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“I think addiction is the best way to describe being stuck in a sin,” explains Cult of Love author Leslye Headland, “because I don't see sin as like a transgression. I see sin as something that you are living, that you are stuck in.” The playwright recently made her Broadway debut with this sharp comedy, the final script in her Seven Deadly Plays series.

Cult of Love sucks audiences into a Christmas gathering from hell. The adult children of the Dahl family gather at their parents home for holiday celebrations, folk songs, and the airing of grievances. The playwright admits she was inspired by aspects of her own life, but the family is entirely fictional. “It's taking my family, and extended family, and putting them in a blender,” Headland tells Gold Derby, “creating characters that are important for the play rather than shoehorning the play into my own experience.”

Explosive...

Before he became known across the galaxy as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alex Guinness had already made a name for himself as one of British cinema's most respected actors. Best known for his work in Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Kind Hearts and Coronets, Guinness had a knack for slipping into roles that mixed dignity with absurdity. Guinness was also a regular face in the Ealing comedies, a run of post-war British films that used humor to unpick everything from class to identity.

One of those films was The Man in the White Suit, in which Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a mild-mannered scientist who accidentally creates an ever-lasting fabric that never gets dirty. It’s part sci-fi, part satire, and completely Ealing: a small, strange story that manages to ask big questions about progress, power, and who really benefits when society moves forward.

The Man in the White...

New York icon Martin Scorsese is revealing his go-to films set in the Big Apple.

The auteur curated the screening series “Living, Breathing New York” for the Roxy Cinema, which features screenings of four of his favorite NYC movies out of a full list of Scorsese’s 32 favorite New York movies he’s created and which IndieWire is proud to share below.

“Living, Breathing New York” is curated by Scorsese in celebration of the new release of Olmo Schnabel’s NYC-set thriller, “Pet Shop Days,” which Scorsese executive produced. The film premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York, and stars Dario Yazbek Bernal and Jack Irv as two lovers whose whirlwind romance sends them down a rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. Willem Dafoe (who starred in Olmo Schnabel‘s father Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”), Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Sarsgaard,...

Quick LinksThe Coen Brothers Were on a Cold StreakWhat is The Ladykillers About?The Ladykillers Was a Critical Failure

With the 97th Academy Awards on the horizon, many fans are revisiting Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning classic movies to see if they hold up. From recent winners like Green Book and Crash, already aging interestingly, to old-school classics like Casablanca and The Apartment, proving their timelessness. The same everlasting question is dredged up every single year: Decades before the release of the Oscar-winning film No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers were raking in awards nominations left and right for Fargo, Barton Fink, and more.

However, it cannot be ignored that in the years immediately preceding their Oscar-winning year with the hit Western, the brotherly duo was experiencing something of a critical cold streak. 2004 saw the release of The Ladykillers, the lowest rated film in the Coen brothers catalog by a wide margin.

Ever since he made his feature directorial debut with “Heavy” in 1995, James Mangold has been known for his range, deftly jumping back and forth between crowd-pleasing genre fare like “Identity” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” powerhouse character studies like “Copland” and “Girl Interrupted,” light romantic comedies (“Kate & Leopold”) and, perhaps most famously, musical biopics like “Walk the Line” and his latest film, the Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown.”

What all of these films have in common is a sensitivity to performance that often yields the best work from actors as varied in styles and approaches as Joaquin Phoenix, Meg Ryan, Sylvester Stallone, Christian Bale, and Timothée Chalamet. “A Complete Unknown” is possibly Mangold’s best film yet in this regard, as it boasts superb work by not only Chalamet as Dylan but Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Elle Fanning as...

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

In January of this year something extraordinary happened. For the first time, United Artists’ Black Tuesday was shown on British television, having been originally banned for its violence. The film noir classic of 1954 stars Edward G. Robinson, one of the four giants of Hollywood’s gangster genre, alongside James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and George Raft. At the time that Edward G. starred in Black Tuesday, he was in something of a career slump, but, in spite of his modest physical stature, he still manages to bring to bear his characteristically brutal persona. Perhaps even more surprising is how good the film is, a sort of forgotten masterpiece from the Argentinean helmer Hugo Fregonese who, in his time, had directed such stars as Gary Cooper, James Mason, Joel McCrea, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Lee Marvin and Stewart Granger, but who is largely forgotten today,...

So, you've survived the experience of watching the Safdie Brothers' anxiety-inducing gambling thriller "Uncut Gems" without your heart exploding, eh? Admittedly, very few movies can match that film's high-strung sense of mania and tension, but if you're looking for a classic Hollywood flick that operates in a somewhat similar but lower key pitch, we have a recommendation. 

Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success," a noir drama from 1957, stars the great Burt Lancaster as a powerful New York City gossip columnist whose daily articles are so powerful, they can make or break careers. Tony Curtis ("Some Like It Hot," "The Defiant Ones") plays a low-level press agent striving to graduate from being disrespected to become a big shot, and the story explores the lengths the agent will go -- and the lives he may ruin -- in order to please the writer so he can finally achieve the success he desires.

I first met Simon Hacker more than a decade ago when I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Simon was a film student. He stuck out as someone who responded to what most people around him in the classroom weren’t much interested in: tradition. While the nascent auteurists were looking to reinvent the wheel, Simon grabbed hold of the ideas of a couple of people I introduced him to: Alexander Mackendrick and David Mamet. I was preaching the basics of classical narrative storytelling, and Simon took the time to listen. “What happens next?” became […]

The post “Punching Above My Weight”: Director Simon Hacker on Partnering with NBA Star Gordon Hayward and Self-Distributing His Indie Comedy, Notice to Quit first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I first met Simon Hacker more than a decade ago when I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Simon was a film student. He stuck out as someone who responded to what most people around him in the classroom weren’t much interested in: tradition. While the nascent auteurists were looking to reinvent the wheel, Simon grabbed hold of the ideas of a couple of people I introduced him to: Alexander Mackendrick and David Mamet. I was preaching the basics of classical narrative storytelling, and Simon took the time to listen. “What happens next?” became […]

The post “Punching Above My Weight”: Director Simon Hacker on Partnering with NBA Star Gordon Hayward and Self-Distributing His Indie Comedy, Notice to Quit first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The esteemed filmmaker behind the Johnny Cash bio-musical “Walk the Line” and superhero drama “Logan,” James Mangold has done it all. He’s torn up the race track with “Ford v Ferrari,” been the only director other than Steven Spielberg to take the helm of an “Indiana Jones” film with last year’s “Dial of Destiny,” and later this year, he’ll debut his Bob Dylan drama starring Timotheé Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown.” Before he began his career as a filmmaker, he learned from legends like Alexander Mackendrick (“The Sweet Smell of Success”) and Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).

In a recent response post on X, Mangold explained his creative process and how it was passed down from these “masters,” as well as gathered from watching the work of others.

“I have learned this way of working from watching masters I admire. Some masters have been my teachers in person.

Michael Mann has followed in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese and joined Letterboxd, the social media site that allows cinephiles to log and rate the movies they’ve seen. The “Miami Vice” director quietly made an account and posted his first list, which is titled “14 Favorite Films in no particular order (except Potemkin).” After singling out Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent epic “Battleship Potemkin” as his favorite film of all time, he highlighted 13 other films ranging from classic film noir and New Hollywood masterpieces to recent hits like “The Hurt Locker” and “Poor Things.” Mann’s 14 favorite films can be found below.

“Battleship Potemkin” (dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

“Dr. Strangelove” (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Biutiful” (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)

“Raging Bull” (dir. Martin Scorsese)

“Incendies” (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“Pale Flower” (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)

“L’Atalante” (dir. Jean Vigo)

“The Asphalt Jungle” (dir. John Huston)

“Poor Things” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

“Apocalypse Now” (dir. Francis Ford Coppola...

How now, what news: the Criterion Channel’s July lineup is here. Eight pop renditions of Shakespeare are on the docket: from movies you forgot were inspired by the Bard (Abel Ferrara’s China Girl) to ones you’d wish to forget altogether (Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing), with maybe my single favorite interpretation (Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet) alongside Paul Mazursky, Gus Van Sant, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jarman, and (of course) Kenneth Branagh. A neonoir collection arrives four months ahead of Noirvember: two Ellroy adaptations, two from De Palma that are not his neonoir Ellroy adaptation, two from the Coen brothers (i.e. the chance to see a DVD-stranded The Man Who Wasn’t There in HD), and––finally––a Michael Winner picture given Criterion’s seal of approval.

Columbia screwballs run between classics to lesser-seens while Nicolas Roeg and Heisei-era Godzilla face off. A Times Square collection brings The Gods of Times Square,...

Alec Guinness is one of the most renowned actors in the history of the arts — a true thespian, an Academy Award winner with three other acting nominations and a lifetime achievement award to his name. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and is forever tied to the legacies of great filmmakers like David Lean, Alexander Mackendrick, and Ronald Neame. But to a lot of people, he's still just the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy. Once he became Obi-Wan, that shadow loomed over his head for the rest of his life, and Guinness never got over it. For a man who seemed perpetually dissatisfied and unhappy with his life, the idea that his role as a space wizard mattered more than his lifetime devoted to what he perceived as higher art must have felt like no less than a profound insult.

Some apotheosis of film culture has been reached with Freddy Got Fingered‘s addition to the Criterion Channel. Three years after we interviewed Tom Green about his consummate film maudit, it’s appearing on the service’s Razzie-centered program that also includes the now-admired likes of Cruising, Heaven’s Gate, Querelle, and Ishtar; the still-due likes of Under the Cherry Moon; and the more-contested Gigli, Swept Away, and Nicolas Cage-led Wicker Man. In all cases it’s an opportunity to reconsider one of the lamest, thin-gruel entities in modern culture.

A Jane Russell retro features von Sternberg’s Macao, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Raoul Walsh’s The Tall Men and The Revolt of Mamie Stover; streaming premieres will be held for Yuen Woo-ping’s Dreadnaught, Claire Simon’s Our Body, Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father, the Devil, the recently restored Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles, and The Passion of Rememberance.

A few of the industry heavyweights who cast ballots to help determine The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 100 greatest film books of all time agreed to share a few words with THR about a film book that they especially treasure.

Below, you can read actor Alec Baldwin gush about his “favorite show business memoir,” marketing exec Terry Press explain why she owns three copies of “the only book dedicated to one of the most iconic screen teams,” studio chief Tom Rothman reveal which how-to book he gives to every young executive who comes to work for him and actor Robert Wagner on the biography of an oft-caricatured golden age studio mogul that actually captures the “vulnerable human being” who met some 70 years ago.

Alec Baldwin on By Myself, by Lauren Bacall By Myself

“I had always admired Lauren Bacall as an actress throughout her career, beginning as a young...

It's been a long road, getting from there to here.

One might recall in June of 2023, it was announced that several key executives and programmers at Turner Classic Movies were callously canned by the new management at their parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. For many, this was tantamount to nixing TCM altogether. CEO David Zaslav made this decision at the end of a string of bad decisions that made him look like the film world's most callous villain. After the weird rebranding of HBO Max to merely Max, it was starting to look like Zaslav didn't give a damn about film history.

It certainly looked that way to Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, three lovers of vintage film and advocates for the preservation of classics. The trio famously called Zaslav to appeal for the retaining of TCM and the re-hiring of some of their old staff. A...

In the proliferation of subgenres, the media noir is perhaps the rarest. From the ’50s alone, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps, and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success spring to mind. Just lately, with the exception of Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014), there hasn’t been too much evidence of a renaissance, but Roxine Helberg’s satisfying feature debut taps back into the same dark wells of oral ambivalence corruption and power, casting the excellent Bel Powley as a journalism student who will do whatever it takes to make it in the cut-throat world of TV news broadcasting.

It’s possible that the media noir was supplanted by the white-knight school of journalism movies, which has been going strong since All the President’s Men (1976) and struck Oscar gold as recently as 2015’s Spotlight But that was in the dinosaur print era,...

Zia Mohyeddin, the British-Pakistani actor known for his parts in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and ‘Immaculate Conception’, and the stage version of ‘A Passage to India’, died on Monday in a Karachi hospital, ‘Variety’ reports. Mohyeddin, who was 91, was ill and on life support, his family said. His death was condoled by top members of Pakistan’s political establishment, including President Arif Ali, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and his predecessor, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan.

Mohyeddin was born in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), British India, in 1931. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the early 1950s.

After theatre roles in ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ and ‘Julius Caesar’, Mohyeddin in 1960 made his West End debut in ‘A Passage to India’, where he originated the role of Dr Aziz.

The actor featured in David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962), playing the role of Arab guide Tafas. Roles in...

Zia Mohyeddin, a British-Pakistani actor known for films “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Immaculate Conception” and the stage version of “A Passage to India,” died on Monday in Karachi. He was 91.

Mohyeddin was ill and was on life support in a Karachi hospital, his family said.

Mohyeddin was born in Lylallpur (now Faisalabad), British India, in 1931. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the early 1950s. After theater roles in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and “Julius Caesar,” Mohyeddin made his West End debut in “A Passage to India” in 1960, where he originated the role of Dr. Aziz.

The actor featured in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), playing the role of Arab guide Tafas. Roles in Alexander Mackendrick’s “Sammy Going South” (1963), Fred Zinnemann’s “Behold a Pale Horse” (1964), Basil Dearden’s “Khartoum” (1966), Ralph Thomas’ “Deadlier Than the Male” (1966), Tony Richardson’s “The Sailor from...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

Look into the series Criterion Channel have programmed for August and this lineup is revealed as (in scientific terms) quite something. “Hollywood Chinese” proves an especially deep bench, spanning “cinema’s first hundred years to explore the ways in which the Chinese people have been imagined in American feature films” and bringing with it the likes of Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet—among 20-or-so others. A three-film Marguerite Duras series brings one of the greatest films ever (India Song) and two lesser-screened experiments; films featuring Yaphet Kotto include Blue Collar, Across 110th Street, and Midnight Run; and lest we ignore a Myrna Loy retro that goes no later than 1949.

Criterion editions include The Asphalt Jungle, Husbands, Rouge, and Sweet Smell of Success; streaming premieres for Loznitsa’s Donbass, Béla Tarr’s watershed Damnation, and...

Get Them to the Greek: Madden Traipses Lightly Through Factual WWII Espionage

Despite it’s presentation as a frothy pseudo-comedy, the events transpiring in John Madden’s Operation Mincemeat actually happened, albeit under more strenuous circumstances than the cheery disposition the film leans into. Based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which was already the basis for a 2010 television documentary, the comedically inclined Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex) spins this into the kind of lighthearted territory of 1940s studio efforts grappling with post WWII realities.

Somewhere between Lubitsch’s original To Be or Not to Be (1942) and maybe Alexander Mackendrick’s original Whisky Galore!…...

With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

With it being seven years since his last live-action film, 2014’s The Grand Budapast Hotel, Wes Anderson is hard at work. Following a Cannes premiere, The French Dispatch finally arrives in limited theaters on October 22 followed by a wide release the following week, and he’s already shooting his next film (recently revealed to have the title Asteroid City) outside of Madrid with Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Rupert Friend, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Hope Davis, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Tony Revolori, and Matt Dillon.

As is the case with all of his work, Wes Anderson synthesizes cinema history in his own specific language and for The French Dispatch he has provided a list of influences. As revealed in a promotional book sent to The Flim Stage and styled after the film’s magazine, 32 films are listed that “provided inspiration to the filmmakers,...

It’s the granddaddy of British cop dramas of the modern era. The most popular English picture of 1950 introduced PC George Dixon, a warm-hearted constable who would become a staple on BBC TV for 21 years. T.E.B. Clarke’s screenplay of a murder manhunt is stocked with actors American fans know well — Dirk Bogarde, Bernard Lee — and some we should know better — Jack Warner, Robert Flemyng, Dora Bryan. The show was made by the top craftsmen of Ealing Studios, and its fast pace and Brit sensibility will definitely impress. And remember — the Bobbies on the beat don’t even carry guns.

The Blue Lamp

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1950 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / Street Date June 1, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Patric Doonan, Bruce Seton, Meredith Edwards, Dora Bryan, Gladys Henson, Tessie O’Shea, Betty Ann Davies, Jennifer Jayne, Sam Kydd,...

If you’ve been jealous of those across the pond that get access to The British Film Institute’s streaming service BFI Player Classics, one will be delighted to hear it’s now coming to the United States. Launching on May 14, the curated collection––which will have offering distinct from its UK counterpart––will kick off with over 200 British or British co-production films picked by BFI experts.

With work by legendary directors Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Ken Russell, and Ken Loach, it also includes a number of ground-breaking British filmmakers who deserve more attention, including Horace Ové, Laura Mulvey, Ron Peck; Menelik Shabazz, Sally Potter, Gurinder Chadha (I’m British But… 1989), Waris Hussein, and John Akomfrah.

“BFI Player Classics brings together a collection of British films – the cinematic DNA of the UK – that is essential for anyone who wants to see and understand the best of British film,” said Robin Baker,...

BFI Player Classics includes Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), Ken Russell’s feature debut French Dressing (1963).

The British Film Institute will launch BFI Player Classics as a stand-alone streaming service in the US featuring a curated roster of classic UK cinema on May 14.

The platform arrives with more than 200 UK or UK co-productions picked by BFI experts, and includes work from as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Ken Russell, and Ken Loach.

BFI Player Classics includes titles like Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), Russell’s feature debut French Dressing (1963), and Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol (1948).

Films not currently available across...

During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”

A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...

Whisky Galore Photo: Optimum Releasing

Whisky Galore, 10pm, BBC4, Thursday January 14

Seventy years has done little to dim the subversive joy of Alexander Mackendrick's Hebridean wartime comedy - which it's worth remembering, was his directorial debut. Compton Mackenzie's novel - which was inspired by the actual grounding of the SS Politician off Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides - springs to glorious life, bursting with colour despite the black and white. As the locals try to salvage 50,000 cases of Scotch from a stricken US ship while outwitting a pompous Englishman Basil Radford who has been sent to the island, the character and visual comedy build to dram fine effect. Read our full review.

The Angel's Share, BBC iPlayer, until December

If Whisky Galore! puts you in the mood for more of the spirit, then why not make it a double-bill with this Scottish charmer, which sees Ken Loach and...

Devo’s Gerald Casale joins us for a discussion of the movies that made Devo!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Truth About De-Evolution (1976)

Island Of Lost Souls (1932)

Akran (1969)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Fail Safe (1964)

Valley Of The Dolls (1967)

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970)

The President’s Analyst (1967)

The Atomic Cafe (1982)

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

Village Of The Damned (1960)

Children Of The Damned (1964)

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954)

Planet Of The Apes (1968)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Parallax View (1974)

Soylent Green (1973)

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Rocky (1976)

A Face In The Crowd (1957)

Whisky Galore! (1949)

No Time For Sergeants (1958)

Network (1976)

JFK (1991)

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Lost Highway (1997)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Expresso Bongo (1959)

Gremlins (1984)

I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)

Other Notable Items

Paul McCartney

Slash

Willie Nelson

Devo

Elliot Roberts

Lorne Michaels

Saturday Night Live TV series (1975- )

Michael O’Donoghue

The Muppets

Neil Young

Walter Williams

Mr. Bill

Richard Myers

George Kuchar

Mike Kuchar

John F.

To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Ealing Studios’ flawless The Ladykillers, Studiocanal is releasing the first ever 4k restoration of the 1955 black comedy from the original 3-strip Technicolor negative, showcasing director Alexander Mackendrick’s vision in its full glory.

Featuring all-star line-up of the finest comedy actors of the era: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Danny Green, Frankie Howerd and Katie Johnson, The Ladykillers follows the hilarious capers of a group of small-time crooks, taking on more they can handle in the form of their sweet, but slightly dotty, elderly landlady Mrs Wilberforce. The gang pull off a robbery but none of them could have predicted that their greatest obstacle to escaping with the loot would be their tiny hostess.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Ladykillers is released as a 4K Uhd Blu-ray Collector’s Edition, Standard Blu-ray,...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.***"Like watching Shirley Temple pull the wings off a fly," was one critic's evocative summary of A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Alexander Mackendrick's disturbingly faithful rendition of Richard Hughes' striking novel.The book had been a passion project of Mackendrick for years, and he'd tried unsuccessfully to set it up at Ealing, the little British studio which had launched his career, but the story, in which a crew of anachronistic Victorian pirates find themselves inadvertent abductors of a family of schoolchildren, was much too strange and upsetting for producer Michael Balcon. You see, the children utterly destroy the pirates. It was a variation on the theme of "lethal innocence...

Sixty-five years later the classic from Ealing Studios is still subversive, hilarious and distinctly English

It hardly makes sense to think of it as a rerelease, as the 1955 crime caper classic from Ealing Studios is perennially being revisited on screen, and in “Best Of” lists and there have been a number of adaptations, chiefly a middling but well-intentioned remake from the Coen brothers in 2004 featuring Tom Hanks as the mastermind professor first played by Alec Guinness.

The original – now getting a 4K restoration – is subversive, hilarious and as English as Elgar. That’s despite being written by the expatriate American William Rose and directed by American-born Alexander Mackendrick. Both bring a street-smart American snap to the movie, but with an exquisitely English sensibility: a mixture of cynicism with guileless innocence. The comedy works because it is as superbly constructed as a deadly-serious noir thriller – there are weirdly distinct echoes of...

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“Ealing Goes Scottish”

By Raymond Benson

The famous British studio, Ealing, made many kinds of pictures and became a major force in the U.K.’s film industry, especially after producer Michael Balcon took it over. While the studio had already made a few comedies, for some reason in the late 1940s it started producing more of them. The natures of these comedies shifted and became more intelligent, dry, and focused on underdog characters who valiantly attempt to overcome a series of obstacles. Sometimes the protagonists are successful—and sometimes not. Along the way, though, a series of misadventures occur. They range from “amusing” to “riotously funny.” It all worked, and the Ealing Comedies became a sub-genre unto themselves, especially when they starred the likes of Alec Guinness, Alastair Sim, or Stanley Holloway.

The year 1949 is generally considered the beginning of the run,...

Make way for the parade! Featuring Brian Trenchard-Smith, Eli Roth, Katt Shea, Thomas Jane, our very own Don Barrett and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Screams of a Winter Night (1979)

Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death (1975)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2018)

The Rhythm Section (2020)

Atomic Blonde (2017)

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965)

The Ipcress File (1965)

Funeral In Berlin (1966)

Extraction (2020)

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

The Mermaid (2016)

Oklahoma! (1955)

Singin’ In The Rain (1953)

Nightcrawler (2014)

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

Ghetto Freaks a.k.a. Sign of Aquarius (1970)

Hostel (2005)

Cabin Fever (2002)

Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen (2012)

The Movie Orgy (1968)

Gremlins (1984)

The Goonies (1985)

Hell of the Living Dead a.k.a. Night of the Zombies (1980)

Troll 2 (1990)

In The Land Of The Cannibals a.k.a. Land of...

Film Movement, a self-described “film service” that traffics in esoteric theatrical and home video product has released two notable examples of post-war British comedy with Whisky Galore! and The Maggie – both are seafaring satires directed by Alexander Mackendrick featuring some of Ealing Studio’s most memorable players.

Whiskey Galore!/The Maggie

Blu ray

Film Movement

1949, 1954 / 1:33:1 / 82 min., 92 min.

Starring Joan Greenwood, Paul Douglas

Cinematography by Gerald Gibbs, Gordon Dines

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

The men and women of Ealing emerged from the second World War with their cheerful cynicism intact and more than ready to take a bite out of the hand what fed them – from Passport to Pimlico to Kind Hearts and Coronets those artists happily took potshots at the class systems they had fought so hard to defend. Though these satires had teeth (Kind Hearts was especially lethal), romance was never far away – it’s no wonder...

The Oscar

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1966/ 1:66:1 / 120 min.

Starring Stephen Boyd, Tony Bennett, Elke Sommer

Written by Harlan Ellison

Directed by Russell Rouse

Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success is a great movie with two career-best performances from Burt Lancaster as a malignant gossip columnist named J. J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as press agent Sidney Falco – “a real louse.” The third star of the show is surely the screenplay by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets – a lyrical pastiche of streetwise slang that sizzles like “a pocketful of firecrackers.”

Hunsecker – What’s this boy got that Susie likes?

Falco – Integrity – acute, like indigestion.

Hunsecker – I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.

And so on. Mackendrick’s Broadway melodrama is a tale of bright lights and the big city so some hyperbole is expected. But Lehman and Odets were performing...

Much of Ealing Studios’ core appeal begins right here, with T.E.B. Clarke’s astute look at the character of pragmatic, energetic Londoners, who in this fantasy face an outrageous situation with spirit, pluck, and a determination not to be cheated. What happens when a few square blocks of London discover that they’re no longer even part of the British Empire? A classic of wartime ‘adjustments,’ the ensemble comedy even begins with a Tex Avery- like ode to rationing.

Passport to Pimlico

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 84 min. / Street Date December 20, 2019 / 29.95

Starring: Stanley Holloway, Hermione Baddeley, Margaret Rutherford, Sydney Tafler, Betty Warren, Barbara Murray, Paul Dupuis, John Slater, Jane Hylton, Raymond Huntley, Philip Stainton, Roy Carr, Nancy Gabrielle, Malcolm Knight, Roy Gladdish, Frederick Piper, Charles Hawtrey, Stuart Lindsell, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Gilbert Davis, Michael Hordern, Arthur Howard, Bill Shine, Harry Locke, Sam Kydd.

Cinematography: Lionel...

Alexander Mackendrick’s exhilarating pirate adventure mixes accurate history with a fine story of innocence corrupting the corrupt: Anthony Quinn’s pirate goes soft for a 12 year-old girl, and jeopardizes his highly insecure professional standing. James Coburn is superb as the first mate trying to keep the skullduggery on course with a passel of interfering kids on board. And young Deborah Baxter offers an un-sentimentalized portrait of the ordinary magic of childhood. No Summer Magic this! Region-Free German disc.

A High Wind in Jamaica

Blu-ray Caution This May be Region B only see below

Explosive Media GmbH

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date July 20, 2018 / Sturm über Jamaika / Available at Amazon.de

11.99 Euros Starring: Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Deborah Baxter, Dennis Price, Lila Kedrova, Nigel Davenport, Isabel Dean, Kenneth J. Warren, Gert Fröbe, Vivienne Ventura

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Art Director: John Hoesli

Film Editor: Derek York

Original Music: Larry Adler

Written by Stanley Mann,...

File this great comedy under social science fiction, subheading ‘H’ for hilarious. Alec Guinness’s comic boffin hero is both a bringer of miracles and one of the most dangerous men alive. The story of Sidney Stratton, brilliant chemist and inadvertent industrial terrorist, is a consistent laugh riot. Call the jokes droll, understated, dry, and reserved, but they certainly aren’t stupid — Ealing’s high-class comedy is slapstick heaven, yet hides a lesson about modern economics that most people still haven’t learned. And Guinness’s romantic foil is the woman with the velvet-gravel voice, Joan Greenwood.

The Man in the White Suit

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 85 min. / Street Date September 3, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Mollison, Vida Hope.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Art Direction: Jim Morahan

Film Editor: Bernard Gribble

Original Music:...

Burt Lancaster in Frank and Eleanor Perry's The Swimmer (1968), based upon the John Cheever short story. Courtesy of Film Forum.For decades, film critics and academics interested in the classical Hollywood cinema have been dutifully studying the canonized big stars—Cary Grant, Garbo, the Hepburns, Bogart and Bacall, Dietrich and Crawford and Monroe—while downplaying one of the most highly varied and fascinating careers of any studio actor: Burt Lancaster. Now, New York’s Film Forum is giving us a great excuse to revisit this actor’s towering body of work—emphasis on “body.” From big-name classics like Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980) and John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) to little-known masterpieces like Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956) and Luchino Visconti’s late decadent chamber drama Conversation Piece (1974), a meaty, healthy range of Burt is on display for the next four weeks, between July 19 to August 15.Serious film talk...

Above: Italian 4-fogli for Birdman of Alcatraz. Artist: Renato Casaro.Starting today with a week-long run of Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, New York’s Film Forum is hosting a 4-week, 37-film retrospective of one of the great he-men of Hollywood. With his square jaw, gymnast’s physique, and megawatt grin, Burt Lancaster (1913–1994) must have been a boon to movie poster artists and over the years he was drawn or painted by many great affichistes. I could have curated a post on just the Italian renditions of Lancaster alone: over the years he was painted by Ercole Brini, Anselmo Ballester, Luigi Martinati, Renato Casaro, Averardo Ciriello, and many more. To mark the retrospective I have selected 50 of my favorite illustrated images of the indelible star, from his brooding film noir youth (though he was actually 33 when he made his debut in The Killers), through his serious thespian mid-period to his...

Tony Curtis would’ve celebrated his 94th birthday on June 3, 2019. The Oscar-nominated performer starred in dozens of movies throughout his career, becoming famous as the charismatic leading man of romantic comedies, action films, and prestige dramas. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1925 in The Bronx, New York, Curtis got his start in movies thanks mainly to his good looks. He first gained attention as a serious actor thanks to Alexander Mackendrick‘s searing drama “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), in which he played an unscrupulous publicist who agrees to do the bidding of an amoral Broadway critic (Burt Lancaster). The film brought him a BAFTA nomination as Best Actor.

SEEBurt Lancaster movies: 20 greatest films ranked worst to best

He earned his one and only Oscar bid the...

Tony Curtis would’ve celebrated his 94th birthday on June 3, 2019. The Oscar-nominated performer starred in dozens of movies throughout his career, becoming famous as the charismatic leading man of romantic comedies, action films, and prestige dramas. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1925 in The Bronx, New York, Curtis got his start in movies thanks mainly to his good looks. He first gained attention as a serious actor thanks to Alexander Mackendrick‘s searing drama “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), in which he played an unscrupulous publicist who agrees to do the bidding of an amoral Broadway critic (Burt Lancaster). The film brought him a BAFTA nomination as Best Actor.

He earned his one and only Oscar bid the following year as Best Actor for Stanley Kramer‘s...

Blown up to Road Show spectacular dimensions, a fairly modest idea for a comedy western became something of a career Waterloo for director John Sturges. But it’s still a favorite of fans thrilled by fancy 70mm-style presentations. A huge cast led by Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin leads the charge on a whisky-soaked madcap chase. It’s all in a fine spirit of fun. . . so where are the big laughs?

The Hallelujah Trail

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 155 min. / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through the Olive Films website / 24.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin, Donald Pleasence, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, John Anderson, Tom Stern, Robert J. Wilke, Dub Taylor, Whit Bissell, Helen Kleeb, Val Avery, Hope Summers, John Dehner.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Written by John Gay from the novel by William Gulick

Executive...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This March will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Friday, March 2

Friday Night Double Feature: The Ladykillers and La poison

Criminal schemes take unlikely targets in these two pitch-dark comedies from the 1950s. In Alexander Mackendrick’s Ealing Studio farce The Ladykillers (1955), a team of thieves (led by Alec Guinness) descends on a boardinghouse run by an elderly widow, who becomes the victim of their misdeeds. In Sacha Guitry’s brisk, witty, and savage La poison (1951), a gardener (Michel Simon) and his wife, fed up after thirty years of marriage, find themselves plotting each other’s murder.

Tuesday, March 6

Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Art* and In...

Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich laced with too many prescription drugs, Suburbicon might look, sound, and perhaps even taste a little like a Joel and Ethan Coen picture because, in a sense, it is. The Minnesota brothers penned the script for this deliciously cruel and acerbically funny 1960s suburban nightmare years ago — something of a surprise given the story’s fixation on building walls and having other people pay for them — before being picked up and brought to life, in all its glory, by George Clooney.

In a turn of events worth noting, the film’s publicity (surely amongst the year’s most misleading) hinted that Suburbicon would be something derivative of those brothers’ more slapstick-leaning ensemble outings (Burn After Reading, Hail, Caesar!, etc.) but — much to the director’s credit, it must be said — it is, in both content and tone, a far more somber beast.

Based in the titular,...

You never heard of the Great Glasgow Ice Cream Wars? They weren’t exactly Armageddon, and the gentle director Bill Forsyth makes a radio personality’s involvement with two competing ice cream companies more of a plunge into amiable drollery. If you like Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero you’ll understand the odd, unhurried attitude of this oddball show from 1984.

Comfort and Joy

Region B Blu-ray

Studiocanal

1984 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 100 min. / Street Date February 29, 2016 / At Amazon UK / £ 9.99

Starring: Bill Patterson, C.P. Grogan, Eleanor David, Alex Norton, Patrick Malahide.

Cinematography: Chris Menges

Film Editor: Michael Ellis

Original Music: Mark Knopfler

Produced by Davina Belling, Clive Parsons

Written and Directed by Bill Forsyth

Quick, name some great filmmakers before the 1990s that hail from Scotland. Actually, there are plenty, it’s just that most made their careers and reputations in London, and some later in Hollywood. The home-grown talent Bill Forsyth...

Stars: Mandy Miller, Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins, Terence Morgan, Godfrey Tearle, Marjorie Fielding, Nancy Price, Edward Chapman, Patricia Plunkett, Eleanor Summerfield, Colin Gordon | Written by Nigel Balchin, Jack Whittingham | Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

When you watch Mandy, you can’t help but feel it was a film ahead of its time. The story of a deaf girl unable to speak, the new Blu-ray is the perfect chance to watch the movie again.

When Mandy’s (Mandy Miller) parents discover that their child is deaf, they struggle to help her communicate not only with the outside world, but with themselves too. When Christine (Phyllis Calvert), the mother, decides to take Mandy to a school for deaf children, her husband’s reluctance to allow this puts a strain on their marriage.

What is impressive about Mandy is that it doesn’t over dramatise the story of a little girl trapped in her own little world,...

Whisky Galore! screens Friday, May 19th through Sunday May 21st at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts each evening at 8:00pm. Look for a review of Whisky Galore! by Mark Longden this Thursday night here at We Are Movie Geeks.

The inhabitants of a Scottish island try to plunder 50,000 cases of whisky from a nearby stranded ship. A remake of the beloved black and white original film directed by Alexander Mackendrick for Ealing Studios, which was based on the novel by Sir Compton Mackenzie, which itself was based on the real events of 1941 when the S.S. Politician was shipwrecked in the Outer Hebrides leading to a hilarious battle as the wily islanders on nearby Eriskay tried to salvage the huge cargo of whisky on board, enraging the British authorities.

Admission is:

$6 for the general public

$5 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools...