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From Romeo and Juliet to Rick and Ilsa, passionate romances have captured the public's fascination for millennia. The earliest on-screen romance dates all the way back to 1896 and a 30-second film called The May Irwin Kiss directed by William Heise that features two lovers cuddling and kissing. Fast-forward to the 21st century and the popularity of romance movies has not waned.

The romantic genre is one of the most popular in the film industry, dating back to the time when the first movies were ever made. 1896's The May Irwin Kiss (directed by William Heise) was one of the first pieces of filmmaking that introduced the genre to audiences. To this day, it remains a beloved one in the industry, mostly given the way it provides audiences with touching, compelling, and, at times, genre-bending stories that feature relatable characters.

In the beginning, there was light. And then, there were movies. And then, not long after that, there were people who watched those movies and snarked, “Well, that’s two hours I’ll never get back”. As Charlie Kaufman is fond of pointing out, however, every two hours is two hours that you’ll never get back. It doesn’t matter if a movie is good or bad or anything in between: At the end of the day, we cannot hoard our time.

And yet, for all of the truth contained in that wisdom, certain films make it almost impossible to shake the feeling that cinema — the most palpably fourth-dimensional of all popular art forms — possesses an unrivaled ability to make us appreciate how we can waste it. Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is nothing if not one of those films.

A star-studded comedy of terrors that boasts more A-list celebrities than actual laughs,...

The Ride director Stéphanie Gillard at an Amanda Parer Intrude rabbit Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Executive produced by Rouge International's Nadia Turincev and Julie Gayet (of The French Minister (Quai D’Orsay), directed by Bertrand Tavernier, based on Antonin Baudry's graphic novels), Stéphanie Gillard's The Ride with expansive cinematography by Martin de Chabaneix and atmospheric sound recording by Erwan Kerzanet (Léos Carax's unholy Holy Motors and Catherine Breillat's unflinching Fat Girl) takes us on the 300 mile pilgrimage on horseback of the Lakota people through the Badlands of South Dakota.

The Ride

Jim Harrison's novels, Arthur Penn's Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman, Misty Upham and Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian, William Heise and William K.L. Dickson's Sioux Ghost Dance for Thomas Edison, and how the filming of The Ride became a personal journey are explored in my conversation with the...

Terrence Malick is having a busy week, which for the director who formerly took ages between films, must rank among his busiest. Malick has first been working on a documentary called Voyage of Time that will incorporate footage from The Tree of Life and be “a celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse,” according to a press release via HitFix. One version of the film will be just 40 minutes long, will feature narration by Brad Pitt, and will appear on IMAX screens. Another longer version will appear in traditional theaters and will be narrated by Cate Blanchett. Neither version has a release date just yet but are being planned for 2016.

His latest film however, Knight of Cups, is about to premiere at the Berlinale on February 8 (watch the trailer here), and the full plot revealed for the film sounds perfectly Malick-esque.

Hosted by Open City Cinema, the 2nd annual Winnipeg Underground Film Festival will be a raucous three-day celebration of fantastic avant-garde and experimental short films and videos from around the world. This year’s edition will run on June 27-29.

The fest opens on June 27 at 7:00 p.m. with a unique bang of an idea: “The 90 Second.” This is a program super-duper short films collected from all over the world, from right in the fest’s hometown of Winnipeg to Auckland to Chicago to London and numerous points in between.

Another one of the fest’s main highlights is a two-part celebration of the work of prolific Canadian film artist Mike Hoolboom. Two programs of two short films each will be featured. The first runs on June 28 at 3:30 p.m. with the films Frank’s Cock and Tom; and the second will close the fest on June 28 at 8:00 p.

Sometimes, the best things in life happen by accident. In the case of Thomas Edison, the legendary inventor created an experimental film meant to test his early motion picture exhibition device, the Kinetoscope. In doing so, Edison unwittingly created the first movie created in the U.S. The Kinetoscope was made so that viewers could watch a movie through a peephole at the top of the device, while a filmstrip was fed at a rapid speed over a light source. Fellow inventor William K.L. Dickson and 19th-century director-cinematographer William Heise assisted Edison with the movie Monkeyshines, No. 1 (not to be confused with the 1988 George A. Romero horror film, eek!), which features one of Edison's employees dancing about. The film test was not created for commercial...

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Before we get further, this article was made for both diehard film fanatics and those just discovering the wonder of early cinema. If you fall into the former category, I suggest bookmarking this and returning after you see Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo. The director has included endless nods to the films that made him who he is and it is a joy to see their inclusion in his adventure film.

If you fall into the latter category, get caught up with my rundown of the classic films most prominently featured in his magical ode to the beginnings of the medium. Check them all out below where they are also free to stream in their entirety, unless otherwise noted.

Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor; 1923)

Not only is the homage directly on the theatrical poster and in the actual film, but our lead characters go see this silent classic featuring...

Note: Hugo was screened at the New York Film Festival as a work-in-progress with color correction, sound mixing, titles, 3D and visual effects not fully complete. Check out my detailed impressions below, but look for a full review on the final film when it releases next month.

Being a film lover and director go hand in hand, but it is difficult to find a more passionate, well-educated cinema historian than Martin Scorsese. The director of classics such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull has a seemingly endless knowledge of the medium, frequently noting the influence that filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Italian neo-realist pieces such as The Bicycle Thieves have had on him. One can see the profound effect in his filmmaking, with such a firm control on and expertise in the medium coming through his frames. By presiding over a film preservation foundation, the auteur also hopes the profound...

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

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

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

Sept. 8

7:30 p.m.

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way

Berkeley, CA 94720

Hosted by: Pacific Film Archive

To mark the 10th anniversary of the release of the massive underground and obscure film DVD collection Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film, 1893-1941, curator Bruce Posner presents a night of obscure and rarely publicly screened films, including several classics of the avant-garde.

Included in the program is what is considered the first underground film produced in the U.S.: Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta. Completed in 1921, Manhatta is a visual poem celebrating the architecture of NYC.

During that same time period, the early avant-garde was in full swing in Europe and tonight’s program will also include several of that era’s most famous works, such as Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma, and Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique. (To...