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Tom Cruise is no stranger to pushing the boundaries of his craft. From scaling skyscrapers in Mission: Impossible to resurrecting Top Gun with unparalleled success, the actor has always been a beacon of commitment and versatility. This time, however, the beloved actor finds himself stepping into something entirely different, a collaboration with one of the most daring filmmakers in contemporary cinema, i.e., Alejandro G. Iñárritu!

Tom Cruise at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con International | Credits: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

The filmmaker is known for his deeply evocative storytelling and masterful direction. Iñárritu’s films, such as Birdman and The Revenant, have carved out a unique space in Hollywood, and his partnership with Cruise is set to be one of the most intriguing moves in recent cinematic history. Let’s dive into what we know about this mysterious collaboration and what it could mean for Cruise and Iñárritu’s careers.

Rob Marshall is in talks to direct a film adaptation of Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls,” the classic Broadway musical and 1955 film of the same name, for TriStar Pictures, according to an insider with knowledge of the project.

John Requa and Glenn Ficarra are in talks to write the screenplay with Marshall and John DeLuca. John Goldwyn, Marc Toberoff and Marc Platt are producing with Marshall and DeLuca.

Previously, the studio purchased the rights to the original short stories written by Damon Runyon that inspired the musical, to the Broadway musical book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows and its music by Loesser, as well as the remake rights to the ’55 film “Guys and Dolls” as released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company.

Runyon originally wrote the short stories “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown,” “Pick the Winner” and “Blood Pressure” about a gambler and his relationship with a missionary girl.

Rob Marshall is rockin’ the boat!

The “Chicago” director is in talks to helm the remake of “Guys and Dolls” for Sony’s TriStar Pictures. Marshall and John DeLuca will write the script with John Requa & Glenn Ficarra.

John Goldwyn, Marc Toberoff and Marc Platt will produce alongside Marshall and DeLuca, while TriStar president Nicole Brown and Shary Shirazi will oversee the project for the studio.

Bill Condon was previously attached to direct the film back in 2021.

Sony purchased remake rights in 2019 for the original Damon Runyon short stories about gamblers and gangsters, as well as the rights to the Broadway musical The studio also acquired remake rights to the previous 1955 film adaptation from the Samuel Goldwyn company.

That version of “Guys and Dolls” starred Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, and Vivian Blaine, and was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also wrote the screenplay.

“Guys and Dolls” opened...

Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.

Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.

Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.

Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...

[This article was originally published in 2017. It has been updated in August 2024.]

70mm is back! Thanks to Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan, one of the oldest and grandest traditions in Hollywood is making a comeback after years of financial setbacks and near-extinction. As Nolan has said many times, shooting in 70mm proved an immersive and more textured experience than any other form of cinema.

Due to the costly nature of film and theaters’ lack of 70mm projectors, it’s been quite a challenge to get to a place where Tarantino and Nolan can make entire features using 65/70mm, but the preservation of film is turning in their favor.

Below, we’ve gathered 20 of the most essential 70mm film releases. From Stanley Kubrick to William Wyler and David Lean, it’s clear shooting in 70mm is mandatory for any epic filmmaker.

With additional editorial contributions from Zack Sharf.

“Oklahoma!” (1955)

Fred Zinnemann’s film adaptation of the 1943 stage musical was the...

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes director Nanette Burstein on Eddie Fisher and Susan Oliver with Elizabeth Taylor in Daniel Mann’s BUtterfield 8: “They cast Eddie Fisher in the film and his love interest looks exactly like Debbie Reynolds.”

In Nanette Burstein’s Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (Cannes Film Festival world première and a Spotlight Documentary selection of the 23rd edition of the Tribeca Festival), written and edited by Tal Ben-David, we hear, through the audio tapes of journalist Richard Meryman, Elizabeth Taylor in her own words as she discusses her career and life, including her first five husbands, Conrad Hilton Jr. (Nick), Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton.

Oscar nominees Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor with Montgomery Clift in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer

The tapes start in 1964. Elizabeth Taylor offers her interviewer a drink. “I’m not illicit, not immoral,” she...

France’s Deauville American Film Festival has announced a retrospective gathering 50 U.S. features that have challenged perceptions of the world to mark its 50th anniversary.

The selection ranges from D. W. Griffith’s 1916 silent epic Intolerance to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and also includes Ida Lupino’s groundbreaking 1950 rape drama Outrage as well as Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. (see full list below)

“Cinema has always made us dream, travel, desire, fantasize, laugh, cry. But how many films have been able to shake up our certainties, question our beliefs, question our prejudices and put our own views into perspective?,” said the festival.

“The Deauville American Film Festival wanted to highlight a selection of 50 films that have changed the way we look at the world,” it continued.

Launched in 1975, the festival unfolding in the swanky Normandy beach resort of Deauville, annually fetes Hollywood...

For this week’s column, I spoke to Dawn Baillie, who is responsible for, or who has collaborated on, some of the most iconic American movie posters of the last four decades, from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) to Barbie (2023). Her work is currently the focus of an extraordinary ongoing exhibition at Poster House in New York City.I asked her if she would humor me by selecting her top ten movie posters of all time, now a tradition for this column. She most graciously accepted the challenge. Baillie’s top ten and comments are listed below in descending order. She explained that these are all posters she “refers to often,” and presents her selection with the caveat that she could easily list 50 more. Dawn Baillie’S Top Ten Favorite Movie POSTERS1. USA one-sheet by Erik Nitsche for All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA, 1950)When we talk about encapsulating...

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By this point, we all know how fortunate we are that we got to see Denis Villenueve's two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel "Dune" in its entirety. Warner Bros. clearly believed in Villenueve as a visionary by giving him a $160 million budget to adapt the first chunk of Herbert's book after the filmmaker's last movie for the studio, "Blade Runner 2049," severely underperformed commercially. The gamble itself wasn't on Villenueve. WB knew he could build massive worlds and tell a compelling story within them. It was on the material to sell itself. Was a nuanced tale of political intrigue set on a desert planet of interest to mainstream audiences?

Villenueve's "Dune" was compelling enough to score a $41 million theatrical opening despite debuting on HBO Max the same day. A significant number of moviegoers understood this was a big-screen experience,...

At the 27th Academy Awards, Oscar helped Edmond O’Brien win an Oscar.

O’Brien played sleazy show biz publicist Oscar Muldoon in 1954’s “The Barefoot Contessa,” which starred Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. Bogart had been crowned Best Actor of 1951 for “The African Queen,” and had also contended for the same award for 1943’s Best Picture, “Casablanca.” Gardner was coming off of her first and only nomination, for Best Actress in 1953’s “Mogambo.” “The Barefoot Contessa” was written and directed by Academy favorite Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who had won back-to-back Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars for 1949’s “A Letter to Three Wives” and 1950’s Best Picture, “All About Eve.”

”The Barefoot Contessa” didn’t fare quite as well at the Oscars as “Letter” or “Eve.” Neither Bogart or Gardner received nominations, though Bogart was cited for his role in that same year’s Best Picture entry “The Caine Mutiny.

Superstar Marilyn Monroe passed away in 1962, but her legacy lives on in the form of several classic movies that still hold up today. The actor and model appeared in plenty of great films across her lifetime, including several that have only grown in public estimation since their release. Among the best: crowd pleasers like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "The Seven Year Itch," and "How To Marry A Millionaire," plus stone-cold classics "Some Like It Hot" and "All About Eve."

Surprisingly, though, Monroe's most popular and obviously beloved movies aren't actually her most acclaimed –- at least according to one major metric. Only one of the films she appeared in during her too-short lifetime has a perfect critical score on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, and it's not any of the titles listed above. Instead, that coveted 100% score goes to "Don't Bother To Knock," a comparatively underseen thriller Monroe starred in...

Renowned for her acting prowess, Angelina Jolie almost portrayed the historical figure Cleopatra in a film, which was ultimately canceled. Following the disastrous reception of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1963 film, numerous filmmakers have expressed interest in bringing their vision of the Egyptian queen to the screen.

Angelina Jolie | Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jolie was attached to one such project, with directors like David Fincher and Ang Lee also being involved before its cancellation. Brian Helgeland, the original screenwriter of the film, has recently provided insight into the canceled film, describing it as a love affair epic infused with elements like political thriller, assassinations, and romance.

Inside Angelina Jolie’s Canceled Epic of Cleopatra

Screenwriter and producer Brian Helgeland recently reflected on the canceled Cleopatra film, which was set to star Angelina Jolie. He shared that he was the “very first writer” to work on the film’s script, which aimed to...

Long live Queen Cleopatra, even if her film adaptations have been plagued for more than half a century.

After Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1963 “Cleopatra” starring Elizabeth Taylor made history as one of the biggest box office disasters ever, a long-gestating adaptation was set with Angelina Jolie attached to star (and directors like David Fincher and Ang Lee being attached at different times). “A Knight’s Tale” and “Man on Fire” writer Brian Helgeland wrote the script, and while the film was “almost made,” it eventually fell by the wayside.

Now, Helgeland is recalling the details of the scrapped project in a new interview with Inverse. “I was the very first writer on ‘Cleopatra’ when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which was almost made,” Helgeland said. “It had elements of a political thriller with assassinations and sex, but it’s an epic that’s divided between her...

When Disney purchased the 20th Century Fox library in 2019, it caused some consternation among cineastes. The Fox catalog was vast and impressive, containing tons of indelible classics and even more titles waiting deep inside the studio's archive. 20th Century Fox was formed in 1935 and quickly became one of the "big five" studios that dominated the film industry for decades. Fox hadn't seen a shake-up this dramatic since 1985 when ultra-conservative media mogul Rubert Murdoch bought a controlling share of the company from Marvin Davis.

When Disney made its purchase, many film fans wondered if Fox's old classics would be made more widely available through the about-to-launch Disney+. When the streaming service debuted with a paltry 500 titles, cineastes were aghast. Why buy all those Fox titles if you're not going to distribute them?

That, however, was merely the end of the road for Fox. For its 83-year life, the studio went through many massive,...

If Criterion24/7 hasn’t completely colonized your attention every time you open the Channel––this is to say: if you’re stronger than me––their May lineup may be of interest. First and foremost I’m happy to see a Michael Roemer triple-feature: his superlative Nothing But a Man, arriving in a Criterion Edition, and the recently rediscovered The Plot Against Harry and Vengeance is Mine, three distinct features that suggest a long-lost voice of American movies. Meanwhile, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Antiwar Trilogy four by Sara Driver, and a wide collection from Ayoka Chenzira fill out the auteurist sets.

Series-wise, a highlight of 1999 goes beyond the well-established canon with films like Trick and Bye Bye Africa, while of course including Sofia Coppola, Michael Mann, Scorsese, and Claire Denis. Films starring Shirley Maclaine, a study of 1960s paranoia, and Columbia’s “golden era” (read: 1950-1961) are curated; meanwhile, The Breaking Ice,...

Buddy Adler was just two years into his brief reign as the Head of Production for 20th Century Fox in 1958 when producer Walter Wanger brought him an epic project that could potentially pull the then-struggling studio out of its box office slump. The film wound up soaring so far over budget that Fox would be forced to sell 180 acres of its Los Angeles backlot to Alcoa just to stay financially afloat.

Had Adler made "Cleopatra" on his own terms, the title role would've been a sensibly priced production toplined by one of the studio's affordable contract stars (e.g. Joan Collins or Joanne Woodward). Wanger, however, had outsized dreams. He saw the historical drama as a Hollywood epic for the ages. He believed in its potential to dominate the box office and win scores of Academy Awards. He wanted Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the most popular movie star on the planet,...

Everyone remembers their first time. That is the first time they saw Marlon Brando.

For the late Mike Nichols, seeing Brando on Broadway in 1947 in his seminal turn as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams‘ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was the catalyst that lead to his career in the arts which saw him become a rare Egot winner. The teenage Nichols and his then girlfriend’s mother were given tickets for the second night of the Elia Kazan-directed production. “There had never been anything like it, I know that by now,” Nichols recalled in a 2010 L.A. Times interview. It was, to this day, the only thing onstage that I had ever seen that was 100% real and 100% poetic. Lucy and I weren’t exactly theater buffs, but we couldn’t get up at the intermission. We were just so stunned. Your heart was pounding. It was a major experience.”

Susan L.

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

Italy’s Torino Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Marlon Brando’s birth with a 24-title retrospective of films featuring the groundbreaking two-time Oscar winner, known for his naturalistic acting style and rebellious streak.

The Brando retro will be “the backbone” of the fest, according to its new artistic director, Italian actor/director Giulio Base. Accordingly, an image of Brando – photographed when he was shooting Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” – is featured on the poster for the fest’s upcoming 42nd edition, which will run Nov. 22-30.

Torino is Italy’s preeminent event for young directors and indie cinema, and is where Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino screened their first works. The festival’s lineup will be announced at a later date.

“As an actor, Brando has always been my guiding star and I had been wondering for a while – since way before being appointed at Torino...

February––particularly its third week––is all about romance. Accordingly the Criterion Channel got creative with their monthly programming and, in a few weeks, will debut Interdimensional Romance, a series of films wherein “passion conquers time and space, age and memory, and even death and the afterlife.” For every title you might’ve guessed there’s a wilder companion: Alan Rudolph’s Made In Heaven, Soderbergh’s remake, and Resnais’ Love Unto Death. Mostly I’m excited to revisit Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, a likely essential viewing before Megalopolis.

February also marks Black History Month, and Criterion’s series will include work by Shirley Clarke (also subject of a standalone series), Garrett Bradley, Cheryl Dunye, and Julie Dash, while movies by Sirk, Minnelli, King Vidor, and Lang play in “Gothic Noir.” Greta Gerwig gets an “Adventures in Moviegoing” and can be seen in Mary Bronstein’s Yeast,...

Rod Serling was famous for a lot of things. He was one of the most acclaimed television writers of the mid-20th century, the creator of the genre-defining anthology series "The Twilight Zone," he co-wrote the screenplay to the original "Planet of the Apes," and he even helped give Steven Spielberg his big break. But even though he's famous for a lot of things, he was a prolific writer and even some of his best and most fascinating projects have been largely forgotten by the public over time. Like, for example, an adaptation of one of the most popular Christmas stories ever told, transformed into one of the most politically charged Christmas movies ever filmed.

Serling was no stranger to Christmas stories. After all, he wrote the classic yuletide episode "Night of the Meek," a hopeful story about an alcoholic department store Santa who stumbles across a magical sack that...

Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

Back By Popular Demand

The Graduate,...

Michel Ciment, the esteemed French film critic, historian, author, radio producer and editor of the influential film magazine Positif, has died. He was 85.

His death was reported Monday by the French radio channel France Inter, the home of his culture program Le Masque et la Plume since 1970.

Ciment was “perhaps the freest and most encyclopedic mind that film criticism has ever produced,” Le Masque et la Plume producer Jérome Garcin in a statement. He made what would be his last appearance on the show in September.

The Paris native also produced Projection privée on France Culture radio from 1990-2016. He was “an immense critic and historian who devoted his entire life to passing on, in words and in writing, his erudition and his passion for the seventh art,” a statement from the channel said.

Ciment joined Positif after sending in a story about the Orson Welles film The Trial in 1963 and would become its editor,...

French critic, historian and author was loyal contributor to Screen’s Cannes jury grid.

Iconic French film critic and historian Michel Ciment has died, his entourage confirmed on Monday evening to French radio station France Inter, home to his world-renowned radio show Le Masque et la Plume since 1970. He was 85.

Born in 1938 in Paris, Ciment devoted his life to cinema and became a pillar of French film criticism and history for more than half a century.

He served as a juror at major festivals including Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno and received numerous French civic honours including the Legion of Honour,...

These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.

James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve has ably demonstrated that a catty feud between theater critics and actresses is crackling subject matter for witty, adult entertainment. Anand Tucker’s The Critic follows a similar premise and, auspiciously, recruited playwright Patrick Marber––a well-known luminary of the British theater scene––to pen a script packed with sharp, acerbic dialog. This, still, is not half-enough. In its quest to surprise audiences, The Critic jumps down too many rabbit holes, progressively losing all semblance of plausibility or insight it might’ve otherwise yielded.

The film is being billed as an adaptation of Anthony Quinn’s well-regarded novel Curtain Call, though one glance at the book summary indicates that significant liberties have been taken––notably, a murder-mystery strand has been entirely jettisoned. What we have instead is an interpersonal drama between several personalities either directly or tangentially related to the theater. Chief among...

Horace Ové, director of “Pressure” (1976), the first full-length Black British film, died on Sept. 16. He was 86.

Ové’s son Zak posted on Facebook: “Our loving father Horace, took his last breath at 4.30 this morning, while sleeping peacefully. I hope his spirit is free now after many years of suffering with Alzheimer’s. You are forever missed, and forever loved. Rest in Peace Pops, and thank you for everything.”

Born in Trinidad in 1936, Ové’s moved to London in 1960 to study interior design. A stint in Rome, during which he worked as a film extra including on Joseph Mankiewicz’s “Cleopatra” (1963), he was exposed to the work of Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica, who would become infuences. He returned to Britain in 1965 and covered social and political events in the country while being a student at the London Film School. During the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the...

Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest movie makers of all time, with titles such as “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” and “The Irishman.” The Academy Awards think that highly of him, too. Scorsese has reaped nine Best Director nominations. That tally ties him with Steven Spielberg. Here’s the breakdown of Best Director bids for both of them:

Scorsese:

“Raging Bull” in 1981 — lost to Robert Redford for “Ordinary People.” “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1989 — lost to Barry Levinson for “Rain Man.” “Goodfellas” in 1991 — lost to Kevin Costner for “Dances With Wolves.” “Gangs of New York” in 2003 — lost to Roman Polanski for “The Pianist.” “The Aviator” in 2005 — lost to Clint Eastwood for “Million Dollar Baby.” “The Departed” in 2007 — Won. “Hugo” in 2012 — lost to Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist.” “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2014 — lost to Alfonso Cuarón for “Gravity.” “The Irishman” in 2020 — lost to Bong Joon Ho for “Parasite.

Few American filmmakers of the last 40 years await a major rediscovery like Hal Hartley, whose traces in modern movies are either too-minor or entirely unknown. Thus it’s cause for celebration that the Criterion Channel are soon launching a major retrospective: 13 features (which constitutes all but My America) and 17 shorts, a sui generis style and persistent vision running across 30 years. Expect your Halloween party to be aswim in Henry Fool costumes.

Speaking of: there’s a one-month headstart on seasonal programming with the 13-film “High School Horror”––most notable perhaps being a streaming premiere for the uncut version of Suspiria, plus the rare opportunity to see a Robert Rodriguez movie on the Criterion Channel––and a retrospective of Hong Kong vampire movies. A retrospective of ’70s car movies offer chills and thrills of a different sort

Six films by Allan Dwan and 12 “gaslight noirs” round out the main September series; The Eight Mountains,...

Lelia Goldoni, who was cast in the lead role for John Cassavette’s race-centered film “Shadows,” died over the weekend at the age of 86.

The actress died on Saturday at the Actors Fund Home in Engelwood, New Jersey, Goldoni’s friend, Jd Sobol, told TheWrap on Thursday.

The New York City native was born on Oct. 1, 1936, and got her start in the entertainment business during the 1940s, with one of her first roles being a cameo in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “House of Strangers” in 1949. That same year she also had a role in John Huston’s “We Were Strangers.”

Martin Scorsese later brought Goldoni on to star as a friend of Ellen Burnstyn’s character in his 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Her resume also included performing in the original “The Italian Job” (1969), John Schlesinger’s “The Day of the Locust” (1975) and Robert Mulligan’s “Bloodbrothers.”

Goldoni, who...

Gal Gadot is moving forward with her Cleopatra movie, and she recently told Vogue Hong Kong that it will “change the narrative” about the historical figure.

“Israel borders Egypt, and I grew up with so many stories about Cleopatra, and she’s like a household name,” Gadot said. “You know, if Wonder Woman is the imaginary strong female leader, Cleopatra’s actually the real one. That’s a perfect example of a story that I wanted to tell because I started reading different books about Cleopatra, and I said, ‘Wow, that’s fascinating.’ All I ever saw in regards to Cleopatra from film was that she was this seductive woman who had an affair with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. But the truth is, there’s so much more to her.”

“This woman was so ahead of her time,” Gadot continued. “Egypt and what Egypt was back then, was still...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ “Cleopatra,” which opened in New York on June 12, 1963 and in Los Angeles a week later, was not a flop. In fact, the 243-minute film was a box office champ making $26 million at the box office, $6 million more than the Cinerama epic “How the West was Won.” But being the most expensive movie of its time — the budget ended up being around $44 million which would be around $429.5 million in 2023 — it took a long time to recoup its staggering costs. The film was such a drain on Twentieth Century Fox, the studio ended up having to sell nearly 300 acres of its backlot. That acreage was transformed into Century City.

The budgets started to soar when the original production with Elizabeth Taylor, who asked for and received $1 million for her services, Peter Finch as Julius Caesar, Stephen Boyd as Marc Antony and veteran filmmaker Rouben Mamoulian as director, stopped production...

Exclusive: Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James are joining forces to star in a scorching new play by Penelope Skinner, directed by Ian Rickson, that will open in London’s West End in the fall.

Pretty hot names to have atop a theater marquee, that’s for sure.

The drama, called Lyonesse, will open at the Harold Pinter Theatre in late September or early October. Official dates are being determined.

In this new work, Skinner — who won the George Devine Award for most promising playwright in 2011 for The Village Bike — focuses on Elaine (Scott Thomas), a reclusive and brilliant actress who disappeared from public view under mysterious circumstances.

Elaine summons Kate (James), a young film executive, to her remote Cornish estate to facilitate “her glorious comeback,” according to a production source who copped me a premise of the play.

“But who really controls the stories we tell and how we get to tell them?...

Just in time for Succession‘s end, let’s look at method acting. The Criterion Channel are highlighting the controversial practice in a 27-film series centered on Brando, Newman, Nicholson, and many other’s embodiment of “an intensely personal, internalized, and naturalistic approach to performance.” That series makes mention of Marilyn Monroe, who gets her own, 11-title highlight––the iconic commingling with deeper cuts.

Pride Month offers “Masc,” a consideration of “trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes” onscreen; the Michael Koresky-curated Queersighted returning with a study of the gay best friend; and the 20-film “LGBTQ+ Favorites.” Louis Garrel’s delightful The Innocent (about which I talked to him here), the director’s cut of Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, and Stanley Kwan’s hugely underseen Lan Yu make streaming premieres, while Araki’s Totally F***ed Up and Mysterious Skin also get a run. Criterion Editions include Five Easy Pieces,...

Queen Cleopatra is a Netflix documentary directed by Tina Gharavi and Victoria Adeola Thomas, starring Adele James, Craig Russell and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Do you remember the Joseph L. Mankiewicz movie, Cleopatra, starring Elisabeth Taylor? Well, absolutely nothing to do with it.

A documentary series that follows in the footsteps of African Queens: Njinga in its treatment and approach to dramatized documentary.

Queen Cleopatra About the series

To say it with (much) subtlety: the series is not a ten, nor a seven… from there, let’s go down and let everyone places it where they want. A series that undoubtedly lacks the means to recreate the grandeur of Ancient Egypt and that, without the actors or the imagination of I, Claudius (the mythical BBC series) pretends to do something similar, but with not enough resources for the choice of a subject so… grandiose.

And with such a brutal and imperial...

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If you look at the coverage around the current Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, or the one that took place in 2007-2008, it tends to revolve around television. With TV taking less time to produce more content, a strike of any significant length of time will affect that medium well before the big-budget world of film, where the average length of pre-production can range anywhere from six months to a year.

As the writer John Gregory Dunne once wrote in his essay “Hollywood: Opening Moves,” “From the earliest days of the motion picture industry … the screenwriter has been regarded at best as an anomalous necessity, at worst a curse to be born.” Though audiences starting in Hollywood’s earliest days came to know the names of some prominent screenwriters,...

Though Tom Pelphrey was already a two-time Daytime Emmy-winner for his work in the daytime drama “Guiding Light” and had been working steadily on stage and screen, his move to “Ozark’s” third season took his career to a new level. He blazed onscreen as Ben Davis, the bipolar brother of Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney), and seemingly shot to stardom overnight. It’s been a busy couple of years for the actor both professionally and personally — his partner Kaley Cuoco gave birth to their first child, a daughter, on March 30. And now Pelphrey is starring in “Love and Death,” HBO Max’s limited series from David E. Kelley about Texas housewife Candy Montgomery (played by Elisabeth Olsen), who killed her friend Betty Gore in 1980 after being confronted with evidence of Montgomery’s affair with Gore’s husband. (Montgomery pleaded self-defense and was acquitted of murder.) Pelphrey plays Don Crowder, a...

You can probably list the names of a plethora of fashion designers off the top of your head. Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, etc. They not only designed beautiful clothes people crave to wear, but they became figureheads in their industry. You could put them on the cover of a magazine and know exactly who they are. Costume designers, however, don't get the same kind of popularity, even though they are in a similar profession. You may be able to think of a few names — Ann Roth, Sandy Powell, or Ruth E. Carter — but I would suspect it would be difficult for you to pick them out of a crowd.

Then there is Edith Head. With her unmistakable short black hair and Coke bottle glasses, Head was the crème de la crème of Hollywood costume design from the late 1920s through the 1970s. She holds...

(Welcome to Did They Get It Right?, a series where we take a look at an Oscars category from yesteryear and examine whether the Academy's winner stands the test of time.)

In any given year, you're lucky to have even one performance by an actor that is genuinely considered to be iconic. I know that is a word that gets thrown around enough nowadays that it means almost nothing, but every so often, that is really the only word you can use. These are the performances that you would show to an alien as the benchmarks of cinema. I'm talking about Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" or Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz"-level stuff. Well, 1950 produced three. All of them are women, all three played actors, and they all competed against each other in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards. You have Bette Davis and Anne Baxter...

This Mickey Spillane noir tale has its good points: star Anthony Quinn gives a solid ‘tough guy’ performance, sizing up a quartet of thrill-crazy Spillane dames that promise no end of trouble. The surprisingly clever script dares to exploit the gimmicks of both amnesia and plastic surgery — without insulting our intelligence. Peggie Castle is our new favorite in the glamour sweepstakes, and Gene Evans, Charles Coburn, Mary Ellen Kay, Shawn Smith, Barry Kelley, Jay Adler and Bruno VeSota co-star. And remember: ‘Evil to Him who Evil Thinks.’

The Long Wait 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1954 / B&w / 1:75 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date March 21, 2023 / Available from ClassicFlix / 39.99

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Gene Evans, Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay, Shawn Smith, Dolores Donlon, Barry Kelley, James Millican, Bruno VeSota, Jay Adler, John Damler, Frank Marlowe, Paul Dubov.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Art Director: Boris Leven

Film Editor: Ronald Sinclair

Editorial Supervisor Otto Ludwig...

Comedy is what we need right now, says Nicholas Hytner, who ran London’s National Theatre for a decade.

It’s fine to have heavy-lifting dramas by Ibsen or Schiller, but boy-oh-boy laughter is an increasingly uplifting necessity.

Which is where Guys & Dolls and James Corden, post his life on The Late Late Show, come in.

Hytner, partnered with longtime executive Nick Starr, now own and control London’s Bridge Theatre and is overseeing a fully immersive revival of the classic Broadway musical Guys & Dolls, choreographed by Dame Arlene Phillips (Strictly Come Dancing) and now in early previews.

It stars Daniel Mays as Nathan Detroit, Andrew Richardson (A Call to Spy) as Sky Masterson, Celinde Schoenmaker (Rocketman) as Sarah Brown and Marisha Wallace (Aladdin) as long-suffering Miss Adelaide. Cedric Neal plays Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Also in the cast are Jordan Castle,...

This year, all the Oscar-contending directors are nominated for original screenplay: the Daniels, Todd Field, Martin McDonagh, Ruben Östlund and Steven Spielberg (writing with Tony Kushner).

This is the first time it’s happened in AMPAS history.

The only year that came close was 2017, when all five helmers had written or co-written their scripts, though they didn’t all get writing noms.

So here’s Film History 101.

In Hollywood lore, Preston Sturges is often credited as the first scribe to become a hyphenate, as writer-director of the 1940 “The Great McGinty.” But as with all Hollywood “facts,” there is only an element of truth here.

In the next few years, he was joined by some heavyweights: Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”) and John Huston (“The Maltese Falcon”) in 1941; Leo McCarey (co-writer of “Going My Way”); Billy Wilder (writing with Raymond Chandler) for “Double Indemnity” in 1944; and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“Dragonwyck”), 1946.

However, a writer-director wasn’t an innovation.

There’s a film in the Oscar best picture race that has younger Academy voters and a new generation of film critics excited, while their older peers in both camps appear more what one might call agitated.

It’s a fairly neat generational split. The film’s anarchic spirit and unorthodox mix of genre filmmaking and biting social commentary is seen as daring and refreshing by its young fans, while its older detractors are scratching their heads over weird tonal shifts, from comic and rollicking one minute, serious and reflective in the next, shifting from spoofing genre tropes to questioning of societal norms.

The year is 1968 and the film is Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde.”

But you’d be forgiven if you found the paragraphs above an apt description of this year’s Producers Guild Awards best feature winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Just as “Bonnie” was a landmark film in Academy history,...

Look over the list of Best Picture winners over the years and you realise that almost every film selected is still in circulation.

William Wellman’s Wings, the very first winner in 1927, is readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as are such other early winners as Cimarron and Broadway Melody.

Most of the other Best Picture winners are titles that any film lover will recognise instantly. The blind spots are obvious. The Academy never chooses foreign language titles. In recent years, it has shunned comedies.

The Shape of Water may have won in 2018, but voters are generally wary about genre pictures. You don’t see many sci-fi or martial arts titles on the list.

There is a growing divide between what wins at the Oscars and what makes the money at the box office. Even so, the est Picture Oscar remains one of the most reliable bellwethers for films that will have an afterlife.

Look over the list of Best Picture winners over the years and you realise that almost every film selected is still in circulation.

William Wellman’s Wings, the very first winner in 1927, is readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as are such other early winners as Cimarron and Broadway Melody.

Most of the other Best Picture winners are titles that any film lover will recognise instantly. The blind spots are obvious. The Academy never chooses foreign language titles. In recent years, it has shunned comedies.

The Shape of Water may have won in 2018, but voters are generally wary about genre pictures. You don’t see many sci-fi or martial arts titles on the list.

There is a growing divide between what wins at the Oscars and what makes the money at the box office. Even so, the est Picture Oscar remains one of the most reliable bellwethers for films that will have an afterlife.

The year 1953 surely left even the most devoted Oscar fans scratching their heads. One of the biggest upsets ever for Best Picture, some shocking snubs and all major awards going to different films led to some baffling anomalies at the 25th Academy Awards ceremony on March 19, 1953. This was also the year that the film industry finally capitulated to its rival source of entertainment, television, and for the first time broadcast the lavish ceremony live for viewers at home – so perhaps they wanted to dazzle and stun. Let’s flashback to the Oscars from 70 years ago.

With the cameras switching back and forth between Bob Hope hosting in Los Angeles and Conrad Nagel hosting in New York, the event attracted the largest single television audience to date in that medium’s young history. Five films were nominated for Best Picture, including the expected winner “High Noon,” plus “The Quiet Man,” “Moulin Rouge” and “Ivanhoe.

Superhero movies based on comics are currently the most successful and lucrative genre on the planet, and they have been for many years. But that's not enough for some people. For some reason, some of us have got it into our heads that films based on comics about Spider-Man and Batman also require Academy Award recognition — as though they haven't already won the ultimate popularity contest already, and they need to win this other, smaller popularity contest held exclusively by bourgeois Hollywood in order to be legitimized.

There was a bit of outrage when Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" was snubbed along with the immensely popular and populist Pixar sci-fi comedy "Wall-e," and the two movies' exclusion from the Best Picture race directly preceded the expansion of the category from five films to ten. But even though people thought the expanded Best Picture field might allow for more popular...

It's very difficult to imagine anyone other than Bette Davis playing Margo Channing, the aging, acid-tongued theater star that finds her life being stolen out from under her in "All About Eve." Before production began on the 1950 film, however, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and producer Darryl F. Zanuck were doing just that. While names like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck were considered, comedy queen Claudette Colbert eventually won the role — but she eventually lost it after suffering an injury on the set of "Three Came Home."

There's no doubt that Colbert would have done a fine job in "All About Eve." She was a fantastic actress, having risen to fame in the '30s playing sly, smart women, each with an unshakable degree of class. She was 47 when she was cast in the Mankiewicz picture, and, not unlike Margo herself, Colbert was struggling to reconcile her age in...