Released in the U.S. in March of 2012, The Hunger Games is based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. Directed by Gary Ross, the film was an immediate box office hit, setting records with an opening…
A 1949 play by Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the Tony for Best Play. Considered one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, over the years, Death of a Salesman…
In what seems like his 12th film in two years–I haven’t counted, but he seems to be in a perpetual state of filming–Nicholas Cage adds yet another unhinged man to his lengthy resume. In Army of One, Cage plays Gary…
The follow-up to 2003’s delightful Finding Nemo, Finding Dory follows the very friendly blue tang fish who suffers memory loss every 10 seconds or so. As a baby, Dory’s (Ellen DeGeneres) loving parents (Eugene Levy, Diane Keaton) work to teach…
While helping Mel Brooks put the finishing touches on the classic Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder was offered the opportunity to write and direct his first feature film. The result was the bizarre, yet funny The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter…
Since his death this past August at age 83, I’ve found myself revisiting the filmography of actor/writer/director Gene Wilder. I grew up adoring him for his signature role, that of of Willy Wonka in the first film adaption of Roald…
October 29, 1964—just eight months after The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, television director Steve Binder was given the task of staging the Teen-Age Music International Show (The T.A.M.I. Show), a concert that captured twelve of the biggest…
Though Paramount released a barebones Blu-ray of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood back in 2015, Criterion’s newly released Blu-ray, with a new 2K digital transfer supervised by Linklater himself and an impressive selection of extras about the film, is well worth the…
Produced two years earlier, it’s impossible not to think of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes while watching Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich. This doesn’t come as a surprise when you consider that both films were adapted from novels by…
Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, three movies will show up somewhere, sometime on television: A Christmas Carol (of which there are several good versions), A Christmas Story and It’s A Wonderful Life. After its copyright was inexplicably not renewed…