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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.

August’s Locarno Film Festival will go British with its latest retrospective: Great Expectations: British Post-War Cinema, 1945-1960.

The retrospective forms a major strand of the film festival’s programming and for many festival goers is a standout and popular attraction. Boasting fresh restorations and rare screenings of difficult to get prints, past seasons have been devoted to filmmakers such as Douglas Sirk or studios such as last year’s retrospective, The Lady with the Torch, which celebrated the centenary of Columbia Pictures.

Great Expectations: British Post-War Cinema, 1945-1960 is organized by the Locarno Film Festival in partnership with the BFI National Archive and the Cinémathèque Suisse, with the support of Studiocanal. The film curator responsible for the last program, Ehsan Khoshbakht, returns this year with Great Expectations. He spoke exclusively with Variety about the lineup and the rules dictating his selection.

What are the criteria for selection?

I chose...

No streaming service does a director retrospective like the Criterion Channel, and March offers two masters at opposite ends of exposure. On one side is Michael Mann, whose work from Thief through Collateral (minus The Keep) is given a spotlight; on the other is Alain Guiraudie, who (in advance of Misericordia opening on March 21) has five films arriving. (2001’s duet of That Old Dream That Moves and Sunshine for the Scoundrels have perhaps never streamed in the U.S. before.) Meanwhile, three noirs from Douglas Sirk are programmed alongside a Lee Chang-dong retrospective that features three new restorations.

Showcases will be staged for Dogme 95, Best Supporting Actor winners, and French Poetic Relaism. Welles’ The Trial gets a Criterion Edition alongside Demon Pond; Horace Ové’s newly restored Pressure makes a streaming premiere alongside spruced-up copies of Amadeus, Love Is the Devil, Port of Shadows, and Burning an Illusion, as...

Classic horror anthologies Flesh and Fantasy and Dead of Night will be released in a limited edition Blu-ray box set on April 30 via Australia’s Imprint.

Julien Duvivier helms 1943’s Flesh and Fantasy. Charles Boyer, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Betty Field, Robert Cummings, Robert Benchley, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Winninger, and Anna Lee star.

When a jittery businessman complains of a disturbing dream, a friend relates three stories to help calm his nerves. A homely dressmaker wears a mask of beauty to attract a man on Mardi Gras night; a fortune teller predicts an eminent lawyer will commit a murder; and a high-wire artist, haunted by a nightmare in which he suffers a fall, romances a woman who resembles the one he had seen in his dream.

Flesh and Fantasy special features:

Audio commentary by film historians Rodney Barnett and Adrian Smith (new) Video essay by film scholar Joseph Dwyer...

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This February, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the return of beloved shows like Invincible and Reacher to the much-anticipated teen romantic drama film My Fault: London. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Prime Video this month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 10 best films that are coming to Prime Video in February 2025 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

A Fish Called Wanda (February 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96% Credit – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A Fish Called Wanda is a heist comedy film directed by Charles Crichton from a screenplay by John Cleese. The 1988 film revolves around a group of thieves and con artists who team up to pull off the perfect heist, but things go horribly wrong because they all try to double-cross each other.

At the 2024 Academy Awards, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon lost all 10 of its nominations, yet the movie still managed to break an impressive Oscars record. Based on a non-fiction book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true story of a string of murders committed against the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma. With Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in the leads, this epic drummed up quite a bit of attention at the end of 2023. Yet, despite its star-studded cast and legendary director, the film came out of the Oscars empty-handed.

In total, Killers of the Flower Moon was up for ten awards at the 2024 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song. Ultimately, the movie was overshadowed by other large scale movies,...

As the nights grow longer and the air turns crisp, it’s the perfect time to settle in with some of the best spooky films ever made. From eerie silent classics to modern horror hits, spooky cinema has evolved across decades, yet each era has its own spine-tingling gems. Whether you love atmospheric terror or heart-pounding scares, here’s a journey through the best films from the 1920s to today that will give you chills. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to The Hollywood Insider Click here to read more on The Hollywood Insider’s vision, values and mission statement here – Media has the responsibility to better our world – The Hollywood Insider fully focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment, against gossip and scandal, by combining entertainment, education, and philanthropy. 1920s - 1980s ‘The Haunting’ (1963) Cast: Julie Harris,...

Rotten Tomatoes might just be a review aggregator, but its influence is significant — inordinate, you might say. The website that should give you a rough guide as to what critics think about a film has become the arbiter of whether a film is deemed good or not, or in Rt parlance, "fresh" or "rotten." This binary would be fine if Rt wasn't as influential as it is, but these days the Tomatometer's reach is wide, and our adherence to its decrees often borders on unflinching. A green splat is enough to put most casual viewers off a film, which is a shame because that means hordes of people are overlooking unfairly-maligned classics like "The Comedy," or worse, the delights of the seven John Travolta movies to achieve a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are a handful of movies that have garnered a rare 100% rating,...

It's odd to think of stars like Audrey Hepburn within a modern context. The Egot winner seems to belong so perfectly to a bygone era of Hollywood — one characterized by a kind of romanticism and graceful dignity that just doesn't map on to the age of streaming and ubiquitous "content." Of course, in reality the Hollywood of the mid-20th century was often anything but a halcyon dream, with the star system still very much in operation, shackling actors to their respective studios to be traded off and sold like commodities. Still, it's just plain weird to think about these titans of Hollywood in the context of, for instance, Rotten Tomatoes — the great arbiter of our contemporary collective taste in cinema.

Imagine, if you will, the career of this Unicef Goodwill Ambassador, fashion icon, and legendary starlet summed up in a list of cartoon splats and tomatoes. It doesn't feel quite right does it?...

Courtesy of Studiocanal

by James Cameron-wilson

Two of the most famous characters Audrey Hepburn ever played were Eliza Dolittle and Maid Marion. In StudioCanal’s new 4K restoration home entertainment release of The Lavender Hill Mob, Audrey Hepburn shares her first film with Stanley Holloway, who played Eliza’s father in My Fair Lady, and Robert Shaw, who played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin & Marion. Not that Audrey Hepburn actually shares the screen in The Lavender Hill Mob with either Stanley Holloway or Robert Shaw, but she does get the film off to a bright start with a nuzzle with Alec Guinness The Lavender Hill Mob arrived in the middle of the golden era of the Ealing Comedy cycle, two years after Kind Hearts and Coronets and just four years before The Ladykillers. And it remains a pure joy. Unlike heist movies of the future, it manages to be...

To celebrate the release of The Lavender Hill Mob out on 4K Uhd Collector’s Edition and on Digital from 22 April – we have a 4K Uhd Collector’s Edition to give away to one lucky winner!

Studiocanal are proud to announce the release of a spectacular 4K restoration of one of the most-loved British comedies from Ealing Studios, The Lavender Hill Mob, written by T.E.B. Clarke (winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar), directed by Charles Crichton (A Fish Called Wanda) and starring Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady), Sid James (Carry On films) and Alfie Bass (Alfie). The enduringly funny story of a nobody bank employee’s ingenious plan to rob the Bank of England and the motley crew that he assembles to carry out the raid, will be released in UK cinemas on 29 March and as a 4K Uhd Collector’s Edition and on Digital from 22 April.

Franchise animation Kung Fu Panda 4 and creature clash Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire lead a bumper weekend of 16 new films at the UK-Ireland box office.

Universal’s Kung Fu Panda 4 has the biggest opening of the weekend in 715 sites – a significant jump for the series, after 2008’s Kung Fu Panda (448) and sequels in 2011 (514) and 2016 (585), all through Paramount.

Conversely, the total grosses of each film have dropped, with the first title making £20.4m, followed by £17m and £14.2m for the sequels. All of these were pre-pandemic; number four will look to cross the £10m mark before challenging any of those totals.

Classic heist caper The Lavender Hill Mob is getting a cinema rerelease. But which of these 40s and 50s film fancies are slyly subversive, and which have dated less well?

Anyone wanting a look at Dublin in the late 1940s might like this, but there’s not much else especially compelling about this weird Walter Mitty-ish comedy about a park loafer hoping to finance a one-way trip to the South Seas by helping rich people who have fallen over. Inspired by the anywhere-but-here mood of postwar privations, this is pretty charmless, and almost completely tone-deaf to the class/ethnic sensitivities of a crew of posh Brits rolling around the Irish capital. Not director Charles Crichton’s finest hour.

The 2024 Oscar nominees for Best Director are Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), and Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”). Our odds currently show that Nolan (3/1) is most likely to win, followed in order by Lanthimos (4/1), Glazer (9/2), Triet (9/2), and Scorsese (9/2).

Three of these five filmmakers have been nominated at least once before, with Scorsese standing out as the only previous victor in the group. Now on his 10th bid (only two behind category record holder William Wyler), he initially triumphed on his sixth for “The Departed” (2007), which is also the only Best Picture winner in his filmography. He earned his remaining notices for “Raging Bull” (1981), “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1989), “Goodfellas” (1991), “Gangs of New York” (2003), “The Aviator” (2005), “Hugo” (2012), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2014), and “The Irishman” (2020).

Having previously ranked as the third oldest directing nominee ever...

Two Ealing classics – The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts & Coronets – are heading to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray: more here.

Lovely, lovely news for fans of the wonderful Ealing Studios: a pair of its most-loved films have been given a 4K restoration, and are heading to the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format.

Charles Crichton’s The Lavender Hill Mob – which is also getting a cinema re-release in the UK this March – is arriving in a special Vintage Classics Collectors Edition set. That set includes a 64-page booklet, artcards, postcards, a Blu-ray and a 4K disc. Included too is an introduction from Martin Scorsese, and new extra features including a London Comedy Film Festival Q&a with Paul Merton.

The film is available for preorder now, and you can find more information – and get a copy – right here.

The release date for The Lavender Hill Mob on 4K disc is 22nd April,...

Clockwise from top left: Polite Society (Focus Features), Totally Killer (Amazon), The Burial (Amazon), Surrounded (MGM)Image: The A.V. Club

Amazon Prime Video has a diverse selection of originals, indies, and recent theatrical releases this October. Tommy Lee Jones plays a funeral home owner and Jamie Foxx is his attorney in The Burial,...

Not all comedy movies ignore the need for a riveting plot; there are plenty of well-written comedies with a plot just as strong as the humor. Since the top priority of a comedy movie is to make the audience laugh, a good plot often takes a backseat. The very best comedy movies, however, find time for an intriguing plot to keep viewers invested while still providing plenty of laughs. There are sci-fi comedies that wring laughs out of complicated concepts and action comedies with a captivating police procedural storyline in between the car chases and cop banter.

There’s an Agatha Christie-style whodunit baked into the “buddy cop” storyline of Hot Fuzz. The Chandleresque mystery plot of The Big Lebowski captures the complexity of the film noir genre while deconstructing it. Back to the Future sets up a bunch of plot points in 1985 that come back around and reveal...

All signs point to “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis” and “The Fabelmans” all dominating the Oscar noms with eight apiece. But if “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Top Gun: Maverick” manage some pickups, they could join or surpass the group.

On Jan. 24, AMPAS will unveil its nominees for the 95th Academy Awards. The season has been marked by the return of the Hollywood blockbuster, and a love for old-fashioned movie extravaganzas will play a crucial role in how the nearly 9,600 members rank their ballots.

So what will be the story of the day?

Warner Bros’ musical biopic “Elvis” is looking to assemble a robust showing in the tech races, which doesn’t include an overdue career nom for director Baz Luhrmann. Still, its star Austin Butler is a lock for his first nod in best actor.

Martin McDonagh’s Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin...

The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection (1965-1967)

Blu-ray

[Imprint] Television

1965-67 / 1.33: 1 / Black and White and Color

Starring Diana Rigg, Patrick Macnee

Written by Brian Clemens, Philip Levene

Directed by Roy Ward Baker, Sidney Hayers, Charles Crichton

Though remembered for its idiosyncratic humor, The Avengers made its debut in 1961 as a no-nonsense crime drama. Ian Hendry starred as David Keel, a doctor turned detective, while Patrick MacNee haunted the sidelines as an inscrutable investigator named John Steed. Shot in black and white under grey English skies, the show was unmistakably a product of the Cold War, fueled by John Dankworth’s stentorian theme and an origin story that predicted television’s noirish The Fugitive; Keel’s fiancée has been murdered, prompting our heroes to join in the search for her killer.

It was a brief sojourn for Hendry who left at the end of the season, relinquishing star billing to Macnee and his new partner,...

Roger Michell’s final feature film brings good-natured, Ealing-style brio to the 1961 theft of Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington

As with so many of cinema’s most successful practitioners, the South Africa-born British film-maker Roger Michell, who died last September aged 65, was not an “auteur” with a singular distinctive style. On the contrary, he was a versatile craftsman who could turn his hand to a range of genres with ease. From the classic Richard Curtis romcom Notting Hill to the American thriller Changing Lanes and the deliciously twisty Daphne du Maurier dark romance My Cousin Rachel, Michell instinctively understood the differing demands of each story he was telling. He adapted Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia for TV with great success, gave Anne Reid her finest role in the taboo-breaking, Kureishi-scripted drama The Mother, and directed a sorely underrated screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love,...

Pencils down, pass your ballots to the front because the Oscar nomination voting is now closed.

Speaking to voters over the past week, it’s been relatively clear about what voters like and who they’re supporting in a strong year for film.

Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Feb. 8, and we have the 10 burning questions we want to be answered.

Which movie will lead the nomination tally?

There have been three films that have been nominated for 14 Oscars in history — “All About Eve” (1950), “Titanic” (1997) and “La La Land” (2016). We likely won’t see any film get near tying or beating that record. The three most likely candidates to lead the charge are “Belfast” from Focus Features, “Dune” from Warner Bros. and “The Power of the Dog” from Netflix. You could also add “West Side Story” from 20th Century Studios as a dark horse possibility, especially since its tally seems...

In film history, the anthology genre is the most challenging. Episodic films often have several directors and screenwriters which gives them an inconsistent tone and quality. But the genre’s pitfalls haven’t stopped such filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa (“Dreams”), the Coens (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”); Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese (“New York Stories”); and Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg (“Twilight Zone: The Movie”).

Wes Anderson joined them with his latest film “The French Dispatch,” which received a nine-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The comedy brings to life three stories from an American magazine published in a fictional French city and features his stock company of actors including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson.

If you are a fan of the genre, here are the best anthology movies that...

During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”

A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...

Staring down his prey with sunken eyes and a sinister smile, Alastair Sim was the fiend Charles Addams never got around to drawing. Sim was a quick-change artist who didn’t need makeup to transform from a grasping monster into your favorite uncle – it’s why he remains the greatest interpreter of Ebenezer Scrooge. Whether playing a cold-blooded assassin in The Green Man or a kindly army chaplain in Folly to be Wise he understood as well as anyone why the masks of tragedy and comedy are intertwined.

Sim is one of those figures who’s been consigned to the history books for decades. But by releasing a Blu ray set of the great man’s comedies in 2020, Film Movement Classics, like Scrooge, hasn’t lost their senses – they’ve come to them.

Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter

Blu ray

Film Movement Classics

1954, ’60, ’51, ’47 / 1.67:1, 1.37:1 / 86, 97, 93, 82 min.

Starring Alastair Sim,...

Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin’s lives changed when they appeared in the acclaimed comedy, ‘A Fish Called Wanda.’ The 1988 heist film, which was written by John Cleese and directed by Charles Crichton, stars the actors as a gang of diamond thieves who double-cross each another. The femme fatale title character, who […]

The post Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline Play a Gang of Diamond Thieves in A Fish Called Wanda BBC One Broadcast appeared first on Shockya.com.

Berlinale Specials is the festival’s incorporates all out-of-competition titles.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has added two world premieres to its Berlinale Special strand.

The first is Anne Fontaine’s drama Police [original title Night Shift], which stars Omar Sy, Virginie Efira and Grégory Gadeboias a trio of Paris police officers forced to accept an unusual mission. Studiocanal is handling French distribution and international sales.

Veteran filmmaker Fontaine’s previous films include Venice best screenplay winner Dry Cleaning (1997) and Coco Before Channel (2009).

The second is Vadim Perelman’s Persian Lessons, which stars Bpm (Beats Per Minute) lead Nahuel Perez...

Toot Toot! The Little Engine that Could becomes a tale of the little town that could, when their tiny rail service is discontinued. A crackerjack cast of Ealing regulars — Stanley Holloway, Naunton Wayne, John Gregson — band together to take over the little spur line and keep it running. We get to see a vintage locomotive from the early 1800s in action, but the appeal isn’t limited to lovers of trains — Ealing’s knack for inspired, understated comedy is all over this show. Plus, it’s the company’s first feature in Technicolor, and is beautifully remastered.

The Titfield Thunderbolt

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 84 min. / Street Date , 2020 /

Starring: Stanley Holloway, George Relph, Naunton Wayne, John Gregson, Godfrey Tearle, Hugh Griffith, Gabrielle Brune, Sidney James, Reginald Beckwith, Edie Martin, Michael Trubshawe, Jack MacGowran, Ewan Roberts.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Film Editor: Seth Holt

Original Music: Georges Auric

Written by...

Even though actress Jamie Lee Curtis has had a killer career since her days as an 80's horror movie scream queen - including roles in such mega-hits as Charles Crichton's A Fish Called Wanda and James Cameron's True Lies - there are a great many movie fans out there (including yours truly) that will always see her as sweet little Laurie Strode from director John Carpenter's proto-type slasher classic Halloween. And speaking of John Carpenter's Halloween, today it turns out that Curtis is not a fan of parents that show the horror movie to their kids. In fact, she goes so far as to say that they are "the worst human being(s) on the planet."

Ouch, Jamie Lee Curtis, tell us how you really feel. Specifically, Curtis let these comments fly during a recent podcast interview, saying this.

"I'm not demeaning children or saying they can't...

They’re ‘The Men Who Broke the Bank and Lost the Cargo!’ Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway shine in one of the funniest crime comedies ever, Ealing Studios’ tale of a pair of nobodies who take the Bank of England for millions. Guinness’s bank clerk follows his dreams into a big time bullion heist, and the joke is that his ad-hoc mob is the most loyal, ethical band of brothers in the history of crime. This being a caper picture, the suspense is steep as well — just what is going to trip up these brilliantly gifted amateurs?

The Lavender Hill Mob

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 81 min. / Street Date September 3, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Audrey Hepburn.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Film Editor: Seth Holt

Original Music: Georges Auric

Written by T.E.B. Clarke

Produced by Michael Balcon

Directed by...

July 9th is bringing all kinds of horror-rific awesomeness our way with this week’s genre-related Blu-ray and DVD releases. Easily one of my most anticipated discs of this year, the new Silent Hill Collector’s Edition from Scream Factory heads home on Tuesday as well as Mill Creek’s stunning Steelbook for Mothra, which looks to be a must-have for any movie monster aficionados out there. In terms of recent films, both Pet Sematary (2019) and Claire Denis’ High Life are hitting various formats this week, and for you Andy Sidaris fans out there, Savage Beach is hitting Blu-ray as well.

Other releases for July 9th include Dead of Night, Division 19, This Island Earth, and Waterworld in 4K.

Dead of Night

A group of strangers, mysteriously gathered at an isolated country estate, recount chilling tales of the supernatural. First, a racer survives a brush with death only to receive...

This moody, unsettling whodunnit benefits from sensitive cinematography, fine direction and a perfectly-cast group of players. Stephen Boyd gets a worthwhile starring role, backed by some good names and a nice debut from Judi Dench. What I don’t understand is why Pamela Franklin, possibly the most talented and versatile young English player ever, didn’t become a major star. She’s more than half the picture here.

The Third Secret

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1964 / B&W / 2:35 / 103 min. / / Street Date February 25, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £17.77

Starring: Stephen Boyd, Pamela Franklin, Diane Cilento, Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Paul Rogers, Alan Webb, Rachel Kempson, Freda Jackson, Judi Dench, Peter Copley, Nigel Davenport, Charles Lloyd Pack, Barbara Hicks.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Film Editor: Frederick Wilson

Original Music: Richard Arnell

Written and Produced by Robert L. Joseph

Directed by Charles Crichton

Trying to keep up a production schedule during the cash-flow crisis of Cleopatra,...

Mubi's retrospective Ealing Comedies is showing May 31 - August 7, 2018 in the United States.Kind Hearts and CoronetsRe-reading his memoirs from his prison cell, Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) narrates the story of his life in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Disowned by his maternal family, the aristocratic D’Ascoynes, and thus condemned to a life of poverty, Louis decides that his only option is to swiftly murder his living relatives in order to obtain the dukedom which is rightfully his. As the guiding light of the film, being both narrator and protagonist, Louis takes up the greatest amount space. But it is Alec Guinness who has made Kind Hearts most memorable, by playing all eight members of the D’Ascoyne family that Louis encounters. With a broad range of characters—young and old, men and women, as caricatures or with honesty—Kind Hearts is perhaps the perfect example of Guinness’ work with the Ealing comedies,...

“The funniest movie I have seen in a long time” – Roger Ebert

A Fish Called Wanda will be available on Blu-ray October 3rd from Arrow Video

In 1988, John Cleese, former Python and the mastermind behind Fawlty Towers, teamed up with the veteran Ealing Comedy director Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob) to produce another classic of British comedy.

Cleese plays Archie Leach, a weak-willed barrister who finds himself embroiled with a quartet of ill-matched jewel thieves – two American con artists played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline, Michael Palin’s animal-loving hitman and London gangster Tom Georgeson – when Georgeson is arrested. Only he and Palin know the whereabouts of the diamonds, prompting plenty of farce and in-fighting as well as some embarrassing nudity and the unfortunate demise of some innocent pooches…

Nominated for three Academy Awards and winning one for Kline’s outstanding supporting turn as the psychopathic Otto,...

There’s nothing revelatory or new about adding a dose of the comedic to a crime picture, but the heist comedy is just a small corner of a vast and beloved cinematic landscape, as of recently, dominated by one filmmaker: Steven Soderbergh.

Responsible for four acclaimed entries in the genre, including Out of Sight and the Ocean’s 11 trilogy, Soderbergh has thankfully ended his so-called retirement and returned to film and the world of heist comedies with his newest, Logan Lucky, now playing in theaters. The film’s plot follows Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) a family man who plans to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina, only to find he and his crew (Adam Driver, Daniel Craig and Riley Keough) must do the job while a Nascar race is underway.

To celebrate Soderbergh’s return with Logan Lucky, we’ve decided to look back at the greatest heist comedies of all-time.

After polling critics from around the world for the greatest American films of all-time, BBC has now forged ahead in the attempt to get a consensus on the best comedies of all-time. After polling 253 film critics, including 118 women and 135 men, from 52 countries and six continents a simple, the list of the 100 greatest is now here.

Featuring canonical classics such as Some Like It Hot, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Playtime, and more in the top 10, there’s some interesting observations looking at the rest of the list. Toni Erdmann is the most recent inclusion, while the highest Wes Anderson pick is The Royal Tenenbaums. There’s also a healthy dose of Chaplin and Lubitsch with four films each, and the recently departed Jerry Lewis has a pair of inclusions.

Check out the list below (and my ballot) and see more on their official site.

100. (tie) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese,...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...

Special Mention: Misery

Directed by Rob Reiner

Screenplay by William Goldman

1990, USA

Genre: Thriller

Elevated by standout performances from James Caan and Kathy Bates, Misery remains one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date. Director Rob Reiner is clearly more interested in the dark humour and humanity than the gory detail in King’s novel, but make no mistake about it, Misery is a tough watch soaked in sharp dialogue, a brooding atmosphere, and disturbing bodily harm inflicted on James Caan by sweet old Kathy Bates. I can still feel his pain.

129. Black Sabbath (Three Faces of Fear)

Mario Bava and Salvatore Billitteri

Written by Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei

Italy 1960 / Italy 1963

Genre: Horror Anthology

Not to be confused with Black Sunday, Black Sabbath is a horror anthology composed of three atmospheric tales. “The Drop of Water” concerns a nurse who steals a ring off a corpse, only...

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

Twenty years ago today, Bryan Singer, the director of the “good X-Men movies” (read: all of them except X3), and writer Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Rogue One) rounded up five thieves for the heist of the 90’s. It all starts out with a seemingly harmless lineup, but Keyser Söze – bogeyman of the criminal underworld – has very specific (and sinister) plans for The Usual Suspects’ Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Fenster (Benicio del Toro), Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey). Bonus points to Singer for casting Giancarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad”’s Gus Fring), who looks ridiculously young as one of the FBI agents after Keyser Söze.

From pool sharks and grifters to tricksters, card cheats and American hustlers, here’s our rundown of the most memorable con artists in movie history.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Fast Eddie Felson – The Hustler (1961)

One of the finest fraudster films to ever...

The hotly-anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey movie is finally released in cinemas today (February 13) to coincide with Valentine's Day this weekend, and it's got our minds racing about just one thing....

The most ridiculously silly orgasms in movie history, obviously!

From Jennifer Aniston's otherworldly pleasure to Jason Biggs's doubly embarrassing shortcomings - here are 10 fantastically farcical orgasms on the silver screen below:

1. Jason Biggs in American Pie (1999)

Virginal, apple pie-bonking Jim Levenstein can't believe his luck when his history tutoring with sexy Slovakian exchange student Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) turns into something more. So excited is Jim, however, that he barely contains himself at her touch, only lasting a few more seconds on second go, until he, er, explodes again.

Sadly Stifler (Seann William Scott) had previously coerced Jim to set up a webcam in his room so they can all watch the frisky teenage pair, but he unwittingly...

Chatting about writing, The Muppets, DreamWorks, Clockwise and Charles Crichton, all with Mr John Cleese...

Now out in hardback is John Cleese's autobiography, So Anyway. It's a genuinely interesting read, very much written in his own voice, and he spared us some time to have a chat about it, and his career.

Here's how it went...

Can we start with the predictable stuff first, but I always wonder this when anyone writes an autobiography: why do it? Why put your life down in a book, who is it for, and did you enjoy it?

Well let's go backwards on that. Yes I enjoyed it very much. Who is it for me? In a funny kind of way it was for me, because some people seem to think that I've had a very interesting life, which compared with people who have fought in wars, and been spies, and discovered rivers in Africa,...

Best British movies of all time? (Image: a young Michael Caine in 'Get Carter') Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster (see photo above), was selected as the United Kingdom's very best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges' 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller? What a difference ten years make. On Total Film's 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine's Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be? Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we're talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film's 2004 list was the result of a 25-critic consensus,...

Today on Trailers from Hell, Alan Spencer takes on Charles Chrichton's 1988 comedy classic, "A Fish Called Wanda," starring John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline.  A comic crime caper stuffed with eccentric supporting characters, "A Fish Called Wanda" is in the best tradition of British comedies like "The Lavender Hill Mob." That should be no surprise because the director, Charles Crichton, is responsible for both. Crichton's amazing career began in the thirties as an editor on "Things to Come" and "Thief of Bagdad" and ended in 1998 with "Wanda," co-written with star John Cleese. The film was enormously successful winning an Academy Award for co-star Kevin Kline and BAFTA Awards for Cleese and Michael Palin for Best Actor and Supporting Actor.

A comic crime caper stuffed with eccentric supporting characters, A Fish Called Wanda is in the best tradition of British comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob. That should be no surprise because the director, Charles Crichton, is responsible for both. Crichton’s amazing career began in the thirties as an editor on Things To Come and Thief Of Bagdad and ended in 1998 with Wanda, co-written with star John Cleese. The film was enormously successful winning an Academy Award for co-star Kevin Kline and BAFTA Awards for Cleese and Michael Palin for Best Actor and Supporting Actor.

The post A Fish Called Wanda appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

(Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945, Studiocanal, PG)

Portmanteau movies became an established form in 1916 when one of its greatest examples, Dw Griffith's Intolerance, interweaving four stories reaching from ancient Babylon to the early 20th century, was released. They've been appearing ever since, covering a variety of subjects (a shared author, a theme, a genre, a setting), the greatest number produced in the 1950s and 60s when it was a useful device for bringing international moviemakers together.

The greatest portmanteau film came from Ealing Studios and was a collaboration between four staff directors, one celebrated (the Brazilian-born Cavalcanti) and three soon to become well known. It took as its subject the British ghost story or tale of the supernatural, was written by a variety of hands, and went into production in that curious period between D-Day and the end of the last war, though there's no explicit reference to the war.

Every year, we here at Sound On Sight celebrate the month of October with 31 Days of Horror; and every year, I update the list of my favourite horror films ever made. Last year, I released a list that included 150 picks. This year, I’ll be upgrading the list, making minor alterations, changing the rankings, adding new entries, and possibly removing a few titles. I’ve also decided to publish each post backwards this time for one reason: the new additions appear lower on my list, whereas my top 50 haven’t changed much, except for maybe in ranking. I am including documentaries, short films and mini series, only as special mentions – along with a few features that can qualify as horror, but barely do.

Come Back Tonight To See My List Of The 200 Best!

****

Special Mention:

Wait until Dark

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Robert Carrington

USA, 1967

Directed by Terence Young,...

Alec Guinness: Before Obi-Wan Kenobi, there were the eight D’Ascoyne family members (photo: Alec Guiness, Dennis Price in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’) (See previous post: “Alec Guinness Movies: Pre-Star Wars Career.”) TCM won’t be showing The Bridge on the River Kwai on Alec Guinness day, though obviously not because the cable network programmers believe that one four-hour David Lean epic per day should be enough. After all, prior to Lawrence of Arabia TCM will be presenting the three-and-a-half-hour-long Doctor Zhivago (1965), a great-looking but never-ending romantic drama in which Guinness — quite poorly — plays a Kgb official. He’s slightly less miscast as a mere Englishman — one much too young for the then 32-year-old actor — in Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), a movie that fully belongs to boy-loving (in a chaste, fatherly manner) fugitive Finlay Currie. And finally, make sure to watch Robert Hamer’s dark comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets...

A periodic round up of interesting and notable books about film, including biographies, histories, critical assessments, and more.

I have to confess from the off that, apart from Daniel Day-Lewis’ typically spellbinding performance (if that’s even the right word for what he does) and the meticulous detail and cinematography that made the film a joy to look at, Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln left me rather cold; perhaps if I had read Lincoln: A Cinematic and Historical Companion (Disney Editions, distributed in the UK by Turnaround www.turnarounduk.com) beforehand, my viewing experience would have been richer and more rewarding.

The book opens with earnest forewards by Spielberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy, and is thereafter divided into two sections, each in two parts. Part One, ‘Players on the Stage of History’, features full page colour photos of the film’s main players in the style of 19th century portraiture, which...

(Charles Crichton, 1950; StudioCanal, PG)

Made during Ealing Studios's peak period from the early 40s to the mid-1950s, Dance Hall is virtually the only movie produced by that male-dominated studio that might be considered a feminist work. Co-scripted by Diana Morgan, the sole woman admitted by Ealing boss Michael Balcon to his elite creative team, it looks at the world from the point of view of four young working-class women (Natasha Parry, Petula Clark, Jane Hylton and Diana Dors). They live in council flats, work in the same west London factory, and find romance and an escape from their drab lives at the local dance hall. Except for the middle-class accents, the film presents an honest, down-to-earth portrait of Britain in the postwar age of austerity. Typically for its time, Parry (future wife of the director Peter Brook) is torn between glamorous sports car-driving spiv Bonar Colleano and dull,...

★★★☆☆ Following the recent retrospective Ealing: Light and Dark at the BFI, which reintroduced cinemagoers to the lesser known body of work of the distinctly British studio, StudioCanal continue the task of dusting off and digitally remastering said underlings, giving them their first lease of life on DVD. The latest, Dance Hall (1950) - one of Ealing's most overlooked productions - is an early, somewhat lightweight venture for director Charles Crichton before his more celebrated and refined works such as The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), but offers as much insight into the inner workings of post-war frugality as its more distinguished peers.

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