When the director of Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders decided what to create next, he focused instead on a modestly budgeted film about a boy who befriends an alien. The result was the biggest hit of his career.

Should we call him "Spartacus"? Or "Champion"? Both names certainly fit the man. Kirk Douglas turns 95 tomorrow, and he is still very much with us.

Christian Bale strikes me as a complete enigma. Yes, his acting chops are prodigious, but he seems to me to be all technique and no heart; we get buckets of perfectly formed ice, but very little fire.

We started this right off with the merge, which Marty felt was a good thing for him. I agree, although he immediately went to "I'm back in the saddle ...

The late Deborah Kerr was the kind of star and personality we rarely see anymore: a lady first and foremost, who, even playing women of dubious virtue, projected an innate sense of class, dignity, even nobility.

Bruce Weber's documentary-in-progress Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast about actor Robert Mitchum shows the Hollywood tough guy of Westerns and noirs as a shy, modest, non-celebrity.

The story of Gene Hackman, who quietly turned eighty just two months ago, is one of raw will and talent overcoming a host of limitations that would have defeated most people.

There are plenty of films out there that make us hopeful about life and living. Film noir is a guilty pleasure where we witness the denizens of society's bottom rungs stamping on each other's feet for a higher, safer position.

Let Robert Mitchum tell you the story of left hand/right hand (or why he's got LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers) playing a mad preacher in Charles Laughton's creepy and terrifying Southern gothic classic.

Remembering Jean Simmons, who died Friday, January 22, of lung cancer at 80, the first thing I thought of is her performance in Angel Face.

In the wake of the revered Walter Cronkite's passing, I've attempted to isolate the ten best movies about journalism.

Welcome to film noir, indeed a world unto its own. In my book, this type of picture, done right, has always deserved the highest of praise.