Rent it now: The original ‘Heartbreak Kid’
Successful remakes have a way of getting in the way of the original — “An Affair to Remember” is much more popular than “Love Affair” — but if there’s any justice, the 2007 Farrelly brothers version of...
View ArticleLincoln Center Film Society celebrates ‘Hollywood’s Jew Wave’
Among the many movie revolutions of the 1960s was the way that the Hollywood studios finally allowed Jewish actors to embrace their ethnicity and Jewish writers and directors to explore their culture....
View Article‘Perils of Show Business’: Charles Grodin explains it all for you
You don’t have to be an aspiring actor to enjoy the new DVD “The Perils of Show Business” (Limelight Editions) in which Charles Grodin talks about his experiences progressing from useless acting...
View Article‘The Loved One’: they don’t make them like this anymore
The ad slogan for “The Loved One” when it came out in 1965 was unusually brash — “The motion picture with something to offend everyone!” For once a movie studio used honest marketing, but the...
View Article‘Hello Ladies’: abrasive but very funny
A 2013 HBO season series that never clicked, “Hello Ladies” has just been released on DVD by HBO Video. The big comedy hits on HBO tend to feature characters you might want to spend time with in real...
View ArticleAn hour with Mike Nichols tonight at 9
PBS is unveiling a new “American Masters” documentary tonight at 9 that focuses on the long and unusually varied career of director Mike Nichols. Nichols was such a potent force on stage, screen and...
View Article‘Crisis’: minor, but funny Woody Allen
Woody Allen’s TV series debut, “Crisis in Six Scenes,” which was released for streaming via Amazon on Friday, received some of the most withering reviews the 80-year-old writer-director-actor has...
View Article‘Becoming Mike Nichols’: a master class
When Mike Nichols died two years ago, we didn’t just lose a great stage and film director, we lost a great talker. Nichols put a lot of effort into interviews, whether he was sharing public time with a...
View ArticleWhen bad times produce great films
A friend on social media suggested last week that there could be an unexpected positive result from the chaos and corruption of the Trump Administration – a new wave of paranoid thrillers similar to...
View Article‘Off the Cliff’: the film revolution that wasn’t
Penguin Books is releasing a paperback edition of Becky Aikman’s “Off the Cliff” on August 7. Subtitled “How the Making of ‘Thelma & Louise’ Drove Hollywood to the Edge,” the book is a smart and...
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