Made and set during the COVID-19 era, Pandemic Pillow Talk and Sylvie of the Sunshine State are both thoughtful and funny.
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Actress-filmmaker Radha Blank’s semi-autobiographical midlife-crisis tale The Forty-Year-Old Version evokes memories of Woody Allen + Paul Mazursky.
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5 Nazi movies: Joseph Goebbels’ ‘Third Reich’ cinema - a crucial and extremely popular propaganda tool - promoted the White Nationalist German ethos.
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10 examples of theocracy in movies and TV illustrate the many forms of the inescapably authoritarian communion between religion and government.
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Belfast movie: Kenneth Branagh is shooting his ‘most personal film,’ set in tumultuous 1960s Northern Ireland. Judi Dench and Jamie Dornan among stars.
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The COVID-19 positive test of actor Robert Pattinson has halted - once again - The Batman while unsettling the already wobbly film industry.
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Playwright Arthur Miller vs. Red Scare paranoia: The Crucible and the Salem witch hunts demythologize the concept of ‘American exceptionalism.’
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Visions of the shattered American Dream in 2 ‘Arthur Miller movies’: The subversive family dramas All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
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Technicolor siren Virginia Mayo was most impressive as callous black-and-white women in films like The Best Years of Our Lives + White Heat.
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Frank and Ava movie interview: Frank Sinatra portrayer Rico Simonini discusses the indie drama about singer’s turbulent marriage with Ava Gardner.
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The Poseidon Adventure actress Carol Lynley should also be remembered for a landmark teen pregnancy drama and for a first-rate British thriller.
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As an RKO and MGM star, sassy blonde Ann Sothern had an unconventional professional trajectory: A and B movies in a decades-long film career that had no less than 2 peaks.
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In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s ‘best bad movie,’ The Barefoot Contessa, Ava Gardner exudes a magnetic - and underrated - mix of glamour and charisma.
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Howard Keel: Dallas resurgence as rancher Clayton Farlow following abrupt career downfall and decades-long Hollywood purgatory.
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Independence Day movies: Exuberant all-white all-Iowan marching band + lovely and talented Joan Leslie + racist British imperialism salute.
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4th of July Movies: From our dystopian present to John Paul Jones + Benedict Arnold and other complex American Revolutionary War figures.
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Howard Keel MGM musicals: Texas Carnival publicity shot with Esther Williams. In his MGM musicals of the 1950s, Howard Keel was almost always paired with small, girl-like leading ladies –…
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Howard Keel musicals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: Box office roller-coaster ride. Brought to Hollywood in 1948 to star in MGM’s then popular musicals, stage performer Howard Keel seemed poised to reach major…
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Howard Keel publicity shot ca. 1950. A prominent name in Hollywood musicals in the first half of the 1950s, Howard Keel was seen – and heard – as baritone-voiced, larger-than-life…
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Starring Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story is kneecapped by The Force of Corporate Pressure.
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Starring Chadwick Boseman and standout Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler’s movie history-making Black Panther gives new life to the superhero genre.
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Trouble Is My Business is a tongue-in-cheek film noir homage that evokes memories of classic Hollywood crime dramas of the 1940s and 1950s.
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Ronald Colman: Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month in two major 1930s classics Updated: Turner Classic Movies’ July 2017 Star of the Month is Ronald Colman, one of the…
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Crime Novel classic remembered: Everywoman heroine with typical bourgeois values but an unusual black housekeeper ally + straight and gay movie versions.
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Roy Rogers, Singing Cowboy of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood. Known for his affable characterizations and, both on and off screen, “traditional values” stance, the King of the Cowboys – step…
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe joined forces on the problem-plagued The Misfits. See also: The playwright’s answer to On the Waterfront.
Little Fugitive director Morris Engel was the post-WWII ‘Father of American Independent Cinema,’ inspiring John Cassavetes and the French New Wave.
Actress Sandra Dee is seen as a sweet-looking but gutsy rule-breaker in the 1959 blockbusters A Summer Place and Imitation of Life.
Lena Horne. Lena Horne movies: Velvety-voiced singer generally relegated to specialty numbers during heyday of the Hollywood musical Had things been different, it’s anybody’s guess whether or not three-time Grammy…
Howard Keel at the height of his career in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with Jane Powell. In his autobiography, Only Make Believe: My Life in Show Business, Howard Keel…
The Women remake: Critics derided + moviegoers were indifferent to writer-director Diane English’s defanged + declawed all-star all-female feminist comedy.
However well-intentioned, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s skillfull Detroit movie is unsatisfying as both drama and history. Will Poulter and John Boyega star.