DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2018
Dec
28
 
 
I know, I know. New Year’s Day is supposed to be the sole province of college football for sports enthusiasts...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
27
 
 
In this 1944 movie adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, Dick Powell became the first actor to portray gritty gumshoe Philip Marlowe on screen. (It would take two more years for Humphrey Bogart to personify the same character in 1946’s The Big Sleep.) Powell was determined to shake his movie-musical crooning idol image, and this film accomplished that very effectively. And Claire Trevor, as the story’s femme fatale, played her part very well as well.  
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
26
 
 
Space travel may have lost some of its visual cachet in an era when 7-year-olds can create their own intergalactic fantasy CGI, but there are still moments when the real thing gets pretty awesome...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
26
 
 
A lot of traditions were tested, or overruled, at this year’s annual Kennedy Center Honors celebration. For the first time, one of the awards is bestowed not upon an individual for a career-long achievement of artistry, but to an individual work of art: the musical Hamilton. It’ll be performed, in part, here – and co-creator Lin-Manual Miranda, taking the stage, breaks another tradition, becoming the first honoree to perform at his or her own awards celebration. Other honorees
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
26
 
 
I just saw this film for the first time in many, many years – and laughed throughout, while being constantly amazed that both Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal now look so… young. (In a week, this 1989 movie will be 30 years old.)  Oh, and the scene in Katz’s Deli? It’s just as funny. And that’s director Rob Reiner’s mother who gets to deliver that classic line after Sally fakes the sounds and expressions of sexual ecstasy. And, one final point, if you go to Ka
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
26
 
 
Here’s another film I saw again recently – just last night, in fact. But this one I watch often, whenever it pops up on TV like a hand floating to the surface of a lake. That’s because this 1972 movie is an excellent film. Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography is so gorgeous, I began paying close attention to cinematographers in movie credits from then on. Jon Voight is great here – as is Burt Reynolds. And Ned Beatty may have the toughest role of all…  
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
25
 
 
Okay, so it’s not a Christmas movie special – but any time you get a chance to watch a pair of movies featuring Marilyn Monroe, it’s a gift. And tonight, TCM presents, in prime time, two films in which Monroe shone with mesmerizing exuberance. In Some Like It Hot, from 1959, she’s the radiant star, throwing off equal measures of sex appeal and playful humor as a member of an all-girl music band – a band infiltrated by two musicians in drag (played by Tony Curtis and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
25
 
 
Here’s another nicely conceived double bill. NBC’s prime time Christmas lineup begins with yet another showing of the 1966 holiday cartoon special, featuring Dr. Seuss’ holiday-hating Grinch…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
25
 
 
…And that’s followed by the 2000 Ron Howard live-action adaptation of the same source material, starring Jim Carrey as an amazingly elastic-faced green Grinch. Also featured, as residents of Whoville: Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, Bill Irwin, and, as Cindy Lou Who, Taylor Momsen. My favorite character name? Played by Clint Howard, it’s the mayor’s aide, Whobris.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Dec
24
 
 
The most recent time we saw an animated Belle was in last year’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, where she made a cameo along with all the other Disney princesses. But the first time was in 1991, as the central star of Disney’s animated musical Beauty and the Beast. In both films, Belle is played, and her voice provided, by Paige O’Hara, who has built a successful second career painting authorized portraits of her Disney alter ego (pictured). And in prime time, on Disney-owned ABC,