In his eminently forgettable "Stardust Memories" (1980), Woody Allen in the persona of a world-famous director in the Fellini mold, a kind of pizza made with Velveeta, catsup and Wonder bread, visits a college to participate in a leaden symposium on the art of the film. Rather than receivi

For years my shaving mirror has tried to convince me that I look just like Paul Newman: baby blues, wavy hair (with just a sprinkling of salt amid the pepper), sharp, assertive chin and that drive-the-ladies-wild roguish grin, with just a touch of worldly wisdom revealed in the perfectly etched line

When an art form starts to reflect upon itself, does the borrowing indicate maturity or senescence? I don’t know. Film artists have copied one another since the very earliest comics in the silents realized that audiences loved chase scenes and so tried to outdo their rivals with ever more fran

On the eve of his 16th birthday, Esteban (Eloy Azorin) settles in on the living room sofa in front of the television set to watch the movie "All About Eve" (J. Mankiewicz, 1950) with his mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth). He complains that the title has been rendered in Spanish as "Eve U

Good news for Matt Damon fans: They will hate Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley. My theory rests on the junior high school girls sitting behind me, who squirmed and chatted from prelude to coda. I harbored dark hopes that the popcorn they replenished every half hour would lodge under their retai

In the beginning, Scorsese said "Let there be light," but he preferred the darkness. He created the heavens and the earth but, like Milton, found hell far more interesting. And so it came to pass that in one brilliant film after another over a 30-year artistic career, Martin Scorsese has s