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Fans are excited to see the Oscars ceremony unfold this year. After seeing Jimmy Kimmel for the last two years at the center stage, fans look forward to seeing a new host. Conan O’Brien will be hosting the 97th Academy Awards on March 2nd at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Besides its ABC broadcast, this year’s event will stream on Hulu, a first in the history of the Oscars.

From actors to performers to comedy greats, the Oscars have seen several celebrities take over the hosting duties over the years. The first-ever Academy Awards took place as a private dinner, without a formal host. Douglas Fairbanks, Academy President at the time, hosted the dinner alongside Vice-President William C. deMille.

Conan O’Brien is the host for the upcoming Oscars ceremony | Credits: Conan/TBS

Bob Hope holds the record for hosting the most number of ceremonies. He hosted the Oscars...

Drew Barrymore is a child of Hollywood royalty and a Golden Globe winning actress whose career has spanned nearly her entire life, making her first credited screen performance at the age of three. But how many of her titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Barrymore was born to a celebrated acting family though she never really knew her famous ancestors. Her grandfather was John Barrymore, star of “Grand Hotel”, “Twentieth Century” and “Dinner at Eight” among others. She is also the great grand niece of Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore. Lionel won one of the earliest Oscars as Best Actor for “A Free Soul” in 1931 but is probably best remembered as the villainous Mr. Potter of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His sister Ethel won the 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “None but the Lonely Heart...

Robert De Niro won his second Oscar in 1981 for playing a boxing champ in Raging Bull. And now he has been chosen as the acting champ when it comes to Academy Awards.

His performance for the Martin Scorsese film from 1980 has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Actor winner ever, according to a Gold Derby ballot cast by 21 of our film experts, critics, and editors, who ranked all 97 male leading actors.

Anthony Hopkins finished second for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), with Marlon Brando following in third for The Godfather (1972). Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood (2007), and Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird (1961) rounded out the top five.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Actor winners is Warner Baxter for In Old Arizona (1928). George Arliss in Disraeli (1929), Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul (1930), Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine (1942), and Paul Muni for The Story of Louis Pasteur...

Robert De Niro won his second Oscar in 1981 for playing a boxing champ in Raging Bull. And now he has been chosen as the champ of all actors.

His performance for the Martin Scorsese film from 1980 has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Actor winner ever, according to a Gold Derby ballot cast by 21 of our film experts, critics, and editors, who ranked all 97 male leading actors.

Anthony Hopkins ranked second for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), with Marlon Brando following in third for The Godfather (1972). Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood (2007), and Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird (1961) rounded out the top five.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Actor winners is Warner Baxter for In Old Arizona (1928). Just above that film performance in the rankings are George Arliss in Disraeli (1929), Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul (1930), Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine...

Clark Gable was the Oscar-winning matinee idol who starred in dozens of films before his untimely death in 1960. Let’s take a look back at 12 of Gable’s greatest movies, ranked worst to best.

After appearing in bit parts in a number of films, Gable shot to stardom with his performance in “A Free Soul” (1931) as a gangster who bewitches a young woman (Norma Shearer) whose attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) helped him beat a murder rap. From there forward, the actor’s persona as a raffish leading man who’s every guy’s best friend and every gal’s dream became cemented in a number of subsequent roles.

He won an Oscar just three years later for Frank Capra‘s screwball classic “It Happened One Night” (1934), in which he played a newspaper reporter traveling with a spoiled socialite (Claudette Colbert). The film became the first to sweep the five major Oscars,...

"It's a Wonderful Life" is one of the best Christmas movies of all time -- a fantastic, poignant movie that doubles as a great indictment of rampant capitalism. Though Frank Capra never expected this movie to be that popular, it has become an integral part of the holiday season for many American homes throughout December, as well as a staple of classic cinema in general.

The movie follows James Stewart's idealistic George Bailey, a man who hates the idea of living in his small hometown doing nothing but serving the community ... and yet, at every turn, he puts his own ambitions on the back burner in favor of helping others, his dreams constantly winding up on hold as incident after incident sends him on a different path than he imagined. But when he falls on hard times and the crushing fist of capitalism threatens to destroy his life's work,...

This past holiday season, we shared some unconventional Christmas movie recommendations, like The Silent Partner, Anna and the Apocalypse, The Ref, and my own recommendation, Trancers. But even though I love Trancers and also watch Anna and the Apocalypse every December, my two favorite Christmas movies are not unconventional choices at all: every December 25th, I watch A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation. Very common choices. Someone else with very common choice for their favorite Christmas movie is filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who revealed to BFI that his holiday favorite is It’s a Wonderful Life.

Directed by Frank Capra, who crafted the screenplay with Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Jo Swerling, the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life was based on the short story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern (which was loosely based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) . Here’s the synopsis: George Bailey has so many...

Stars: Bela Lugosi, Lionel Barrymore, Carroll Borland, Jean Hersholt, Lionel Atwill, Elizabeth Allan | Written by Guy Endore, Bernard Schubert | Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning’s 1935 film Mark of the Vampire is a compelling entry in early sound-era horror cinema, blending gothic atmosphere with an intriguing twist on vampire mythology. Renowned for its haunting visuals and surprising narrative, the film stands as both a tribute to and a playful critique of traditional horror tropes.

The film begins with a classic setup: a remote European village shrouded in superstition, a mysterious death with puncture wounds on the victim’s neck, and whispers of vampiric activity. Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and his ghostly daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) are at the centre of the villagers’ fears. As the story unfolds, Browning masterfully subverts audience expectations, delivering a twist that shifts the narrative from supernatural horror to a detective story steeped in theatrical deception.

One of the most famous characters from literature of all time, A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge stands among the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula as one of the most prolifically portrayed characters to have ever been written. Lionel Barrymore famously acted the part on a number of radio productions for decades while Charles Dickens’ himself was said to be brilliant when he slipped into character during his 150+ readings of his novella for the stage.

Although there is no shortage of Christmas movies out there, very few of them end up lasting a long time in the public consciousness. The last movie to truly prove itself long-term was the 2003 comedy "Elf," which is up there on most people's rewatch list every time the holidays come around. For the most part, though, our favorite Christmas movies are the older ones, like "Home Alone" (1990), "A Christmas Story" (1983), "A Christmas Carol" (1951), or "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947).

Before all of those was "It's a Wonderful Life," which came out in 1946 and is now considered the absolute best film the Christmas genre has to offer. With a score of 8.6 out of 10 on IMDb, the movie is ranked 21st among the site's top movies ever. In 2024, at least, nobody's got a bad thing to say about the film. It's a heartwarming story about a guy who learns to value the wonderful life he has,...

Any examination of It's A Wonderful Life isn't complete without acknowledging the fact that contemporary reviews were far from universally positive, and that it made Rko Films a loss of more than $500k. Derided by some for its sentimentality and simplistic ideas, Frank Capra's masterpiece has grown in stature and appreciation in the decades since its release to such an extent that that context appears entirely baffling. You can't force good taste, I guess.

Endlessly replayed at Christmas over the years, It's A Wonderful Life is returning to cinemas once more almost 80 years after its release, as if anyone needed any excuse to watch it again. It has earned its place as one of the greatest ever Christmas movies, despite Capra never really aspiring to that specific achievement. He wanted it to be a celebration of life, and he succeeded in a way that he could surely never have predicted.

Let's face it: the best Christmas movies aren't complete without a good villain. In fact, for as many beloved Christmas characters as there are, more than half of them are the villains of the story. I suppose nothing gets us in the Christmas spirit more than watching it be defended from the Grinches and Scrooges of the world. So, to definitively rank them all is quite a task. Cinema's greatest Christmas villains range from the deliciously malicious to the just straight up terrifying. However, we here at /Film are up to the task.

There's an easy way to qualify for this list — be in a Christmas film — but we wanted to ask ourselves some deeper questions. When we think of the holiday season, do we think of these villains? Are the characters themselves strong or memorable? Are they embedded in the iconography of Christmas? Better yet, do they threaten the...

As the Christmas season approaches, you're probably ready to get into the holiday spirit with some on-brand movies — and if we're putting aside all but one streaming service, there are some pretty great selections on Amazon's Prime Video. I'm just as susceptible to holiday cheer as anyone else, and whether they're from my childhood or new discoveries, I like to settle in on a chilly early winter night with a holiday-themed movie. So what are some great selections on Prime Video?

This list obviously excludes anything that requires a secondary subscription — looking at you, movies available on Prime through Max and Starz — as well as anything you have to pay to rent, but there are still some pretty solid holiday movies to choose from on the online retailer's proprietary streamer. From dramatic family Christmases to a sprawling British ensemble comedy to one of the most famous (and emotional) Christmas movies in cinematic history,...

Over the decades, Frank Capra's 1946 holiday-themed family film, Its a Wonderful Life, has established its place in American culture as a Christmas classic. Perhaps it's more correct to call it the Christmas classic. That would come as a great shock to anyone alive back then when it first hit (empty) theaters.

An ode to nostalgia among the Greatest Generation (back when that generation were just in their teens and 20s), the movie itself has taken on a larger reputation embodying the very concept of nostalgia, the ultimate Hallmark movie before the Hallmark Channel existed. That cheery title belied the fact that the production of the film had been a colossal pain for everyone involved, and left the director in misery and self-doubt, lashing out at all those creative parties he depended on most. Forget the cheery aura, nobody made any friends on this set.

To put things in necessary perspective,...

Now that they’ve set the year’s best film for a December 10 debut, the Criterion Channel have unveiled the rest of next month’s selection. John Waters’ films are inseparable from John Waters’ presence, making fitting Criterion’s decision to pair an eight-film retrospective (Multiple Maniacs to Cecil B. Demented) with his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” wherein the director extols virtues of Bergman, Chabrol, Barbara Loden, and Samuel Fuller. His own Polyester will have a Criterion Edition alongside the Bob Dylan doc Don’t Look Back, an iconic film in its own right and, I think, fitting companion to The Unknown with Lon Chaney, also streaming on Criterion. No Country for Old Men and Election receive likewise treatment; the latter appears in “MTV Productions,” a series featuring Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Original Kings of Comedy, and (coming close to Freddy Got Fingered for least-expected 2024 addition) Jackass: the Movie.

Damien Chazelle's Oscar-winning film La La Land broke one of the longest-standing records in Oscars history. La La Land is undoubtedly one of the best movies of both Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's careers. The film infamously lost Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards to Moonlight after it was mistakenly announced that La La Land had taken home the coveted prize. It did end up winning six Oscars, including Stone's first Best Actress award as well as Best Director, Best Cinematographer, and Best Original Score. The film also earned a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, making it one of Chazelle's best movies.

La La Land helped to legitimize both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling's acting careers and established them as two of the most sought-after talents in Hollywood. The same can be said of Chazelle, whose groundbreaking 2013 film Whiplash starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons cemented him...

James Stewart began his professional acting career on the stage in the early 1930s, and it wasn't the rosiest beginning. He was cast in a string of walk-on parts and stage manager positions on Broadway and was canned from several of them for missing his cues. Still in his mid-20s, Stewart even contemplated leaving acting behind and returning to school. Luckily, he landed the lead role in a play called "Yellow Jack" in 1934, and critics loved him. Encouraged to stay in showbiz, Stewart drifted toward Hollywood, where he starred in his first film, Tim Whelan's "The Murder Man," in 1935. 

From there, it was a meteoric rise for Stewart, who appeared in six feature films in 1936 alone, working for prestigious and successful directors like William Wellman and W.S. Van Dyke. Stewart's acting career would take a serious upturn in 1938 when he starred in "You Can't Take It With You,...

On July 23, 1937, MGM unveiled in theaters Saratoga, a star vehicle for Jean Harlow, who had died suddenly weeks earlier. Additional shooting was needed to complete the film, which featured the actress alongside Clark Gable. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, headlined “‘Saratoga’ Warmly Greeted … Jean Harlow’s Last Earns High Praise,” is below:

Jean Harlow’s last picture, Saratoga, cannot be reviewed unemotionally. It can only be reported.

Audience reception at a preview last evening in Glendale was unmistakably enthusiastic. Possibly surprised, but never shocked by the fact that the story is a riotous comedy, each time Miss Harlow’s name appeared on the screen and upon the occasion of her first entrance the house rocked with applause. It was more than cursory hand-clapping. The final hand was in honest appreciation of an honestly entertaining offering, splendidly performed, written and directed.

The production by Bernard H. Hyman, with John Emerson as associate producer,...

“Beverly Hills Cop” and its young exuberant star Eddie Murphy were dominant forces on the cultural landscape as soon as the action comedy opened Dec. 5, 1984 on 1,532 screens, earning over $15 million in its first five days of release. “Beverly Hills Cop” garnered nearly $235 million domestically and another $81.6 million internationally.

The comedy even earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay while Murphy hit superstar status thanks to his dazzling comedic turn as Axel Foley, a freewheeling Detroit cop who is the ultimate fish out of water when a murder investigation leads him to the by-the-book Beverly Hills police department. And the soundtrack album featuring the film’s composer Harold Faltermeyer’s hit “Axel F,” as well as the Pointer Sisters‘ “Neutron Dance” and Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

Three years later, Murphy returned in “Beverly Hills Cop II,” which made close to $300 million worldwide...

MGM celebrated its centennial on April 17th. Marcus Lowe established the studio by merging Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Boasting it had “more stars than there are in heaven,” MGM may have been the biggest studio during the Golden Age of Hollywood, it has gone through many owners and regimes over the years but seems to on terra firma since Amazon acquired MGM in 2021. In fact, Amazon MGM Studios won best screenplay Oscar for “American Fiction.” And speaking of Academy Awards, MGM has earned numerous statuettes over the years. Here’s a look at five Best Picture winners produced between 1929-1958.

“The Broadway Melody”

The 1929 musical made Oscar history by being the first talkie to win the top prize. Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed wrote the songs which include “The Broadway Melody,” “You Were Meant for Me” and “The Wedding of the Painted Doll” but...

In 1965, Martin Scorsese was 22 and surrounded by legends when he won the Jesse L. Laskey Intercollegiate Award at the Milestone Awards dinner hosted by the then-called Screen Producers Guild on March 8, 1965. Now, almost 60 years later, the filmmaker received the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the 2024 PGA Awards in what he called a “full-circle” moment.

Guillermo del Toro introduced the Killers of the Flower Moon director and producer at Sunday’s award show, calling him an “indispensable titan.” When Scorsese, now 81, took the stage, he started to tell the story of the 1965 awards show and how he kissed German actress Elke Sommer on stage.

“On the stage, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Norman Lear, Lew Wasserman, Julie Stein, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Janel Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and David O. Selznick,” said Scorsese. “They were the people on the dais at...

Martin Scorsese accepted the Producers Guild’s David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the PGA Awards tonight and took the Hollywood & Highland Ovation Ballroom down memory lane — to about 60 years ago, when he accepted a PGA nod for his student film, It’s Not Just You, Murray! at the ripe age of 22.

Painting the scene, the Killers of the Flower Moon filmmaker said: “On the stage, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, Jack Benny, Samuel Goldwyn, Jack Warner and Norman Lear, Lew Wasserman, Julie SteinCary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Janel Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer and David O. Selznick. They were the people on the dais at the 13th edition of this event on March 8, 1965. That dinner was called the Milestone Awards Dinner and presented at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

“At the very end of the dais was me,” Scorsese continued. “I was all the way on the end. I was receiving the Jesse L.

In the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, 88 films have each received nominations for both Best Actor and Best Actress. Although there have been 19 cases of two or more movies doing so in a single year, there hasn’t been such an occurrence since 1996, when both lead lineups included performers from “Dead Man Walking” and “Leaving Las Vegas.” However, according to Gold Derby’s late-stage 2024 Oscar nominations predictions, that nearly three-decade gap is set to soon be closed by costar pairs from “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro.”

The vast majority of the Oscars prognosticators who’ve been shaping our odds all season agree that Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”) will all clinch academy mentions for their lead performances. The last such quartet consisted of eventual winners Nicolas Cage (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking”) and their respective costars,...

Mickey Cottrell, the dependable Hollywood publicist who went to bat for independent films for decades while also dabbling in acting and producing, has died. He was 79.

Cottrell died on New Year’s Day at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his friend Ian Birnie, former Lacma film curator, told The Hollywood Reporter. He suffered a major stroke in 2016.

Cottrell did PR for three Gus Van Sant-directed films: Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), where he also played the clean freak Daddy Carroll in the movie, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993).

He also repped Bagdad Cafe (1987), Earth Girls Are Easy (1987), Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm (1989), Tarnation (2003), Ballets Russes (2005), The Price of Sugar (2007), Skin (2008), Bill Cunningham New York (2010), Salt (2010) and Tab Hunter Confidential (2015), among many other films.

Films and filmmakers he represented were honored with eight Sundance jury prizes and three Oscars, he once noted.

J.J. Abrams touts Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde and Shampoo for must-see viewing as part of the January 2024 Turner Classic Movies lineup in his own TCM Picks video that dropped on Tuesday.

“They could not be more different,” Abrams says of Arthur Penn’s 1967 crime spree drama Bonnie and Clyde, which also starred Faye Dunaway, and Hal Ashby’s Oscar-winning dramedy Shampoo. Bonnie and Clyde “portrayed violence in a way that had not typically been seen in American cinema and really ushered in a new age of bold graphic storytelling in a way that you really hadn’t seen before,” Abrams says in the video.

Having made a name for himself in Hollywood with television and popular series like Felicity, Alias and Lost, you can see the grounds for Abrams’ eventual success making action tentpole movies, given his love for classic Hollywood pics.

Shampoo becomes a time capsule movie for Abrams,...

Can you think of a villain from a Christmas movie that didn't exactly face justice for their crimes? The obvious answer is Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from It's a Wonderful Life, who never faces any consequences for his actions despite stealing a significant sum of money from Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell). However, seeing how Saturday Night Live did a whole sketch about how an angry mob should have seized Mr. Potter, we thought that was maybe a bit too obvious of a choice. Plus, Mr. Potter not being punished for his crimes is actually fairly consistent with the film's themes about money and power keeping the wealthy elite away from harm.

It's a Wonderful Life, originally released in black and white, was later re-released in color due to the popularity of colorized films. Director Frank Capra decided to colorize the movie after seeing the success of a colorized Cary Grant film, Topper. The film entered the public domain in the 1970s, leading to multiple studios releasing their own colorized versions, which sparked controversy among fans who preferred the original black-and-white version.

The classic version of It's a Wonderful Life is in black and white since that medium was the norm when the movie premiered in 1946. However, once colored pictures became easier to produce and more popular, the Christmas film was re-released in color. Now, audiences have the option of viewing the movie in black and white or in color. Most airings of It's a Wonderful Life typically stick to the original version of the holiday classic, though.

The cast of It's a Wonderful Life...

James "Jimmy" Stewart stars as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, portraying him from a teenager to a married adult with kids. Donna Reed plays Mary Hatch Bailey, George's wife, at different stages of her life, from a teenager to a married woman with four children. Lionel Barrymore takes on the role of Henry Potter, the film's antagonist, who constantly tries to ruin the Bailey family and their business.

The Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life contains a large cast of actors of varying ages, and each performer contributed to the everlasting success of the 1946 film. The movie tells the life story of George Bailey, who grows up in Bedford Falls, New York, but dreams of leaving town and exploring the world following high school graduation and before heading to college. However, after George's father dies unexpectedly, he is forced to remain in town to run the family business,...

Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge in ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ (Photo by Kerry Brown / Bleecker Street)

Once again, the holidays – or is it holidaze? – are upon us, bringing with it a flurry of Christmas movies.

You have your endless parade of cartoons, specials, Christmas-themed episodes of your favorite TV shows, bad holiday comedies (1996’s Jingle All the Way and 2007’s Fred Claus come to mind), and Christmas-set horror movies (1984’s Gremlins). Then there’s the cheesy yet feel-good Lifetime and Hallmark films. And how can we forget the 24-hour marathon of 1983’s A Christmas Story (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year), beginning on Christmas Eve and ending on Christmas Day?

If those don’t do it for you, maybe these lists of Christmas movies will.

Classic Christmas Movies

You can’t go wrong with these classics, which can lighten the hearts of even the most ardent cynics.

George's missing deposit could lead to serious financial and legal trouble, with potential charges of misappropriation of funds. The negative portrayal of Potter and bankers in the film sparked an FBI investigation due to claims of promoting communist messaging. Potter offered George a high-paying job as a strategic move to acquire the entire town of Bedford Falls and eliminate the threat posed by the Building and Loan.

At the end of It's A Wonderful Life, George Baily learns about what Bedford Falls would be like if he had never been born, learning to appreciate the life he has and a community of friends that loves him. While it was originally met with mixed reviews and a middling box office. It wasn't until its copyright lapsed in 1974 that the film became a television staple around the Holidays, cementing itself as one of the most popular Christmas movies. Directed by Frank Capra...

“I’m stuck here in this mudhole for life, doing the same full work day after day,” George tells a stranger he meets while leaning over a bridge. George has come to the bridge on a frigid winter night with the intention of throwing himself off and ending it all. “Other men are leading exciting lives, but I – well, I’m just a small-town bank clerk,” he vents. “I never did anything really useful or interesting, and it looks as if I never will. I might just as well be dead. Sometimes I wish I were. In fact, I wish I’d never been born!”

You probably know the above exchange as a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1946 classic starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Henry Travers as the lovable, doddering angel second-class Clarence Odbody. But the above quotation actually comes from the short story “The Greatest Gift,...

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

We are in somewhat of a transitional period with how we think about the acting categories for entertainment awards. This, primarily, has to do with gender. We have had separate categories for female and male performers for decades upon decades, but if you really stop to think about it, there is no difference in what a female actor does compared to a male one. Why shouldn't Colin Farrell in "The Banshees of Inisherin" compete against Cate Blanchett in "TÁR"? Of course, the worry is that in our patriarchal society, men will come to dominate that category and fewer women will be nominated and win. Then you have the added issue of non-binary performers being forced to slot themselves in a particular...

Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed “Oppenheimer,” which revolves around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist considered the father of the atomic bomb, is one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer. Actually of the year. Over the decades there have been several films dealing with the Manhattan Project that culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thus ending World War II on Sept. 2, 1945.

Soon after the global conflict ended MGM, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox were rushing to be the first studio to greenlight a movie dealing with the birth of the atomic bomb that ushered in the Cold War. MGM quickly put a project in motion hiring Robert Considine to write a story . The studio was circling the likes of its “A’ stars Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Van Johnson. Meanwhile over at Paramount, producer Hal Wallis was preparing a $1.5 million atomic bomb film called “Top Secret.

Since she first appeared in "E.T." when she was just 7 years old, Drew Barrymore has been a beloved fixture in the entertainment industry. Films like "Never Been Kissed" and "Charlie's Angels" solidified her star power, and she's started a new chapter as the host of "The Drew Barrymore Show," which kicked off in September 2020.

Over the years, Drew's candid, vulnerable conversation style has helped her interviews stand out on her talk show. She's been able to connect with people like Brooke Shields about the sexualization they both faced as child stars, and in particular, Drew's openness about the struggles she faced with her parents during her youth has allowed her to bond with stars with similar backgrounds, like Jennette McCurdy.

Drew was raised by actors John Drew Barrymore and Ildiko Jaid Mako Barrymore, but she's been clear about how absent and unreliable they were during her childhood. She became emancipated...

“I want you to promise to keep this a secret, from everyone,” says Edward C. Burke, a mysterious professor played by mythic master of the macabre, Lon Chaney Sr. The line is a warning to a mourning daughter in the surviving screenplay for London After Midnight; it’s also part of the eeriest horror movies of the silent era. Unfortunately though, director Tod Browning’s 1927 classic has become one of the most inadvertently well-kept secrets of Hollywood, even as it remains one of the most influential works in horror movie history. If only we could see it.

While the film has been lost to time, the ghastly image of Chaney’s vampire in the film has lingered in the pop culture imagination, influencing everything from the earliest Hollywood Dracula film of 1931, which was originally supposed to star Chaney until his death in 1930, to seemingly this year’s recent Renfield reimagining at the same studio.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” gives you a wholesome prankish druggy chameleonic video-game buzz; it’s also a nice, sweet confection for 6-year-olds. Historically, the proverbial problem with live-action movies based on video games — and “Super Mario Bros.,” a leaden dud released 30 years ago, had the dishonor of being the very first one — is that they jam-pack the screen with tropes and fights and characters and landscapes right out of the game, but when it comes to molding all that gimcrackery into, you know, a story, they lose the electronic pulse that made the game addictive. Digital animation is, and always should have been, the true cousin of video games (which are essentially computer fantasies that you control). And “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” takes full advantage of the sculptural liquid zap of the computer-animation medium. Yet it also has a fairy-tale story that’s good enough to get you onto its wavelength.

Few names in Hollywood's illustrious history get people talking quite like Joan Crawford. The legendary actress began her career in silent films before transitioning to sound, and worked for decades, appearing in more than 80 films and television shows. However, the images conjured up of Crawford these days are rarely of her -- instead, they're of Faye Dunaway, who played a diabolical and utterly maniacal version of the actress in "Mommie Dearest," That 1981 film -- based on a shocking book from Crawford's daughter Christina -- changed Crawford's reputation forever and all-too-often erases her stature as one of cinemas greatest stars.

That is nothing short of a tragedy. Few actors could match Crawford's talent, determination, and tenacity. Indeed, even after she retired and then passed away in 1977, very few have matched her prodigious abilities. It can be difficult to look past her domineering facade (especially in a post-"Mommie Dearest" world), but...

Every year, a lot of actors win awards on Oscar night, but the ones who most often win the evening are the young stars and starlets who get to walk the red carpet. Sometimes they even win Oscar gold too. With any luck, the young star of “The Florida Project” Brooklynn Prince will make a splash at this year’s ceremony, but here are some of the cutest kids of years’ past:

Jackie Cooper – “Skippy” (1930)

Jackie Cooper was nominated for Best Actor for his role in 1930’s “Skippy.” To date, he’s the youngest boy to ever be nominated in the Best Actor category. He lost to Lionel Barrymore, who thanked Cooper in his acceptance speech. But Cooper didn’t hear it: he fell asleep on Marie Dressler’s arm during the ceremony (which started after midnight) and no one wanted to wake him.

Shirley Temple – (1934)

Shirley Temple was the...

In a rare occurrence, three of the four acting categories are still up in the air as we inch closer to Oscar Sunday. And depending on the permutation of the victorious quartet, we could have one of the oldest groups of winners ever.

Most of the top contenders in each category are over the age of 50. Ke Huy Quan, the closest thing to a lock in Best Supporting Actor, is 51. His “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-stars and fellow Screen Actors Guild Awards winners Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis are 60 and 64, respectively. Yeoh’s been neck and neck this whole time in Best Actress with Cate Blanchett (“TÁR”), who is 53. Curtis pulled off her supporting actress SAG upset over fellow 64-year-old veteran Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”). And in lead actor, SAG-AFTRA crowned 54-year-old Brendan Fraser for “The Whale.”

If any combination of these people prevail, it...

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...

The silent horror film London After Midnight, which starred the legendary Lon Chaney (father of the also legendary Wolf Man star Lon Chaney Jr.) did very well when it was released in 1927, earning over a million dollars at the box office on a budget of 151,666.14. But that didn’t help the film when it came time for it to be preserved. Every known existing print of London After Midnight was destroyed, with the last copy going up in the flames in the 1965 MGM vault fire. For almost fifty years, genre fans have been wondering what it would be like to watch London After Midnight. And now film historian Daniel Titley has written an entire book dedicated to movie. Titled London After Midnight: The Lost Film, this book was released on December 28th and has quickly become a bestseller. You can pick up a copy at This Link.

London After Midnight:...

Hee-haw! Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is a holiday viewing staple for many Christmas-celebrating households. Nothing promotes Yuletide cheer like the sound of Jimmy Stewart screaming, "Merry Christmas, you old Building & Loan!" throughout the streets of Bedford Falls.

After all, it's a story in the spirit of the season. James Stewart's idealistic George Bailey is a man for whom helping others comes reflexively, to the point of putting his own ambitions on the back burner. Dreams of seeing the world are constantly delayed as life happens, and one terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day is all it takes to break poor George. His suicidal thoughts are interrupted by a literal guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers), who takes George on a scenic tour of the lives he impacted and teaches him the film's lesson, summed up in the final lines, "No man is a failure who has friends.

One of the most famous characters from literature of all time, A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge stands among the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula as one of the most prolifically portrayed characters to have ever been written. Lionel Barrymore famously acted the part on a number of radio productions for decades while Charles Dickens’ himself was said to be brilliant when he slipped into character during his 150+ readings of his novella for the stage.

Some huge stars were shining bright on Sunday for an annual table read of the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The celeb-packed charity event, benefitting the Ed Asner Family Center, brought out some big names to recreate the magic of director Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic classic.

Brendan Fraser was on hand to play the iconic hero George Bailey — originally portrayed the Jimmy Stewart — while Christina Applegate brought wonderful charm playing Mary Hatch, a role first inhabited by Donna Reed.

Meanwhile, Jk Simmons lent his inimitable gruffness to portray the villainous Mr. Potter (originally played by Lionel Barrymore). Also, the character of the lovable guardian angel Clarence, first played by Henry Travers, was read with charming earnestness by Seth Rogen — who admitted in a Q&a after the event that he’d never seen the film.

Additional stars included Jean Smart, Fred Armisen, Ken Jeong, Jim Beaver, Brent Spiner, Phil Lamarr,...

(Welcome to Year of the Vampire, a series examining the greatest, strangest, and sometimes overlooked vampire movies of all time in honor of "Nosferatu," which turns 100 this year.)

Vampires may be fundamentally incapable of self-reflection (seeing as how they don't show up in mirrors and all), but that doesn't mean we can't reflect on them. And so we have, all throughout 2022. The Year of the Vampire is almost over now, and these last 11 months have been an educational, blood-spattered ride through one of film history's oldest genres.

With the first 50 articles in this series, we spotlit individual vampire movies, beginning with F.W. Murnau's original "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" and ending with Werner Herzog's 1979 remake "Nosferatu the Vampyre." However, if you've been following along at all, you might know we've jumped around in time since January and analyzed over two dozen 20th-century vampire films.

This list adds to that with 20 more titles,...

Some young people look at various tweets, articles, and posts from cinephiles and film historians like myself advocating for proper film preservation and scoff, thinking that, in this brave new world of instant access streaming services and online downloads, the entire history of cinema is at our fingertips and so we shouldn't be complaining.

Of course, this attitude is not only grossly misinformed given modern cinema's unsustainable status quo, but potentially dangerous, at least when it comes to keeping the history of what is still the most preeminent artistic medium of our lifetime alive. If historians are particularly passionate about the issue, it's in part because we're aware of similar threats that menaced film preservation in the past.

One of those threats emerged in the mid-'80s, when media mogul Ted Turner made the rather glib decision to "colorize" classic black-and-white films for television broadcast. The pushback from filmmakers, critics,...

Mark of the Vampire

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1935 / 1.33: 1 / 60 Min.

Starring Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi

Written by Guy Endore, Bernard Schubert

Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning died in 1962, living long enough to see his work enjoy a resurgence on late night’s Shock Theater, a syndicated TV package featuring Universal’s classic horror films. Browning’s Dracula was one of the crown jewels of that series but if you wanted to see more of the director’s work it probably wouldn’t be on television—his most infamous films were too lurid even for the midnight hour: potboilers populated by deformed and deranged circus performers, bloodthirsty magicians, and cross-dressing ventriloquists.

1932’s Freaks was the ne plus ultra of the Browning shockers, a sawdust soap opera pitting a beautiful prima donna against unorthodox carny performers—”unorthodox” because these folks were, on the surface, strange figures whose physical abberations made them outcasts everywhere except the circus.

With certain cinematic performances, we could not possibly fathom another actor in the same part. Only Bette Davis could have played Margot Channing in "All About Eve." Only Bruce Willis could have played John McClane in "Die Hard." Only Samuel L. Jackson could have played Jules in "Pulp Fiction." Of course, the reality is this isn't true. Countless actors audition and lose out on parts they would be perfect for all the time because of a variety of random reasons completely out of their control, yet when see a transcendent performance, we still believe the actor has performed magic in front of us. The filmmakers got the one person in the entire world made to play this particular character.

For me and many others, one such performance is James Stewart's Oscar-nominated turn as the titular character in Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The notion of Stewart as a folksy,...

The lasting horror of war is the blight it leaves on the lives of those left behind. Early sound pictures tried to deal with the guilt and pain of WW1, and the great Ernst Lubitsch took time out from romantic comedies and musicals for this very grim rumination on lies and responsibility. A French soldier decides to contact the family of a German he killed in the trenches; with no clear purpose or plan, he’s apt to make things worse for everybody. Lionel Barrymore and Nancy Carroll are wonderful, but you’ll choke up in the scenes with the German mother, played by Louise Carter. The film is best known for its opening montage, in which Lubitsch openly attacks the hypocrisy of militarist patriotism. It’s an exceedingly effective, non-hysterical piece of anti-war filmmaking.

Broken Lullaby

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1932 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 76 min. / The Man I Killed / Street...