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When a Hollywood actor is big and making lots of movies, it kind of feels like they'll stick around forever. There are plenty who do, but so often a familiar face will enjoy a hot streak before vanishing from the limelight. Back in the '90s we had a number of such actors. Alicia Silverstone, Meg Ryan, and Bridget Fonda all hit their peak during the decade and became household names thanks to their hits. And then they were gone, either suffering from a string of poor choices (Silverstone), taking a break from acting (Ryan), or retiring altogether (Fonda). Another Hollywood star who enjoyed her heyday in the '90s before vacating our multiplexes was Rene Russo. But why exactly did she disappear from Hollywood?

Russo was one of several models who crossed over into acting during the '90s. Some made a big splash in their breakthrough roles, like...

In the late 80s, Michael Keaton turned to the dark side literally. After a string of successful comedies, the actor played edgy roles in movies such as Beetlejuice, Clean and Sober, Pacific Heights, and his superstar turn in Batman. In 1991, however, Keaton took a left turn as a soft but conflicted New York City detective in the crime thriller One Good Cop.

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between.

Today we go back to celebrate Pittsburgh’s first son – Michael Keaton. Our B-Sides today are: Clean and Sober, The Dream Team, One Good Cop, and My Life. Our guest is official five-timer Cory Everett, creator of Cinephile: A Card Game.

Cory has just released My First Movie: Vol. 2, the latest series of ‘Lil Cinephile picture books that offer a colorful, kid-friendly look at your favorite film genres from Spaghetti Westerns to Hollywood Musicals to Yakuza Movies. Also, don’t miss Cinephile Game Night when it returns live at the 61st New York Film Festival featuring Cory, Conor, and Jordan Raup in person!

We dive deep into analyzing how the actor took boring lead roles and made them sing.

Doing the most they can with a script that could’ve been plucked from the rejected bin of ‘90s Miramax feel-good crowd-pleasers, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley are having the time of their lives in Wicked Little Letters. This 1920-set tale of a town turned upside-down when insulting letters start mysteriously arriving moves in the kind of amiable fashion that ensures no laugh is too daring, no emotional beat too deep, no shot anything but pleasantly lit. While Thea Sharrock’s comedy may be based on a true story, there’s little feeling of authenticity, as if watching a stage play where each performer is tasked with making sure even the nosebleed seats can glean every word.

Living side-by-side but living wildly different lifestyles, Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) is defined by conformity, locked into a rigid, religious routine by her overbearing Edward (a sleepwalking Timothy Spall). Meanwhile, next door is...

Hollywood has a mixed track record when it comes to their movies and how certain ideas would have worked better in a different genre. One of the most common mismatches is between serious films that had concepts better suited to comedy, while others took themselves so seriously they became a meme. In either case, these movies would have worked much better had they been played up for jokes.

For some movies, they do so poorly or come out so generic and mediocre that adding some laughs could have taken them from obscurity to notoriety. Comedy itself has a wide range, and could take the form of anything from a dark satirical comedy to a laugh out loud romp. Sometimes, all a movie needs is to feel like it doesn't take itself too seriously and let audiences actually enjoy the story.

Related: Least Obvious Links In The MCU

One Good Cop...

Some actors manage to catch lightning in a bottle twice. It’s impressive enough to find your niche in Hollywood’s A-list even once. Occasionally, an actor will reinvent him/herself and begin a new phase of their careers that will be even more successful than it was before. Here are nine actors who had a cinematic rebirth.

Liam Neeson- Neeson has had a long career, and the early part of it was in dramatic roles. An intense dramatic actor, he apeared in films like The Dead Pool, Dark Man, Schindler’s List, Rob Roy and Les Miserables. His career rebirth came after playing Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars-Episode one: The Phantom Menace. After that, he got more offers for actions parts and recreated himself as an action hero in films like Gangs of NY, Batman Begins, Taken, Clash of the Titans, the A-Team, Unknown, the Grey, Taken 2,...

SyFy launched their latest mini-series in December. “Ascension” was advertised as the story of a group of people sent into space in the 60s as a lifeboat for humanity. The mission in an inter-generational voyage with the ultimate goal of allowing the future generations of the original crew to settle on a distant planet.

What they’ve really created is a pressure cooker. The crew has taken a society that was already segregated between the people doing the grunt labor and the people doing the more glamorous “service jobs” and taken it even farther. “Lower Deck” is hurled like an insult at every available opportunity. Each job on Ascension has an apprenticeship program, and while it’s possible for someone from the lower decks to apprentice for an upper deck job, they’re also made well aware that they are an exception and any misstep will result in a complete loss of status.

Michael Keaton continues to have a conspicuously versatile career. He consistently explores new territory, not only through the characters he plays but also through branching out into other production roles like directing. Part of the reason he is able to do this seems to be because rather than jumping at every offer that has likely come his way, Keaton seems to have the opportunity to be very particular about what movies he appears in. He continues to have a strong presence whenever he does show up on-screen, in good movies and in bad. Although he has his own signature stylistic preferences, he frequently changes up the overall timing, voice, and tone in many of his performances.

He’s a great part of movies.

But despite all of this, there is an elephant in the room—one might call it another presence in the darkness of the screening room. In many of Michael Keaton’s movies,...

Twice in one week I have heard or read Michael Keaton’s name in two separate stories. This must be some sort of record for the 2000s, which have seen very little of Keaton. Late last week it was announced he would take over as the lead villain in the Robocop remake. Now it seems he is directing his second film, an indie titled Buttercup. I don’t know about you, but any mention of Michael Keaton getting back to work - more importantly, back to promising work – is good news.

Keaton has never reached the heights of some of his peers as a star, but it isn’t because he is not a wonderful actor. He simply made some bad choices along the way, like Jack Frost and White Noise and, well, the list is painfully long. But there are those Michael Keaton performances out there where you can...

Killer Nashville is proud to launch its first Screenwriting Intensive as part of the Killer Nashville weekend, featuring Hollywood screen and television writers Heywood Gould, April Kelly, Steven Womack, and Philip Cioffari.

Heywood Gould’s screen credits include Cocktail; Rolling Thunder; The Boys from Brazil; Streets of Gold; One Good Cop; Trial by Jury; Mistrial; Double Bang; The Equalizer; N.Y.P.D.; and Fort Apache, the Bronx. Gould will kick off the event at the Killer Nashville Conference… More...

A banished Norse god! Apocalyptic vampires! A vigilant yeg! A cute scene-stealing Capuchin monkey! Mutant teenagers! A bunch of drunk and horny bridesmaids! Big Foot! A Green Ring! Pirates, Zombies, and Mermaids! Karate kicking zoo animals! A couple of forest dwelling trolls! And one smokin' hot teacher! That's what awaits us at the Cineplex over the course of May and June, and it promises to be a scorcher!

It doesn't really matter how fast and furious things get on the big screen, the summer movie season doesn't officially kick off until May 6th. And this year Thor opens things with a lighting bolt blast of Marvel excitement. It doesn't come to an end until August 31st, when Sam Worthington sends us all back to school with The Debt. Between then and now, we will see some of the biggest movies of the year hit hard. Some will win, some will lose,...

Actress Rene Russo has revealed all about her two great movie love scenes, insisting Michael Keaton "broke the ice" with a joke and Pierce Brosnan was "the perfect gentleman".

The stunning Major League star has 'bedded' a number of leading men on the big screen, but she'll always remember sex scenes in One Good Cop and The Thomas Crown Affair, thanks mainly to her co-stars.

Russo admits she was terrified before she climbed on top of Keaton for her first ever love scene, recalling, "I'm thinking, 'I don't know how to do this... Do I just go for it, like full on...?' I get under the covers and I get on top of him and I'm about to kiss him and he looks at me and he says, 'I'm sorry if I do and I'm sorry if I don't...' It totally broke the ice."

And she'll never forget the day she had to make love to James Bond star Brosnan in 1999's The Thomas Crown Affair.

She adds, "Pierce was the perfect gentleman... Pierce comes in with a silver tray with a bottle of champagne and two champagne glasses in a G-string."

But she insists the romance stopped there: "They make a huge (pizza) peel that they put us on and then slide us onto the pool table, where we were making love; that's how romantic that was."...

Is there a more important year for a girl than when she turns 16? It's the first time we start to decide what kind of woman we want to be. Now there is no shortage of examples coming at us from every side, and any girl worth her salt starts to work her way through the categories pretty quickly, right? I want to be the smart girl, the pretty girl, the popular girl; every option is open. For some of us, sweet 16 meant tiaras and coming out parties, but for me, 1991 was the year I learned that I wanted to be a bad girl.

In the summer of 1991, I was stranded in small town Florida for 3 months with little to do except hang out at the mall - you can only wander through Spencer Gifts so many times before catatonia sets in. Instead, I spent my nights at the movies. Now...