Film

Sullivan’s Travels, the Preston Sturges movie from 1941, tells the story of John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), not the boxer, but a Hollywood director of highly successful light comedies. He is determined to change his image by adapting a ponderous social-message novel entitled O Brother, Where A

Road maps provide a wonderful metaphor for life. The thick double line of the Interstate marks the quickest, most direct route to our destination, but a nearly infinite number of blue and red side roads offer unimagined possibilities. By choosing the safe, direct route, we miss a great many of life&

Pity poor Kansas! Deposited there in the dead center of the country, propping up Nebraska and oppressing Oklahoma, the state has been typecast by Hollywood screenwriters. When a poor girl gets bonked on the head, she hies out of Kansas as fast as her red slippers or white sneakers will carry her. Ev

This summer radio listeners in the Boston area have had a steady diet of ads for a touring company of Peter Pan. The attention-grabber is a line from its most familiar song: I won’t grow up; I don’t want to go to school. Great fun for all the family. Günter Grass, however, might have be

Dr. Sanford Cinematz, F.A.P.A., P.C.: Dreams. Yes, yes, your dream.

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