Film

Tim Markatos’s whirlwind weekend at this year’s New York Film Festival.

The film is a poor example of what education should look like. But there’s a better one in the movie industry, featuring a classics teacher named William Hundert.

The film is a poor example of what education should look like. But there’s a better one in the movie industry, featuring a classics teacher named William Hundert.

The most recent entries in the film universe went to the blockbuster formula. Amazon has a chance to right the ship.

A record number of signal-callers goes top-10. Plus: Misleading studio flicks, and breaking down the world one decimal point at a time.

Who didn’t love Ron Howard’s Splash back in 1984? Tom Hanks falls in the ocean and nearly drowns but is rescued by the beautiful mermaid Daryl Hannah. She follows him to New York, and they have a romantic idyll until she’s captured by the authorities. “Nobody said love’s perfect,” says Tom’s…

Will exposed creep Louis C.K. try to make art that honestly confronts what he did—or will he go the way of Woody Allen?

Every week we ask interesting people what they think President Trump should read. In the past, we've talked with Harvey Mansfield and Ben Shapiro, among others. This week we spoke with Charles J. Sykes, best-selling author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

The most potent form of nostalgia is for a time you never knew in a place you do and imagine was at its peak before you came along. For me, that would be the 1950s in New York City, set to the cool, light strain of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.” I can never get enough…

There was a time when I was surprised that many Americans—even fans of Turner Classic Movies—seemed to think that Alfred Hitchcock was a roly-poly Englishman who somehow ended up in Hollywood and got his start making movies there. The way the story goes, Hitchcock crossed the pond and made Rebecca…

Michael Tolkin is one of America's greatest living novelists—and way too underappreciated, perhaps because of his successes in other genres. He's directed movies, including the 1991 film The Rapture, starring David Duchovny and Mimi Rogers; written screenplays, including The Player, based on his…

Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

Some endnotes and digressions from the latest show:

This was not your typical film premiere. The Bleeding Edge depicts the live-organ harvesting of religious dissidents by agents of the Chinese government and its reigning Communist Party—and the film's starring actress, human-rights activist and religious dissident Anastasia Lin was allegedly almost…

Andrzej Wajda, the Polish film and theatre producer and director who restored his country's consciousness of its torment at the hands of its Russian and Nazi German enemies, died on October 9 in Warsaw at the age of 90. His body of work made him an outstanding personality in the past 60 years of…

Vincent Hanna was strung out on coke. If that means anything to you, read on. (And if it doesn't, read on, anyway. I need the clicks.) This was just one of many revelations during a panel discussion following a Wednesday night screening of Heat, a remastered 20th anniversary edition of Michael…

Gene Wilder, the comedic actor and director who died Monday at the age of 83, had the qualities of a good character actor: an idiosyncratic voice, a mop of curly hair, and a familiarly quirky manner. But somehow, he became a star in a string of successful comedies in the 1970s and 1980s, including…

We mourn those closest to us when they die: parents, relatives, family, friends. When a leader or athlete dies, an obituary is good; it's something to share.

Much has been made of Sean Penn’s recently released secret interview with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, mastermind of two daring prison escapes, and the author of immeasurable suffering the world over. That Penn would shake hands with El Chapo isn't too surprising,…

Marrakesh

Not long ago, one of my favorite, but alas now defunct radio shows used to keep an Apology Clock. This time-piece counted very specific numerals: The Apology Clock ticked off each time someone famous was forced to apologize for their indiscretions. Since the Apology Clock is a product of our SJW…

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore will release his next movie in September in Toronto. Moore made the announcement on the Twitter live-streaming service Periscope. It'll premier at the Toronto Film Festival:

The jewelry that the women on the screen wear is made from silver and turquoise, matching their ornate and beautiful dresses. This is Miss Navajo, a 2007 documentary that examines issues of history and culture as it follows 21-year-old Navajo Crystal Frazier’s attempt to become Miss Navajo…

Three crusading filmmakers intent on doing stories that no one else will touch have moved on from a truth-telling documentary about natural-gas extraction to a planned TV movie about the man they’ve dubbed “America’s worst serial killer.” By the looks of it, plenty of people want the movie to be…

President Obama released the following statement on the passing of film critic Roger Ebert:

In testimony on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought up the movie Argo last month to help explain the terror attack against Americans in Benghazi, Libya. And now, with the Oscars tonight, the new secretary of state, John Kerry, is again plugging the film. 

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that the recent mobs in the Middle East aren't in response to U.S. policy: 

Can the Colorado shootings be blamed on the culture?  On too much violence in the movies? The argument is made all the time. But it is surprising to hear someone like Harvey Weinstein—who has made a career and a fortune turning out spectacularly violent movies—say it's time for Hollywood to address…

The Obama reelection campaign paid $345,353 for "a 17-minute campaign documentary by Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim, set for release Thursday," the Daily Caller reports. "The price comes out to more than $20,300 per minute."

I’m not a movie critic and I read Atlas Shrugged decades ago when I was in the Army. So it wasn’t exactly fresh in my mind when I attended a special screening in Washington this week of the film version of the novel by Ayn Rand. I had low expectations. But it turns out to be a terrific movie.

I’ve been told 2010 was a great year for movies—everything from The King’s Speech to The Social Network to Inception. Not that I would know. As a parent of two toddlers, I get to a movie theater at most once or twice a year.

Is it becoming modesty in a city, or just cluelessness, to cede to others the celebration of literary lions bred in that city’s midst?

A few months back I came across the trailer for I Want Your Money, an upcoming right-of-center documentary on the perils of big government and redistribution. Naturally, I was interested. The trailer made me laugh, which is more than I can say about most movies. Even better, according to today's…

What is combat in Afghanistan like? For those of us who have not been embedded as reporters, but want to know what our soldiers in this difficult war are up against, there is now Restrepo, a documentary film by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger. The subtitle of the film is “One Platoon, One…