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Reader, you have been lied to! Film history is littered with unfairly maligned classics, whether critics were too eager to review the making of rather than the finished product, or they suffered from underwhelming ad campaigns or general disinterest. Let’s revise our takes on some of these films from wrongheaded to the correct opinion.

When Paramount released “We’re No Angels” as its 1989 Christmas movie (and final film of the decade), reviews were mixed and the box office weak. Hard as it may be to believe in the post-“Fockers” era, audiences just weren’t interested in seeing Robert De Niro in a broad comedy, even (especially?) one co-starring Sean Penn and written by David Mamet.

As years passed, the movie’s reputation never really improved, with even its makers acknowledging its flaws. In his 2023 Hollywood memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink,” Mamet blamed director Neil Jordan for ruining his script...

Most of us are pretty used to the idea that horror movies are a great way for up-and-coming actors to get a foothold in the film industry. That's primarily thanks to the horror boom of the 1980s, giving opportunities to numerous thespians who went on to become A-list actors; folks like Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Meg Ryan, and others. Yet the notion of horror giving a first chance to future stars is not relegated to the last 40-odd years. Sure, horror's reputability certainly wavered during the classic Hollywood years, meaning that studio horror films weren't as prolific as Westerns were, and thus many more young actors found themselves riding a horse more often than running around a spooky castle. Yet horror's always been popular, and during the 1950s, the studios began to get excited about a new gimmick which would briefly revitalize the genre: 3D.

1953's "House of Wax" is,...

No film is perfect. No, not even the dozens of examples you are about to cite. Every film, if one wants to delve into its structure, performances, scriptwriting, or themes, contains flaws or irresponsible messaging somewhere inside it. If a film feels flawless, it's because we're so taken by its story, its characters, its philosophy, or its general tone that we don't notice its flaws. Those who nitpick the smaller plot details in universally beloved movies aren't necessarily trolling, but instead revealing that, for whatever reason, a classic simply didn't grab them. The only film that is truly flawless remains "Gremlins 2: The New Batch." That is the only film in cinema history with no flaws whatsoever.

On the review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes, even the most widely celebrated movies can still emerge with an imperfect approval rating, as there is always going to be at least one professional critic who it didn't jibe with.

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Long before he became arguably the most famous actor in the world, John Wayne started his career by literally knocking over director John Ford. Given how Ford would go on to treat Wayne and many other actors on set, it's quite satisfying to know Duke managed to get in a good hit on the director before he was subjected to the man's penchant for emasculating his male stars. Despite their contentious relationship (which didn't seem to sour Wayne on Ford in the end), the filmmaker clearly saw something in Wayne, as evidenced by the fact he was largely responsible for kickstarting his acting career.

The director first encountered the young USC student lugging around props on a set back in the mid-1920s, and cast Wayne in 1928's "Hangman's House," in which he played a spectator at a horse race...

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This July, HBO Max is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the highly anticipated streaming releases of Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners and Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega‘s Death of a Unicorn. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to HBO Max next month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 12 best films coming to HBO Max in July 2025 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Woman at War (July 1) Rt Score: 97% Credit – Köggull Filmworks, Solar Media Entertainment, Gulldrengurinn, Vintage Pictures, and Slot Machine

Woman at War is an Icelandic-Ukrainian comedy-drama film directed by Benedikt Erlingsson, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ólafur Egill Egilsson. The 2018 film follows Halla, an environmental activist trying to destroy the local aluminium business, but her priorities change...

William Shatner's 1989 space epic "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" is still, to this day, cited as one of the worst "Star Trek" movies. The film's hefty $30 million budget likely went mostly to its cast, as its visual effects are severely lacking and the sets look shoddy and cheap. Likewise, the scenes featuring the planet Nimbus III and its Paradise City were very clearly just shot out in the Mojave Desert, and there was compositing for the film's many viewscreen shots, forcing Shatner to shoot actual projection screens. (It doesn't look good.)

"The Final Frontier" was beset with myriad production problems as well. Right when shooting began, there was a strike by the Teamsters Union, forcing Paramount to seek out non-union drivers in a move that was, of course, meant to invite Teamsters retaliation. Also, the studio couldn't afford its usual team of effects wizards at Industrial Light & Magic,...

By 1973, Richard Lester, Philadelphia-born but as vital a figure in the cutting edge of ’60s British cinema as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, had run his film career aground with a string of flops. But he never fully gave up on his plans to adapt The Three Musketeers, a project originally intended as a vehicle for the Beatles.

A few years after the Fab Four went their separate ways, Lester finally got the production off the ground, and he approached his adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s classic 1844 novel with the same comic lens that informed his earlier work. Initially planned as a single epic complete with intermission, the final movie would be split in two for greater ease of distribution and profit potential.

The films follow the plot of the novel faithfully: Lowborn but skilled swordsman d’Artagnan (Michael York) travels from the country to the capital to join the elite Musketeers,...

Movie sets can be tense places. Between Hollywood-size egos, similarly massive budgets at stake and all the ways things can go wrong, tensions are bound to flare. It can lead to anything from strong words to actual fists thrown. Like when…

5 George Clooney Choked David O. Russell on the Set of ‘Three Kings’

It’s no secret that, in Clooney’s words, Russell is a “miserable f--k” to work with, and he found that out firsthand on the set of Three Kings. Clooney got fed up with Russell bullying extras, “so I went over and put my arm around him. I said, ‘David, it’s a big day. But you can’t shove, push or humiliate people who aren’t allowed to defend themselves.’ He turned on me and said, ‘Why don’t you just worry about your f---ed-up act? You’re being a d--k. You want to hit me?...

Thanks to "Star Wars Rebels," we've known that the Ghorman Massacre was something that would be coming to a head at some point during this season of "Andor." This third batch of episodes in season 2 has given us a look at exactly how the Imperial Security Bureau baited the Ghormans into protest, how they shaped the galactic sentiment against the Ghormans, and how they crushed them with superior firepower. Now that we've seen the eighth episode of this second season and the massacre itself played out, we're able to understand the utter depravity with which the Empire operated. It was so disgusting it was even revolting to Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), and that says quite a bit given he's been so dedicated to the order brought about by the Empire.

The Ghorman protest and ensuing massacre isn't without echoes of films from the past, though, and there are two in...

In the 1930s and 40s, Warner Bros. made films across many genres, but their bread and butter was crime thrillers and gangster pictures. The studio’s 1936 film The Walking Dead plays to this strength and infuses the story with a Frankensteinian horror twist. Helmed by Michael Curtiz, sometimes called “the greatest director you’ve never heard of,” and starring the biggest horror star of the era Boris Karloff, the film is one of the most unique horror offerings of the 1930s. It is also among the most overlooked, overshadowed by its far more famous contemporaries from Universal. This is unfortunate because The Walking Dead is a hardboiled gangster picture, a Frankenstein-adjacent thriller, an indictment of the death penalty, an examination of corruption in the justice system, a meditation on the nature of the soul, and a pondering of the metaphysics of death all in one. And it does it all in a mere 66 minutes.

The 59th Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival will feature a tribute to 1940s American screen star John Garfield.

“We are excited to remember the exceptional but somewhat forgotten career of a pioneer of what, in his day, was an unusually realistic approach to acting by showing 10 titles,” Kviff’s artistic director and the tribute’s curator Karel Och said. “No fewer than eight of them will be screened from the 35mm prints.”

Born on March 4, 1913 as Julius “Julie” Garfinkle, he was one of the first to captivate film and theater audiences with the acting style later known as Method acting. As an intuitive co-creator of the techniques championed by the Actors Studio, he influenced icons such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Paul Newman.

His nearly quarter-century acting career was influenced by the political situation in the U.S. at the time. Garfield first appeared on stage on the eve...

VistaVision is back. Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” not only earned Lol Crawley the Best Cinematography Oscar but has sparked a renewed interest in the format — one that is now being further fanned by unconfirmed reports of the 35mm horizontal format also being used in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s untitled 2026 film, and Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.”

The timing is perfect, therefore, for the TCM Classic Film Festival to screen two rare Paramount VistaVision prints of “We’re No Angels” (1955) and “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957) on April 26 at the Tcl Chinese Theater. What’s more, the movies will be projected with special horizontal projectors, which haven’t been used since the 1950s.

Crawley will introduce “Gunfight,” the Western from director John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven”), which teams Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday, and Charlotte Barker,...

The British Film Institute has added veteran James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli and filmmaker Terry Gilliam to the board of its U.S. outpost and changed the stateside organization’s name from Friends of the British Film Institute to BFI America.

Other members of the new board include Colin Walsh, Deborah Schindler (Producer), Penelope Wong (Producer and marketing expert), and Dr. Mali Heled Kinberg (UCLA Professor).

The new-look BFI America and its board will be officially launched at a reception in Los Angeles next month, during which a celebration will also be held for the BFI National Archive’s 90th anniversary.

Following the event, six films from the BFI National Archive’s collection, including an original print of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, will screen as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival. The screening will mark the film’s 50th anniversary and will be introduced by BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts.

The British Film Institute (BFI) has launched BFI America, whose board members include Barbara Broccoli and Terry Gilliam.

The BFI will be out in force in L.A. later this month to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the BFI National Archive, one of the world’s oldest and most significant film and TV collections. At the celebratory event on Apr. 23, BFI America will be formally launched.

BFI America, formerly known as Friends of the British Film Institute, will “champion the work of the BFI in the U.S. and internationally, including the vital preservation and restoration work of the BFI National Archive, and maintain the organization’s enduring partnership with U.S. cinema and its vibrant film community,” according to the organization.

Board members include former James Bond producer Broccoli, director Gilliam, Colin Walsh (founder, Varo Money Inc.), Deborah Schindler (producer), Penelope Wong (producer and marketing expert), and Dr. Mali...

Barbara Broccoli is bridging the pond between British and U.S. cinema, even after relinquishing the James Bond franchise to Amazon. Broccoli and her franchise co-producer and half-brother Michael G. Wilson recently sold the creative control of the Bond property to Amazon MGM for a rumored $1 billion. Now, Broccoli has been announced as one of the BFI Fellows for the newly launched BFI America from the British Film Institute.

BFI America is being billed as a “champion the work of the BFI in the U.S. and internationally, including the vital preservation and restoration work of the BFI National Archive, and maintain the organization’s enduring partnership with U.S. cinema and its vibrant film community.” In addition to Broccoli, other board members include director Terry Gilliam, Varo Money founder Colin Walsh, producer Deborah Schindler, producer Penelope Wong, and UCLA professor Dr. Mali Heled Kinberg.

“The UK and the U.

We’ve always loved setting trends at The Film Stage and are accordingly chuffed that, nine months after we screened a 35mm print at the Roxy, Roman Polanski’s late-career triumph The Ghost Writer comes to the Criterion Channel in next month’s Coastal Thrillers, a series that does what it says on the tin: The Lady from Shanghai, Key Largo, The Long Goodbye, The Fog, and the other best film of 2010, Scorsese’s Shutter Island. It pairs well with Noir and the Blacklist featuring films by Joseph Losey, Fritz Lang, Jules Dassin, and so on. Retrospectives are held for Terry Southern, Kathryn Bigelow, Jem Cohen, and (just in time for Caught By the Tides) Jia Zhangke, while Spike Lee gets his own Adventures In Moviegoing.

For recent restorations, Antonioni’s Il Grido and Anthony Harvey’s Dutchman appear. Criterion Editions include The Runner, Touchez pas au grisbi, Godzilla vs.

Reader, you have been lied to! Film history is littered with unfairly maligned classics, whether critics were too eager to review the making of rather than the finished product, or they suffered from underwhelming ad campaigns or general disinterest. Let’s revise our takes on some of these films from wrongheaded to the correct opinion.

In a recent interview, Steven Soderbergh referred to “The Good German” as the “most reviled” film he’s ever made, claiming no one has ever brought it up to him in a positive manner. Soderbergh remains baffled by the response, and justifiably so. While the World War II drama was poorly reviewed and failed to find an audience in 2006, it’s one of the director’s most fascinating, original, and, for viewers able to get on its wavelength, emotionally devastating films.

Adapted by screenwriter Paul Attanasio from a novel by Joseph Kanon, “The Good German...

Among the most legendary actresses of all time, Ingrid Bergman looms large. Bergman's career extended across decades, and she was able to work with some of the greatest filmmakers of all time, from Alfred Hitchcock to Michael Curtiz to Leo McCarey. And moreover, many of the films in her filmography are widely, and correctly, considered among the best English-language films ever made, from "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "Gaslight" to one of the most iconic American and World War II films ever, "Casablanca." Bergman, unsurprisingly, was well rewarded for her immense talent and acting craft, netting three Oscars (as well as being nominated four other times). That she wasn't even nominated for "Casablanca," a film that has a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and walked away with the Best Picture Oscar, says something about how good she was and how not every one of her performances could get the golden statuette.

Jan Shepard, who guest-starred on Rawhide, The Virginian, Gunsmoke and two dozen other TV Westerns and played opposite Elvis Presley in movies eight years apart, has died. She was 96.

Shepard died Jan. 17 at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank of pneumonia brought on by respiratory failure, her son, Hollywood prop master, Brandon Boyle, told The Hollywood Reporter. “She was a good one and will be dearly missed,” he said.

Shepard portrayed Mimi, the sister of Presley’s Danny Fisher, in the Michael Curtiz-directed King Creole (1958) and the wife of Danny Kohana (James Shigeta), who partners with Presley’s Rick Richards in a helicopter business, in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966).

“The first time, I found him to be just the cutest kid around, a big teddy bear, a lot of fun,” she said in an interview for Boyd Magers and Michael G. Fitzgerald’s 1999 book, Westerns Women. But on their next movie,...

For years, when it comes to entertainment, Hollywood has been the epicenter of storytelling. Over the years, there have been countless tales told and stories made for the audience, from death-defying scenes to heart-warming ones that melt your heart out.

While each project or scene has a charm of its own, that is quite incomparable, there are a handful few who have etched into the collectible memory of moviegoers.

Hollywood is full of unforgettable and mesmerizing moments | Credit: Image by Thomas Wolf, licensed under Cca- Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Such moments have sparked debates, inspired countless, and turned their respective films into cultural touchstones. While we cannot possibly compile a list of all such moments, here are 20 unforgettable Hollywood movie moments that continue to captivate and resonate with audiences around the world.

20. “Here’s looking at you, kid” – Casablanca (1942) Casablanca | Credit: Warner Bros.

A romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz,...

Ahoy, and meet the granddaddy of all pirate movies. Every swashbuckling film made after 1935 owes a debt of booty to Captain Blood, the Michael Curtiz-directed pirate adventure. It popularized the genre for decades to come and made a star out of its leading buccaneer, Errol Flynn.

Warner Bros., inspired by the success of other recent swashbuckling period dramas such as The Count of Monte Cristo, decided to set Rafael Sabatini's novel before the cameras with a pair of untested leads: Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Though dated by 21st-century standards, the movie's legacy as a genre-setting touchstone, along with its old Hollywood craftsmanship, still makes it a worthy watch today. While Hollywood had produced swashbuckling pirate films before (including a silent version of Captain Blood in 1924), Captain Blood defined the genre ever after.

Captain Blood Invented the Modern Swashbuckling Movie The Film Popularized the Genre

Image via Warner Bros.

A few fun facts about Oscar statuettes: 

The award is 13-and-a-half inches tall, and the award, overall, weighs about eight-and-a-half pounds. The statues are made of solid bronze and are plated in real gold. During metal shortages during World War II, the Oscars were made out of painted plaster, although winners were permitted to swap them for bronze ones once the materials were plentiful again. 

It's been said that handing an Oscar too much can make the gold tarnish, so Oscar winners have to be careful with them. The statuettes are made by an art foundry in Chicago called Polich Tallix, the same firm that handled the work of Roy Lichtenstein, and the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. 

The statuettes also, technically, don't belong to the voters or to the people who win them. Indeed, starting in 1951, the Motion Picture Academy introduced a new rule forbidding recipients from...

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In 1934, the inimitable Bette Davis appeared in a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage," a semi-autobiographical novel about the unfortunate loves of one Philip Carey. The 1934 film was directed by the prolific John Cromwell and starred Leslie Howard as Philip. Davis played Mildred Rogers, a tearoom waitress that Philip falls in love with, but who treats him with the utmost cruelty. It was a great role for Davis, who was only 26 at the time. 

An article in Collider points out that Davis was under contract with Warner Bros. at the time, but really, really wanted to play the part of Mildred, knowing that it was a juicy role. "Of Human Bondage" was being produced by Rko, and Davis would need WB's Jack Warner to loan her talents to Rko to work on the project. Davis...

When Humphrey Bogart appeared in the 1939 horror film “The Return of Doctor X” as a scientifically engineered vampire, he already had a couple of dozen movies behind him but was still two years away from becoming a true star with John Huston‘s “The Maltese Falcon.” As a contract player at Warner Bros., the studio that signed Bogart when he came there to reprise his stage role as Duke Mantee in “The Petrified Forest,” the actor was largely subject to the idiosyncratic whims of his bosses, and it was clear that they didn’t quite know what to do with Bogart before Huston got a hold of him.

In 1939 alone, he appeared in a Western “The Oklahoma Kid,” a tearjerking melodrama, and multiple gangster films. Several of these films are better remembered than “The Return of Doctor X,” but as Bogart’s only horror film, “X” is a fascinating curiosity,...

Marijuana is legal in 38 states, and now Cheech & Chong are in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. The country is going to pot!

Up in Smoke (1978), the first feature from Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, is one of the 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” motion pictures selected for preservation this year, it was announced Tuesday.

Among those also making the cut are Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Invaders From Mars (1953), The Miracle Worker (1962), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Dirty Dancing (1987), Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Social Network (2010).

Five picks include prominent Hispanic artists or themes: American Me (1992), Mi Familia (1995) — both featuring the work of Edward James Olmos — Up in Smoke, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Spy Kids (2001).

It’s a great day for Marin, who also starred in Spy Kids,...

There is no secret to making a classic movie. There's no tried-and-true formula or a can't-miss piece of source material that equates to a masterpiece provided you assemble the right director, writer(s), and actors. And as Francis Ford Coppola learned while making "The Godfather," there's no guarantee that, once you seemingly have all the right pieces in their right place, the studio will sit back and let you shoot your shot.

All-timers can also sneak up on you. Director Michael Curtiz thought he was making an escapist World War II entertainment when he took the reins on "Casablanca," but even though leads Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman didn't get along on set, he wound up knocking out a film many people consider to be the acme of Hollywood moviemaking. Alternately, when acclaimed director Robert Benton rolled cameras on Tom Stoppard's adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's "Billy Bathgate," one...

In the early 1950s, Hollywood introduced numerous widescreen formats in an effort to compete with the rise of television; the thinking was that the spectacle of CinemaScope, Cinerama, and other processes would give people incentive to leave their homes and return to the theater. Now, as exhibitors struggle with the rise of streaming and declining theater attendance, filmmaker Brady Corbet has revived the greatest of all widescreen formats and given today’s audiences the same reason to get off their couches that Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz, and other premier directors of their era gave in the 1950s.

Corbet opted to shoot “The Brutalist” in VistaVision, a process Paramount Pictures introduced in 1954 with the release of Michael Curtiz’s “White Christmas.” The format’s run was brief but glorious; it essentially fell out of regular use after Marlon Brando’s “One-Eyed Jacks” in 1961, but before that it was employed on several...

Since the first awards ceremony in 1929, the Academy Awards — colloquially known as the Oscars — have chosen the "best picture" in cinema every single year, with varying results. Still, a lot of the time, the Oscars at least gets it sort of right; to use a recent example, "The Shape of Water" is a good movie, but it was also competing against "Get Out" and "Lady Bird," so even a well-liked film like Guillermo del Toro's unexpected love story can spark a larger discussion about the Oscars and how they choose their winners. But I digress. Some of the historical best picture winners are (almost) universally beloved, with 99% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

With acclaimed films like "Moonlight" and "Schindler's List" not far behind on Rotten Tomatoes' ranking of every best picture winner in Oscars history (both movies have a 98% rating), the following four films are, apparently, pretty close to perfect.

The second season of "Star Trek: Picard" started promisingly, but ran out of steam pretty quickly. At the start of the season, the impish all-power trickster Q (John de Lancie) appears to an elderly Admiral Picard (Patrick Stewart) and announces that he'd like to play a game. Q then teleports Picard to an alternate timeline, very much like the Mirror Universe, where everyone is evil. Earth has become a galactic force for tyranny and spends all its resources hunting and killing all other living beings in the galaxy. Picard finds that his alternate self is a dangerous general who keeps a collection of skulls belonging to his fallen foes. 

Picard gathers his closest compatriots, also all transported into the Fascist Timeline, and aims to travel back in time to the point where the fascist regime began. Something happened, he finds, in the year 2024, and he needs to investigate the streets...

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film in the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery above features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

The worst among 96 Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film on the bottom of the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery below features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

Why all the outrage over the apparent slighting of Clint Eastwood’s “Juror #2”? There’s the limited theatrical release, no advertising, and initial absence from Warner Bros. Discovery’s awards page, for a film with strong reviews and audience response — but good grief, has everyone at that studio forgotten what they owe Eastwood’s legacy?

The Warners-Eastwood relationship is unparalleled in Hollywood history. It also represents a way of doing business that Warners no longer cares to apply to its creative relationships — or at least, doesn’t care if that’s the community’s takeaway, which may be the same thing.

Since 1971, Eastwood made 46 films for Warners as a director and/or actor and/or producer. IndieWire wants to make the case that Eastwood has been the most important creative component in the studio’s history — financially, and arguably, critically.

If that seems extreme, consider this. All told, his 46 Warners films have a worldwide gross,...

As long as there are rapacious billionaires and corrupt politicians hoarding wealth and making life miserable for the less fortunate, there will always be a need for the Robin Hood folk tale. The Sherwood Forest-dwelling outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor has been depicted in films since Douglas Fairbanks slung a bow over his shoulder and strapped on a spiffy pair of tights in the 1922 landmark silent production "Robin Hood." Michael Curtiz delivered what still stands as the platonic ideal of a Robin Hood movie in 1938 with the Errol Flynn-starring "The Adventures of Robin Hood," but there have been other worthy takes on the character over the years, most notably Disney's 1973 animated film "Robin Hood" and Richard Lester's poignant 1976 romance "Robin and Marian" starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn.

For most modern audiences, the most well-known rendition of the Robin Hood saga...

Those who were driving through the intersection of Highland and Fountain in Los Angeles in the early 2000s got to know Tommy Wiseau very, very well. It was at that intersection that Wiseau chose to buy a billboard for his then-new film "The Room," and it featured a rather unflattering closeup of the man, staring directly into the camera, one of his eyes half-closed. The billboard stayed up for five straight years, costing Wiseau $5,000 a month.

It worked, though. Enough Angelenos drove past the billboard to become curious about "The Room" and seek out a screening at the Sunset 5 theater nearby. Those who saw it in those early days were utterly baffled. "The Room" is an intense infidelity drama about an all-around good guy named Johnny (Wiseau) whose fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle) instigates an affair with Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero). The film, however, is so weirdly scripted and...

A Hungarian silent film once thought lost, “After Death” (“A halál után”), will premiere at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, thanks to a restoration initiative led by Hungary’s National Film Institute (Nfi).

The only surviving copy of the 1920 crime thriller directed by Alfréd Dicy, one of the pioneers of Hungarian cinema, was found in Belgium’s Royal Film Archive. Its restoration was completed through collaboration between Belgium, Hungary and France, with support from the E.U.’s Creative Europe Media program.

“After Death” is just one of several films on Hungary’s “Most Wanted List,” which was launched in 2021 to recover early Hungarian films. So far, about a dozen from the list have been found and restored.

The oldest on the list, “The Dance” (“A Táncz”), dating back to 1901, is considered to be Hungary’s first film. It showcases Hungarian dancers, and was part of a presentation that...

With Janus possessing the much-needed restorations, Catherine Breillat is getting her biggest-ever spotlight in November’s Criterion Channel series spanning 1976’s A Real Young Girl to 2004’s Anatomy of Hell––just one of numerous retrospectives arriving next month. They’re also spotlighting Ida Lupino, directorial efforts of John Turturro (who also gets an “Adventures In Moviegoing”), the Coen brothers, and Jacques Audiard.

In a slightly more macroscopic view, Columbia Noir and a new edition of “Queersighting” ring in Noirvember. Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy and Miller’s Crossing get Criterion Editions, while restorations of David Bowie-starrer The Linguini Incident, Med Hondo’s West Indies, and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue make streaming debuts; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park arrives just in time for another grim election day.

See the full list of titles arriving in November below:

36 fillette, Catherine Breillat, 1988

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat,...

Prior to "Gilligan's Island" in 1964, Tina Louise was already a long-working actress. Indeed, Louise worked her first modeling gig at the age of two, appearing in an ad campaign for her father's candy store. In high school, she started studying acting, and landed her first professional gig in 1956, appearing in an episode of the TV series "Studio One." She made her feature film debut in Anthony Mann's celebrated drama "God's Little Acre," in which Louise played Griselda, the wife of a character played by Jack Lord. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. 

Louise went on to star in other high-profile film projects, including Michael Curtiz's "The Hangman," and the 1960 Italian historical epic "The Siege of Syracuse," in which she played three different roles. Louise also played the poet Sappho in a film called "The Warrior Empress." In 1964, she appeared in a film called "For Those Who Think Young,...

Director Todd Phillips returns with the highly anticipated sequel to his controversial 2019 Dceu adventure, Joker. The new film, Joker: Folie à Deux, brings back Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, the mentally disturbed criminal who becomes the Joker. Joining Phoenix is the iconic Lady Gaga (A Star is Born) as Harley Quinn, while Zazie Beetz reprises her role, albeit all too briefly, from the first movie. Irish actor Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener add gravitas to the cast.

Joker: Folie à Deux delves deeper into Arthur’s descent into madness, set against Gotham City’s criminal underworld. With a musical twist, Phoenix and Gaga share several striking performances together.

The story follows Arthur navigating life in Arkham Asylum five years after the first film’s events. His Joker persona becomes central to a legal battle where his lawyer (Keener) argues for his mental instability, while district attorney Harvey Dent seeks the death penalty.

With Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited “Megalopolis” now playing in theaters, many cinephiles have been dazzled and baffled in equal measures by the sprawling passion project. But even if the film itself is polarizing, there’s no denying that it reflects Coppola’s unending passion for cinema and a lifetime spent studying history and art.

Those interested in learning more about Coppola’s unique tastes will be thrilled to find that the “Apocalypse Now” director is this month’s guest picker for Turner Classic Movies. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that the auteur has given his stamp of approval to four iconic films airing on the cable channel in October: James Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein,” Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and Marcel Camus’ “Black Orpheus.”

Following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro, Coppola elaborated...

Alan Hale Jr. was a showbiz veteran before he could speak. The son of Alan Hale, a popular character actor best known for his portrayal of Little John in Michael Curtiz' classic "The Adventures of Robin Hood," Hale Jr. appeared in silent films as a baby and made a few war movies as a young man before serving in the United States Coast Guard during World War II. Once the war was over, Hale Jr. worked steadily in film and television, turning up on episodes of "Gunsmoke," "Mister Ed," and "Lassie" while landing supporting roles in movies starring John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and Randolph Scott.

Hale Jr. would be castigated as a nepobaby today, but while being literally born to the business didn't hurt his cause, he was a natural in front of the camera and a welcome presence in just about everything. So, it's no surprise that, after a difficult casting process,...

Is it too early to get ready for Christmas? Maybe, but 'tis the season for holiday classics to get new physical media editions before moviegoers start decking the halls. One of the most beloved Christmas classics is the romantic musical spectacle White Christmas. The Michael Curtiz-directed film starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye is celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2024. To celebrate, Paramount Pictures is releasing its riveting dance on 4K Blu-ray for the first time.

Director Ridley Scott is back in the Oscars conversation with a film that hearkens back to his biggest Oscar success: “Gladiator II,” the long-awaited sequel to his 2000 Best Picture winner “Gladiator.” But despite the awards success of that 24-year-old blockbuster film, Scott himself didn’t get to go along for the ride. He lost Best Director in one of the most fascinating races that category has ever seen. Scott, now 86, has a chance to receive an overdue trophy and become the oldest filmmaker ever to prevail.

See‘Gladiator II’ trailer: Paul Mescal enters the arena in Ridley Scott’s epic sequel [Watch]

To date, Scott has been nominated for four Oscars. Three of those were for Best Director: “Thelma and Louise” (1991), “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down” (2001), though “Gladiator” was the only one of those three films to receive a Best Picture nomination. Helming the Best Picture front-runner that year automatically made...

Michael Curtiz directed Dodge City, a classic Western praised for its daring cinematography & timeless plot. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland starred in the successful film, with Flynn fully embracing Westerns after its success. Dodge City remains a masterpiece of classic Westerns, with unique use of composition, color, and a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

American-Hungarian director Michael Curtiz was prolific. With a five-decade-long career from the early 1910s to the early 1960s, he dipped his toes into silent films, talkies, and eventually color movies, directing a total of 178 films. With so many movies produced, they cannot all be masterpieces. However, some separate themselves from the pack, notably Casablanca (1942), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), or Mildred Pierce (1945). Another lesser-known but just as acclaimed film by the director is the 1939 Dodge City.

Curtiz was also a frequent collaborator of heartthrob Errol Flynn and classic actress Olivia de Havilland. The three worked together on Dodge City,...

Film critic Andrew Sarris changed his profession forever when he introduced, to English-speaking cinephiles at least, the concept of “auteur theory.” The general conceit is that some rarified directors are so gifted, or commanding, in their control over the process of film production that they alone can give a film a “personal or unique stamp.” They are the ones who become the author of the movie you’re watching. If anyone. It’s a seductive theory which encourages the critic to look for points of narrative, visual, or thematic similarity between a filmmaker’s work. The more ideas or images that rhyme, the potentially more impressive the auteur’s command over the medium becomes.

However, while it is hard to dispute the existence of auteurs, the concept at times devalues the contributions of a film’s many other collaborators—especially if they’re, say, editors, production designers, or cinematographers a...

Passage to Marseille reunited iconic Casablanca cast members in a World War II drama directed by Michael Curtiz. Humphrey Bogart's performance in Passage to Marseille alongside Greenstreet and Lorre continued his legendary presence from Casablanca. The film showcases the three's unique acting styles, making it a fresh take on the Casablanca era with memorable characters.

One amazing 1944 movie allowed most of the iconic cast of the romantic classic Casablanca to reunite while also letting Humphrey Bogart work with the film's director again. Casablanca is remembered as one of film's most beloved entries from the 1940s. The performance of its star-studded cast as well as its premise allows Casablanca to be the most quotable movie ever, as several mediums over the years have referenced and made variations of its well-known lines.

Casablanca's iconic cast included Bogart, who was already a large star at the time, alongside now well-known actors including Ingrid Bergman,...

Humphrey Bogart was an iconic actor in Hollywood history who starred in several war movies. Some of his best war films include "Body and Soul," "Battle Circus," "Action in the North Atlantic," "Passage to Marseille," "Across the Pacific," "Sahara," "The Caine Mutiny," and "To Have and to Have Not." Bogart's performances in these war movies showcased his ability to embody a brooding, charismatic, and compelling leading men.

Humphrey Bogart was among the greatest actors who ever lived and starred in several fantastic war movies across his acclaimed career. Although Bogart made a name for himself in gangster movies, film noirs, and adventures, there were plenty of other times he took the battlefield, sailed the seven seas in the Navy, or commanded soldiers as a high-level official. These performances paired Bogart with legendary directors like John Huston, Howard Hawks, and Michael Curtiz and even included his very first movie with...

Let’s face it, streaming services have lost a lot of their appeal. Between their ever shifting libraries, their kneecapping of theaters, and their tendency to overwhelm viewers with substandard garbage, it’s hard to be excited about our streaming present. Heck, most services now play the same couple of ads over and over, even for paying customers!

With every annoying insurance ad and every movie suddenly shoved from a service you bought to a different service you don’t have, Tubi looks better and better. Tubi is one of many free streaming services available online. Like most other services, free or otherwise, Tubi interrupts the programming with occasional ads.

But Tubi also has an outstanding library, one that rivals Max, with its oft-threatened TCM and Ghibli channels. Still, Tubi can be overwhelming to some users, who can’t always see the gems alongside stinkers such as Big Stan (starring Rob Schneider!

He was one of the biggest screen icons and one of the most colorful real-life characters in Hollywood history. Still considered the king of swashbucklers more than 60 years after his death, Errol Flynn’s success was a combination of happenstance, luck and his ability to charm.

Errol Leslie Flynn was born on June 20, 1909, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to an affluent family. A natural born rascal, he was thrown out of several private schools, and eventually wandered, working odd jobs. He fell into acting quite by chance when he won the role of Fletcher Christian in the Australian film “In the Wake of the Bounty” (1933). There are conflicting stories of how he landed this part, but it is the film that piqued his interest in acting, and eventually caught the attention of Warner Bros. executives.

In Hollywood, a combination of luck and Flynn’s athleticism and charm landed him the lead...

Thanks to Baz Luhrmann's electrifying 2022 biopic "Elvis," fans new and old (some very old at this point) have enthusiastically delved into the cultural icon's past to get a more nuanced understanding of how this Tennessee-born mama's career took so many unexpected turns before he collapsed in a pharmaceutically-induced heap at the age of 42.

Every chapter of Presley's life is packed with decisions both brilliant and personally/professionally self-destructive. Indeed, his tragic arc might just be the definitive showbiz cautionary tale. His was an incandescent (if highly derivative) talent that attracted opportunists and admirers; he was treated as a product, and, thus, had an awful tendency to treat those who genuinely loved him with the respect and tenderness they deserved.

Speaking of tenderness, Presley's value as an entertainment commodity was, at its early peak, so dizzyingly high that he could work around his newly signed contract with Paramount Pictures...

Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 neorealist drama is unsparing in its depiction of the heavy price of both resistance and collaboration with the Nazi occupation

Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 film is a blazingly urgent and painful bulletin from the frontline of Italy’s historical agony: the Axis power that had belatedly turned against the Mussolini fascists only to be humiliatingly occupied by Nazi Germany on whose orders the dictator was reinstalled in the northern Salò puppet state, resplendent in contemptible impotence and pathos, with Rome at its defeated and compromised centre. It was a film that used the so-recently-devastated real streets and people of Rome on location for a project on which Rossellini started script work well before the end of the war, building on ideas by screenwriter Sergio Amidei with dialogue contribution by the young Federico Fellini.

Rome, Open City is revived as part of the BFI Southbank’s Chasing the Real season of Italian neorealism,...