LOVE STORY was the Number One film of 1970 and probably the most famous three-hanky tearjearker of all time. Harvard law student (and millionaire) Ryan O’Neal meets Radcliffe music student (and self-described “social zero”) Ali MacGraw and the two quickly (way too quickly) fall in...

For a heathen like me, films with religious overtones are usually best when played for their camp entertainment value, a la THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Something where the spectacle overwhelms anything overtly pious. Personal religious stories tend to come off as preachy and make my skin crawl. So why do...

LIMELIGHT is an interesting film in the Charlie Chaplin canon. In his last American film, Chaplin stars as Calvero, a once-famous English music hall comedian, who saves a young ballerina (Claire Bloom) from suicide and helps her regain belief in her talent. The title card at the beginning of the film...

It’s been a long road of prognosticators and pontificating on the way to this year’s Oscar nominees, myself included. As the years pass, I become less and less interested in all the major categories (though I still talk about them endlessly throughout the course of the year). My fascination...

CHARIOTS OF FIRE, the sleeper hit of 1981, picked up speed and sprinted towards the finish line in the final laps of awards season. Bolstered by its hit soundtrack, the film emerged victorious, surprisingly winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Based on a true story, Ben Cross and Ian Charleson star...

For years I’ve wondered why the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences don’t officially release a list of eligible original scores, like they do for the original song category. Well, they still haven’t. But Steve Pond over at The Wrap apparently got a hold of the list of the...

“Best” is an apt word for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. The 1946 film won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Director (William Wyler), and another for Hugo Friedhofer’s classic score. The film tells the story of three soldiers (March, Dana Andrews,...

THE GODFATHER, PART II is a rarity in Hollywood: a sequel that works as well as, or better than, the original. The film follows the Corleone mob family in two very different stories: the first with Michael (Al Pacino) in 1950’s Nevada and Cuba and the second with Robert De Niro playing a younger...

Over 50 years later, David Lean’s THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI still stands as one of the all-time great antiwar films. Alec Guinness stars as Colonel Nicholson, the commander of a group of British soldiers held in a Japanese POW camp in Burma in 1943. Forced to build a bridge on the Bangkok-Rangoon...

As the movie poster rightfully proclaims: “You’ll fall in love with LILI!” This charming, simple film stars Leslie Caron as a sad and lonely orphan who hooks up with a traveling carnival and falls in love with a womanizing magician (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and a crippled, embittered...