Annie Hall: This Is 40

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. Photo: United Artists In the film’s first scene, Woody Allen as Alvy Singer addresses his audience, letting us know that he recently turned 40 and…

12 Angry Men: Choosing Life or Death

Photo: United Artists The most famous episode of the CBS anthology series Studio One (1947-1958) is from 1954 and features a teleplay by Reginald Rose. Depicting a process where one…

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: The Crazy Ones

Photo: United Artists Author Ken Kesey considered himself a link between beatniks and hippies, a critic of behaviorism and the conventional. His most famous novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's…

American Beauty: Beyond Italian Upholstery

Mena Suvari. Photo: DreamWorks The story of how American Beauty, one of the most celebrated films of the 1990s, was made is the story of how a struggling TV writer…

On the Waterfront: The End of Mob Rule

Marlon Brando. Photo: Columbia In 1949, investigative journalist Malcolm Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles he had written for the New York Sun. Titled "Crime on…

12 Years a Slave: Land of the Unfree

Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures The historian Sue Eakin was born in Louisiana five decades after the end of the Civil War and she specialized in…

Gravity: More Science, Less Hollywood

Sandra Bullock. Photo: Warner Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and the most famous person working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was surprised the other day to…

Amour: In Sickness and in Health

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. Photo: Les Films du Losange Welcome to the ever-fascinating journey of the cinema of Michael Haneke. When I started writing this review I began by…

It’s a Wonderful Life: Wing and a Prayer

James Stewart, Donna Reed, Carol Coombs, Jimmy Hawkins, Larry Simms and Karolyn Grimes. Photo: RKO This Christmas I decided to catch Frank Capra's last masterpiece again. Having seen it several…