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This past holiday season, we shared some unconventional Christmas movie recommendations, like The Silent Partner, Anna and the Apocalypse, The Ref, and my own recommendation, Trancers. But even though I love Trancers and also watch Anna and the Apocalypse every December, my two favorite Christmas movies are not unconventional choices at all: every December 25th, I watch A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation. Very common choices. Someone else with very common choice for their favorite Christmas movie is filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who revealed to BFI that his holiday favorite is It’s a Wonderful Life.

Directed by Frank Capra, who crafted the screenplay with Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Jo Swerling, the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life was based on the short story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern (which was loosely based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) . Here’s the synopsis: George Bailey has so many...

If film is, as Roger Ebert famously put it, a machine that generates empathy, then there's perhaps no other artistic medium out there so perfectly suited to communicating and eliciting sadness. By the same token, movies are maybe the best medium at laying out a persuasive case for the value of sadness as an aesthetic experience. A good cry at a movie can be cathartic, therapeutic, restorative, sobering and educational, or merely painful and gut-wrenching and still have value for its sheer depth of experience.

To compile this ranking of the 15 saddest movies ever, we've tried to go beyond the territory of efficient tear-jerking, and look instead for those films that are positively drenched in gloom, pain, misery, and despair from beginning to end — the movies that articulate sadness as an existential constant as opposed to a momentary state. Get the tissues ready, take a deep breath, and happy (or not) viewing.

When it comes to acting superstardom, few professional Thespians have as many "certified fresh" films in their portfolio of work as the man, the myth, the legend, John Wayne. In order to achieve such a feat, any movie an actor has appeared in must have scored at least 75% or higher, with at least five reviews from Top Critics, while boasting a minimum of 80 reviews on the aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

To his great credit, John Wayne starred in seven films throughout his prolific career, which earned him this "certified fresh" distinction. Spanning a whole range of genres, including war films, romances, and, of course, Westerns, John Wayne continues to prove himself as one of Hollywood's most remarkable talents to this day, as many of his greatest pictures continue to be beloved by critics of all generations.

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Related 15 John Wayne Movies That Changed the Western Genre

John Wayne's prolific career...

As the star of some of the most iconic films ever made, James Stewart's career was one of the most varied and impressive in Hollywood history. From his acting debut in the 1930s until his semi-retirement at the end of the 1970s, Stewart starred in Christmas classics, acclaimed thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock, and a whole host of beloved rom-coms, screwball comedies, and thought-provoking dramas. As an Academy Award-winning performer, Stewarts likable persona and distinctive drawl made him the quintessential American ideal whose embodied qualities of strong moral resilience and fortitude.

The best James Stewart movies have stood the test of time, and his definitive roles made him one of Hollywoods most sought-after performers throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Stewarts best movies left a major mark on Hollywood, as George Baileys story in Its a Wonderful Life has become annual viewing for families worldwide every holiday season, and his performance...

Though the title of the awards has changed over the decades, the two guest star in a drama series Emmys are among the most competitive handed out during the Creative Arts ceremony. Cicely Tyson earned the most nomination in this category with nine. Michael J. Fox received seven nominations earning the award in 2009 for FX’s “Rescue Me.” And who have won the most in the past five decades? Patricia Clarkson, Charles S. Dutton, Cherry Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, John Lithgow, Shirley Knight, Margo Martindale, Patrick McGoohan, Amanda Plummer and Alfre Woodward have each won twice.

This year five drama nominees appeared in FX’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith“- Michaela Cole, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Parker Posey and John Turturro. Rounding out the nominees for Best Drama Guest Actress are Claire Foy for “The Crown,” Marcia Gay Harden for “The Morning Show” while Nestor Carbonell for “Shogun,” Tracy Letts...

Less than a year after winning her seventh career Emmy for producing her own birthday special, “90 Years of Laughter + Love,” Carol Burnett is on the verge of making even more TV academy history. Having just secured a Best Comedy Supporting Actress nomination for Apple TV+’s “Palm Royale,” she has a clear shot at not only conquering her fifth unique Emmy category but also becoming the organization’s very first nonagenarian acting champion.

Set in 1969, “Palm Royale” is the first non-sketch series on which Burnett has ever played a regular role. She appears throughout the inaugural season as Norma Dellacorte, an initially comatose Florida socialite who, like all of the women in her circle, harbors some rather heavy secrets. The show is up for a total of 11 Emmys, including Best Comedy Series and Actress (Kristen Wiig).

The current record for oldest acting Emmy winner belongs to Betty White, who was...

Less than a year after winning her seventh career Emmy for co-producing her own birthday special, “90 Years of Laughter + Love,” Carol Burnett is preparing to make even more TV academy history. The small screen legend is on the verge of earning her first Best Comedy Supporting Actress nomination for Apple TV+’s “Palm Royale,” which would also be her first bid for a regular role on a non-sketch series. If she succeeds on this possible outing, she will set a new record as the first nonagenarian winner of any acting Emmy.

Set in 1969, “Palm Royale” features Burnett in the role of Norma Dellacorte, an initially comatose Florida socialite who, like all of the women in her circle, harbors some rather heavy secrets. Although she has so far been exclusively credited as a special guest star on the show, she does not presently qualify for guest category placement since she appears...

It's a Wonderful Life, originally released in black and white, was later re-released in color due to the popularity of colorized films. Director Frank Capra decided to colorize the movie after seeing the success of a colorized Cary Grant film, Topper. The film entered the public domain in the 1970s, leading to multiple studios releasing their own colorized versions, which sparked controversy among fans who preferred the original black-and-white version.

The classic version of It's a Wonderful Life is in black and white since that medium was the norm when the movie premiered in 1946. However, once colored pictures became easier to produce and more popular, the Christmas film was re-released in color. Now, audiences have the option of viewing the movie in black and white or in color. Most airings of It's a Wonderful Life typically stick to the original version of the holiday classic, though.

The cast of It's a Wonderful Life...

James "Jimmy" Stewart stars as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, portraying him from a teenager to a married adult with kids. Donna Reed plays Mary Hatch Bailey, George's wife, at different stages of her life, from a teenager to a married woman with four children. Lionel Barrymore takes on the role of Henry Potter, the film's antagonist, who constantly tries to ruin the Bailey family and their business.

The Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life contains a large cast of actors of varying ages, and each performer contributed to the everlasting success of the 1946 film. The movie tells the life story of George Bailey, who grows up in Bedford Falls, New York, but dreams of leaving town and exploring the world following high school graduation and before heading to college. However, after George's father dies unexpectedly, he is forced to remain in town to run the family business,...

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray sizzled as the duplicitous lovers in Billy Wilder’s exceptional 1944 film noir “Double Indemnity.” But that classic based on James M. Cain’s novel wasn’t their first pairing. Four years earlier, they played very different lovers in “Remember the Night,” which was penned by the brilliant Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. The exquisite holiday film, ironically released in January of 1940, has become a Christmas favorite thanks to TCM, streaming services and DVDs.

MacMurray stars as Jack, a young New York City assistant district attorney. Stanwyck’s Lee has seen her share of bad breaks is on trial before Christmas for shoplifting a bracelet at a jewelry store. MacMurray decides to bail her out of jail for the holidays and ends up taking her back to his Indiana family farm where she is warmly welcomed by his mother and aunt. His mother (Beulah Bondi...

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.

This article contains mentions of suicide.

It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday classic that tells the story of George Bailey being visited by a guardian angel. The movie initially performed poorly but became a Christmas classic after its copyright expired, and it could be broadcast without fees. The film revolves around the Bailey family, with George as the central character who ultimately realizes the value of his own life.

Although Christmas plays only a small role in It's a Wonderful Life, the movie has become a holiday classic, and its story revolves around the Bailey family. The 1946 drama film tells the tale of George Bailey — a man who contemplates suicide and is visited by a guardian angel. The angel, Clarence Odbody, shows George what it would be like in his hometown of Bedford Falls if he had never been born and how his family would have turned out if he had never existed.

John Wayne's legacy in American cinema is primarily attributed to his roles in revolutionary Western films, which helped solidify many core themes and tropes of the genre. Despite personal controversies and questionable character, Wayne's onscreen performances in films of all genres left a lasting impact on 20th-century American cinema. Wayne showcased his versatility as an actor in films like The Quiet Man, Reap the Wild Wind, and The Shepherd of the Hills, proving that he could excel beyond his iconic Western and War movie roles.

John Wayne is primarily known for his famous roles in Westerns and war movies but has also starred in several other classic genres during his illustrious career. Wayne's legacy can be attributed to his roles in revolutionary Western films such as 1939's Stagecoach which certified him as a major Hollywood star who embodied sentiments of the rugged and masculine wandering traveler. His performances helped...

Although her acting on her eponymous 11-season variety show was consistently overlooked by the TV academy, Carol Burnett has still racked up two dozen Emmy nominations and six wins over the course of six decades. Having just reached the age of 90, she is now on the verge of earning her first Best Drama Supporting Actress notice for AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” which would also be her first for a supporting or lead role on a non-sketch series. If she succeeds on this possible bid, she will set a new precedent as the first nonagenarian to ever win an acting Emmy.

Burnett joined the cast of “Better Call Saul” for the second part of its sixth and final season, which aired from July to August 2022. Her character, Marion, is the elderly mother of a cab driver who becomes an accomplice of seasoned criminal Jimmy “Saul Goodman” McGill (Bob Odenkirk). Although...

Baby Clyde's Oscar Completist Diaries -- Part 2

(If you missed part one read that first!)

When Covid hit I happened to be in Colombia. I wasn’t frolicking on the beach in 90-degree heat or scuba diving in the beautiful clear blue Caribbean Sea but watching the Best Actress nominees of 1969 (That’s what holidays are for right?). Jean Simmons and Liza Minnelli had somehow passed me by over the years and with my new Russian pal I was able to fill in all the gaps. By the time I was back in London and lockdown had kicked in, I’d decided to make a project of it. Using Kevin Jacobson’s And The Runner-Up Is podcast as my companion I started watching every nomination in reverse order from 1969 down to 1927. I rewatched everything I’d already seen and added in the first-time watches along the way, noting everything down...

It’s the week of Christmas, which means it’s a time for presents, love, friendship, and lots and lots of movies. And beyond the endless streaming originals and Hallmark films set during the holiday seasons are a few bonafide classics of the genre — chief among them “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the beloved 1946 Frank Capra picture and a perennial topper of any “Top Christmas Movie” list.

Online, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is free to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Plex. The movie can also be purchased via multiple VOD platforms, including Redbox, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Apple TV, with prices ranging from 1.99 to 3.99.

Linear TV will also be carrying multiple showings of the beloved film. On Christmas Eve, NBC will air the film in its entirety starting at 8 p.m. Et. E! will also air the film on loop on Christmas Day, starting at 6 a.m. Et for a total of seven showings.

Mitchell Leisen’s great Christmas-time tale has a brilliant screenplay by Preston Sturges and letter-perfect performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, threading the needle between light cynicism and well-earned sentiment. Sturges’ celebration of ‘country values’ is sincere and heartfelt, as is his affection for the supporting cast. The presentation includes two radio broadcasts plus a star-studded Paramount short subject for war bonds.

Remember the Night

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / / Street Date December 19, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £18.99

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway, Julius Tannen, Virginia Brissac, Fred ‘Snowflake’ Toones, Charles Arnt, Paul Guilfoyle.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Art Directors: Hans Drier, Roland Anderson

Costumes: Edith Head

Film Editor: Doane Harrison

Original Music: Friedrich Hollander

Written by Preston Sturges

Produced by

Directed by Mitchell Leisen

The 1940 feature Remember the Night made its comeback a few years ago just as...

The effort to restore neglected films doesn’t get more rewarding than this 4K rebirth of Lewis Milestone’s version of the acclaimed Somerset Maugham story. Loaned from MGM, Joan Crawford tries on the role of Sadie Thompson and holds her own opposite Walter Huston’s fire & brimstone preacher. It’s still a major achievement of the pre-Code era, an adult story that doesn’t water down its ‘dangerous’ themes: it’s exactly the kind of show that the censors didn’t want made.

Rain

Blu-ray

Mary Pickford Foundation / Vci

1932 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 + 76 min. / Street Date September 27, 2022 / Available from Mvd / 29.95

Starring: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, Fred Howard, Ben Hendricks Jr., William Gargan, Mary Shaw, Guy Kibbee, Kendall Lee, Beulah Bondi, Matt Moore, Walter Catlett.

Cinematography: Oliver Marsh

Art Director: Richard Day

Film Editor: W. Duncan Mansfield

Original Music: Alfred Newman

Screen adaptation by Maxwell Anderson from the play by John Colton,...

Director/Tfh Guru Allan Arkush discusses his favorite year in film, 1975, with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Rules of the Game (1939)

Le Boucher (1970)

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Topaz (1969)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary

The Innocents (1961) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

The Earrings of Madame De… (1953)

Rope (1948) – Darren Bousman’s trailer commentary

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937) – Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Duck Soup (1933) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Going My Way (1944)

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary

M*A*S*H (1970)

Shampoo (1975) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Nada Gang (1975)

Get Crazy (1983) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Night Moves (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – Katt Shea’s trailer...

Four months after her death in 2021, Jessica Walter became the first deceased performer to earn a Primetime Emmy nomination for voice acting. Her fifth career bid and first for vocal work came for “Archer,” on which she played the titular animated spy’s mother for the last dozen years of her life. After receiving her first posthumous notice for the show’s 11th season last July, she has now been honored with another for its 12th. This makes her the first departed actor ever recognized by the TV academy across multiple years.

Chadwick Boseman, who lost his private battle with cancer in August 2020, is also a 2022 Emmy nominee for voicing his “Black Panther” character, T’Challa, on “What If…?”. This makes him the first deceased male to earn a bid in the Best Character Voice-Over Performance category. The current group of Emmy contenders is only the fourth to include two or more posthumous performers,...

The big-scale Cinerama fantasy once thought unrecoverable is back — a terrific restoration brings us George Pal’s ode to fairy tales, filmed on Bavarian locations with an international cast. Laurence Harvey and Karl Boehm are the brothers that compiled the famed tales of princesses, witches, magic spells and fiery dragons. Their idealized biography is interspersed with three full fairy tale stories, about a magic cloak of invisibility, a cobbler’s helpful elves, and a pair of fearless dragon slayers. The show has dancing, beautiful locations, a sequence with Puppetoons and a terrific animated dragon. Featured stars are Claire Bloom, Walter Slezak, Barbara Eden, Oscar Homolka, Martita Hunt, Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Terry-Thomas and Buddy Hackett; a long-form docu goes into fascinating detail explaining how Dave Strohmaier and Tom March accomplished the mind-boggling restoration.

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1962 / Color / 2:89 widescreen [Smilebox] widescreen / 140 135 min.

The best picture prize is what every studio and filmmaker covets, whether they publicly admit it or not. But, of course, it would help if you had the star power to make it happen. Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett both have proven that they have said star power with the amount of best picture nominees (and winners) they’ve appeared in over their careers. With DiCaprio starring in “Don’t Look Up” alongside Blanchett, who is co-starring in another awards vehicle, “Nightmare Alley,” both stand a solid chance of getting close to — or possibly breaking — a record.

This year, Blanchett’s double feature outings could have her breaking a significant record for female actors. The two-time Oscar-winning actress currently has had a role in seven former Academy nominees: “Elizabeth” (1998), “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Aviator” (2004), “Babel” (2006) and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008). She’s currently tied...

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,...

There seems to be a yearning for nostalgia in entertainment these days, given that our daily headlines are rarely upbeat and heartwarming, what with the country’s deeply ingrained political divisions as well as the ongoing threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. That might be why TV execs have been capitalizing on their audience’s hunger for comfort viewing with revivals of hits from past, ranging from “Sex and the City” and “Dexter” to “The Wonder Years” and “Gossip Girl.”

However, this holiday season will get a one-night only treat when the CW presents a new version of an early ‘70s classic, “The Waltons’ Homecoming.” The two-hour film that airs on November 28 at 8 p.m. features actor Richard Thomas, who played John-Boy in the original CBS TV series that premiered in 1972 for nine seasons and launched six more reunion movies for NBC. Thomas will take over the narrating duties that were...

When not making tons of money collaborating with James Stewart, Anthony Mann directed some really grim westerns. This mini-epic spells out the ugly real-life Code of The West: seizing land and establishing private empires. Walter Huston’s T.C. Jeffords maintains his sprawling fiefdom through economic tyranny (he prints his own money and expects banks to accept it) — and by simple violence, murdering the people that have lived on ‘his’ land for generations. Barbara Stanwyck is the feisty heir who wages generational war on her piratical father. It’s the darkest and most subversive of Huac-era ‘noir’ westerns.

The Furies

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 435

1950 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 109 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 20, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland, Thomas Gomez, Beulah Bondi, Albert Dekker, John Bromfield, Wallace Ford, Blanche Yurka.

Cinematography: Victor Milner

Film Editor: Archie Marshek

Original Music:...

In the Supporting Actress Smackdown series we take a particular Oscar vintage and explore it with a panel of artists and journalists. This episode goes way back to 1938. 

The Actresses & Characters

In 1938 the Academy was still evolving and the "Best Supporting Actress" category was just three years old. Still, their all time favourite type (the long-suffering wife/mom) was already showing its strength. Other then-popular character types like 'the vamp' (Milja Korjus in The Great Waltz) and ditzy/funny moms (Billie Burke in Merrily We Live! and Spring Byington in You Can't Take It With You) didn't stay in vogue with the Academy for as long. In 1938 we also got an historic first: Fay Bainter was the first actor to be double-nominated, competing in both Lead (White Banners) and Supporting (Jezebel) categories simultaneously, winning the latter. Will our panel agree? 

The Panelists

Here to talk about these performances and movies...

Hollywood takes a hard look at the mundane horrors of mental asylums, and Olivia de Havilland scores another career high with her portrayal of a housewife experiencing a nervous breakdown. Some people found the show scary and a few felt it was tasteless, but Ms. de Havilland’s performance is riveting, 71 years later. Anatole Litvak’s intense direction makes good use of expressionistic visual devices, without veering into dippy Salvador Dalí psycho-surrealism.

The Snake Pit

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 108 min. / Street Date April 22, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Glenn Langan, Helen Craig, Leif Erickson, Beulah Bondi, Lee Patrick, Natalie Schafer, Ruth Donnelly, Katherine Locke, Minna Gombell, Ann Doran, Jacqueline deWit, Betsy Blair, Queenie Smith, Virginia Brissac, Marie Blake, Isabel Jewell, Celia Lovsky, Mae Marsh, Doro Merande, Mary Newton, Inez Palange, Mary Treen, Minerva Urecal.

Cinematography:...

The fifth season of “How to Get Away with Murder” would have been incomplete without a guest appearance by Cicely Tyson, who reprised her role as fan favorite Ophelia Harkness in the 13th episode, “Where Are Your Parents?” She’s been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards for this role in Best Drama Guest Actress but has lost them to Margo Martindale, Alexis Bledel, and Samira Wiley, respectively. Will the fourth time be the charm for Tyson?

Tyson already has a whopping 15 Emmy bids and three wins under her belt; she won two for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” in 1974 (Best Movie/Mini Actress and Actress of the Year) and one for “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” in 1994 (Best Movie/Mini Supporting Actress). A Best Actress Oscar nominee for “Sounder” (1972), Tyson received her Honorary Oscar in November and is a Tony winner for “The Trip to Bountiful” (2013).

See Cicely Tyson’s 10 greatest films,...

This season, Cicely Tyson reprised her role as Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) mother, Ophelia Harkness, on Season 4 of ABC’s “How to Get Away With Murder’s.” She was previously nominated at the Emmys for playing this fan-favorite character in 2015 and 2017, but lost to Margo Martindale (“The Americans”) and Alexis Bledel (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), respectively. Can Tyson, 93, finally triumph on her third bid for “Htgawm” and become the oldest actress to win in the Best Drama Guest Actress category, surpassing the current record-holder Beulah Bondi for “The Waltons” (1977)?

SEE2018 Emmy nominations complete list: All the nominees for the 70th Emmy Awards

Tyson isn’t a new name to Emmy voters. In fact, she’s now been nominated a whopping 14 times and has taken home a total of three statuettes: two for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” in 1974 (Best Movie/Mini Actress and Actress of the Year) and...

The 1930s – more films about women, more films about working life. And often the two overlapped. You watch a film made today, it’s brutally clear that the people who made it rarely have to be anywhere In the ‘30s, at the height of the studio system, the entire creative force behind a picture worked 9-5 on the studio lot, just like anyone else. They had a workplace. And while many made a great deal more money than the characters they were depicting, they knew what it was to hold a job. That mindset, that constant awareness of money and office work and routine, bleeds into the pictures of the period.

Take a film like Rafter Romance, which played at TCM Classic Film Festival Friday morning. Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster star as two broke strangers living in the same apartment building (and they say people knew their neighbors back...

Chicago – The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Cso) has come up with the perfect celebration for the pre-holiday weekend, presenting Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life in Concert.” On Dec. 10th and 11th, 2016. The Cso will accompany the soundtrack on a restored version of the film.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

This is “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Iawl) as you’ve never seen it before, restored to a brilliant print and with the original Dimitri Tiomkin soundtrack score enhanced by the majesty of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The film is projected above the orchestra, and with each symphonic moment in the story, the musicians and choral singers take over the music live. Iawl had many variations of themes in the soundtrack, so besides the Tiomkin original score, there are snippets of WW2 songs “Over There” and “This is the Army, Mr. Jones,” along with the holiday songs “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

After a decade of the Dust Bowl destroying crops while rich land owners exploited every little farmer there was, making a film that naively bought into the American dream would seem foolish for any filmmaker. But Jean Renoir could only see hope in the plains, having fled his home to exchange the dreams of Fascism for the dreams of celluloid. While Renoir struggled in Hollywood during the war period, his break came as he went north to Millerton Lake to make The Southerner in 1945. The resulting film follows doe-eyed Zachary Scott, exuding his common-day presence, as Sam Tucker. Tucker, gullible for the promises that hard work means a better life, moves his family from a proto-Days of Heaven cotton-picking existence to a farm of one’s own,...

Looking to discover a top-quality film that honors lasting values? Jean Renoir gives Zachary Scott and Betty Field as Texas sharecroppers trying to survive a rough first year. It's beautifully written by Hugo Butler, with given realistic, earthy touches not found in Hollywood pix. And the transfer is a new UCLA restoration. With two impressive short subjects in equal good quality. The Southerner Blu-ray Kino Classics 1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 92 min. / Street Date February 9, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Betty Field, Beulah Bondi, Carol Naish, Norman Lloyd, Zachary Scott, Percy Kilbride, Charles Kemper, Blanche Yurka, Estelle Taylor, Paul Harvey, Noreen Nash, Nestor Paiva, Almira Sessions. Cinematography Lucien Andriot Film Editor Gregg C. Tallas Production Designer Eugène Lourié Assistant Director Robert Aldrich Original Music Werner Janssen Written by Hugo Butler, Jean Renoir from a novel by George Sessions Perry Produced by Robert Hakim, David L. Loew Directed by Jean Renoir...

I’m happy to host another evening of Walt Disney entertainment on Turner Classic Movies this Thursday night beginning at 8pm Est/5pm Pst and continuing into the wee hours. As always there is a mix of vintage cartoons shorts, TV shows, and feature films with a particular emphasis on Christmas and winter settings. We begin with one of Walt Disney’s loveliest yet least-known features, So Dear to My Heart (1949), starring Bobby Driscoll, Luana Patten, Beulah Bondi, Burl Ives, and Harry Carey, Sr. It’s a charming film that evokes Walt Disney’s youth in the early 20th century as seen through rose-colored glasses. In fact, one might say...

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Prolific Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy continued an impressive output of work during the collapse of the studio system of the 1950s, churning out twelve titles that decade and starting his own production company associated with Warner Bros. Though his career would taper off in the mid-to-late 60s, he was known for a helming a wide variety of genres. However, his later career would see a return to musical inclinations, though not all of them have withstood the tests of time. One such obscure item in his filmography is 1953’s Latin Lovers, an ‘exotic’ romantic pseudo-musical comedy of rich people’s errors starring one of LeRoy’s most famous credited ‘discoveries,’ Lana Turner. Here, she’s swathed in decadent black and white numbers as a woman of impressive and independent financial means, victim to a shared paranoia of the historically sensitive wealthy American in that she believes men only want her for her money.

© 2015 Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced its fall programming slate, beginning with “This Is Duplass: An Evening with Jay and Mark” and “In the Labyrinth: A Conversation with Guillermo del Toro” hosted by Academy Museum Director Kerry Brougher.

Other events to be presented from October through early December include a conversation with Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, a screening of Fellini’s “Amarcord,” a look back at the first days of Disneyland with “Hollywood Home Movies,” a new restoration of 1943’s “Heaven Can Wait,” an Academy Film Scholars Lecture highlighting prolific director Lois Weber, and an anniversary screening of the holiday classic “Remember the Night.”

This Is Duplass: An Evening With Jay And Mark Tuesday, October 6, at 7:30 p.m. Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Beverly Hills Jay and Mark Duplass will take the stage to discuss their smart, off-center and comedic cinematic style,...

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...

'San Andreas' movie with Dwayne Johnson. 'San Andreas' movie box office: $100 million domestic milestone today As the old saying (sort of) goes: If you build it, they will come. Warner Bros. built a gigantic video game, called it San Andreas, and They have come to check out Dwayne Johnson perform miraculous deeds not seen since ... George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, released two weeks earlier. Embraced by moviegoers, hungry for quality, original storylines and well-delineated characters – and with the assistance of 3D surcharges – the San Andreas movie debuted with $54.58 million from 3,777 theaters on its first weekend out (May 29-31) in North America. Down a perfectly acceptable 52 percent on its second weekend (June 5-7), the special effects-laden actioner collected an extra $25.83 million, trailing only the Melissa McCarthy-Jason Statham comedy Spy, (with $29.08 million) as found at Box Office Mojo.* And that's how this original movie – it's not officially a remake,...

One can’t ignore a certain irony that Leo McCarey, director of one of the most irrefutably sorrowful motion pictures with 1937’s Make Way For Tomorrow, was actually well renowned for his comedic ventures, like that same year’s The Awful Truth or the most beloved of the Marx Brothers films with Duck Soup (1933). In the decades since its release, the film has recently come to be recognized for its influence on several filmmakers, including Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) and Ira Sachs’ Love is Strange (2014). Filmed during the Great Depression, yet without specific references to the significant economic downturn, the film has a timeless resonance that feels particularly fitting for our contemporary existence.

Though not cemented in Western culture, there’s a particular tendency for this depiction to transpire within the landscape of white, capitalistic peoples and their insistence on stuffing their elders into nursing home facilities. The film...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

A dazzling lineup of six dramas has been assembled for the Criterion Collection's May 2015 slate. Along with works from classic filmmakers and actors, special features in the set (Blu-ray only) include interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, Bernardo Bertolucci, Wim Wenders and many more. Booking individual titles begins in mid-April, and Criterion will release the films for general purchase in mid-May. Synopses below are courtesy of Criterion. "Make Way for Tomorrow" "Make Way for Tomorrow," by Leo McCarey ("An Affair to Remember"), is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. Beulah Bondi ("It's a Wonderful Life") and Victor Moore ("Swing Time") headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and...

Jean Arthur films on TCM include three Frank Capra classics Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, January 5, 2015, on Turner Classic Movies, including three directed by Frank Capra, the man who helped to turn Arthur into a major Hollywood star. They are the following: Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; George Stevens' The More the Merrier; and Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night. One the most effective performers of the studio era, Jean Arthur -- whose film career began inauspiciously in 1923 -- was Columbia Pictures' biggest female star from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s, when Rita Hayworth came to prominence and, coincidentally, Arthur's Columbia contract expired. Today, she's best known for her trio of films directed by Frank Capra, Columbia's top director of the 1930s. Jean Arthur-Frank Capra...

Tomorrow when the Supporting Actress Smackdown 1941 hits, we'll just be discussing the five nominees (24 more hours to get your ballots in for the reader's section of the vote!). As it should be. But for the first time in a Smackdown I polled my fellow panelists as to who they would have nominated if, uh, they'd have been alive in 1941 and if, uh, they'd been AMPAS members.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde lust after Lana Turner & Ingrid Bergman. And so does our panel.

Angelica and I didn't vote (I haven't seen enough 1941 pictures, I confess) but our other three panelists have recommendations for you outside the Oscar shortlist. In fact, all three of them only co-signed 2 of Oscar's 5 choices... different ones mostly so the Smackdown should be interesting (I'm not telling you which as the critiques come tomorrow!). So here are some For Your Considerations for your rental queues or your...

My mother would have preferred a mother more like Beulah Bondi in "It’s a Wonderful Life." My daughters would have preferred a mother more like Susan Sarandon in "Little Women" or Natasha Richardson in "The Parent Trap." Much as I love Barbara Stanwyck in "Stella Dallas" and Claudia McNeil in "Raisin in the Sun," I would have preferred a mother more like Frances McDormand in "Almost Famous" or like Marcia Gay Harden in "Whip It" than the one I had and loved and was more like Debbie Reynolds in Albert Brooks’ "Mother." I’ve been reading Richard Corliss’ "Mom in the Movies," a sprightly survey of cinemamas, as though it were a catalogue of mail-order moms. Read more here.

As promised last week, here’s the list of my favorite Christmas movies, starting with all my very favorite-est…

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). Directed by Frank Capra, who declared it his favorite of all his films and showed it every Christmas at his home, it stars James Stewart as “everyman” George Bailey, Donna Reed as his wife Mary Hatch Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as the banker Mr. Potter, and a veritable Who’s Who of notable character actors, including Beulah Bondi as Ma Bailey, Thomas Mitchell as Uncle Billy, Ward Bond as Bert the cop, Frank Faylen as Ernie the cab driver, Gloria Grahame as Violet the “bad” girl, Sheldon Leonard as Nick the bartender, and Harry Travers in the pivotal role of the angel Clarence Odbody. The story of an ordinary man who lives an ordinary life, driven to despair of having his dreams crushed once and for all...

The drama, the joy, the laughter: Can we all agree to live-tweet The Sound of Music Live again this weekend? NBC might be planning to stage live musicals "again and again and again,” but they'll also be playing the ones they've already aired a whole bunch, starting with a Sound of Music Live rerun Saturday, December 14 at 8 .m. Variety points out that the encore showing will preempt It's A Wonderful Life, which is too bad. We've been saving up our Beulah Bondi zingers all year long.

What if George Bailey (James Stewart) took that job Potter offered him? He would have become The Wolf of Bedford Falls. Frank Capra's timeless classic It's a Wonderful Life gets a Martin Scorsese makeover in this new trailer tailored after The Wolf of Wall Street. Check out this updated version just in time for the holidays, from comedian Owne Weber.

It's a Wonderful Life was released January 7th, 1947 and stars James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond. The film is directed by Frank Capra.

The Wolf of Wall Street comes to theaters December 25th, 2013 and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, Margot Robbie, Jonah Hill, Cristin Milioti, Jon Bernthal, Ethan Suplee, Jon Favreau. The film is directed by Martin Scorsese.

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ sequel could get killed by Paramount (photo: James Stewart and Donna Reed in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’) What would the world be like if any one individual human being had never been born? In most cases, the world would quite possibly be an infinitely better place, but the overwhelming majority of (delusional) humans want to feel good about themselves and their place on our overpopulated, fast-rotting planet. Hence movies such as Frank Capra’s 1946 sentimental fantasy drama It’s a Wonderful Life, released the year after the end of World War II — which reportedly left about 60 million human beings dead (plus countless other non-humans), in addition to millions more maimed, homeless, and/or psychologically destroyed. Starring James Stewart as Small Town America family man George Bailey, who almost kills himself but is prevented from doing so by an angel with way too much time in his hands,...

Star Partners and Hummingbird Productions are teaming up for a sequel to the 1946 Frank Capra holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.

The follow-up, entitled It's a Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story, follows the unlikeable grandson of James Stewart's George Bailey. Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey's daughter Zuzu in the original, will play an angel who shows the grandson, also named George Bailey, how life would be better if he had never been born. Karolyn Grimes delivered the famous line "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings" in It's a Wonderful Life, which followed George Bailey's near-suicide attempt on Christmas Eve, before his guardian angel intervened.

Hummingbird's Bob Farnsworth and Martha Bolton wrote the screenplay, with Farnsworth also producing alongside Star Partners' Allen J. Schwalb. The producers are hoping to get the sequel in theaters by Christmas 2015. Here's what Bob Farnsworth had to say about the story.