One of my favorite dads in cinema is one of the most obvious -- Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.  The picture of patience, justice, tolerance, intelligence and grace, he's so damn perfect that it's...

Had she lived long enough to see the day, June 1 marks the birthday of cinema's ultimate fractured sex goddess.

On this day, Marilyn Monroe would have been 82-years-old.

And despite all those coffee mugs emblazoned with her...

Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, my beloved Ike Turner...they are all gone dammit. Gone.  How any self respecting (or self flagellating) Christian thinks I should believe in God is beyond me. Not that I need God necessarily and yet,...

Bette Davis would have been 100-years-old today and I just wish (I wish) I could have met her in my life. I wouldn't have cared if she hollered at me, made me pull her anti-aging tape straps under her wig, blew cigarette...

Next to the cinematic milestone of watching Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and promptly falling in love with him (at age seven) my other girlhood crush was Desi Arnaz -- cool cat Cuban bandleader extraordinaire and husband to the...

So. Finally. I have to come to my carefully considered (and considerably annoyed) decisions regarding my full list of Oscar predictions.

Also included are the movies I want to win, some of which might, shock of all shocks, actually take home a few golden boys this...

Bye, Bye Roy...

Yes, he was 75 and yes, this is the way it happens, but the news of Roy Scheider's death made me so sad last night that his brilliant, sexy, grizzled depiction of the ultimate macho fey...

With the Writer's Strike marching on, I'm revisiting one of my favorite pictures about a Hollywood screenwriter -- Nicholas Ray's masterpiece, In a Lonely Place.

Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place is one of the...

There's a moment in Heath Ledger's far too short, sometimes brilliant film career that makes me so teary eyed, so filled with wistful emotion, that no matter how many times I watch it, I'm still taken aback by its...

Here's my top ten movies of 2007 in no particular order. Read, agree, disagree, call me crazy, whatever. But make sure to watch them all and...watch them twice.

Zodiac

Based on his fiendishly artistic, misanthropic...

It's that screwy, depressing time of year again. The big holidays are over, we've probably spent too much money, we've visited countless relatives (or not enough, or thankfully, not enough) and we're ready to (deep breath) start anew (I'll...

Two-Lane Blacktop. Criterion Edition. Greatest Car Movie Ever Made. My year is complete. Yes.

"If I'm not grounded pretty soon, I'm gonna go into orbit."

--Warren Oates A.K.A. GTO

It feels almost too easy applying the term "existential" to Monte Hellman's mysterious Two-Lane Blacktop, (and Mr. Hellman...

"Well, if you believe movies, man, then you'll believe anything."
--Ike Turner

Ike Turner has just died at the age of 76. The much maligned, deservedly acclaimed, much argued father of rock and roll; the Tina Turner discovering and...

For many of us, especially those of us who love movies, there are four pleasures in life: Food, sex, books and cinema ... though not necessarily in that order.

Of the four, cinema is the pleasure which can...

Halloween is supposed to mean scary but really, as an adult, when is it actually frightening? Not often. And that's fine. For those over the age of 13, Halloween is simply about costumes, shindigs and lots and lots of candy. Or nothing. Which is...

In Stanley Kubrick's cinematic universe reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork...

When William Freidkin's Bug hit theaters, the movie left many viewers confused, even angry. Based on the picture's previews and poster art, audience's unfamiliar with the Tracy Letts play it was adapted from, thought they were going to see another Saw or Hostel or whatever Lions Gate horror film was...

Hot damn I love Elvis Presley.

Yes, yes, I know. Everyone loves Elvis--and especially today, the 30th anniversary of Presley's death. But in an age when hype often supersedes talent or charisma, loving the astoundingly magnetic Elvis makes sense.

Truly, if someone claims to not like Elvis, not...