
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009
Grateful as I feel to Turner Classic Movies for its centennial tribute to Johnny Mercer this month, it's a bit surprising that the management has failed to make an additional place for actor Robert Ryan.
Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009
A serendipitous convergence will make the next week doubly gratifying for people who cherish notable American songwriters — and would be receptive to recalling their careers by watching fond but also discerning biographical features.
Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009
Since its 1922 debut, F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" has remained the prototype for all notable vampire thrillers that aspire to be taken seriously as imaginative inducements to apprehension.
Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009
"Federico Fellini's 8½" became one of the most esteemed foreign-language imports of the decade after opening in the summer of 1963. The clamor over "La Dolce Vita" three years earlier had created a tide of curiosity and even adoration that swelled beyond the art-house public and press.
Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were cast as show business colleagues in "Flying Down to Rio," the first of the nine RKO musicals that teamed them in the 1930s.
Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009
Modern antiquarians should be intrigued to learn that there was a genuine "dark side" to adroit and pioneering funnyman Max Linder.
Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009
"The Suspenseful World of Thrillers," a Turner Classic Movies' retrospective series on Friday nights in October, betrays a curious ring.
Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009
Victor Fleming's version of "The Virginian" runs only 90 minutes, but this duration is sufficient to persuade you that so much civilization has infiltrated Medicine Bow that the enmity and nihilism of a Trampas are intolerable and indefensible.
Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009
The death last month of the comedy writer, producer and, for a time, director John Hughes was a shocker, at once untimely and eerie.
Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009
Elia Kazan's career, whose high points made him an unrivaled influence on the American stage and screen from World War II through the early 1960s, is probably secure from effacement by late-arriving and overcompensating detractors.