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There are many different ways to measure a terrific film awards season.

Last year, “Barbenheimer” put two billion-dollar blockbusters at the center of the awards chatter. “Barbie” settled for an Oscar and a “box office achievement” Golden Globe, while “Oppenheimer” fulfilled its promise as the first (much-needed) awards season megahit and awards juggernaut in many years. Besides sweeping up multiple Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s opus also garnered both Oscar and Golden Globe best picture wins.

Twenty-five years ago, the Oscar race was a Weinstein-era slugfest for best picture, with the Harvey-handled “Shakespeare in Love” keeping Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” out of the top Oscar perch, while both films took home Golden Globe best picture trophies. This year has been knocked by some critics and some awards season pundits as perhaps not one for the history books, with a less than stellar lineup of key contenders.

What’s it like to grow up the son of Hollywood legends? Stephen Bogart, whose parents left him for six months even after his nanny dropped dead, reveals how he finally shook off the past

In the spring of 1951, Humphrey Bogart flew across the Atlantic to make The African Queen, John Huston’s classic Technicolor yarn about an odd couple on a boat. He took his wife, Lauren Bacall. He took his whisky and his cigarettes. But he left his two-year-old son in the care of the nanny, reasoning that the jungle was dangerous and that he’d only be gone for six months. Bogart and Bacall waved goodbye from the airport gangplank. The kid waved back from the employee’s arms. And it was at this moment, as the plane left the runway, that the nanny had a brain haemorrhage and dropped dead on the tarmac.

Stephen Bogart takes up the tale.

No two actors shaped the role of James Bond as profoundly as Sean Connery and Daniel Craig. Connery was the first to bring him to life, and Craig saw him die. Both were physically imposing—Connery the ex-bodybuilder, and Craig with “that beautiful boxer’s face.” Both were in their...

With every awards season comes something new: emerging talent, groundbreaking technology, fresh storylines. This season, at least six new directors hit the ground running. Actor Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List, Matilda and The Morning Show) wrote and made her feature directorial debut, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, about a white Zimbabwean family following the Rhodesian Bush War; actor Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire, Fargo, American Hustle), a grandson of John Huston, wrote and helmed the boxing drama Day of the Fight; Malcolm Washington, son of Denzel Washington, co-wrote and directed The Piano Lesson, based on the August Wilson play; cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Black Panther, Mudbound) jumped behind the camera for The Fire Inside,another boxing movie; Josh Margolin wrote and directed Thelma, based on something that happened to his grandmother; and film editor William Goldenberg (Argo, Zero Dark Thirty) helmed Unstoppable, about a boxer born with one leg.

In...

Clint Eastwood might've appeared in 14 films after "Unforgiven" but his Oscar-winning directorial effort really does feel like a fond farewell to the genre that defined his career in front of the camera. For many, his stint as Will Munny, a worn down gunman making one last stand, sits as one of his finest and he could've hung up his acting hat for good there and then in one of the best Western movies of all time. For his co-star, Morgan Freeman, though, there's an earlier role rooted in Eastwood's time in the Old West that outshines even that.

Speaking to Rotten Tomatoes in 2023, the five-time Oscar nominee (one of which he won for his performance in Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"), was asked about his favorite films. Of his five truly fascinating choices, one of them was Eastwood's own cold-blooded 1976 cowboy movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales." The film saw Easwood play the titular character,...

Max’s Ted Turner documentary series likes itself some Ted Turner. The trailer for the new docuseries “Call Me Ted” selects a few phrases to shower the media mogul with praise: “Mogul,” “Adventurer,” “Rebel,” “Risk Taker,” “Showman,” “Philanthropist,” and “Genius.”

But it’s not just the filmmakers who had glowing words about Turner, who is 85. His ex-wife Jane Fonda in trailer called him a “legend” and an “American hero”; U2 frontman Bono said Turner was “way more rock and roll than I am.”

Probably right around here we should point out that Max and the Turner cable channels (like TBS and TNT) share a parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. Turner has been a part of all the Warner Bros. iterations since 1996; HBO was part of Time Warner. Ted Turner himself though left the business about 20 years ago.

“Call Me Ted” takes audiences back to 1980 when Turner founded CNN, the first 24-hour cable news channel.

Jack Huston is no stranger to the movie business. So when the longtime actor and grandson of filmmaker John Huston launched his directorial debut — the boxing drama “Day of the Fight” — to good reviews at last year’s Venice Film Festival, he knew it would still be tough to find distribution in today’s theatrical marketplace. But he had no idea how tough a fight it would be.

“We took on a sort of impossible feat by making a black-and-white period movie starring Michael Pitt,” Huston says of his film, which boasts supporting turns from Joe Pesci, Ron Perlman and Steve Buscemi. ”People walk out of this film so joyous, even [reps from] the biggest distributors. But some of these companies aren’t contractually allowed to take on black-and-white movies, which to me is the death of art. I put everything into this movie, so when it came to distribution, I said,...

Our odyssey through the work of Michael Caine reaches a grim nadir: the 1984 comedy Blame It On Rio. Brace yourselves, readers.

Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah and Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws: The Revenge) whilst continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape to Victory).

Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…

Spoilers for Blame it on Rio lay ahead…

Directed by:

Stanley Donen

Tagline:

This had multiple taglines, starting innocuous enough but I became increasingly uneasy as they went on…...

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.

Orson Welles was nearly as famous for the movies he never finished as the masterpieces he made. For decades,...

Purists will argue that film noir was born in 1941 with the release of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and died in 1958 with Marlene Dietrich traipsing down a long, dark, lonely road at the end of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. And while this period contains the quintessence of what Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank originally characterized as film noir, the genre has always been in a constant state of flux, adapting to the different times and cultures out of which these films emerged.

Noir came into its own alongside the ravages of World War II, with the gangster and detective films of the era drastically transforming into something altogether new as the aesthetics of German Expressionism took hold in America, and in large part due to the influx of German expatriates like Fritz Lang. These already dark, hardboiled films suddenly gained a newfound viciousness and sense of ambiguity,...

It’s been almost 60 years since Ron Howard last played that lovable scamp Opie on “The Andy Griffith Show,” but the Oscar-winning filmmaker still carries the hit television show in his heart to this day. In announcing his TCM Picks for November, Howard began by honoring his TV father, the late Andy Griffith, with the selection of Elia Kazan’s 1957 satire, “A Face in the Crowd.”

“It’s significance has grown tremendously over the decades, both as a distinct piece of cinema and an increasingly relevant social commentary,” Howard said in the video below. “Most personal to me is Andy Griffith’s performance as the central figure, Lonesome Rhodes, an easygoing folk singer who’s transformed by a media producer into a populist figure who’s changing the face of politics.”

Howard goes on to explain how Griffith was the second choice behind Kazan’s regular leading man Marlon Brando,...

Jack Nicholson has been known to be one of the biggest legends in Hollywood, but the actor was also infamous for something else. The Shining actor was very outgoing and allegedly frequented parties. One older incident involving the actor cracked audiences.

Kevin Spacey has worked with some of the most well-known names in the industry and he heard a lot through the pipeline. The Outbreak actor narrated a funny incident involving the star which was told to him by a soundman. The story mentioned one of his biggest flops that also starred Marlon Brando, The Missouri Breaks.

Jack Nicholson and his love for ‘coke’: The epic story

Kevin Spacey appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast where the actor sat down to discuss his past filmography and other controversies. While talking about the older days, the Control actor remembered a hilarious Jack Nicholson story.

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Ahhh, fall. It’s finally here. The leaves are dropping, pumpkin spice is in the air (and everyone’s coffee), and the holidays are close enough where we’re all either rushing to get our work done before the end of the year or starting to wind down in hopes that people will soon stop bothering us. It’s a magical time, especially with new awards contenders like “Anora” and “Conclave” finally releasing to wide audiences, but let’s not forget that older films deserve some love too. Especially around Thanksgiving, a holiday specifically designed for reflection. What better way to celebrate than looking back on some classics of cinema, both the widely seen and the obscure.

While October may have provided the spooks in New York and Los Angeles repertory theaters, November aims to calm things down with light offerings for youngsters like “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,...

Luca Guadagnino and Lionsgate announced that the “Call Me by Your Name” and “Queer” director is in final discussions to film a new version of Bret Eason Ellis’ dark horror novel “American Psycho,” nearly 25 years after the same company released Mary Harron’s satirical adaptation. In a key role that elevated his career, the 2000 film starred Christian Bale as yuppie investment banker-turned-serial killer Patrick Bateman.

It’s the kind of announcement destined to raise eyebrows. Guadagnino is in a career sweet spot after “Challengers” and “Queer” this year (and “After the Hunt” in post); he already has many projects in the works, including “Separate Rooms” with Josh O’Connor and a Thomas Mann adaptation in early development. So why is he choosing a remake — and for a film that doesn’t seem that long ago?

New versions of older films are not unusual. Even the word “remake” is tricky here — does that apply with adaptations?...

Exclusive: The life of legendary author Ernest Hemingway is set to become a ten-part TV drama.

LA’s Avatar Entertainment has secured rights to Mary V. Dearborn’s Ernest Hemingway: A Biography and was at MIPCOM this week shopping the project to buyers. Larry Robinson, Head of Avatar Entertainment, will exec produce the series.

Dearborn’s 750-page biography follows the author’s life from his middle-class childhood in Oak Park, Illinois, to his life as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, his career as a journalist in Chicago, his life among other preeminent authors in Paris and the establishment of Hemingway as the world’s most famous novelists. Gersh represents the Hemingway estate, but Dearborn’s book about the author’s life sit outside of that.

The biography, which has received praise from The Washington Post as “the most fully faceted portrait of Hemingway now available,” extensively...

On Friday, Oct. 19, Variety partnered with the Santa Fe International Film festival to celebrate its 10 Screenwriters to Watch. All 10 recipients gathered at Santa Fe’s Lensic Performing Arts Center for a lively conversation about their path to screenwriting and the work that earned them their place on Variety’s annual list of the most promising up-and-coming scribes in the entertainment industry.

The panel began with a conversation about the films that first made them want to be screenwriters — and in some cases, exposed them to the idea that writing for film and television was a job they could pursue. Among their responses, “Fancy Dance” co-screenwriter Miciana Alise named John Huston’s “Annie” (“Carol Burnett just takes up the whole screen”), while her partner Erica Tremblay remembered “The Last Emperor” making a lasting impression; Noah Pink (“Eden”) said “Jurassic Park;” Tory Kamen (“Eleanor the Great”) and Nora Garrett (“After the Hunt”) agreed that “Juno,...

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,...

Clint Eastwood's Hollywood career officially began in 1955 when he made a brief, uncredited appearance as a lab technician in Jack Arnold's "Revenge of the Creature." Nine years later, unhappy as a midlevel television star on the CBS Western series "Rawhide," he jetted off to Spain to make a different kind of Western with a very different kind of director named Sergio Leone. The result, "A Fistful of Dollars," changed the face of the genre forever, and set Eastwood down the path to becoming a filmmaker in his own right.

Eastwood's directing career got off to a curiously assured start with the wildly suspenseful thriller "Play Misty for Me," in which the tough, swaggering star of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Dirty Harry" played a victimized Bay Area disc jockey. No one expected this from Eastwood, and it's fair to say no one saw this hugely...

Prime Video’s “Killer Heat” is a new mystery thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Nick Bali, a private investigator. It shows Nick traveling to Greece to investigate the shocking death of a wealthy man named Leo Vardakis. Nick is hired by Penelope, Leo’s identical twin brother’s wife. The film takes place entirely on a scenic island and relies on the moodiness of the setting as it unravels new bits of information. It seems heavily inspired by the Hollywood noir classics that redefined the genre conventions decades ago. Fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and movies like “Killer Heat,” featuring slow-burn mysteries, can check out this thriller on Prime Video.

This 2024 film is based on Jo Nesbø’s short story – “The Jealousy Man.” The film is directed by Philippe Lacôte, known for directing “Night of the Kings,” a critically acclaimed fantasy drama. Besides Gordon-Levit, the film also stars Shailene Woodley and...

Roman Polanski's 1974 neo-noir "Chinatown" is so good that many lump it together with the great first-wave noir films of the 1940s. Polanski presented it as a throwback genre, but included all the modern style -- and in-vogue cynicism -- that the 1970s had to offer. Unusual for the genre, "Chinatown" also delved into the rather boring world of Los Angeles utility politics, and how merely diverting the water supply from one part of the city to another can reveal a web of corruption, murder, and sexual abuse. 

Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a too-smart-for-all-this private investigator who tends to make a living catching cheating spouses. Jake is confronted by a socialite named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), who points out that his tailing of her husband Hollis led to his death. Evelyn hires Jake to investigate Hollis' death, assuming it to be a murder. From there, Jake discovers a tapestry...

Although Nicole Kidman recently accepted the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in recognition of her four-decade acting career, there is no indication that her life’s work is anywhere near finished. Indeed, according to Gold Derby’s racetrack odds, the 56-year-old is well on her way to picking up her sixth Oscar nomination for her lead performance in the critically acclaimed “Babygirl,” which would make her the 13th AFI honoree to subsequently earn film academy recognition in a competitive category.

The fact that Kidman’s life achievement award was presented by her pal and costar, Meryl Streep, is quite fitting given that she’s the only woman to go from being an AFI recipient to an Oscar contender. Since receiving the AFI honor in 2004, she has racked up a whopping eight bids, including a successful one for “The Iron Lady” (2012). A previous champ for “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1980) and...

For producer Barry Navidi, Johnny Depp’s directorial comeback “Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness” marks a full-circle moment in an unconventional career.

Navidi’s first time working with Depp nearly 30 years ago on the 1995 project “Divine Rapture” ended in disappointment when the production was shelved. But on Tuesday, the two will celebrate a high with the world premiere of “Modi” at San Sebastian Film Festival.

Set in war-torn Paris in 1916, “Modi” follows 72 turbulent hours in the life of bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani (Riccardo Scamarcio). Fleeing the police and contemplating leaving the city, Modi is convinced to stay by his fellow artists. After a night of hallucinations, he encounters American collector Maurice Gangnat (Pacino), who could change his life forever.

Born in pre-revolution Iran, Navidi grew up watching Hollywood and Indian films. One that made an impression was “The Godfather,” starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. “Call it fate,...

Plot: In the aftermath of WW2, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survived the holocaust, emigrates to America. While there, he gets a taste of the American dream from a wealthy benefactor (Guy Pearce), although success may carry a price too difficult to bear.

Review: It would be fair to say there hasn’t been a movie like The Brutalist in about forty years. One-time actor Brady Corbet, who emerged as a director following The Childhood of a Leader and the underrated Vox Lux, makes movies in the vein of David Lean, with this telling a deeply personal story on an epic scale the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. Shooting in 70mm VistaVision, The Brutalist is a three-and-a-half hour masterwork (with an intermission) that will go a long way towards establishing Corbett as one of the great modern directors.

Indeed, The Brutalist...

Back in 2016, Moma curator Dave Kehr programmed a series of restorations and rediscoveries from the early days of sound at Universal Studios. Across the country in Los Angeles, film historian Leonard Maltin looked at the schedule with envy and longing. “My mouth was watering,” Maltin told IndieWire. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t just fly to New York and set up a futon in the lobby so I could go to all the films he was screening.”

Luckily, Maltin was able to see some of the films back in Hollywood when Universal archivist Bob O’Neil allowed him to sit in on screenings that had been set up to check answer prints. “I saw dozens of them,” Maltin said. “Some were good, many were unmemorable or downright bad, but every now and then I got lucky and found a real winner.”

Maltin wanted to share his discoveries with the Los Angeles film community,...

John Huston’s The African Queen, starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, is heading to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray this October.

Ah, now here’s a flat out classic vintage movie that’s now been confirmed for its 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray debut. From director John Huston comes the joyful The African Queen, a 1951 movie that paired up Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.

Robert Morley co-stars, and the film itself is a rollicking action adventure. I’ve said this before talking about movies like North By Northwest in the past, but The African Queen is the kind of movie that I wonder gets overlooked by some because it’s a) old and b) acclaimed. In this case, it’s as fun as a summer blockbuster movie, and few people get to the end and think they’ve wasted 105 minutes of their life.

Anyway, back to the 4K release, that had been rumoured for some time.

In life and in cinema, Pedro Almodóvar likes to talk about death. When people aren’t losing their faculties in his films––like going blind (Folle… folle… fólleme Tim!), falling into comas (Talk to Her), or falling apart altogether (The Skin I Live In)––they dwell on the afterlife or are already there (Volver), though never is it a cause for undue solemnity. Speaking in a New Yorker profile in 2016, the director recalled watching the local woman in his hometown of Calzada chatting as they tended to their families’ graves. “Death disappeared,” Almodóvar explained, “because the important thing was the flowers, the conversations.”

That sentiment is alive and well in the director’s latest death film. His first-ever English-language feature, adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through mostly in structure only, The Room Next Door stars Tilda Swinton as the terminally ill named Martha who decides...

Elegant and confounding in equivalent measure, Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature could’ve used a finishing touch from an American script supervisor. Adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through” — and the second mounting of a Nunez book this fall season alongside David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s “The Friend” — “The Room Next Door” is mannered in a way that doesn’t feel purposeful, stilted and stiff where it should be sumptuous, and aches of the feeling that the Spanish auteur passed his sensibility, and his script, through a direct-to-English transferal that lacks the nuances that, say, a bilingual literary translator would bring to a text brought from Europe to the United States. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, playing longtime friends who reunite as the latter decides to give up stage-three cancer treatment to choose euthanasia instead, move and speak as if in different films.

Moore...

Closing out an epilogue that, in turn, caps the 3.5-hour experience that is “The Brutalist,” a certain character looks straight to the camera to deliver a kind of valediction. “It is the destination, not the journey,” they say, though the sentiment doesn’t wholly ring true. Far from it, for the journey is every bit as enthralling in this American epic of assimilation, immigration and industry, while the peculiar rhythms and idiosyncrasies of director Brady Corbet’s storytelling make the film a real standout of this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Split between two chapters, bookended by overture and epilogue and divided by an intermission, “The Brutalist” could be described as novelistic in both form and function. Following a digressive approach more common to the page, Corbet and co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold (who directed the 2020 Venice standout “The World to Come”) embroider a sprawling narrative with quirks and asides, using a...

Plot: A young man (Bill Skarsgard) returns from the dead to avenge his girlfriend’s murder.

Review: Rupert Sanders’s The Crow is one of the more controversial would-be big-budget blockbusters (they hope) in some time. The rights holders to the property have spent over a decade trying to relaunch James O’Barr’s classic antihero. While there was initially some enthusiasm from fans when It star Bill Skarsgard was cast in the lead, they didn’t care for the character’s look when it was revealed, and many dismissed the trailer as Crow-Wick and a stain on the memory of the original Brandon Lee classic.

But, here’s the thing – outside of the first movie by Alex Proyas, there’s never been another good Crow movie. In fact, there have been some genuinely abysmal ones, so it’s strange fans have all of a sudden gotten so precious about a...

“Chinatown”, directed by Roman Polanski, starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary, with a fresh 4K Ultra HD release, now available:

“…Jack Nicholson is private eye ‘Jake Gittes’, living off the murky moral climate of sunbaked pre-war Southern California.

“Hired by a beautiful socialite (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband’s extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits…

“…as he uncovers a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together in one unforgettable night…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Peter Marshall, the multiple Emmy Award-winning host of classic game show “Hollywood Squares,” died Thursday of kidney failure, his publicist Harlan Boll told TheWrap.

Best known for hosting more than 5,000 episodes of the original version of the game show for more than 15 years, he enjoyed an eight-decade career as a singer, actor and emcee. Marshall even quipped that he wanted his official cause of death to be reported as “boredom.”

According to his wife of 35 years, Laurie, he died at his home in Encino, surrounded by loved ones.

Marshall was tapped to host “Hollywood Squares” in 1966: The game show featured celebrities such as Paul Lynde, Joan Rivers, Rich Little, George Gobel and Wally Cox in “squares” that could be won like tic-tac-toe by contestants.

He began his showbiz career while still in his teens after seeing his sister, “Red River” star Joanne Dru, get into modeling. He landed a...

Jeff Bridges made his unofficial screen debut in John Cromwell's 1951 drama "The Company She Keeps" just over a year after he was born. The son of actors Dorothy and Lloyd Bridges, he steadily proved himself a nepo baby of the finest order upon reaching young adulthood. In the 50 years and change since then, he's done it all, be it squaring off with King Kong, riding a light cycle on The Grid, or seeking compensation for the damage to his prized rug. (It really tied his living room together.) He even snagged a long-expected Oscar for playing an alcoholic country singer in Scott Cooper's "Crazy Heart," a film that arrived on the heels of Bridges portraying the first-ever Marvel Cinematic Universe villain in "Iron Man."

Trying to decide which of Bridges' movies stands out above the rest is a formidable challenge. It's also one that we, thankfully, need not...

“I always try to keep myself three or four months away from whatever physical manifestations a role will demand,” says Tim Blake Nelson. And Nelson has had his fair share of manifestations, from an escaped convict with an uncanny ability to harmonize (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) to a resident villain in early Marvel movie lore (The Incredible Hulk) or a paranoid police officer with a knack for interrogation (TV series Watchmen).

“You’re an actor every day. You’re not just an actor when you’re working. You have to keep your body and your mindset in a state of readiness,” says Nelson. One of his latest incarnations is as an aging boxer, Bernard “Bang Bang” Rozyski, who trains his grandson and deals with his own health issues, all the while fighting the demons of his past.

Directed by Vincent Grashaw, Bang Bang (check out a clip here), will...

I love me some damn dirty apes, and I’m not alone. Ever since the first Planet of the Apes movie in 1968, it’s been one of Hollywood’s most consistent (on a quality level) franchises. Think about it. Has there ever really been a lousy Planet of the Apes movie? Not really. Yet, it’s often unheralded when we talk about the great franchises. So, let’s look at the series as a whole, with this Planet of the Apes movies ranked list (from worst to best). And don’t worry – you’ll get to have your say tomorrow with a poll I’ll be publishing, so check back for that.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Tim Burton’s remake of the original 1968 classic is a mixed bag. Mark Wahlberg was a little too green at this point in his career to make a captivating action hero, with him paling...

Very few filmmakers have the distinction of creating a classic on their first effort. But John Huston, one of the greatest screenwriters and directors of the 20th century, did just that in 1941 with “The Maltese Falcon” and went on to create many classics by inventing, reinventing and reinvigorating genres.

Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. His father was the great actor Walter Huston, and young John developed an interest in the stage at a young age watching his father perform in vaudeville. He was a sickly child with an enlarged heart and kidney ailments but eventually overcame that to drop out of school at the age of 14 to become a professional boxer.

As a young adult, Huston wrote and sold several short stories, and made his way to Hollywood when “talking pictures” created a demand for writers. He took a short hiatus from Hollywood after the car he...

Our journey through Michael Caine’s 80s work reaches one of his best: Educating Rita, co-starring a powerhouse Julie Walters in the title role.

Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah And Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws The Revenge) while continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape To Victory).

Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…

Spoilers for Educating Rita ahead…

Directed by: Lewis Gilbert

Tagline: Frank Bryant is a professor of literature. And Rita is his newest student.

Shel Bachrach, a top insurance broker in Hollywood whose behind-the-scenes work helped movies like Cliffhanger, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Ali get made, died Monday in Palm Springs, a publicist announced. He was 80.

Bachrach provided financial protection and mitigated risks associated with such potential problems as drug-related filming delays (think Courtney Love in The People vs. Larry Flynt), actors who pilot aircraft (Harrison Ford) and directors who could be sidelined by age issues (David Lean, for his last movie, A Passage to India) or medical issues (John Huston, who battled emphysema).

Bachrach arranged risk management on stunt-filled films — if a star is injured during production, a movie could grind to a halt — and wrote policies for magicians and “Big Cat” performers in Las Vegas and for game shows like The Price Is Right, where contestants can win great sums of money.

Born in Detroit on April 7, 1944, Sheldon Jay Bachrach...

Michael Mann has followed in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese and joined Letterboxd, the social media site that allows cinephiles to log and rate the movies they’ve seen. The “Miami Vice” director quietly made an account and posted his first list, which is titled “14 Favorite Films in no particular order (except Potemkin).” After singling out Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent epic “Battleship Potemkin” as his favorite film of all time, he highlighted 13 other films ranging from classic film noir and New Hollywood masterpieces to recent hits like “The Hurt Locker” and “Poor Things.” Mann’s 14 favorite films can be found below.

“Battleship Potemkin” (dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

“Dr. Strangelove” (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Biutiful” (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)

“Raging Bull” (dir. Martin Scorsese)

“Incendies” (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“Pale Flower” (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)

“L’Atalante” (dir. Jean Vigo)

“The Asphalt Jungle” (dir. John Huston)

“Poor Things” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

“Apocalypse Now” (dir. Francis Ford Coppola...

Robert Towne, the screenwriter as superstar whose Oscar-winning work on the 1974 classic Chinatown is widely recognized as the gold standard for movie scripts, has died. He was 89.

Towne died Monday at his home in Los Angeles, publicist Carri McClure announced.

He also received Academy Award nominations for The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975) in the years surrounding his most famous work.

His takes on Los Angeles were etched with melancholy and painted the city as one of beauty and sadness. In Chinatown and Shampoo, gumshoe J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Warren Beatty) end up alone. (Towne collaborated often with those actors.)

This squinty vantage on Southern California, as a temptress who dashes hopes, also was evident in his script for Tequila Sunrise (1988), which starred Mel Gibson as a retired drug dealer, Kurt Russell as a cop and Michelle Pfeiffer as the femme fatale.

Towne also...

In a career that lasted four decades, the great character actor Ned Beatty worked with a number of the greatest film directors in history, starting out with John Boorman and 1972’s “Deliverance,” in which he made his spectacular screen debut. From there, he went on to work with such screen legends as Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, John Huston, Mike Nichols and Spike Lee.

Beatty was nominated for an Academy Award for 1976’s “Network,” directed by Lumet, as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination for portraying an Irish tenor in 1991’s “Hear My Song.” Beatty did not appear in films until he was 35 years old and was immediately pegged as a character actor, a category in which he flourished. His other film credits include “Nashville,” “Superman,” “Wise Blood” and “Toy Story 3.” He died in 2021.

Tour our photo gallery ranking his 12 greatest screen performances from worst to best.

For a while there, we thought they really did forget it, Jake. But now Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne has provided an update on the prequel series he has developed alongside David Fincher, confirming that the blinds haven’t been closed on the endeavor after all.

Towne — who won an Oscar for his original screenplay — recently told Variety that all episodes of the planned Chinatown prequel have been written. “All I’m likely to say is yes, all the episodes have been written for Netflix.” On collaborating with Fincher, he added, “Working with a force of nature like David Fincher, tho’ occasionally humbling, is never less than enlightening.”

Expanding the seedy world of noir classic Chinatown has been done before, with Towne and Jack Nicholson reuniting for 1990’s The Two Jakes, which we’ll just say is no Chinatown…But a prequel to the 1974 film exploring the origins of Jake Gittes...

It’s nearly five years since we learned David Fincher and Robert Towne would partner on a Chinatown series concerning the early days of Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes. The time since pointed towards a director who’d been brought back to feature filmmaking, to say nothing of how costly and expansive such a project would be for a company clearly less willing to take chances on major auteurs. Speaking to Variety on occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary, however, Towne provided the crucial notice that “all the episodes have been written.” An advanced state of development that nevertheless fails to signal where it’s at with Netflix––the company offered no update of their own.

Towne was fairly candid, though, saying the project’s villain will evoke John Huston’s Noah Cross––among the most evil characters in mainstream American cinema––having been shaped by the notion “that...

There are the classics — and then there’s “Chinatown.” First released on June 20, 1974, the seminal noir feature was a resounding success at its time: a big hit for producer and Paramount heavy Robert Evans, a renowned return to Hollywood for director Roman Polanski and an Academy Award winner for screenwriter Robert Towne, plus Oscar nominations for stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

But the film has only become more enshrined in the canon in the decades since, in particular for Towne’s script: a grim portrait of uninhibited greed shaping Los Angeles in the 30’s, celebrated as one of the best — and often cited as the best — screenplay in history. Key to its legacy is its terrifying ending, which sees Nicholson’s detective J.J. Gittes return to his old stamping ground of Chinatown. There he witnesses another deadly miscarriage of justice that he’s helpless to stop.

That Towne...

The 1970s is considered a stellar decade for film – the height of the New Hollywood movement – which makes 1974’s “Chinatown” all the more classic. It is arguably one of the most memorable films to come out of that decade, becoming a defining feature for the era and earning 11 Oscar nominations. The mystery neo-noir is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time, particularly for its script, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now on its 50th anniversary, let’s look back at the awards run of “Chinatown” – written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski – which was released on June 20, 1974.

The psychological mystery stars Jack Nicholson as private detective J.J. “Jake” Gittes. He is hired by a seemingly wealthy socialite to simply investigate her husband’s extramarital affairs, but gets entangled into a whirlpool hidden beneath the surface involving a deeper and deadlier...

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Just one of the unforgettable lines from a nearly perfect script delivered by a stellar cast of actors. “Chinatown” premiered on June 20, 1974 to great acclaim, and unsurprisingly snared its fair share of award nominations. However, it had formidable competition from another classic, and although it failed to capture many awards, it has gone on to be cited as one of the greatest films ever made. Let’s go back five decades to see how this great film came to be. Read on for more about the “Chinatown” 50th anniversary.

Loosely based around the California water wars during the early 1900s, “Chinatown” is a neo-noir mystery with a multi-layered plot that exposes some of the most repulsive human behaviors. The water wars centered around politicians in Los Angeles deceitfully diverting water from the Owens River, and away from the farmers in the Owens Valley, to supply the growing city.

Even if you have never seen “Chinatown” you are probably familiar with the celebrated final line “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.” But did you know that the line almost didn’t make it to the screen?

Set in a drought-ridden 1937 Los Angeles, “Chinatown” stars Jack Nicholson as a J.J. Gittes, a former-cop-turned private-detective with a lot of demons, who works as a successful private eye specializing in a divorce cases. One day, a woman (Diane Ladd) shows up in his office proclaiming she’s Evelyn Mulwray and wants to hire him because she suspects that her husband, the Los Angeles Water Commissioner, is having an affair. When he’s murdered, Gittes finds himself embroiled in a wide-ranging conspiracy involving control of L.A.’s water lead by John Huston’s ruthless businessman Noah Cross, who happens to be Evelyn’s father. Entering the picture is the real Evelyn...

John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" opens with an unsolved mystery. The introductory text talks about a prized statuette of a falcon encrusted in rare jewels — a gift from the Knights Templar to Spain's Charles V — which was stolen by pirates and lost to history for years. After a string of murders and attempts to swipe a black bird statuette occur, private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is compelled to crack a mind-boggling case involving rogues with their eyes on the prized artifact. This bird statue, dubbed the Maltese Falcon, has since evolved into an unforgettable MacGuffin, where the value of the actual prop skyrocketed over the years, changing several hands while being sold at auctions at exorbitant prices.

According to Vanity Fair's 2016 Hollywood issue, the last-known auction for the falcon was held in 2013, where the official bidding kept soaring until it hit the $3 million mark and was sold for $3.5 million.

The 1984 summer movie season kicked off in May and early June with a flurry of blockbusters. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" opened to a gargantuan $25 million over Memorial Day weekend, and, unconcerned about getting chopped up in the mega-sequel's wake, Paramount scored a $17 million debut the following weekend with "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." If you're thinking the studios might sit out a weekend while these films dominate the box office, Columbia and Warner Bros opted to throw a couple of haymakers over the June 8 three-day with, respectively, "Ghostbusters" and "Gremlins."

And then, on the fourth weekend of the summer movie season, Hollywood at last took a breather. With kids fresh out of school, the studios sat back and watched the aforementioned titles continue to flourish, while other pricey gambles (e.g. "Streets of Fire" and "Once Upon a Time in America") flopped.

Then on June...

Last Updated on June 10, 2024

Jack Nicholson is one of the all-time Hollywood legends – and was one of the all-time partiers, too. With both comes a wealth of stories about his most raucous days. So saddle up, kids, it’s time to hear a funny tale about Jack Nicholson and cocaine!

As recalled by Kevin Spacey – who actually made his debut in the Jack Nicholson / Meryl Streep film Heartburn – the three-time Oscar winner put himself in a potentially awkward situation with a sound man during the making of Prizzi’s Honor, John Huston’s 1985 crime film which earned him his fifth Best Actor nomination. In a pitch-perfect Nicholson impression, Spacey remembered sound mixer Dennis Maitland telling him the story, which took place in Nicholson’s trailer.

As it goes, Maitland expressed his excitement for again working with the star, reminding the actor that they met back on 1976’s The Missouri Breaks. Nicholson replied,...

We can’t get enough of John Mulaney these days.

After winning his third Emmy last year for writing his Netflix stand-up special “Baby J,” where he spoke candidly (and hilariously) about his stint in rehab for addiction, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer has risen from the ashes like a comically witty Phoenix.

In the Emmy race once again this year in multiple categories, most notably for guest comedy actor for his performance in the brilliant episode “Fishes” from FX’s second season of “The Bear” and outstanding talk series for the Netflix live smash “Everybody’s in L.A.”

On this episode of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Mulaney discusses his experience and perspectives on Los Angeles’ identity, his creative processes, and whether he’ll host the Oscars. Listen below!

Mulaney surprised everyone as the host of the 14th annual Governors Awards, where he killed in the...