What an astounding one-two punch Betty Comden and Adolph Green delivered in movie musical history in the early Fifties. In 1952, they wrote Singin’ in the Rain, starring Gene Kelly, pretty much considered the best movie musical ever made. Then, a year later, they counter-punched with this 1953 classic, starring Fred Astaire. The Band Wagon, like its predecessor, is an absolutely deserving member of TCM’s “The Essentials” – and, also like its predecessor, is a very k

2017

Sep

THE FIRM By David Bianculli

If you’re not into musicals, here’s another movie worth watching on TV tonight. Based on the John Grisham novel, and directed by Sydney Pollack, this 1993 legal thriller stars Tom Cruise as a young attorney seduced into working for a sinister Southern law firm. It’s sort of like The Devil’s Advocate, only without the actual Devil. Jeanne Tripplehorn (pictured with Cruise) is featured as the young lawyer’s wife, as part of a supporting cast absolutely bursting with t

2017

Sep

THE BOY FRIEND By David Bianculli

This 1971 music is written and directed by Ken Russell, a director famous for his visual excess – yet in this movie, about an understudy of a musical who achieves stardom, those impulses are put to wholly appropriate use. The understudy, played by waifish fashion model Twiggy, not only dreams of stardom, but has fantasies about it – fantasies envisioned through Russell’s particular vision, which here salutes everything from the vintage choreography of Busby Berkeley to some of

2017

Sep

A DOZEN REASONS YOU NEED TO WATCH KEN BURNS’ ‘THE VIETNAM WAR’ By David Hinckley

Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, a 10-part, 18-hour PBS epic, pokes a spot that’s still raw, tender and painful...

2017

Sep

ESTEEMED VIETNAM VETS – SENATORS AND SECRETARIES – ATTEND SCREENING OF ‘THE VIETNAM WAR’ FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION OF THEIR EXPERIENCES By Roger Catlin

There will be scores of community talk-backs associated with the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick opus The Vietnam War that starts Sunday on PBS...

2017

Sep

FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER: A DAUGHTER OF CAMBODIA REMEMBERS By David Bianculli

MOVIE PREMIERE: The same week it’s released theatrically in the top 10 U.S. movie markets, this new film is directed by Angelina Jolie. It’s set during the time of the deadly Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the same brutal era depicted long ago in The Killing Fields. It’s about human rights activist and author Loung Ung, and the story is told from her perspective – at a very young age, when she was less than 10 years old.

2017

Sep

STRONG ISLAND By David Bianculli

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Yance Ford, director of this new Netflix documentary, is the brother of William Ford Jr., the movie’s subject. It’s not, and is not intended to be, a wholly objective study. Instead, it’s a study of grief, and conflicting perspectives, and the way the loss of a life can affect so many people. William Ford, upset about a comment about his mother made by a mechanic when picking up a car repair, returned to the Long Island auto shop later that day in 1992 to

2017

Sep

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER By David Bianculli

Tonight’s scheduled guests include Fran Lebowitz, Tim Gunn, Salman Rushdie (pictured) and columnist Bret Stevens.

2017

Sep

KEN BURNS' 'THE VIETNAM WAR' BRINGS IT ALL BACK HOME IN WAYS HIS OTHER FILMS NEVER HAVE By Ed Bark

Going against the grain of their usual approach, Ken Burns and producing partner Lynn Novick have seen to it that historians, sociologists, and other assorted academics are kept out of The Vietnam War. The history is still too recent and raw for that...

2017

Sep

THOUGHTS ON A B-SIDE OF THE 'VIETNAM' SOUNDTRACK By David Hinckley

Whenever Ken Burns talks about The Vietnam War, his epic 10-part documentary, he repeatedly stresses that this war doesn’t have one single truth.... Nor does it have any one single soundtrack...

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