Biases up front: For many of the same reasons most of us don’t care for leftist movie stars, I don’t like George Clooney, but after he publicly made fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s, that was something altogether different. Unforgivable. An
And so we finally reach the top ten. Admittedly, from here on in there will be few surprises. These are the greats, the perennials, the timeless classics that we all grew up on, pass on to our children, and give
As Dudley the Angel, Cary Grant is remarkable in “The Bishop’s Wife.” In lesser hands, what could’ve been a fairly bland do-gooder role, is turned into a complex character with a real emotional life thanks to Grant’s extraordinary ability to
You can see the possibility that small acts multiplied by the millions can merge into great movements of social change. — So speaketh Howard Zinn in summing up the theme of last night’s two hour History Channel telecast of “The
Pretty much ignored when released in 1985, One Magic Christmas has hung in there and found an audience thanks to a solid script and Mary Steenburgen’s compelling lead performance as Ginny Hanks Grainger, a morose wife and mother whose Christmas
Four years before they would make noir history teaming up to commit a sordid murder-for-profit in Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” in the first of their four cinematic pairings, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck would find true love courtesy of genius
At first glance that steamy noirish poster might come off as a pretty deceptive piece of advertising for what looks like just another boy meets girl, post-war, studio Christmas film. But bubbling beneath the surface of “A Holiday Affair” are
From my “Avatar” review: “Steven Spielberg’s sixteen year-old dinosaurs are light years ahead of “Avatar” in the reality department.” Cameron might have used more terabytes, megabytes, spiderbytes, or whateverbytes to create the Na’vi and the paradise planet of Pandora than
Absent from the big screen for over a decade now, Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns armed with a reported half-billion dollars, a story he’s been desperate to tell for 15 years, and the very latest in cutting-edge visual technology. The
Bob Hope plays The Lemon Drop Kid, so named because of an affinity for a certain kind of candy. The Kid grifts his way through life bottom feeding in the rackets as a racetrack tout steering suckers to this bet
Purists tend to hate this adaptation, and while it’s hard to blame them on those grounds, MGM’s warmly produced version of the Dickens’ classic offers a number of charms the more respected darker and deeper versions do not. Namely, it
There’s a “Twilight Zone” episode early in the first season where Ida Lupino plays a Norma Desmond-type screen star: aging, resentful, a little nuts and holed up in a dark Hollywood mansion lost in the glory days that run endlessly
A Muppet Christmas Carol is of course elevated, as all things are, by the presence of The Mighty Michael Caine, who wisely plays the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge perfectly straight amongst all the Muppetry and shenanigans that goes on around
Over the weekend at Townhall.com, Carl Horowitz took Big Hollywood and everyone else he sees as “reprehensible … dyspeptic … insufferably smug, moralizing antiquarians” to task for lacking the “elementary logic to understand” that “the ‘agenda’ of today’s American filmmakers,
A lovely, low-key, tender family film with a rich spiritual theme about a young, imaginative girl who finds and protects one of Santa’s reindeer. Thanks to a wonderful performance by the young lead, Rebecca Harrell, and Sam Elliott and Cloris
Don’t let the unwatchable sequels diminish how imaginative and heartfelt the original was. And though I’m not a big fan of Tim Allen’s film choices of late, in the right role like this (and Galaxy Quest), he’s very good. Also
Since I’ve known my lovely wife this romantic comedy set on Christmas Eve and starring Dick Powell and Debbie Reynolds has been her favorite among what she calls “her cute little movies.” Shot in that beautiful Technicolor process among crisp
That’s right, a 1979 television movie starring The Fonz as Ebenezer Scrooge is ranked ahead of White Christmas. (Or, if you’re younger than a hundred, the Coach in “The Waterboy.”) I have nothing to say in my defense and await
Try to get your mind around this: In Joy Behar’s partisan-crazed world, hypocrisy is a sin worse than serial adultery. In other words, had Tiger Woods lectured schoolchildren on the importance of preserving the institution of marriage, marital fidelity and
This big-budget musical is yet another not terribly great movie that makes the list for two reasons. The first is a personal memory. A hundred years ago, the day before Christmas break began, an English teacher pulled my entire freshman
For a couple decades now too many members of the American celebrity and sports class have made millions The Madonna Way: pimping their deviant behavior into fame and fortune — shoving their thug lives, drug lives, and sex lives down
Scrooged (1988) has the exact opposite problem of our 25th greatest Christmas film, White Christmas. Whereas the Bing Crosby musical ties a couple hours of mediocrity into the kind of perfect holiday-bow finale that leaves you wanting more, Scrooged is
Don’t believe for a second that the History Channel — which should now be called The Revisionist History Channel — will be the end of Matt Damon and Howard Zinn’s cinematic ode to trashing America. The obvious next step for
Some movies are just plain old comfort food and our returning to them again and again has little to do with any actual cinematic merit. Maybe there’s a simplicity of story that just makes for a great escape or maybe
The budget for “Brothers,” per director Jim Sheridan, is $25 million, which probably doesn’t include marketing for promotion and … well, tell me again how Hollywood is driven by profit and not ideology? We’re a month away from 2010 so
