Having first become entranced with the ethereal beauty and outsize talent of Catherine Deneuve over half a century ago, it’s astounding to think this stunningly gifted French actress just turned 80.  ..read more

Great movies about oppressive societies can help put it all in perspective, inspiring us to protect the freedoms we too often take for granted, through activism — or, simply and crucially, the vote ..read more

Just last month, Robert De Niro turned eighty, a milestone that came and went without much fuss. It may well be that famously private actor didn’t want any. However, this moment reflects another milestone, marking a half century since De Niro broke out as a screen actor with two indelible performances, first in “Bang the Drum Slowly” playing a terminally ill baseball catcher, second as the unhinged Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets ..read more

Today the concept of someone writing and directing their own films is, if not commonplace, hardly unusual. Specific examples immediately pop: Billy Wilder, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, and more recently, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Spike Lee, and Quentin Tarantino. A quick Google search yields many more prominent names. So it’s hard to imagine that way back in the thirties, during Hollywood’s Golden Age, there was no such animal. Writers and directors were kept in different silos, and never the ‘twain met ..read more

I wonder how many people under forty learned of Alan Arkin’s passing last month and thought,  “Oh, that’s sad, it’s that funny old guy from the ‘Kominsky Method’!” Of course, they might also remember him from two hits made in this century: “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006), which brought him a late-career Supporting Actor Oscar, and Ben Affleck’s “Argo” (2012), which also earned him a nomination ..read more

“Orson Welles lists ‘Citizen Kane’ as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for ‘Shadow of a Doubt’, and Sir Carol Reed chose ‘The Third Man’ - and I'm in all of them.” Those are the words of Joseph Cotten, perhaps the finest screen actor never to be nominated for an Oscar. The more time passes, the more it feels like a serious oversight ..read more

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable ..read more

Netflix, the world’s largest streaming service with over 220 million subscribers worldwide, enjoyed a stellar Oscar night this year, picking up six Oscars out of a total of 16 nominations.  ..read more

Now as before, all the noise and hype around these major commercial titles can distract us from a few smaller gems released in the past year. So below I’ve compiled a list of nine outstanding “under the radar” films from ‘22, including three narrative features from overseas, and three documentaries. If you’re just hearing about some of them now, then I’m doing my job. Here’s to lots more great movies — big and small — in ’23 ..read more

Today his name may be familiar only to film buffs, scholars and students, but some of Fritz Lang's movies have never really left us. For the most part his work explored nefarious doings in society’s criminal underbelly. But he also gave us our first real science fiction epic (1927’s “Metropolis ..read more