News

“I’m going to miss being disreputable,” Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell grumbles to Tom Cruise’s now-iconic superspy after their first of many impossible missions. It’s 1996 and these brazen upstarts sip beer outside a pub, preparing to part ways forever. “Well, Luther,” Ethan assures with a smirk, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ll always think of you that way.” It’s a lovely, quiet moment, germinating the earnest warmth that makes Mission: Impossible endure.

That endurance, longevity, and the ever-increasing scope they persist under both fuel and plague Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. In its aims, director Chris McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendersen’s script serves as a capstone to this monumental action franchise. It also attempts the semblance of a standalone film, accessible to any viewer who is (for some reason) fresh to the series in its eighth, presumably ultimate entry. One sympathizes; the...

Back to the Future is filled with hidden references to classic films, showing the passion and knowledge for film of director Robert Zemeckis. The Western-themed Back to the Future Part III features iconic Western actors in a fun bar scene, adding depth to the film. The first film includes clever nods to movies like Safety Last! and 2001: A Space Odyssey, showcasing the attention to detail by the creators.

The Back to the Future films are jam-packed with references to movies of the past. In the 1980s, some audiences may have caught these details, but today, most viewers would probably miss them and consider them to be outdated. These could be things spotted in the background, props, parts of the story, actors, and Easter eggs. The creators of the franchise truly made every creative decision with careful consideration and meaning behind it.

The first film was released in 1985, and was...

One of the all-time greats in the world of silent film comedy, Harold Lloyd, is perhaps best known for his monumental work Safety Last!, which, in addition to providing Boeing with a perfect slogan, gave us the iconic scene in which Lloyd perilously hangs from a clockface.

He also starred in classics like the college football comedy The Freshman, which no doubt served as the inspiration for Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy.

But before both of those projects, Lloyd was the victim of a freak accident that left him horribly injured, all due to a mishap that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in one of his silent comedies. In 1919, Lloyd inked a deal with Pathe distributors to star in a new series of films, and agreed to pose for a photographer in order to promote the arrangement. During the photo shoot, Lloyd was given a trunk full of props,...

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd were the clown jewels of silent comedy. Chaplin was off the screen in 1924; he was a year away from the release of one of his feature masterpieces “The Gold Rush.” Lloyd followed the blockbuster success of 1923’s “Safety Last!” in 1924 with the gems “Girl Shy” and “Hot Water.” And Keaton dazzled critics and audiences with the innovative “Sherlock Jr.” and the riotous “The Navigator.”

“Sherlock Jr.”, which opened in May 1924, was just Keaton’s third feature. Running a brisk 45 minutes, “Sherlock Jr” pushed the cinematic envelope. The stoic, deadpan comic plays a projectionist and janitor at a small-town movie theater who dreams, literally, of becoming a detective. He also discovers that he has a slick rival (Ward Crane) for his sweet girl (Kathryn McGuire). The slick even steals the pocket watch of the girl’s father and puts the blame on Buster. Banished from the house,...

Back to the Future pays homage to the 1923 film Safety Last! in its opening and ending scenes, with a clock tower scene from the classic comedy being referenced. The clock depicting the famous scene from Safety Last! in Doc Brown's collection foreshadows the similar perilous situation he finds himself in at the end of the film. The homage to Safety Last! was intentional on the part of the filmmakers, who wanted to connect the climax of Back to the Future to the classic film that inspired it.

Back to the Future's opening and ending are two of the most iconic parts of the franchise, but these famous moments actually pay homage to a movie that came out 62 years earlier. Filmmakers often sneak references to their inspirations into their own films, with paying homage to the classics being a trend that can still be found in Hollywood to this day.

Bespectacled Harold Lloyd, one of the legendary clown jewels of silent film, is best known for such films as 1924’s “Girl Shy” and “Hot Water,” 1925’s “The Freshman” and 1928’s “Speedy.” And his masterpiece “Safety Last!” is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In this charming comedy, Lloyd’s “The Boy” leaves his small hometown hoping to make it good in the big city and earn enough money to send for his starry-eyed girlfriend (Mildred Davis). Though there are many wonderful moments in the film, “Safety Last!” is best membered for the sequence in which Lloyd defies gravity hanging from the hands of a gigantic clock of a high-rise building.

And if you live in Los Angeles and its environs, you can catch a beautifully restored screening of “Safety Last!” Sunday August 27 at 2 p.m. at the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater. A live orchestra conducted by Angel Velez...

Harold Lloyd’s stunts in Safety Last! make it one of the most heart-in-mouth films of all time. On its 100th birthday, his granddaughter remembers his mastery, inspiration – and the real-life love at the film’s heart

It is one of the most famous images in film history: a bespectacled man dangles from the hands of a broken clock, 12 storeys above the Los Angeles traffic. The climax of Harold Lloyd’s slapstick suspense masterpiece Safety Last!, which is about to celebrate its centenary, is also a defining image of the city, much like the construction workers perched on a steel beam in the 1932 news photograph Lunch Atop a Skyscraper is for New York. They share a sense of the giddy dangers of 20th-century urbanism, and the precarity of the working man.

Harold, the hero of Safety Last!, is just such an ordinary joe: a department store sales clerk struggling to keep his job,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Anthology Film Archives

On Sunday, Courtney Stephens gives a live performance of her archival doc Terra Femme.

Film at Lincoln Center

New 4K restorations of the Infernal Affairs trilogy start screening this weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Caan Film Festival returns with 35mm prints of The Godfather, El Dorado, and Games, while Safety Last! screens this Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Morvern Callar and A Woman Under the Influence, while Godard’s King Lear screens.

Film Forum

A Miloš Forman retrospective celebrates the filmmaker’s 90th birthday; the restoration of Carnal Knowledge continues.

IFC Center

“World of Wong Kar-wai” returns; the 4K Daisies restoration continues, as does the new restoration of Heat; Beaches of Agnes, Bottle Rocket, Aliens, Blue Velvet, The Holy Mountain, El Topo, Taxi Driver, The Shining, and The Silence of the Lambs...

After Blue (Paradis sale)The lineup for the 2021 festival has been revealed, including new films by Bertrand Mandico, Axelle Ropert, Abel Ferrara and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEBeckett (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino)Free Guy (Shawn Levy)Heat (Michael Mann)Hinterland (Stefan Ruzowitzky)Ida Red (John Swab)Monte Verità (Stefan Jäger)National Lampoon's Animal House (John Landis)Respect (Liesl Tommy)Rose (Aurélie Saada)Sinkhole (Kim Ji-hoon)The Alleys (Bassel Ghandour)The Terminator (James Cameron)Vortex (Gaspar Noé)Yaya e Lennie — The Walking Liberty (Alessandro Rak)Tomorrow My Love (Gitanjali Rao)Lynx (Laurent Geslin)Zeros and OnesCONCORSO INTERNAZIONALEAfter Blue (Paradis sale) (Bertrand Mandico)Al Naher (The River) (Ghassan Salhab)Espíritu sagrado (The Sacred Spirit) (Chema García Ibarra)Gerda (Natalya Kudryashova)I giganti (The Giants) (Bonifacio Angius)Jiao ma teng hui (A New Old Play) (Jiongjiong Qiu)Juju StoriesLa Place d'une autre (Secret Name) (Aurélia Georges)Leynilögga (Cop Secret...

Now that France’s borders are poised to open up to travelers from around Europe and the United States, there’s an intriguing new lodging option in Paris for cinephiles — and industry folk perhaps making a pit stop ahead of or after the Cannes Film Festival in July.

Hotel Paradiso, a four-star venue that bills itself as “the first cinema-hotel,” is open for business in the capital’s 12th arrondissement. An adjunct of the MK2 exhibition circuit, the hotel’s 34 rooms each boast laser projectors and giant screens (that are “bigger than the bed”). There are also two suites kitted out with private screening rooms. Soon to open are a karaoke lounge, podcast studio and an open-air cinema roof terrace. In a nod to the movies, guests must dial 007 to reach reception.

The hotel is located above MK2’s six-screen Nation multiplex and has views onto giant murals painted by...

(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.) The Movie: Safety Last! Where You Can Stream It: HBO Max The Pitch: A small-town guy moves to the big city, wanting to make enough money so he can afford to send for his girlfriend […]

The post The Quarantine Stream: ‘Safety Last!’ is One of the All-Time Great Silent Films appeared first on /Film.

By Raymond Benson

The Criterion Collection has released its fourth entry in a group of Harold Lloyd silent classics, titles considered to be his very best work—and The Kid Brother could very well be at the top of the heap as the definitive Lloyd feature film. While Safety Last! (1923) contains the iconic sequence of Lloyd ascending a skyscraper and hanging on to the arm of a giant clock, there is much to be said about The Kid Brother’s storytelling, the depth of its characters, and Lloyd’s ability to make us laugh at peril. This time, instead of great heights or speeding cars, the threat comes from villains who want nothing more than to break poor Harold’s neck.

The setting is a rural town at the cusp of the changeover between “western times” and the modern age. Cars exist, but most people are still riding horses. Sheriff...

Marking the 112th anniversary of Harold Lloyd's birthday, Sony Pictures Releasing is reissuing Lloyd's classic films, including Safety Last! and The Freshman. Beginning April 20, the films, which have been made available by the Harold Lloyd Trust, will premiere at Film Forum in New York. Bookings in additional cities -- including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago -- will follow. Many of the silent titles will feature newly recorded scores. "My grandfather holds an historic place in cinema history," said Suzanne Lloyd, the actor's granddaughter and president of Harold Lloyd Entertainment. "I'm pleased and proud that Sony has stepped forward to release these films so that a new generation can experience the sheer entertainment of Harold Lloyd on the big screen." Lloyd's film career spanned 34 years and 200 comedies. Among his most famous films are Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last! (1923), Girl Shy (1924), The Freshman (1925), The Kid Brother (1927), Speedy (1928) and Movie Crazy (1932).

The image of actor Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock in the 1923 silent movie Safety Last! is getting a contemporary makeover. Mark Gordon will produce Safety Last for Columbia Pictures, which has picked up writer Keith Bunin's pitch. The contemporary take, a love story, will be loosely based the Lloyd classic, which centers on a store clerk who organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building but is forced to make the perilous climb himself. The new version is expected to feature elaborate, choreographed physical comedy that was the trademark of the silent pictures. P. Jennifer Dana (Winter Passing) also will produce, and Suzanne Lloyd, granddaughter of the silent-film legend, will serve as executive producer. The Mark Gordon Co.'s Lawrence Inglee will oversee the project alongside Columbia Pictures senior executives Andrea Gianetti and Matt Tolmach.