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With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Even Frances Hodgson Burnett’s happy endings come with a price. The beloved British author responsible for two of children literature’s most enduring classics was never precious about meting out “happily ever after” endings with some serious asterisks. Burnett didn’t dislike a happy ending so much as understand that even the most fantastical of plot twists — the long-missing father returns, compassion is cool, the savior was living next door the entire time — should exist in both a fairy tale world and one that looks very similar to the real one.

After all, Burnett’s heroes are mostly children who are skin-of-their-teeth survivors, young stars who overcome through both sheer force of will and the power of their big imaginations. There...

Los Angeles (AP) — Mickey Rooney, the pint-size, precocious actor and all-around talent whose more than 80-year career spanned silent comedies, Shakespeare, Judy Garland musicals, Andy Hardy stardom, television and the Broadway theater, died Sunday at age 93. Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home. Smith said police took a death report but indicated that there was nothing suspicious and it was not a police case. He said he had no additional details on the circumstances of his passing. Rooney started his career in his parents' vaudeville act while still a toddler, and broke into movies before age 10. He was still racking up film and TV credits more than 80 years later — a tenure likely unmatched in the history of show business. "I always say, 'Don't retire — inspire,'" he told The Associated Press in March 2008. "There's a lot to be done.

Anthony McCartney, AP Entertainment Writer

Los Angeles (AP) - Mickey Rooney, the pint-size, precocious actor and all-around talent whose more than 80-year career spanned silent comedies, Shakespeare, Judy Garland musicals, Andy Hardy stardom, television and the Broadway theater, died Sunday at age 93.

Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith said that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home.

Smith said police took a death report but indicated that there was nothing suspicious and he had no additional details on the circumstances of his passing. The Los Angeles County Coroner's office said it was not their case because Rooney died a natural death.

There were no further immediate details on the cause of death, but Rooney did attend an Oscar party last month.

Rooney started his career in his parents' vaudeville act while still a toddler, and broke into movies before age 10. He was still racking...

One of the Most Amazing Silent Movies (or Movies of Any Era, Period) Ever Made Tops the List of Best of Movies Released in 1921 Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Metro Pictures' film version of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s epic novel -- from a scenario by the immensely powerful writer-producer June Mathis -- catapulted Mathis’ protégé, the until then little known Rudolph Valentino (photo, left), to worldwide superstardom, as The Four Horsemen became one of the biggest box-office hits of the silent era. Ingram’s wife, the invariably excellent Alice Terry (right, dark-haired in real life; a light-haired in her many movies), played Valentino's love interest. Ninety-two years after its initial launch, the Four Horsemen remains a monumental achievement. Released by MGM, Vincente Minnelli's 1962 remake of this Metro Pictures production featured an all-star cast: Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin (dubbed by Angela Lansbury), Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb,...

In Robert Wiene’s 1920 dreamlike horror classic, veteran German actor Werner Krauss plays the mysterious Dr. Caligari, the apparent force behind a creepy somnambulist named Cesare and played by Conrad Veidt, who abducts beautiful Lil Dagover. The finale in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has inspired tons of movies and television shows, from Fritz Lang's 1944 film noir The Woman in the Window to the last episode of the TV series St. Elsewhere. In addition, the film shares some key elements in common (suppposedly as a result of a mere coincidence) with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's 2011 thriller Shutter Island. The 1920 crime melodrama Outside the Law is not in any way related to Rachid Bouchareb's 2010 political drama. Instead, the Tod Browning-directed movie is a well-made entry in the gangster genre (long before the explosion a decade later). Browning, best known for his early '30s efforts Dracula and Freaks,...

Kino Classics will release the "David O. Selznick Collection" for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD on November 13. The collection focuses on the golden-age mogul's earlier productions and includes the Freddie Bartholomew classic "Little Lord Fauntleroy," the original 1937 version of "A Star is Born" starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, and William Wellman's "Nothing Sacred." Also part of the set are King Vidor's spicy South Seas adventure "Bird of Paradise," starring Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea, and Frank Borzage's 1932 version of "Farewell to Arms." "Nothing Sacred" and "A Star is Born" are both lavish Technicolor productions, preceding Selznick's most famous high-watt color production in 1939, "Gone with the Wind." The Kino collection's titles range from 1932 to 1937, which straddles the period between Selznick's work at both MGM and Rko, and his...

A reluctant Hollywood child star, he returned to the spotlight in the Superman movies

Jackie Cooper, who has died aged 88, was the first child star of the talkies, paving the way for Freddie Bartholomew, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney. While they could turn on the waterworks when called for, Cooper beat them all easily at the crying game. Little Jackie, from the age of eight until his early teens, blubbed his way effectively through a number of tearjerkers. Sometimes he would try to suppress his tears, pouting and saying, "Ah, shucks! Ah, shucks!" As a critic wrote in 1934: "Jackie Cooper's tear ducts, having been more or less in abeyance for the past few months, have been opened up to provide an autumn freshet in Peck's Bad Boy."

Cooper had started off in the movies billed as "the little tough guy" in eight of Hal Roach's Our Gang comedy shorts.