My Most Memorable Film
Richard Chew on ‘Risky Business’
In the summer of 1983, Risky Business opened to healthy box office returns and launched Tom Cruise’s rise to superstar status. […]
Film
This Quarter in Film History
The Colbert Report: It Almost Didn’t Happen One Night
Eighty years after its February 22 premiere, ‘It Happened One Night’ remains one of the best films Hollywood has ever made. […]
Book Reviews
Lost in Transition
It’s not at uncommon, for transitions to be the editor’s focus, Jeffrey Michael Bays tries to remedy that. […]
Tail Pop
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. […]
My Most Memorable Film
Carlton Kaller on ‘Almost Famous’
Scattered throughout the films of Cameron Crowe are moments in which the director’s adolescent rock wordsmith background shine through. […]
Tail Pop
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. […]
This Quarter in Film History
Dancing with Myself
Cover Girl (1944) is a famous movie for two reasons — one intentional and the other accidental. The film’s legacy is of a time when women were celebrated for their glamour and sexuality. […]
This Quarter in Film History
Separating the Bums from the Contenders
Sixty years after its premiere in June 1954 in Japan, of all places (New York and Los Angeles followed in July), ‘On the Waterfront’ is still regarded as a seminal film because of its immense influence on acting. […]
Book Reviews
The Magic of Cinema Sound
The many people who create sound,are likewise invisible to the public — even as their contributions are central to making onscreen worlds. They too are part of the occult magic of cinema. […]
Tail Pop
Melvin Frank & Norman Panama’s ‘The Court Jester’
When I was growing up in the 1960s, the entertainer Danny Kaye seemed to be everywhere — today traveling the world on behalf of UNICEF, tonight hosting his own CBS variety show. My classmates and I knew the songs from Hans Christian Andersen (1952), even if we boys didn’t always admit it. […]
