilities to shoot quickly and economically.

His turned to movies with “12 Angry Men,” an adaptation of Reginald Rose‘s TV drama about a lone juror (Henry Fonda) holding out during a murder trial.

Before John Williams became the flagship film composer-conductor anyone thought of when they thought about the Hollywood Bowl, that honor belonged to Henry Mancini. And in some years, when Los Angeles is particularly lucky, it still does, even though the scorer behind “The Pink Panther,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and other classic scores has been gone for 30 years now. This Sunday, the LA Phil will devote the Bowl’s traditional opening night to a 100th birthday celebration for the man who, arguably more than any other, turned movie scores into a truly populist artform… and who conducted at the Bowl 29 times.

It’s not even the only major event involving Mancini’s legacy this weekend. Friday will see the release of a tribute album, “The Henry Mancini 100th Sessions – Henry Has Company,” that features among its guests Lizzo, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock and, not incidentally,...

Anouk Aimee, the French actress who received a best actress Oscar nomination in 1967 for A Man And A Woman, has died aged 92.

Aimee died at her home in Paris. Her death was confirmed by an Instagram post from her daughter Manuela Papatakis, which read, “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.”

Born Nicole Francoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris in 1932, she made her film debut aged 14 in the role of Anouk in Henri Calef’s The House Under The Sea. She kept the name for her career,...

Anouk Aimee, the French actress who received a best actress Oscar nomination in 1967 for A Man And A Woman, has died aged 92.

Aimee died at her home in Paris. Her death was confirmed by an Instagram post from her daughter Manuela Papatakis, which read, “With my daughter, Galaad, and my granddaughter, Mila, we have great sadness to announce the departure of my mother Anouk Aimée.”

Born Nicole Francoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris in 1932, she made her film debut aged 14 in the role of Anouk in Henri Calef’s The House Under The Sea. She kept the name for her career,...

Mike Figgis has been shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary for the past 18 months about the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. It’s called Megadoc.

Figgis told me Monday that it’s been edited but there’s allowance for the fact that the film played in competition here at the Cannes Film Festival. He recorded an interview with the cinema titan the other day.

Figgis, who was introduced into the Coppola clan back in the mid 1990s after directing Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, told me that the documentary is “very much a fly-on-the-wall” and also features conversations with various cast members — Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, Shia Labeouf — and Coppola’s wife Eleanor Coppola, who shot the footage and directed her own study of her husband’s work for the acclaimed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, about the making of 1979s Apocalypse Now.

He will go...

Jerry Herman’s musical “Hello, Dolly!” dominated the 18th Tony Awards which took place at the New York Hilton on May 24, 1964. “Hello, Dolly!” entered the ceremony with 11 nominations and walked out with ten awards including best musical, best actress for Carol Channing, original score for Herman and for Gower Champion’s choreography and direction.

Other musicals in contention for multiple awards that year were “High Spirits,” based on Noel Coward’s classic comedy “Blithe Spirit,” “Funny Girl,” which transformed Barbra Streisand into a Broadway superstar, and “110 in the Shade,” based on the straight play “The Rainmaker.”

Bert Lahr, best known as the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” won lead actor in a musical for “Foxy,” based on Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.” The musical was not a hit closed after 72 performances. Also nominated in the category was Bob Fosse for a short-lived revival of Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey.

Albert Finney had an acting legacy including triumphs on stage and television. He was primarily known worldwide for his career, which lasted over half a century, as a film actor, equally adept in lighthearted musicals and complex dramas.

Finney’s work has been heralded in all three media. He won London’s Olivier Award for “Orphans” on stage, and won an Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for his performance as Winston Churchill in TV’s “The Gathering Storm.” But it was in film that Finney was most honored. In 2000, Finney scored a rare double at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for his work in Steven Soderbergh‘s “Erin Brockovich,” and even though he had little more than a cameo part in Soderbergh’s “Traffic” later that year, the role was big enough for him to win a second SAG Award that night as part of the film’s ensemble cast.

From Robert Donat’s heart-breaking Mr Chips to the real-life Mr Bachmann, Judi Dench’s venomous schoolmarm to Paul Giamatti’s classics stickler in The Holdovers, cinema loves teachers, whether inspirational or awful

I had a few teachers I adored in my years at school – and one or two, perhaps, who even inspired me in some capacity – but I can’t say a film about my relationship with them would make for particularly thrilling viewing. Teaching is hard graft, and often thankless; even the best in the profession are rarely rewarded with the kind of dewy, triumphant tributes that cap off many a Hollywood classroom drama. Yet the inspirational teacher film remains a mainstay: film-makers never tire of imagining the schooldays they’d like to have had.

Paul Giamatti offers a variation on the type in The Holdovers, out on VOD last week: the curmudgeonly, academically oriented teacher with (surprise!

On Wednesday night, the African American Film Critics Association honored the top actors, directors and films of the year at the 15th annual Aafca Awards, in a Los Angeles ceremony hosted by Roy Wood Jr.

One of night’s top honors — which were announced in advance — went to American Fiction star Jeffrey Wright, who delivered a humorous speech about the debt actors owe to critics as he accepted the Legend Award.

“There is a line in The Dresser which, to my mind, is the film that best captures what it is to be an actor,” he began. “Albert Finney, playing this blustery, brilliant, Shakespearean actress, says these horrible words: ‘The critics. Hate the critics. I have nothing but compassion for them. How can one hate the crippled, the mentally deficient, and the dead?'”

“I’ve been changed,” Wright said to a response of thunderous laughter. “After this moment I...

I remember exactly where I was when I discovered Philip Seymour Hoffman had died. I was at a revival screening of the 1979 version of Battlestar: Galactica at a Montreal theatre, waiting for the film to start when my email blew up. Here at JoBlo, whenever an icon dies, it tends to become a thread that allows us all to vent a little, and Hoffman’s death destroyed many of us.

It shook me up in a lot of ways, as I had just seen him at the Sundance Film Festival a few weeks earlier, where he had two films, A Most Wanted Man and God’s Pocket. In hindsight, it’s easy to say he didn’t look quite right, but honestly, I had no clue anything was wrong with him. Of course, in the days following his death, we learned that addiction had taken its toll on perhaps the most outstanding actor of his generation,...

Nicolas Cage is an actor who always performs his all, but arguably his biggest and most intense performance is the one he won an Academy Award for -- that of alcoholic screenwriter Ben Sanderson in "Leaving Las Vegas." The movie follows Sanderson as he tries to drink himself to death in Las Vegas, Nevada, a task that doesn't seem too difficult to anyone who's been there. He ends up involved in a complicated romance with a sex worker named Sera (Elisabeth Shue), which makes his suicidal tendencies capable of causing collateral damage and means he has to try and decide whether or not he wants to fight for his life after all. It's a brutal, heart-wrenching film and performance by Cage, but one scene in particular really left its mark on the actor and everyone who watched him.

In an interview with Vanity Fair where Cage rewatched several scenes from his own films,...

Elvis Presley was a consummate performer, but Quentin Tarantino felt Elvis never took his movies seriously. The Pulp Fiction director speculated what might have happened if the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll wasn’t under Colonel Tom Parker’s sway. Tarantino also said Warren Beatty wanted to co-star with Elvis in one of the best Westerns of all time.

Quentin Tarantino said Elvis Presley could have outdone Warren Beatty

In his 2022 book Cinema Speculation, Tarantino discussed the 1960s movie scene. “Along with Paul Newman and Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen was the biggest of the younger male movie stars of the ’60s,” he wrote. “The U.K. had its share of exciting young leading men like Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, and Terence Stamp, but of the young sexy guys in America — that were also genuine movie stars — it was McQueen, Newman, and Beatty. On the next level down was James Garner,...

Michael Blakemore, the only director in Tony Award history to win twice in one year, died Sunday, Dec. 10, following a short illness. He was 95.

His death was announced by the London-based United Agents literary and talent agency.

An acclaimed director of both West End and Broadway productions – his formidable credits include A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1968), Noises Off (1983), City of Angels (1989), Lettice & Lovage (1990) and The Life (1997), among many others – secured his place in the Tony Award record books by becoming the first, and to date only, director to win twice in one year: In 2000, he won the award for Best Director of a Play for Copenhagen and Best Director of a Musical for the revival of Kiss Me Kate.

Born June 18, 1928, in Sydney, Australia, Blakemore made his directing debut in 1966 at the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre, where he served as Artistic Director. His international breakthrough came in 1967 when...

British actor Shirley Anne Field, whose long career included memorable performances in such 1960s classic Angry Young Men genre dramas as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Alfie — as well as a pivotal, several-month stint on the NBC soap Santa Barbara — died Sunday, Dec. 10, of natural causes. She was 87.

Her family announced her passing In a statement to the BBC. “It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday… surrounded by her family and friends. 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.”

Shirley Anne Field, Albert Finney, ‘Saturday Night And Sunday Morning’ (1960)

Born June 27, 1936, in the Forest Gate district of East London, Field began working as a model in the early 1950, moving into acting by the middle of the decade with...

British actor who starred in the 1960s film classics Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Entertainer

Shirley Anne Field, who has died aged 87, was likened to Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Deneuve and even “a sort of red-haired Brigitte Bardot”. There was no question she could stop traffic. “Lorries used to thunder to a halt, and I would wonder what they were looking at,” she said.

Her presence was sharply distinctive. In Karel Reisz’s film of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a defining work of kitchen-sink drama, she was a vision of self-possession as Doreen, who works in a Nottingham hairnet factory, lives with her mother and catches the eye of the discontented lathe operator Arthur Seaton, played by Albert Finney.

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.

You might not be able to tell it from the trailers but Wonka, the latest movie inspired by Roald Dahl’s classic 1964 children’s story “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is, make no mistake about it, a full-on movie musical that I found to be more in the tradition of ’60s-era films like Oliver, Dr. Dolittle, Albert Finney’s Scrooge — basically a throwback to that kind of feel-good musical confection designed to be released during the year’s end.

Unlike 1971’s beloved (but not a hit initially) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder, or Tim Burton’s darker 2005 take Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp, this version directed Paul King and co-written by King and Simon Farnaby is an origin story of how Willy Wonka came to be Wonka, the magician, inventor and chocolate maker extraordinaire. Both previous films certainly have their legions of fans,...

by Eric Blume

It’s always fun when “the conversation” starts to brew for Oscar nominations every year, seeing which actors are gaining traction for a potential nomination. What’s interesting this year is that there are an unusually high number of actors who currently have four acting nominations under their belt who all stand good-to-great chances of joining The Five Club with nods this year. Five Oscar nominations is a big deal. Only 22 actors currently have five, and the names are among some of our best from older Hollywood, to the modern age to contemporary. It’s very nice company to be in.

Let’s take a look at the actors who stand a very real shot of being a part of The Five Club this year…...

Pain Hustlers is a crime drama film directed by David Yates, from a screenplay by Wells Tower and Evan Hughes. The Netflix film follows the story of a single mother Liza, who joins the sales team of a bankrupt pharmaceutical company after losing her and because of her, the sales go through the roof. This helps her to reach the high life but what she doesn’t know is that she is putting herself right in the middle of a federal conspiracy. Pain Hustler stars Emily Blunt and Chris Evans in the lead roles with Andy García and Catherine O’Hara starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the Netflix film here are some similar movies you could watch next.

Thank You For Smoking (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Fox Searchlight Pictures

Synopsis: Based on Christopher Buckley’s acclaimed 1994 novel of the same title and adapted for the screen by Jason Reitman,...

The Burial is a legal drama film directed by Maggie Betts from a screenplay by Betts and Doug Wright. Loosely based on the true story of lawyer Willie E. Gary and his client Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe, the Prime Video film follows the story of their lawsuit against the Loewen funeral company, as it was documented by Jonathan Harr in a New Yorker article. The Burial stars Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones in the lead roles. So, if you loved the Prime Video film here are some similar movies you could watch next.

Michael Clayton (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Warner Bros.

Synopsis: Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house “fixer” at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. At the behest of the firm’s co- founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), Clayton, a former prosecutor from a family of cops, takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirtiest work.

Golda is a biographical war drama film directed by Guy Nattiv from a script by Nicholas Martin. Starring Helen Mirren in the lead role of Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, the film follows Golda’s leadership of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The film also stars Camille Cottin and Liev Schreiber. So, if you loved Golda here are some similar movies you could watch next.

A Woman Called Golda (Not Streaming in the US) Credit – Syndication

Synopsis: The story of the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel’s prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Darkest Hour (Netflix & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Universal Pictures

Synopsis: Academy Award® winner Gary Oldman gives a “towering performance” in acclaimed director Joe Wright’s soaring drama Darkest Hour. As Hitler’s forces storm across the European landscape and close in on the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill...

The Wolfen episode of The Black Sheep was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Brandon Nally, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

A black sheep doesn’t have to be considered bad to have that loving title and distinction. I mean, some of them are considered quite bad and need the layers peeled down to show off the good inside. There are other cases though. A movie can also be a black sheep if it was buried by a more popular outing like The Last Broadcast being utterly forgotten after the behemoth The Blair Witch Project made its appearance. Sometimes, like Last Broadcast, it can just be buried withing its own genre, decade, year, or as in today’s title, all 3. I’ve seen more than a few comments for this one so let’s take a look at werewolves in 1981. No,...

A little over a decade ago, actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint stood on a train platform, with questionable “middle age” makeup applied, and waved goodbye. Their characters were saying goodbye to their onscreen kids, but they were really waving farewell to millions of moviegoers and readers who grew up with their versions of Harry, Hermione, and Ron. In a way, the actors were also bidding adieu to their onscreen characters.

Admittedly a decade is not a super long time (though it’s a lifetime as far as media company CEOs anxious to exploit IP are concerned). Yet in these past 10 years, we’ve watched thespians we once knew as children mature into grown-up working actors, and some of the favorites who played their teachers and mentors go on to win Oscars and greater acclaim. Below are some of the best roles the Harry Potter cast has achieved since graduating from Hogwarts.

As Kenneth Branagh brings his third Hercule Poirot film to theaters with “A Haunting in Venice,” fans of the Agatha Christie character might debate: Who is the best actor to ever play the mustachioed Belgian detective? And which versions simply didn’t work?

We’ve compiled a list of the most notable actors to portray the famously fussy sleuth —from Tony Randall to PBS favorite David Suchet — and ranked them with both how true they are to Christie’s vision and how enjoyable their portrayal is to audience.

MGM

7. Tony Randall (1965)

The “Odd Couple” actor’s one outing as the detective in the Frank Tashlin-directed film “The Alphabet Murders” leans very hard into comedy. The result: Despite the mustache and bald cap and an occasionally passable accent, we get very little of “the little grey cells” character we expect and far more sight gigs and slapstick.

Prime Video

6. John Malkovich...

From left: Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Keystone/Getty Images), Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack’d (YouTube screenshot), Albert Finney in Murder On The Orient Express (Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images), Denzel Washington in Devil In A Blue Dress (D Stevens/Tri Star/Kobal/Shutterstock), Daniel Craig...

Marlene Dietrich in Witness For The Prosecution, Albert Finney in Murder On The Orient Express, Maggie Smith in Evil Under The Sun, Kenneth Branagh in Murder On The Orient Express Graphic: United Arists/Emi Films/20th Century Fox It makes sense that filmmakers have been turning to Agatha Christie for...

Marlene Dietrich in Witness For The Prosecution, Albert Finney in Murder On The Orient Express, Maggie Smith in Evil Under The Sun, Kenneth Branagh in Murder On The Orient ExpressGraphic: United Arists/Emi Films/20th Century Fox

It makes sense that filmmakers have been turning to Agatha Christie for source...

Paramount+ is starting September with a bang with hundreds of new film titles joining its library, from comedies like “Blazing Saddles” and “The Big Lebowski,” to award-winning dramas like “Schindler's List” and “Forrest Gump” and sci-fi thrillers like “Terminator 2” and “Annihilation.”

But the streamer isn’t stopping there, with even more TV series (including Paramount+ originals and exclusives) and sports available throughout the month on the Paramount+ Essential plan and even more titles on the Paramount+ with Showtime.

Check out The Streamable’s picks for the top five titles arriving to the streamer this month!

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What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Coming to Paramount+ in September 2023? “Blazing Saddles” | Friday, Sept. 1

Return to Rock Ridge with Mel Brooks’ fourth-wall-breaking classic that will leave you anything but tired. The satirical Western-black comedy follows...

Clockwise from top left: Batman Returns (Warner Bros.), Edward Scissorhands (20th Century Fox), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Warner Bros.), Beetlejuice (Warner Bros.)Image: The A.V. Club

It’s difficult to believe that Tim Burton—who turns 65 on August 25—is now old enough to start collecting Social Security. But let’s...

When Bo Goldman, the two-time Academy Award screenwriter of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Harold and Maude," passed away on July 25, 2023 at the age of 90, the world lost a master dramatist and a razor-sharp observer of human behavior. Hailed by his Hollywood peers as a "screenwriter's screenwriter," Goldman possessed an unerring ear for dialogue and a cliche-eschewing sense of narrative. Be it a wistful satire of the American dream or a bruisingly authentic depiction of divorce, his name on the poster guaranteed an honest, offbeat view of humanity.

And it almost never happened. Goldman was born in the midst of the Great Depression on September 10, 1932. His father owned a chain of department stores that had fallen on hard times, but that didn't stop the besieged patriarch from sending his son to the prestigious likes of Phillips Exeter and Princeton University. It was at the latter institution that Goldman discovered a love for theater,...

Screenwriter Bo Goldman, who won Oscars for his scripts to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard” and was among a select group of film scribes including Robert Towne and William Goldman considered to be among that generation’s best, died Tuesday in Helendale, Calif., his son-in-law, director Todd Field, confirmed to the New York Times. He was 90.

Goldman was also Oscar nominated for 1993’s “Scent of a Woman.”

The 1976 Oscar he shared with Lawrence Hauben for co-adapting Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was a particularly impressive achievement considering that “Cuckoo’s Nest” represented only Goldman’s second screenplay and the first to be produced. The win for adapted screenplay was part of a sweep for the film that also included victories for best picture, director, actor and actress. No movie had won those five awards since 1934’s “It’s a Wonderful...

Bo Goldman, the late-blooming guru of screenwriting who received Academy Awards for his work on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Melvin and Howard, has died. He was 90.

Goldman died Tuesday in Helendale, California, his son-in-law, director Todd Field, told The New York Times.

Goldman’s first screenplay was, years after he wrote it, directed by Alan Parker for Shoot the Moon (1982), which featured Diane Keaton and Albert Finney in a raw, seriocomic drama about a disintegrating marriage.

He also co-wrote the Mark Rydell-directed rock drama The Rose (1979), starring Bette Midler in an Oscar-nominated turn, and Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman (1992), which netted him his third Academy Award nom (and Al Pacino the best actor Oscar, too).

Goldman was one of the handful of screenwriters — Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Horton Foote, William Goldman, Billy Wilder and Joel and Ethan Coen among them — to win Academy...

Fire sparked by a lightning strike has destroyed an Alabama prop house used in Tim Burton’s 2003 movie Big Fish.

“We lost a house in the Town of Spectre tonight after a lightning strike,” reads a post on Jackson Lake Island’s Facebook page.

The house was located on Jackson Lake Island in the fictitious town of Spectre, Al, built specifically for the movie.

The fantasy comedy-drama directed by Burton, based on Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel, starred Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume, Marion Cotillard and Steve Buscemi. The film’s plotline revolves around the story of a frustrated son who tries to distinguish fact from fiction in the life of his father, a teller of tall tales.

The film was shot on location in Alabama in a series of fairy tale vignettes evoking the tone of a Southern Gothic fantasy.

Mexican character actor Sergio Calderón, best known for playing the “head on a stick” in 1997’s “Men in Black” and Capt. Vallenueva in 2007’s “Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End,” died this morning surrounded by family, according to his spokesperson. Calderón was 77.

Although the cause of death was not publicized at press time, Calderón was previously in the hospital with a bout of pneumonia.

The actors’ other notable credits include Sergio Leone’s “Duck, You Sucker!” (1971), in which Calderón played a Mexican revolutionary. Additionally, in John Huston’s “Under the Volcano” (1984), he played a violent Mexican chief of police opposite Albert Finney.

On the television side, Calderón starred on the debut episode of NBC’s “The A-Team” in 1983, where he made a guest appearance as the flamboyant bandit Malavida Valdése. He later returned to the show in its third season as the river pirate El Cajón (translating...

Sergio Calderón, the amiable Mexican character actor who made his mark in such notable films as The In-Laws, Men in Black and Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, has died. He was 77.

Calderón died Wednesday in a Los Angeles hospital of natural causes, a family spokesman announced.

Calderón portrayed a Mexican revolutionary at the turn of the 20th century in Duck, You Sucker! (1971), written and directed by Sergio Leone, and was a murderous Mexican chief of police opposite Albert Finney in John Huston’s Under the Volcano (1984).

He guest-starred as the colorful bandit Malavida Valdése on the premiere episode of NBC’s The A-Team in 1983, then returned as the river pirate El Cajón (The Coffin) at the start of the show’s third season a year later.

Calderón played Alfonso, one of the Hondurans, in the Arthur Hiller comedy The In-Laws (1979) — it was the role that got...

(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.)

As someone who frequently peruses the past years of the Academy Awards, more often than not the results just wash over me. Rarely are the winners the most exciting options, but I generally understand how and why a given person or film walked away with a trophy, even if they wouldn't have gotten my vote. People like to grouse about the results of the Oscars, but their whiffing on a massive scale actually doesn't happen as often as people claim it does.

Of course, there are those "What were they thinking?" moments, like "Crash" winning Best Picture and "That Thing You Do!" losing Best Song. Few make me scratch my head harder than Best Actor at the 1975 Oscars. It's a slate...