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Peter Bogdanovich’s ‘Paper Moon’
When I was growing up in the 1970s, there were at least two cinemas in my town that used to play double features in the old tradition. […]
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Albert Brooks’ ‘Modern Romance’
Perhaps because I work in this business, or just because I love movies so much, I’m always asked to define which ones I think are the classics. To me, that’s simple: First, when it’s on, I have to watch it — no matter what. […]
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Brad Bird’s ‘The Iron Giant’
What if a gun had a soul? That was the question that was pinned to walls, doors and bulletin boards on the production of The Iron Giant. […]
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Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’
If I had been asked 20 years ago whether a glass of rippling water would become one of the most iconic and recognizable images in cinematic history, I probably would’ve said, “No way.” But then again, I guess that’s not really a question you would ask an eight- year-old. […]
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Robert Redford’s ‘Ordinary People’
It was March 31, 1981. I was celebrating my second anniversary of becoming a union story analyst by watching the 53rd Academy Awards. The host was Johnny Carson and the field of films was perhaps the strongest it had been in decades. […]
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Joe Camp’s ‘Benji’
They say that dogs are man’s best friends. The problem is that I didn’t have a dog when I grew up in the small town of Edinburg, Texas. […]
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John Ford’s ‘My Darling Clementine’
I am a war baby who grew up in Texas before leaving for a larger world that included living in Manhattan for 22 years and moving to Los Angeles to work as a story analyst. So, if what I have to say now reads old to anyone, well good — because old has a way of becoming new again, especially when old is as unforgettable as My Darling Clementine. […]
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Sydney Pollack’s ‘The Way We Were’
The 1970s were years of change for me. I was pregnant with my first child and struggling with the decision to either give up a career that I had worked long and hard to achieve or subject my unborn child to a mother who could be gone more than not. […]
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Robert Ellis Miller’s ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’
I am a graduate teaching assistant in Professor Alan Downer’s Twentieth-Century Theatre class at Princeton University in 1968. Along with several hundred students and a handful of other TAs, I am sitting in a lecture hall, eagerly awaiting Downer’s capsule reviews of the movies currently playing in town. […]
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Woody Allen’s ‘Annie Hall’
When I was a child, I had childish dreams to be a superhero or a pro athlete. Alas, my only super power was secondary perception, the ability to say, after something had happened, “I knew that would happen.” It did not take me long to learn that the Justice League was not looking for a hero with such an annoying super trait. […]
