The turn of the 21st century was ruled by a particular kind of comedic heroine. Blond hair, a bubbly personality, and an exposed midriff were mandatory, and the brand of feminism espoused was primarily about sexual confidence and unfettered ambition. This was the era of Reese Witherspoon in...

Director Michael Ritchie veered from character studies to commercial comedies, but throughout his filmography, the subject of sports (and a cynical approach to it) was a constant.

Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel (released 30 years ago today) still plays like gangbusters, thought its subtext serves as a subtle reminder of the “stranger danger” era.

Pump Up the Volume never capitulates. In its opening scene, a law-breaking teenage radio DJ who goes by the moniker Hard Harry ( known for excessive masturbation during his illegal missives) wonders, “You ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?” The defiance of...

The duality that defines Agnés Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 is present from, quite literally, its opening frames: a title sequence in which our protagonist goes for a tarot card reading, and the writer/director both lays out the themes that will consume her interest for the next 90 minutes, and...

The gloomier the world gets, the more lugubrious the art reflecting it becomes. The world has never witnessed a calamity of the scale of the Holocaust, a disaster purely propelled by hate; eleven million humans never saw the light at end of the tunnel they were physically and figuratively shoved...

Death be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,And...

“If everybody want to stick together, I stick with ‘em. But if nobody want to stick together, I stick alone, by myself.”   -Sven Hansen In 1947, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (because of course there was one), a political activism group that Walt...

It’s one of the most striking openings in cinema history: A burly, shirtless man in a black hood stokes a brazier, heating up a branding tool which will be used to sear the letter “S” into the flesh of accused vampire Princess Asa Vadja, who is being executed for her crimes alongside her...

You probably are not giving much thought to either The Expendables, an Avengers-style roundup of action stars with AARP cards, or Eat Pray Love, a travelogue of white feminism, as they approach their tenth anniversaries on August 13. (As you shouldn’t.) The movies have deservedly faded from...

“That twinkle in your eye,” Clark Gable marvels at Carole Lombard in No Man of Her Own. “Wrap it up for me, will you?” It’s a moment of unguarded onscreen thirst, and watching the film now, as part of KL Studio Classics’ new “Carole Lombard Collection I,” it functions on multiple...

Few films aimed at children have made the case for the value of every life as clearly as Babe did in 1995. Yes, that Babe—the film about the pig who acted like a sheepdog, with the talking animals, and the chapter-style format mimicking the storybook upon which the film was based (The Sheep-Pig...

Few artists can plan a career for themselves, especially in the uncertain world of filmmaking. Most work has to be taken as it’s offered, which is why so many artists end up jacks of all trades. This was certainly the case with Ennio Morricone, who began his career not in films but in a variety...

Like The Stepford Wives, I’d avoided the original Rollerball due to a flaw over which it had no responsibility: spawning an unapologetically terrible remake. So, like Stepford, its recent appearance on Amazon Prime prompted an overdue first watch for Norman Jewison’s futuristic sports drama,...

Harry Palmer’s personal file reads like a permanent record: “Insubordinate, insolent, a trickster...perhaps with criminal tendencies.” When his new boss, another stiff-upper-lip with a patriotic apathy for human life, reads it back to him, Palmer cocks a proper Jack-the-Lad grin and admits,...