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It is difficult to think of a movie star who did more to dictate the course of motion pictures in the United States during the 20th century than John Wayne. The Iowa native, who owes his acting career to John Ford and Tom Mix doing legendary USC football coach Howard Jones a minor favor, slugged it out as a contract player throughout the 1930s until, at tail end of the decade, he twirl-cocked a Winchester rifle as the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach." That moment, that movie, changed the Western forever. Before Ford's masterpiece, the genre was basically pulp cinema; after it became a massive hit, Westerns acquired the power of myth.

Wayne firmly believed Westerns existed to tell tales about the pursuit of America's manifest destiny. Wayne was so serious about this that, late in his career, when Clint Eastwood approached him about co-starring in a Western together, he...

Warning: There will be spoilers for "Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld".

The second half of "Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld" concerns itself with the origins of Cad Bane, the Duros bounty hunter who became one of the most ruthless and notorious guns for hire in that galaxy far, far away.

In the first installment we see him and his friend Niro scratching out a living on the street. Orphaned before they could remember their parents, Cad (then going by the name Colby) and Niro would pull small con jobs and steal food where they could. This drew the attention of a gangster who thought the kids might be useful, and he immediately put them to work as a distraction while he pulled off a mafia-style hit. In fact, the first episode of Cad Bane's arc has all the feeling of the Robert DeNiro scenes in "The Godfather Part II."

Unfortunately,...

Gary Cooper was a two-time Oscar winner who starred in dozens of movies before his death in 1961, but how many of those titles remain classics? Let's take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1901, Cooper got his start in silent movies, most notably the aerial drama "Wings" (1927), which won the very first Academy Award as Best Picture. He would collect his own statuette as Best Actor for another WWI film: the biographical drama "Sergeant York" (1941). Directed by Howard Hawks, it helped create Cooper's screen persona of an ordinary man capable of extraordinary courage in the face of adversity.

He won a second Best Actor trophy for playing a similar character in Fred Zinnemann's western "High Noon" (1952), which cast him as a retired marshal who must stand up to a gang of killers arriving on the noon train. Cooper earned additional nominations for similarly idealistic,...

Superman is about to put a new spin on the iconic romance between Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and a classic piece of cinema was cited as a major inspiration. Superman and Lois Lane are the most famous couple in all of comics, having been together in some form since Action Comics #1 in 1938. The typical dynamic between them, from George Reeves' The New Adventures of Superman to the Christopher Reeve Superman films, is that Lois Lane is head-over-heels for Superman. Though he shares those same affections for her, he often feels like he can't be with her because of a greater duty to the world. However, it seems this summer's Superman is messing with the formula in some exciting ways.

Speaking with ABC, David Corenswet and James Gunn discussed their upcoming Superman project, with one topic highlighted being the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane. David Corenswet described it...

It doesn't sound too surprising when a show with a 20-year lifespan decides to go off the air, but it came as a real shock when the cast and crew "Gunsmoke" learned about the show's sudden cancellation. Without a proper heads up that their version of Dodge City was going dark, the long-running CBS western drama was without a proper ending for our main characters. That decision was made on account of the higher-ups cleaning house, playing the time-honored game of out with the old, in with the new. The "good ol' days" era of when "Gunsmoke" was on television was coming to a close, leaving the show in an awkward position.

The best thing you can hope for in a series finale is something memorable to leave longtime viewers with, but the season 20 closer isn't exactly the best note for "Gunsmoke" to go out on. "The Sharecroppers," which aired...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

Tom Gunning is celebrated in a weekend-long series featuring M on 35mm, Hal Hartley’s Flirt, and an avant-garde program; films by Buster Keaton and Renny Harlin play in See It Big: Stunts!

Nitehawk Cinema

A print of Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman screens early on Saturday and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Charles Burnett, Ousmane Sembène, and more screen in L.A. Rebellion.

Museum of Modern Art

Films by Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, and Dorothy Arzner play in The Lady at 100.

Film Forum

A new 35mm print of 8½ begins playing, while Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman continues in a new restoration.

Bam

A retrospective of Sudanese cinema begins.

Roxy Cinema

The French Connection and City Dudes screen this Saturday; The Little Rascals plays for free on Sunday,...

Every so often, the work of a filmmaker is given a major critical and public reassessment, allowing them to enter the pantheon of great directors.

It happened in the 1950s, when French critics declared that Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Samuel Fuller were not only skillful helmers of genre flicks, but auteurs with distinct personal visions. Later, John Ford was revisited by Peter Bogdanovich and Lindsay Anderson, in books claiming he was more than just a maker of great Westerns. In the 1990s, the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, both of whom had been working steadily in their homelands since the 70s, were finally celebrated abroad. More recently, the filmography of Agnès Varda was excavated in retrospectives and festivals, shining a light on a forgotten member of the New Wave.

It’s time the same thing happened for Frederick Wiseman.

First off, let’s not kid...

Throughout his 50-year filmmaking career, John Wayne was not much of a risk taker when it came to material. Once he broke through as a movie star with John Ford's template-setting Western "Stagecoach" in 1939, he mostly bounced back and forth between oaters and rah-rah war films. When he did futz with his image, he did so with great directors like Ford and Howard Hawks, whose judgment he implicitly trusted.

When it came to experimenting with emerging cinematic technology and new formats, however, Wayne was open to giving anything a whirl that would help movies stave off the stay-at-home threat of television. He made lots of films in Cinemascope and starred in "How the West Was Won," one of the first three-strip Cinerama movies. You might think the 3D fad of the 1950s would've been too sweaty for the Duke, but he actually teamed with director John Farrow to shoot...

Hidden references and in-jokes in cinema can be an acquired taste, but here’s a festive selection of the best arch nods for aficionados to enjoy

One of Hollywood’s most durable Easter eggs debuted in Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (1940) when Cary Grant’s character says: “The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat!” And in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) his character sits pensively in a cemetery where Archie Leach’s gravestone is to be seen. In Charles Crichton’s A Fish Called Wanda (1988), John Cleese’s character is called Archie Leach. Leach is, of course, the real name of Cary Grant – a very goofy and unglamorous sounding name compared with the sonorous “Cary Grant” – and a rare example of Hollywood alluding to the open secret of rebranding its stars and effacing the bland ordinariness of their origins.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

Triple Canopy Presents: In The Hole brings 35mm prints of Salò, Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole, and more.

Roxy Cinema

Martin Scorsese presents Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death on 35mm this Friday; Jerry Lewis’ Smorgasboard shows on 35mm Saturday; Dazed and Confused and Smiley-Face play on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Essential Cinema brings Erich von Stroheim’s Greed and films by Dziga Vertov; Richard Beymer’s The Innerview plays in a new restoration.

Museum of Modern Art

Films by Howard Hawks, George Stevens, and more play in “The Lady at 100.”

Museum of the Moving Image

The Dead Zone plays throughout the weekend while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shows Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman plays in a new restoration; Bride of Frankenstein screens this Sunday.

IFC Center

Barry Lyndon begins screening for its 50th anniversary; Salò,...

The first time Marilyn Monroe, as the perfectly named Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, walks onto the screen in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, even the train—with a whistle of steam—can’t resist catcalling her. Heading off to front the Sweet Sues, an all-girl brass band starting a residency as the house band at a posh Florida hotel, Sugar Kane has vowed to land a rich hubby, and the way she retrieves a flask of whiskey from her garter, it’s hard to imagine any man passing up the opportunity. And yet, most men that enter Wilder’s frame are far more interested in Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, dolled-up in drag to secure places in the Sweet Sues and hide out from the gangsters they witnessed mowing down a snitch and his associates in a garage—a recreation of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Even the gangsters,...

When you think of old-fashioned movie stars, few people are more apt to come to mind than Gary Cooper. Cooper was the embodiment of his name: a solid, straightforward presence who captured audience attention for decades. His career spanned from 1925 to 1961, and his legacy lives on more than sixty years later through his roles in classics like "The Pride of the Yankees," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," and other Old Hollywood titles. Though he passed in 1961, Cooper's legend is such that he's never really left our minds, even as an avatar of old-fashioned masculinity without seeming a bit outsized or exaggerated. Cooper was a quintessentially American star, having won two Best Actor Oscars during his life as well. One of those Oscars was for the early-1940s title "Sergeant York," but it's the other film he won for that we'll discuss today.

As many classics as Cooper has, just one...

The 1997 cult favorite preys on our most internal fears: Very early on in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror film “Cure,” there was a scene that already had me reaching for the rewind button. A slow pan across the beach, where a man is squatting and furiously sketching on a notepad. Another man enters the frame, and suddenly, the sand seems to shift color from a glistening beige to a pallid greyish-green, like blood draining from the face. Of course, it’s an illusion caused by clouds drifting past the sun, but it’s also symbolic of the dark and malevolent shadow that will soon envelope the psychological landscape as well.

The two men exchange a few words, and it’s clear this intruder is an amnesiac. The artist tries to talk further with this mysterious man, inviting him home to see if he can help him reclaim his memory. His altruism...

Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is one of the great revisionist noirs, taking its place alongside Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Like those films, it not only brazenly subverts the tropes of the classic Hollywood private eye film, but also uses the genre’s pervasive aura of moral corruption and social anomie to comment on the American scene in the wake of political scandals and the collapse of the 1960s counterculture into the rampant self-absorption of the Me Decade. All three films eschew pat resolutions, let alone the comforts of a return to status quo order.

Night Moves cadges elements from classic noir films. It lifts basic plot points about the search for the runaway daughter of a moneyed family from Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep, and emulates that film’s excessively labyrinthine narrative, though here you probably don’t need to pay...

Quick LinksWhat is Bringing Up Baby About?The Leopard in Bringing Up Baby Was Mostly PracticalBringing Up Baby Was a Box Office Flop

They did things differently back in the early days of Hollywood. It all started humbly with the development of "talkies" when synchronized sound was introduced in 1927's The Jazz Singer. The train didn't stop here, however, as new groundbreaking film technologies have been discovered every single year since. From Technicolor, Eastman color, and digital cinema, all the way to 3D and even 4D. The cinema experience is becoming more visually striking and immersive by the second, and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Despite these advancements making film an interesting medium to track the growth of, some can't help but be nostalgic for the olden days. Fans and filmmakers alike are concerned that these new advancements strip the filmmaking process of the love that made...

In the age of streaming, there’s a widespread belief that every movie is available, all the time, everywhere. Don’t fall for it! Some of the greatest movies ever made are nowhere to be found due to everything from music rights snafus to corporate negligence. In this column, we take a look at films currently out-of-print on physical media and unavailable on any streaming platform in an effort to draw attention to them and say to their rights holders, “Release This!”

When Peter Bogdanovich‘s musical “At Long Last Love” opened in 1975, the verdict was nearly unanimous — critics agreed that the wunderkind behind “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon” had badly stumbled in his attempt to revive the style of 1930s Ernst Lubitsch musicals like “The Love Parade” and “The Merry Widow.” Even Roger Ebert, who gave the movie one of its more sympathetic reviews,...

John Wayne was one of the biggest movie stars in the history of the medium, but because he reigned during the 1940s, 1950s, and some of the 1960s, he was not a beneficiary of franchise filmmaking. This was a blessing, as it allowed the star to entrust his coarse brand of heroism to great filmmakers like John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Don Siegel, all of whom were free to tweak his persona within reason while not being yoked to an ongoing narrative arc that forced them to color inside pre-determined lines. Look at it this way: instead of Wayne and Ford making a series of Ringo Kid movies after the success of 1939's "Stagecoach," they were able to re-team on original stories like "Fort Apache," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," and "The Searchers," which challenged the Duke to play different kinds of hard men facing different kinds of dilemmas.

When...

Picture the scene: You've been dating this great person for a while and it's time to find out whether they're a keeper. One night over cheeseburgers and vanilla Cokes you decide to pop the question: "Hey, do you like 'Rio Bravo?'" By his own admission, that was a criteria for a successful relationship in director Quentin Tarantino's younger years and he has called Howard Hawks' classic western of the greatest hang-out movies of all time. Depending on your point of view, spending two hours hanging out with John Wayne might not sound like the most appealing prospect, but there is little denying he was a screen icon despite his personal flaws. In "Rio Bravo," we find the Duke at his most engaging and charismatic, and the movie was so successful that it launched an unofficial trilogy.

Released in 1959, "Rio Bravo" was born out of Howard Hawks and...

Awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival amid much mouth-frothing from the American press over its alleged communist credentials, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 classic The Wages of Fear now seems much less like a potboiler spin on Salt of the Earth and a lot more like the spiritual godfather to every testosterone-fueled thrill ride since. Time has inevitably eradicated the contemporary circumstance that fed its political reception and modern audiences will surely recognize that the howls of anti-Americanism said more about the accuser than the accused. If anything, The Wages of Fear now registers as the callous post-World War II flipside to Casablanca, in which people have been scattered not only into pockets of nobility, but also outposts of pusillanimity.

If Diabolique was Clouzot’s bid to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock, then The Wages of Fear is a little bit like a Howard Hawks thriller, only without the mitigating presence of women.

Reader, you have been lied to! Film history is littered with unfairly maligned classics, whether critics were too eager to review the making of rather than the finished product, or they suffered from underwhelming ad campaigns or general disinterest. Let’s revise our takes on some of these films from wrongheaded to the correct opinion.

When “Madhouse,” a comedy about a happily married couple besieged by out of control house guests, was released in early 1990, it met with immediate hostility from critics. How hostile were they? So hostile that “Madhouse” is currently in the select group of movies sitting uncomfortably at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, not a single positive review to its name.

The irony is that not only is “Madhouse” not bad, it’s great. And not only great, but all-time great, a comedy so flawless in its construction and so precise in its timing that it ranks alongside the best work of Howard Hawks,...

Westerns have always worked uncommonly well with ghost stories, which occupy a small part of their ethos and can be readily used to serve story needs. Crossovers aren't entirely common, but have produced some striking movies and TV shows. They run the gamut from bloody updates of traditional Westerns like Bone Tomahawk to wilder genre mash-ups like From Dusk Til Dawn, and while the best of them tend to be modern, the roots of Western horror stretch back to the pulp days.

It should come as no surprise that one of the best old-school examples of Western horror came with Rod Serling's classic seriesThe Twilight Zone. Cowboys were all the rage when the series first premiered, and multiple episodes used Western tropes as the jumping-off point for their various spooky premises. One of them -- Season 3, Episode 7, "The Grave" -- is as good as anything The Twilight Zone has ever produced.

There’s never been a book written about the sub-genre of the so-called “hangout” film. In fact, the earliest reference I’ve come across of the term was Quentin Tarantino describing his admiration for Howard Hawks’ “Rio Bravo” and Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused.” Tarantino defined the sub-genre as being, “movies that you hang out with the characters so much that they actually become your friends.”

When director Carson Lund was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast he talked about setting out to make a hangout film with “Eephus.” The director, who used to write about movies for Slant, has become a student of the genre, and offered a more specific definition.

“[The hangout movie] is a film that prioritizes character interaction at the expense of forward plot momentum. It’s more about just enjoying, as a viewer, spending time with these people,” said Lund on the podcast. “ Howard Hawks is the master of this.

Film historian Karina Longworth‘s “You Must Remember This” podcast has been beloved by cinephiles ever since it launched 11 years ago to explore “the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.” The latest season, “The Old Man Is Still Alive,” is Longworth’s most enlightening and entertaining to date. A deep dive into the late-career transformations of Hollywood legends, including Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Otto Preminger, “The Old Man Is Still Alive” explores how veteran directors met the challenges of an evolving industry and changing tastes with varying degrees of artistic and commercial success.

The idea for the season began with a 2023 trip to the Cinémathèque Française, where Longworth saw Vincente Minnelli’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” for the first time. “I thought of myself as a big Minnelli fan, and I had not even known this movie existed,” Longworth told IndieWire. “I went...

“Anora” took the Oscars by storm on Sunday, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Mikey Madison), Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay. The contemporary story about a young sex worker (Madison) who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch had a fractured fairy tale message. And now it has its happily ever after.

But to those who had been paying attention, its big triumph felt like less of a surprise and more of a crescendo to a campaign that started almost a year ago and had finally reached its natural conclusion. What makes this particular success story so staggering is how deliberate and methodical it was, as distributor Neon closely followed its own playbook — one that led Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” to historic Oscar success five years ago. Add in a deliberate decision to keep “Anora” off of streaming for the duration of its awards run,...

The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and Escape from New York. These are the holy trinity of John Carpenter/Kurt Russell collaborations and are generally seen as anything from best cult film of all time to the best horror movie of all time. The Thing would get a prequel movie but that was only after years of being unappreciated and it would take a re-evaluation for that movie to come to life. Big Trouble wouldn’t even get that as the IP would die at the box office and stay dead to the creators. While all 3 would share some form of a collection of video game tie-ins, comic books, toys, and board games, only Escape from New York would get the direct sequel treatment, and even that was 15 years later. While it is not usually held in the same regard as its oft-imitated predecessor, it’s slowly gaining traction...

Although he wasn't as revered in his time as his contemporaries John Ford and Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann was king of the metaphorical Western. After making a name for himself in low-budget film noir, Mann moved to Westerns in the 1950s, using the genre as a means to explore the same psychologically complex and darkly cynical terrain as he had in his noirs. One of the best of these is The Furies, his only western to center on a woman, which completely upends the genre of John Wayne and Gary Cooper with Freudian symbolism and feminist ideology.

The movie industry has always had its fair share of directors and stars, such as John Wayne and John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart, and Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon, who, throughout their careers, frequently collaborated on numerous movies. While there are many notable cinematic duos, Cary Grant and Howard Hawks are one particular pair from Hollywood's Golden Age who stand out for their comedic energy and natural dynamic that made them an absolute force on the silver screen.

Brian De Palma’s Scarfacestands as one of the most iconic crime films in cinematic history. What many don’t realize, however, is that it’s actually a remake of a 1932 classic by Howard Hawks. This remake, though controversial at the time of its release, has since become a cult classic, influencing cinema and other entertainment since its 1983 release.

Though most audiences are familiar with De Palma’s Scarface as a stand-alone classic, few are aware of the original that paved the way for this iconic reimagining. Hawks’ version, a product of pre-Code Hollywood, set the stage for the evolution of crime cinema. While the two films share the same title and central themes, their setting, characters and treatment of violence stand as almost two separate pieces of work. The influence of both films has since echoed across generations, with each version offering its own unique perspective on the American Dream.

Quentin Tarantino seems to enjoy watching movies rather than making them. There’s still no word about his tenth and final film, yet he has recommended over 300 movies over the years. His fans might be irked by his unwillingness to be as industrious as his peers, but he sure has good taste. That Tarantino is a film fan more than a filmmaker should come as no surprise, considering that he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, for five years. Additionally, he is a self-taught director, meaning he had to do plenty of research early in his career. "When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films," Tarantino was once quoted saying.

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Rio BravoPassedDramaWesternRelease DateApril 4, 1959Runtime141 MinutesDirectorHoward HawksCastSee...

John Wayne achieved major stardom with the 1939 Western film Stagecoach, which marked his first collaboration, as a leading man, with director John Ford, a relationship that reached its pinnacle with the 1956 Western film The Searchers, which is widely regarded as being the greatest and most influential Western film ever made. Ford and Wayne’s historic partnership has somewhat overshadowed another important directorial collaborator in Wayne’s career, Howard Hawks, who first directed Wayne in the classic 1948 Western film Red River. Following Red River, Ford and Wayne next collaborated on the 1959 Western film Rio Bravo, which, like The Searchers, is now regarded as being one of the greatest and most influential films, of any genre, in history.

Rio Bravo features one of Wayne’s greatest screen performances as John Chance, a small-town Texan sheriff who, after arresting the brother of a powerful local rancher for murder, has to hold the man...

The science fiction genre in cinema is roughly one hundred and twenty-five years old, with Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon frequently cited as the film industry's first major work within the genre. While the silent era produced many influential science fiction movies, such as Metropolis, The Lost World, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for most of the twentieth century, science fiction movies were predominantly B movies.

That all changed in 1977 when Star Wars lit the box office on fire. Ever since, science fiction has remained arguably the most profitable genre at the box office. Currently, 14 of the 25 highest-grossing movies of all time are science fiction movies. However, despite the immense popularity of the science fiction genre, many iconic sci-fi films continue to fly under the radar and have been forgotten by modern audiences. Each film included in this article has under 100,000 ratings on Letterboxd.

Related10 Best Modern...

The Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, is one of the most coveted awards to receive in cinema. Many actors, directors, writers, and cinemaphotographers spend their entire careers seeking one of these awards. Last year, Christopher Nolan finally won his first two Oscars. Despite winning hundreds of awards worldwide throughout his career, Nolan lacked any Academy Award wins until Oppenheimer, which earned Nolan the Oscars for Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievement in Directing. While Nolan can now call himself an Academy Award winner, many of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers cannot make the same claim.

Throughout American film history, many of Hollywood's all-time great directors have gone their whole careers without winning an Academy Award. Some, like Paul Thomas Anderson and Richard Linklater, have received many Oscar nominations but never claimed victory. Others, like Fritz Lang, shockingly never managed to garner a single Academy Award nomination despite making many iconic movies.

No movie star ever had a better sense of what their audiences wanted, and how to deliver it, than John Wayne. From his breakout performance in John Ford's 1939 masterpiece "Stagecoach" onward, Wayne was considered one of Hollywood's surest box office bets due to his knack for making, generally, Westerns or war pictures that had a little more oomph in the scripting and directing departments. Obviously, it helped that two of his era's greatest filmmakers, John Ford and Howard Hawks, were frequent collaborators, but Wayne identified other directors and writers who could work efficiently and proficiently on programmers that riffed on themes near and dear to the Duke's heart.

Were the critics always impressed with Wayne's output? Absolutely not. Fortunately, the feeling was mutual. As Wayne once said of critics, "When people say a John Wayne picture got bad reviews, I always wonder if they know it's a redundant sentence,...

Few names are more iconic than John Wayne, whose legendary status was solidified through countless acclaimed box-office successes. As perhaps the defining figure of Hollywood's Golden Age, Wayne’s work in Westerns and war movies made him a household name whose rugged charisma and heroic persona ensured his success from the silent era right through to the end of his career in 1979. With acclaimed collaborations with directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks, Wayne was one of the biggest box office draws from the 1940s through to the 1960s.

The best Wayne movies have truly stood the test of time, and much of his best work also hit it big at the box office. Whether a leading man, co-starring with legends like Maureen O’Hara, or as part of an ensemble cast, Wayne always stood out in every production he was a part of. While the box office takings of Wayne...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice)

Eríce’s latest is the ultimate cinephile catnip: the triumphant return of a director known to only make masterpieces, a film filled with in-group references and nods to cinema history (including a lengthy performance of a song from a Howard Hawks film), and an ending that hinges on the literal power of cinema itself. Thankfully, these qualities are hardly gimmicks; there’s real pathos in this story of a missing director that’s aided by these loving reminders of what makes the seventh art so important to so many. Close Your Eyes commands a secular, cynical audience to remember that art was born out of religion and miracles can still happen if one believes. – Z.W. L.

Hollywood glamour epitomized, 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is what Technicolor was made for. And although it also positively glows with sensuality, as most Marylin Monroe films do, it isn't about sex at all. It's about female empowerment and friendship, showcased by an unbreakable bond between the characters Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell).

From the moment Lorelei and Dorothy slink out of the black lace curtain, they light up the screens like fireflies. Russell was actually top of the bill in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, directed by Howard Hawks, and Monroe was cementing her name in the industry. She sealed that fate with the release of How to Marry a Millionaire in the same year. Russell took Monroe under her wing and helped sooth her anxiety on set; they developed a genuine friendship, which is clear to see on screen and which defines the film far more than its surface-level romance and sensuality.

For Sean Baker, it’s theatrical or bust.

Paychecks from streamers can be tantalized in front of him, but when it comes to his original work, not only is about making works for the cinema, but shooting on celluloid, too.

“We shouldn’t abandon the medium which created this artform,” Baker tells us on this episode of Crew Call, on why he opted to shoot Anora on film.

“We shot it on film, we shoot it for the cinema and that’s how we want people to see it.”

“Theatrical means everything to me,” Baker tells us, “I consider home entertainment to be an afterthought.”

Related: James Mangold “Thrilled” At ‘A Complete Unknown’ Oscar Nominations; Says Awards Process Is Needed To Support Movies That “Aren’t Just Bubblegum Films”

“Neon allowed me a long theatrical window,” he adds. Anora landed on digital and PVOD after a 60-day window on Dec.

Al Pacino is one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. Though he is now 84 years old, Pacino got his start in acting in his late 20s, when he played a role in the 1968 television series N.Y.P.D. Only four years after that debut, Pacino became best known for playing the role of Michael in The Godfather. This earned Pacino an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and later Best Actor for the sequel The Godfather Part II. It would not be until 1993, however, that Pacino first won an Oscar, for Scent of a Woman.

Pacino has also won two Tony awards and two Emmy Awards, giving him three of the coveted Egot letters (he is missing a Grammy). This is a huge achievement that few actors have been able to accomplish. Impressively, Pacino's career continues today, and he even got a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 2020 for The Irishman.

Everyone assumed that the nominees for the Directors Guild of America’s top DGA Award would include, as they did in Wednesday morning’s nominations announcement, Emilia Pérez’s Jacques Audiard, Anora’s Sean Baker, Conclave’s Edward Berger and The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet.

The question was: Who was going to snag the fifth and final slot?

The aforementioned quartet was recently joined on the Golden Globe Awards’ nominations list by The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat and All We Imagine as Light’s Payal Kapadia; and on the Critics Choice Awards’ nominations list by Fargeat, Wicked’s Jon M. Chu, Nickel Boys’ RaMell Ross and Dune: Part Two’s Denis Villeneuve.

But as exciting and glamorous as those awards shows are, they are actually less reliable predictors of Oscar recognition than the picks of the DGA, which more closely mirrors the directors branch of the Academy, which, in turn,...

The hangout movie is one of the most underrated genres of film, spanning back decades. To quote visionary and legendary modern filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, when discussing the Howard Hawks film Rio Bravo in a private screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, hangout movies, "are certain movies that you hang out with the characters so much that they actually become your friends. And that’s a really rare quality to have in a film…because it actually takes that long of a time to get past a movie character where you actually feel that you know the person and you like them…when it’s over, they’re your friends.”

The modern master of the hangout movie is almost certainly Richard Linklater, whose varied filmography includes comedy classics like School of Rock, Oscar winners like Boyhood and romantic comedies like Hit Man. One of his best films of all time,...

Among the most acclaimed American artists in entertainment and highly recognized filmmakers for fans of cinema, Howard Hawks made several iconic films that helped emphasize the craft of moviemaking and revealed how the medium can enthrall an audience no matter the genre. Working in the classic Hollywood era, Howard Hawks made dozens of movies ranging from comedies, dramas, gangster features, sci-fi flicks, film noir, war films and Westerns. Moreover, whatever subject the director tackled, Howard Hawks made sure to infuse his distinct style that champions dynamic characters, emphasizes sharp wit and delivers recognizable thematic elements throughout his work, and in his Western films, the auteur knew how to connect with viewers.

As a staple of the American film language, the Western genre has been defined by many talented artists since its inception and, despite only making a handful of Westerns, Howard Hawks left an impression with each film that showcased...

The Hawksian group dynamic at play in Hatari!—featuring a crew of game catchers working in Tanzania—is a familiar one, with macho gamesmanship, romantic entanglements, and personality clashes all occurring as each individual excels at their professional role, while also relying on the expertise of those around him or her. Yet, more so than any other Howard Hawks film, Hatari! plays not only like a new spin on the director’s pet themes and motifs, but also as a deliberate fusion of reconfigured moments and gestures from his greatest works.

There’s a mano-a-mano shooting competition between Kurt (Hardy Krüger) and Chips (Gérard Blain) that recalls the famous Red River sequence between Monty Clift and John Ireland, while the piano sing-along scene is much like the one in Only Angels Have Wings. The crew’s leader, Sean (John Wayne), who’s constantly flustered by the sophisticated Dallas (Elsa Martinelli...

John Henry "Doc" Holliday (1851–1887) was a sharp-witted dentist-turned-gunslinger and gambler with a hot temper who ultimately became famous for his role in the Wild West and his close friendship with lawman Wyatt Earp. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Holliday turned to gambling and occasionally worked as a dentist. He developed a reputation as a skilled card player and a quick-draw gunfighter. Holliday's partnership with Earp led him to become involved in law enforcement conflicts, including the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881. This deadly confrontation, pitting Earp and Holliday against the Clanton-McLaury gang, became legendary.

Doc Holliday died in Colorado in 1887 at the age of 36. His colorful life story has been the subject of many books and movies, most notable in the 1993 movie Tombstone with Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. However, Doc’s life inspired many other movies, including some that rival the legendary Tombstone itself.

The...

Anything shot by Tony Scott and portrayed on screen by Tom Cruise is going to look way more exciting and fashionable than it really is in reality, and anyone who was motivated to enroll in the Navy after watching Top Gun or its legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick is due for a rude awakening. Beyond the extreme difficulty of navigating a state-of-the-art aerial vehicle, flying at high speed is a harrowing experience that offers a potential fatal end. Aviation represents reckless abandonment of life at the highest level, and this lingering sense of doom is merely brushed upon in the Top Gun movies. For a sobering commentary on the fatalism of flying crossed with a romance between two dutiful but conflicted parties, check out an essential classic Hollywood classic, Only Angels Have Wings, directed by a filmmaking legend, Howard Hawks, and featuring two icons of the era in Cary Grant and Jean Arthur.

There has never been another Western genre icon quite like John Wayne. Sure, Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner have their own horse opera presence, but the Duke is in a category all his own. Near the end of his life, in the 1970s, he continued to make thrilling pictures, such as The Cowboys, Big Jake, and, in his final performance, The Shootist. But there was one film, which doubled as his final collaboration with famed filmmaker Howard Hawks, that remains one of Wayne's most underrated features: Rio Lobo. If the title sounds familiar, you may be thinking of a similar film called Rio Bravo, but Rio Lobo is quite the ride, rounding out a trilogy of Westerns that Wayne and Hawks made together. As is written prominently on the poster, "Give 'em hell, John!"...

Mubi has unveiled their first streaming lineup of the new year and they are kicking things off in a major way with the streaming debut of Víctor Erice’s masterpiece Close Your Eyes. Additional highlights include the first digital release of Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’ Berlinale and NYFF selection Pepe, with the debuts of Luca Guadagnino and James Gray also in the lineup. After releasing the biggest album of 2024, one can get a deeper glimpse into the life and work of Charli Xcx with the documentary Charli Xcx: Alone Together.

Recently naming Close Your Eyes one of the best films of 2024, Z.W. Lewis said, “Eríce’s latest is the ultimate cinephile catnip: the triumphant return of a director known to only make masterpieces, a film filled with in-group references and nods to cinema history (including a lengthy performance of a song from a Howard Hawks film), and...

John Wayne is frequently cited as the most popular and influential Western star of his generation, alongside other figures such as Clint Eastwood and James Stewart. The actor appeared in hundreds of films throughout his extensive career, frequently collaborating with directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks. He became known for his stoic, macho performances, and many of John Wayne’s best movies have gone down in history as the best in the genre.

Throughout his career, John Wayne worked alongside many other stars and became known for his reliable collaborations with other actors. However, there was one particular star of the Western genre whose path didn’t cross with Wayne’s until one project in 1940, which saw them finally share the screen. This actor was Roy Rogers, an American actor nicknamed King of the Cowboys for his frequent appearances in Western movies. He only worked alongside John Wayne once,...

Billy Crystal is thinking back on his formative years in Martin Scorsese’s classroom.

On the Dec. 15 episode of the “Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist” podcast, Crystal talked about his time being taught by Scorsese at New York University.

“He was a graduate student at the time, just doing his first movie, called ‘Who’s That Knocking at My Door.’ And it was 1968, 1969, 1970,” Crystal remarked on the podcast.

Crystal went on to describe Scorsese’s looks: “[He] had a big beard and granny glasses and hair down to his shoulders. He looked like everybody. He’d stand behind you while you were editing your film and he would be very scary, because he would look and he was so intense and he would speak very quickly — even then — he spoke quicker then because he was, you know, 50 years younger.”

Scorsese would reference Howard Hawks always using wide shots in his films as...

Legend and mythmaking are the backbone of the Western genre. As the classic John Ford Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance once emphasized, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." If this sentiment serves as the epigraph to the genre, then the mascot of legend-making would undeniably be one of the stars of Liberty Valance and a countless number of Westerns, John Wayne. Symbolizing the ideal American patriot, Wayne's films and screen presence are still revered today, but his earnest and simplistic approach to portraying morally complex cowboys and law enforcement figures is pastiche. While his films with Ford and Howard Hawks were often probing and revisionist, Wayne, partially due to his outspoken nationalist political views, feels rooted in fantasy. However, there is one Western of his, The Cowboys, described as one of the most accurate portraits of the Wild West.

Academy Award-winning actor Humphrey Bogart’s life might have turned out a whole lot different had he taken to heart criticism his parents showered on him through his entire early life, calling him an “inadequate” actor and scholar, and an outright “failure.” But a distinctive, raspy voice, the character in his face that he once said had “taken an awful lot of late nights and drinking to put it there,” and that unparalleled talent for playing an emotionally complex tough guy — all fueled by an incredible drive — made him a Hollywood legend. And, as told in the new documentary streaming today, “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes,” five women in his life defined the trajectory of his career.

“Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes” is chock full of never-before-seen photos and is told using Bogart’s own words from letters, diaries and historical interviews as the narrative backbone. But what makes the...