Last week I offered an overview of the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) as a sort-of “taste of the fest.” This week, I will tout the three films that I enjoyed the most so that our movie-loving readers can seek them out in theaters, on cable, or on DVD. The first film I caught [...]

The 23rd annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) concluded today with its Best of the Fest—the movies voted as audience favorites.  After attending for the second year in a row, I have decided the PSIFF is my favorite film festival because it makes every effort to program the best in foreign-language films. This year [...]

I am a sucker for old-school show-biz—vaudeville, follies-style Broadway revues, radio drama, television variety series. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, January 10), one of my favorite movies airs on TCM. Set in 1954, My Favorite Year is an unabashedly nostalgic depiction of the days of live television. The story is told through the eyes of a young [...]

While watching The Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel over the holiday weekend, I got caught up in an episode titled “Caesar and Me,” starring Jackie Cooper as a ventriloquist who is at the mercy of Caesar, his dummy. Ventriloquists and their wooden counterparts never fail to give me the creeps, second only to [...]

I have a difficult time remembering film titles that are clichés. It is one thing if a title encapsulates the theme or point of the film, such as Field of Dreams or Unforgiven, or if it is a pun or twist on a familiar phrase, such as Pillow Talk or Dolphin’s Tale. But, unimaginative titles [...]

When I started my version of an annual top-ten movie list a few years ago, I decided to focus on little-known indies, documentaries, and commercial features that have been overlooked, unfairly judged, or lost under the mountains of hype generated by Hollywood blockbusters. As much as I liked Hugo, Drive, or My Week With Marilyn [...]

I love those comedies from the Swinging 1960s that are part farce, part caper movie in which a huge international cast sashays through Europe in an incomprehensible plot. The cinematic equivalent to a 1960s discotheque, with its trendy music, jet set movie stars, mod costumes, and fab hair styles, this subgenre not only includes breezy [...]

On a cold, blustery Chicago afternoon, I was safely tucked in the back row of a theater watching Vertigo as it was intended to be seen—on the big screen in 35mm with a theater full of movie buffs, cinephiles, and Hitchcock fans.  The rich, saturated colors of the new print were a treat after seeing [...]

Whether in the news, online, or around the water cooler, more attention was paid to Black Friday than to Thanksgiving this year. What used to be an unacknowledged tradition for mainstream America—women shopping the day after Thanksgiving while men watched football—has now become a barometer of the American economy. Retailers and their corporate masters outdid [...]