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Image Source: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment As one of his generation’s preeminent actors, Tom Hanks has been in all kinds of movies and played all kinds of roles. Some of those films have taken liberties with reality, like Forrest Gump. Others, like Big, ask you to suspend your disbelief entirely. But there have been several movies in which Tom Hanks has played real-life characters, from Mr. Rogers to Walt Disney to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee to airline pilot Chesley Sullenberger. And when Hanks makes movies like those, he believes authenticity is of the utmost importance. The best example of that would be his role as astronaut Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. When that film was released 30 years ago, Hanks talked to us about how both he and the movie went out of their way to make sure the action and the performances were totally realistic. (Click on the...

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? The Boy Mir: Ten Years In Afghanistan Trailer Put this on my list of documentaries about the wars in the Middle East that I want to check out.