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Plot: In the future, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who’s in debt to loan sharks, takes the one job no one could ever possibly want. He signs up to be an “expendable” on an off-world colony where he’s given hazardous tasks to perform that no one is expected to survive. Every time he dies, they “print” another copy of him. However, when his seventeenth iteration, Mickey 17, unexpectedly survives a mission, he discovers another version, Mickey 18, has already been printed, and in this society, multiples are expressly outlawed.

Review: One has to give Warner Bros some degree of credit for green-lighting Mickey 17. Easily the most lavish movie of director Bong Joon-Ho’s career, it’s the kind of original, audacious sci-fi we rarely see on the big screen anymore. The fact that it doesn’t entirely work is almost beside the point, as stuff like this so rarely...

For the bulk of his career, Leslie Nielsen was best known for his stern, dramatic roles. His tall stature and low voice had casting directors offering him parts as commanders, leaders, and even heavies. Many might recall Nielsen's stone-faced turn in 1956's "Forbidden Planet" as the captain in "The Poseidon Adventure," or playing a cop in the 1972 cop drama "The Bold Ones: The Protectors." In 1977's "Day of the Animals" he plays a manly outdoorsman who loses his mind and, quite darkly, declares insane dominion over animals and women. Some might recall that he can hold his breath a long time, as he declared in "Creepshow." Many will be shocked to witness Nielsen beat and assault Barbra Streisand in the 1987 drama "Nuts." 

However, Nielsen did appear in a handful of comedies, most notably, playing Dr. Rumack in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker farce "Airplane!" The parody proved that he had a talent for deadpan comedy,...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

By way of introduction, I think I said most of the important things last year, so I’ll keep it short this time around. Maybe.

2024 was probably a beautiful, exciting, formative year for some people: a year of first kisses, first jobs, life-changing continental vacations, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t know, because I spent much of it scrolling the news, and people’s reactions to the news, and sinking into a deep well of despair. If you haven’t been living the dream of health, wealth and family (and even if you have), you’ve probably noticed it too. The despair in the air––not to mention the fire, with light hints of brimstone. I don’t feel like I know my countrymen anymore, but I can feel their hunger.

The digs at Hollywood were blunt and unusual. The Apprentice stars were mad — stunned — that so few of their peers would engage with them.

“People have been afraid to touch this film, to be seen as complicit in the film, to support the film, to publicly endorse the film and certainly to show the film on a streaming platform,” Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn in the independently financed Donald Trump origin story, told me recently. “But the role of storytelling is to hold up a mirror. It’s not to make people feel comfortable. It’s not simply to entertain. It is to hold feet to the fire.

“I can’t think of a subject more relevant to what all of us are living through,” he added. “Not to be embraced by the industry has been really hard.”

His co-star Sebastian Stan was almost as pointed.

“When it comes to artistry and creativity,...

The teaser trailer for director James Gunn’s newest movie version of Superman was recently released online. And, unlike previous films, this one has a cute dog that everyone seems to already love.

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Of course, Superman has proven to be one of the most enduring heroes in the history of pop culture, even surviving John Cleese’s awkward take on the character. But this multibillion dollar franchise began as a simple idea from two guys who were eventually screwed out of those billions of dollars: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Also, it could be argued that the character of Superman wouldn’t be quite the same if not for the influence of one of Canada’s most famous comedians: Joe’s cousin Frank Shuster.

Frank, along with Johnny Wayne, performed as the comedy duo Wayne and Shuster for decades. They had their own shows on radio and television in Canada,...

Marshall Brickman, the Oscar-winning co-writer of Annie Hall, has died. Per The New York Times, Brickman’s daughter, Sophie, confirmed his death but did not report a cause. He was 85.

Best known as the co-screenwriter of Woody Allen’s most revered work, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and, later, Manhattan Murder Mystery,...

Today in "Well, you only get to write that headline once" news: A minor mystery about this summer's Deadpool & Wolverine has now been solved, revealing the one line from the script that Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy said Disney asked them to cut from their R-rated comic book brawl.

We’ve talked before about Criterion, the home video company that celebrates the medium of film with prestige releases of great works of cinema, which they then use as bait to trap celebrities in their closet. Does someone want to check on Jude Law real quick and make sure that he got out okay?

Criterion also has its very own streaming app, the Criterion Channel, which allows subscribers to pay $10.99 a month in order to feel extra guilty for binging the entirety of Riverdale while the complete films of Ingmar Bergman remain untouched.

But the Criterion Channel doesn’t just contain foreign and arthouse classics, they’ve also expanded to include some less-obvious choices. Like how they included Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered in their Razzie-themed program earlier this year.

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Well, next month they’ll be streaming a whole new collection, one that showcases movies that were all...

A throwaway line that Doc Brown says to Marty McFly when he shows him the DeLorean in the first Back to the Future movie slyly foreshadowed the almanac storyline for the sequel. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gales Back to the Future script is a masterclass in plant-and-payoff; almost everything in the movie is a setup that builds to a payoff later on. Lorraine telling her kids how she fell in love with George ends up being key to Martys plan to ensure they get together when he goes back in time to 1955 and starts being erased from existence.

Docs Harold Lloyd clock sets up the Safety Last! parody at the clock tower in the big finale. Martys skateboard rolling into a case of plutonium sets up Docs armed standoff with the Libyans he stole it from. Theres a ton of intentional foreshadowing in Back to the Future. But since Zemeckis...

Jackie Chan had been an international star for the better part of a decade when he made 1983’s martial arts action comedy Project A, but it was with this film that he raised his profile to a global phenomenon. It was here that he first assembled the Jackie Chan Stunt Team and pushed his facility with both action choreography and precisely timed physical comedy into the extremes that defined many of his films throughout the 1980s and early ’90s.

Set at the end of the 19th century in a Hong Kong now fully consolidated as a British colony with the signing of a 99-year lease, the film follows Dragon Ma (Chan), a member of the maritime police who’s tasked with taking down a pirate ring responsible for smuggling weapons into the area. As Ma pursues his mission with chaotic zeal, he entangles himself in a rivalry with Hong (Yuen Biao...

The film industry could have avoided a lot of tragedy if they just didn’t use so many horses— or invite the wrath of a vengeful God.

14 ‘Ben-Hur’ (1925)

While filming at the actual ancient Roman chariot racing venue Circus Maximus, the wheel of a chariot broke and the stuntman driving it died.

13 ‘Noah's Ark’ (1928)

While trying to play God and recreate “the great flood,” a ton of extras were injured, one guy lost a leg and three people died.

12 An Unknown 1929 Film

A super-famous German shepherd named Strongheart accidentally touched a hot studio light. His burn became infected, and he died a few weeks later.

11 ‘The Viking’ (1931)

Twenty-seven people died for B-roll. After the film was finished, a producer and the real-life adventurer Varick Frissell decided they needed footage of the abandoned, ice-bound ship The Viking. While filming, some dynamite on board spontaneously exploded.

10 ‘Scarface’ (1932)

Director Gaylord Lloyd was blinded...

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

It’s funny, you think you’ve seen everything that the golden age of Hollywood has to offer, and then along comes a gift-packaged treasure trove of fresh material from over a hundred years ago. Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years is the culmination of painstaking research, detective work and artistry to bring us fifteen shorts from the Anglo-American comic duo made up of the Lancashire-born Stan Laurel and the Georgia-raised Oliver Hardy who, under the canny hand of the producer Hal Roach, became the most enduring comedy duo of all time. The least likely of partnerships, Laurel was the wimpish cry-baby who got into no end of scrapes alongside Hardy, the fastidious, overweight buffoon with the tight-fitting jackets, both of whom more often than not wore matching bowler hats. Having watched countless documentaries on the silent era, particularly the era of silent comedy,...

Ryan Reynolds is celebrating the stunt team on Deadpool & Wolverine and making a case for the Oscars to award their work.

In a new social media post, Reynolds honored the performers who stepped in for actors to make the complex action scenes happen and hoped that their work would be more widely recognized.

“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday. So many films have smashed it this year,” Reynolds shared on X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter. “Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies.”

He continued, “This [Deadpool & Wolverine] stunt team over-delivered. A lot of them are friends I’ve worked with for years and I’ll spend the rest of my days doodling their names in my Heidi Stationary, dotting all the ‘i’s’ with little hearts.

A hundred years later, the sequence still radiates an otherworldly aura: a man wearing a porkpie hat walks down the aisle of a movie theater, steps up onto the stage, and slips into the motion picture screen. The film we have been watching — a conventional enough story of a boy who loses his girl due to a dumb misunderstanding — flows fluidly into another cinematic realm, where the boy is a brilliant detective who outwits the bad guys, solves the crime, and gets the girl. One Hollywood fantasy is switched for a more beguiling Hollywood fantasy.

The film, of course, is Sherlock Jr. (1924), directed by and starring Buster Keaton, the greatest of all silent film comedian-auteurs. (Team Chaplin is welcome to dissent.) It is the usual Keaton concoction of ingenious gags, trick photography and jaw-dropping stunt work, but the film, true to its name, is also an investigation into the role...

Ryan Reynolds, star of upcoming film “Deadpool & Wolverine,” is urging the Academy to acknowledge stunt work at the Oscars. In a recent social media post, Reynolds praised the stunt team’s work on the new movie. He said stunt performers deserve credit just like other artists in film.

The actor shared photos with his stunt doubles and coordinators on Instagram. “Stunt work isn’t nominated for an Oscar yet. I hope that changes,” Reynolds wrote. He pointed out that early filmmakers like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin performed their own stunts. Reynolds said these pioneers told stories with their bodies, just like today’s stunt performers.

Reynolds specifically highlighted some members of his team. This includes his longtime stunt double Alex Kyshkovych and stunt coordinator George Cottle. He also gave credit to Hugh Jackman’s double Daniel Stevens. The actor said the “Deadpool & Wolverine” stunt team...

Ryan Reynolds believes stunt performers deserve their own Oscars category.The 47-year-old actor has taken to social media to pay tribute to the stunt performers who worked on 'Deadpool and Wolverine'.Ryan wrote on X: "Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday. So many films have smashed it this year. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies. "This D and W stunt team over-delivered. A lot of them are friends I’ve worked with for years and I’ll spend the rest of my days doodling their names in my Heidi Stationary, dotting all the “i’s” with little hearts. "I’ve worked with Alex Kyshkovych since the very first @deadpoolmovie . He not only doubles me - he’s the Fight Coordinator. I’d take a sledgehammer to the face for Alex.

Ryan Reynolds took to social media on Wednesday to champion his Deadpool & Wolverine stunt team, and called on the Academy Awards to add a category to “recognize the amazing work of stunt teams across the industry.”

“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday. So many films Smashed it this year… Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies,” wrote Reynolds in an Instagram post alongside photos of him and his stunt crew on set.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been under pressure to include a new stunt category at the Oscars for years, but it hasn’t happened yet. In a social media post, Deadpool & Wolverine star Ryan Reynolds praised the movie’s stunt team and added his voice to those who want to see an Oscar category for stunts.

“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday,” Reynolds wrote. “So many films have smashed it this year. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies. This D&w stunt team over-delivered. A lot of them are friends I’ve worked with for years and I’ll spend the rest of my days doodling their names in my Heidi Stationary, dotting all the ‘i’s’ with little hearts.“

Reynolds continued,...

Ryan Reynolds thinks it’s about time The Academy added an Oscar best Best Stunt Team — if only to recognize the deep bench of industry vets he worked with on the biggest live action movie of the year, “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at the Oscars, and I hope that’ll change someday,” Reynolds began in a lengthy social media post Wednesday. “So many films have smashed it this year. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies.”

That’s when he drew special attention to the crew on the MCU’s first R-rated action romp, saying that they “over-delivered” and joking that he’ll “spend the rest of my days doodling their names in my Heidi Stationary, dotting all the ‘i’s’ with little hearts.”

“I’ve worked with Alex Kyshkovych since the very first ‘Deadpool,...

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Ben Knight, Matuse, Adam Dunn | Written by Drew Pearce | Directed by David Leitch

Stunts have been at the forefront of cinema since the beginning. Some of the earliest directors, actors, and writers were the very best stunt performers. Think Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. Their influence can be seen across the history of cinema, from bridge jumps in Smokey and the Bandit, to lorry flips in The Dark Knight, shopping centre jumps in Police Story, to jumping off cliffs in the latest Mission Impossible. Stunts are in every action movie and ingrained in the very fabric of the art form – why it’s not yet recognised by the academy is a mystery, but David Leitch and his talented cast and crew look set on solving the mystery by putting a spotlight on those stunt performers.

The Action Scene explores the form, history, and visceral power of action cinema through its set pieces.Clockwise from top left: The Fall Guy, In the Shadows, Kambakkth Ishq, and Hooper.Invoking both the stuntman and the scapegoat, the title of The Fall Guy (2024) pithily encapsulates the film’s plot: after a literally backbreaking high-fall-gone-wrong derails his career, stunt performer Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) resumes the job for a blockbuster project helmed by his ex-girlfriend Jody (Emily Blunt), only to be framed for a murder committed by the actor he doubles (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Indeed, stunt performers have physically “taken the fall” for onscreen stars for most of film history, weathering the scrapes, burns, bruises, and fractures that go into constructing visceral spectacle, but their labors have gone mostly unrecognized by the general public. The Fall Guy presents an ironic inversion: whereas Colt gets in trouble because he is visibly linked...

One of the all-time greats in the world of silent film comedy, Harold Lloyd, is perhaps best known for his monumental work Safety Last!, which, in addition to providing Boeing with a perfect slogan, gave us the iconic scene in which Lloyd perilously hangs from a clockface.

He also starred in classics like the college football comedy The Freshman, which no doubt served as the inspiration for Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy.

But before both of those projects, Lloyd was the victim of a freak accident that left him horribly injured, all due to a mishap that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in one of his silent comedies. In 1919, Lloyd inked a deal with Pathe distributors to star in a new series of films, and agreed to pose for a photographer in order to promote the arrangement. During the photo shoot, Lloyd was given a trunk full of props,...

Quick: what’s the all-time best middle movie in a popular Og cinematic trilogy? Yes, The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back are obvious and beyond reproach, but what else comes to mind? Aliens? Terminator 2? Back to the Future Part 2? Evil Dead 2? What about Oldboy or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Yeah, all worthy responses that happened to be flat-out wrong!

When peering through the rear-view at the best movie trilogy centerpiece, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior leaves the others in the dust. Released two years after the handcrafted, low-budget original Mad Max, the making of The Road Warrior couldn’t have been more different than what visionary filmmaker George Miller experienced on the first go-around. For instance, the first film was hampered by limited resources and budgetary restrictions. Meanwhile, the sequel was strapped with over 10 times the original movie’s budget, allowing Miller to execute the dazzling,...

Computer-generated and visual effects in movies have reached peak saturation over the past couple of decades. Seemingly every other “exterior” scene is shot against a digital background nowadays, and most action sequences look more like flashy video game cutscenes than genuine cinematic moments.

Amid the deluge of CGI sadness, however, there are still filmmakers and stunt people committed to filming action in the purest way, capturing stunts in-camera, on location, and with trained professionals. As much as visual effects have advanced over the years, there’s still nothing better than the real thing, and the movies on this list prove that the art of in-camera stunts is as potent and powerful as ever.

Tom Cruise Hangs on Side of Plane — Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

A case can be made that Tom Cruise hanging off the side of an A400 Atlas military plane as it takes off is the most iconic modern movie stunt there is.

Filmmaker Pablo Berger had never made an animated film before. He’d never even considered it until he read Sara Varon’s graphic novel “Robot Dreams.” Having recently lost his best friend and mother, the story of friendship and loss spoke to him on such an emotional level that he decided to adapt it — and learn how to make an animated film.

He spent two-and-years on animation education, but wanted to bring something from his previous directing experience: working with some of the best Spanish actors. Said Berger while on the Toolkit podcast, “In most animated film, [the characters] tend to overact.”

Berger began by working with a small animation team led by art director José Luis Ágreda and character supervisor Daniel Fernández Casas before “an army” of animators brought his vision to life.

“I started saying [to the animators], ‘I’m going to treat you as actors, you are my actors,’” said Berger. “They...

The conventional wisdom when it comes to the early days of cinema is that five major studios — Paramount, Fox, Universal, MGM, and Warner Bros. — were responsible for key innovations of Hollywood filmmaking, such as the star system, the birth of the feature film, and the creation of nationwide and international distribution networks. In fact, the now largely forgotten Vitagraph Studios did all of these things before the five majors even existed, but the company’s ultimate demise and sale to Warner Bros. in 1925 (where it was renamed Vitaphone and created as an independent unit to produce early sound shorts) led to its near erasure from mainstream film history.

While intrepid souls like film historians Andrew A. Erish and Anthony Slide have tried to raise and sustain awareness of Vitagraph’s contributions, their efforts have often been impeded by the scarcity of the films themselves — even for those of us interested in Vitagraph’s output,...

What is the best Australian movie ever made? Walkabout? Wake in Fright? The Piano? Picnic at Hanging Rock? The Babadook? All worthy contenders, no doubt, but they’re all wrong answers. The only acceptable response regarding the best movie from the Land Down Under is Mad Max, George Miller’s marauding motorist mania that celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2024. Never mind the billion-dollar franchise it spawned, the creative ingenuity and low-budget DIY filmmaking of the original remains one of the most impressive cinematic feats on record.

A true independent movie with a rebellious spirit, Mad Max was made in just 12 weeks for a paltry $350,000 yet went on to gross $185 million worldwide. The film introduced the world to Mel Gibson, who would go on to play the badass road-racing Main Force Patrol officer Max Rockatansky twice more en route to becoming a bona fide Hollywood action star. Now, with the law-enforcing...

Filmmaker George Miller has made no bones about classic cinema’s influence on the Mad Max saga over the years. Iconic physical comedians like Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd are cited often as inspirations for the queasy death-defying stunts that Max Rockatansky or Imperator Furiosa get up to, including when we spoke with the writer-director. He even muses to us, “Buster Keaton would survive very well, actually” in the fabled Wasteland.

Perhaps so too then would the stars he selected to bring his most epic adventure yet on the Fury Road to life. Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth are actors that most moviegoers will be familiar with when Furiosa opens later this month—although never in roles like these. Cast as diametrically opposed nemeses forced to endure the harsh desert ruins of a post-apocalyptic Australia, Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa and Hemsworth’s Dr. Dementus are radical departures for the performers. Yet...

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd were the clown jewels of silent comedy. Chaplin was off the screen in 1924; he was a year away from the release of one of his feature masterpieces “The Gold Rush.” Lloyd followed the blockbuster success of 1923’s “Safety Last!” in 1924 with the gems “Girl Shy” and “Hot Water.” And Keaton dazzled critics and audiences with the innovative “Sherlock Jr.” and the riotous “The Navigator.”

“Sherlock Jr.”, which opened in May 1924, was just Keaton’s third feature. Running a brisk 45 minutes, “Sherlock Jr” pushed the cinematic envelope. The stoic, deadpan comic plays a projectionist and janitor at a small-town movie theater who dreams, literally, of becoming a detective. He also discovers that he has a slick rival (Ward Crane) for his sweet girl (Kathryn McGuire). The slick even steals the pocket watch of the girl’s father and puts the blame on Buster. Banished from the house,...

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

Eureka Classics have done it again and have now released the first 4K restoration copy of the original 1927 The Cat and the Canary, available for the first time on blu-ray. Considering how many prestigious silent classics have been lost forever, it is quite a treat to sit through the full 86 minutes that have been meticulous preserved of what really is a prototype of its kind. One might consider the dark house comedy-thriller a rare beast, but it was extremely popular in its day, kicked off by this hugely popular silent, made just nine months before the release of the very first feature-length talking picture, The Jazz Singer.

Looking at The Cat and the Canary today, it is emblematic of everything we know about silent cinema, with its comic intertitles, wide-eyed acting and stereotypes, but viewed more seriously it was a hugely influential title.

Australian director George Miller made his first feature film, "Mad Max," in 1979. It was a very low-budget affair costing about $200,000. The film takes place in the near future when the Earth is running low on oil and civilization is just beginning to crumble. "Mad" Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is a road cop tasked with reigning in the chaos. "Mad Max" was decidedly low-fi, but it struck a chord with audiences, ultimately earning almost $100 million worldwide. It remains one of the most profitable movies of all time, comparable only to "The Blair Witch Project," "Paranormal Activity," and "Deep Throat." Miller would go on to make several sequels to "Mad Max" in 1981, 1985, and 2015. The fifth film in the series, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," is hitting theaters this month, with a potential sixth entry, "Mad Max: The Wasteland," in the early planning stages.

Miller recently participated in a "Furiosa" screening and Q&a event,...

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Ben Knight, Matuse, Adam Dunn | Written by Drew Pearce | Directed by David Leitch

Stunts have been at the forefront of cinema since the beginning. Some of the earliest directors, actors, and writers were the very best stunt performers. Think Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. Their influence can be seen across the history of cinema, from bridge jumps in Smokey and the Bandit, to lorry flips in The Dark Knight, shopping centre jumps in Police Story, to jumping off cliffs in the latest Mission Impossible. Stunts are in every action movie and ingrained in the very fabric of the art form – why it’s not yet recognised by the academy is a mystery, but David Leitch and his talented cast and crew look set on solving the mystery by putting a spotlight on those stunt performers.

This article contains massive spoilers for "The Fall Guy."

Stunt work is all about selling an illusion. When the medium of cinema was first invented, it was initially marketed and thought of as something akin to a sideshow attraction, a wondrous magic trick where a series of pictures put next to each other and illuminated in rapid succession gave the illusion of movement. After this initial novelty gave way to artists utilizing the medium to tell stories, the craftspeople making movies realized that the concept of illusion extended to every aspect of filmmaking.

Where theatre was traditionally bound to a stage or perhaps a circus tent, the movies could expand the canvas of what could be done physically — if cameras could capture it, it could be performed. It's no surprise, then, that films saw people like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and others push the boundaries of physicality and feats of derring-do in the cinema.

Behind the scenes, director David Leitch and producer Kelly McCormick have been instrumental in the movement for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts to recognize stunts. The director-producer husband-wife team hasn’t been shy in using their new film, “The Fall Guy,” a love letter to stunt professionals, to advance the cause. And it’s a cause that is increasingly looking like it will become a reality; a significant victory came last spring with the creation of the new Production and Technology Academy branch, which includes stunt professionals and therefore supplies the necessary pathway to a Best Stunt Design category at the Oscars.

“We’ve always been in the shadows, [but] that’s not the problem,” Leitch said when he was a guest on an upcoming episode of the Toolkit podcast to discuss “The Fall Guy.” “That was maybe the misconception for the Academy, ‘Well, these guys want awards because they...

For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, Sfsff has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The auditorium, primarily a performance space, seats nearly a thousand and features a spacious foyer where passholders could visit and relax between shows (particularly useful on chilly weekends).

Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.

The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.

Jackie Chan is recognized for his slapstick acrobatic fighting style, innovative stunts which he is known to perform on his own, and comic timing. The actor is one of the most influential action stars who’s had a global presence in both Eastern and Western industries. Without a doubt, the influence the actor has had over the years on pop culture is very hard to match and he is known to be the most recognized star in the world.

The actor who has appeared in near about 150 movies in his career has a reputation for performing his stunts with a lot of preparation but injuries are inevitable. Jackie Chan has managed to not only survive but also thrive after taking tons of knocks, which could probably knock down an average person easily. Jackie Chan’s injuries have outdone Sylvester Stallone’s injuries; who is also regarded as one of the...

The last American movie star. The savior of cinema. Maverick. There are plenty of superlatives thrown around Tom Cruise these days—including by us—and for good reason. In an era where audiences increasingly only venture to the theater for familiar intellectual property (if at all), Tom Cruise remains one of the last old school marquee names people turn out for in order to watch the actor.

And more often than not, they’re justified in that trust, because Cruise has spent his middle-age proving that like his most popular alter-ego—Navy pilot Pete Mitchell—he has no intention of turning in his wings. It’s a common observation to even note that the Mission: Impossible movies Cruise made in his 50s were better than the ones he made in his 30s, and his dedication to in-camera stunts in those films, as well as Top Gun: Maverick, have increasingly resembled...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

A retrospective of Denis Villeneuve’s work also brings the director’s programming choices, among them films by Godard, Resnais, Cassavetes, and Wong Kar-wai.

Roxy Cinema

Bob Fosse’s Star 80, The Piano Teacher, The Pillow Book, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and End of Night all play on 35mm.

Anthology Film Archives

As retrospective of Haitian cinema continues, films by Hollis Frampton and Ernie Gehr play Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” continues with films by Nicholas Ray, Jonathan Demme, Lizzie Borden, and more; a 4K restoration of Pandora’s Box has begun a run; a print of The Third Man continues, while the Harold Lloyd film Hot Water shows on 35mm this Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Scorsese, Elaine May, Jonathan Demme, and Gus Van Sant...

Buster Keaton was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the silent era, comparable only to his contemporaries Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Unlike Lloyd with his distinctive spectacles or Chaplin with his signature stache, Keaton was identified by the emotionless expression he wore while enduring some of the most painful, dangerous, and hilarious bits of physical comedy the world has ever seen.

The filmmaker grew up as a vaudeville actor and took the stage as early as age four, where he first honed his slapstick skills in an act with his father. He was always known for taking hard falls without so much as a wince, which is how he earned his nickname, Buster, as an infant. As Keaton told it, legendary illusionist Harry Houdini gave him the nickname after an infant Keaton fell down a full flight of stairs without crying (a "buster" was a slang term for...

The Advanced Imaging Society announced its 2024 Lumiere Award winners on Friday, with Oscars frontrunners “Oppenheimer” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” among the honorees.

This year’s Lumiere Awards celebrated “Masters and Magic,” according to a press release from the Advanced Imaging Society, and recognized “distinguished directors and professionals in film, television, and emerging media” as “voted for by members of the Hollywood creative and technology community.”

“Our awards have humorously been called the Oscars for geeks,” said Jim Chabin, the president of the Advanced Imaging Society, in a statement. “​​In 2023, amidst the industry’s chaos, we witnessed the culmination of years of dedication and sudden bursts of creativity. That work is so important to all of us who love film and television. The Lumiere winners of this year have notably expanded the boundaries of technology in filmmaking, enriching storytelling in remarkable ways.”

The Advanced Imaging Society awarded three films their 2024 Best Picture winners,...

“Oppenheimer” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” were among the winners of the top honors at the Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Awards. The 14th annual awards luncheon took place on Feb. 9 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, with Google Cloud, Barco Cinema, Microsoft and Ryff sponsoring.

Celebrating “Masters and Magic” this year, the Lumiere Awards recognize directors and professionals in film, TV and emerging media. They are voted on by members of Hollywood’s creative and technology community.

“Our awards have humorously been called the Oscars for geeks,” Ais president Jim Chabin stated. “​​In 2023, amidst the industry’s chaos, we witnessed the culmination of years of dedication and sudden bursts of creativity. That work is so important to all of us who love film and television. The Lumiere winners of this year have notably expanded the boundaries of technology in filmmaking, enriching storytelling in remarkable ways.”

In the episodic categories, “The Last of Us...

The Advanced Imaging Society announced a pair of special honors that will be presented at its 14th Lumiere Awards.

Alexander Payne will receive the society’s Harold Lloyd Award for achievement in filmmaking, while director Darren Aronofsky and Sphere Entertainment will receive Earthday.org’s Voices For the Earth Award for Postcard from Earth, the first movie made for new Las Vegas entertainment venue Sphere.

The ceremony will be held Feb. 9 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Academy Award-winner Payne’s films include Sideways, Nebraska and his latest, The Holdovers, which won a pair of Golden Globes on Sunday for actors Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

“We are thrilled to be honoring Alexander Payne, a brilliant filmmaker whose career has inspired audiences by writing and directing nuanced personal stories that reveal deeper realities of American life,” said Suzanne Lloyd, chairman of Harold Lloyd Entertainment. “Harold Lloyd, who, like Alexander Payne,...

Back to the Future pays homage to the 1923 film Safety Last! in its opening and ending scenes, with a clock tower scene from the classic comedy being referenced. The clock depicting the famous scene from Safety Last! in Doc Brown's collection foreshadows the similar perilous situation he finds himself in at the end of the film. The homage to Safety Last! was intentional on the part of the filmmakers, who wanted to connect the climax of Back to the Future to the classic film that inspired it.

Back to the Future's opening and ending are two of the most iconic parts of the franchise, but these famous moments actually pay homage to a movie that came out 62 years earlier. Filmmakers often sneak references to their inspirations into their own films, with paying homage to the classics being a trend that can still be found in Hollywood to this day.

One of Jackie Chan’s action masterpieces is 1983’s Project A. The film brought Chan together with his brothers from the China Drama Academy, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Project A features Chan’s signature action with the famous set pieces that have been inspired by such classic silent-era performers as Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. Now, the home video distribution company 88 Films, which has released remastered Chan movies like Dragons Forever and the Police Story movies, will now be releasing Project A and Project A – Part II on 4K Blu-ray. Blu-ray.com has announced that the set will be available on April 23, 2024.

Special Features and Technical Specs include:

Dolby Vision/Hdr Presentation Of The Hong Kong Cut (106 min) Dolby Vision/Hdr Presentation Of The Taiwan Cut (115 min) Cantonese Dolby Atmos Track and Cantonese 1.0 and with newly translated subtitles + English Dub New Interview with Stuntman Mars (2024) Interview with Jackie...

The classic Harold Lloyd comedy “Safety Last” is turning 100 years old this year. But with its heavy dollops of action and a superstar’s real-life derring-do, it doesn’t seem a day over 10, even if it does date back to the silent era. The film screens this Sunday as the climax of the Academy Museum’s “Silent Sundays” series, with a live score from a 24-piece orchestra helping heighten the suspense in the ultimate fear-of-heights movie.

Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, will be on hand for the anniversary screening. As the keeper of her granddad’s flame for decades, she has perspective on how “Safety Last” resonates with contemporary audiences, especially an extended final act that has the ‘20s star climbing a skyscraper in downtown L.A. and finally hanging from a wayward clockface, in one of the most iconographic images in all of movie history.

“Maybe he was the 1920s Tom Cruise,...

Bespectacled Harold Lloyd, one of the legendary clown jewels of silent film, is best known for such films as 1924’s “Girl Shy” and “Hot Water,” 1925’s “The Freshman” and 1928’s “Speedy.” And his masterpiece “Safety Last!” is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In this charming comedy, Lloyd’s “The Boy” leaves his small hometown hoping to make it good in the big city and earn enough money to send for his starry-eyed girlfriend (Mildred Davis). Though there are many wonderful moments in the film, “Safety Last!” is best membered for the sequence in which Lloyd defies gravity hanging from the hands of a gigantic clock of a high-rise building.

And if you live in Los Angeles and its environs, you can catch a beautifully restored screening of “Safety Last!” Sunday August 27 at 2 p.m. at the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater. A live orchestra conducted by Angel Velez...

There’s a moment early on in Harold Lloyd’s perennial silent hit in which his character (sometimes called ‘the boy’ but sometimes bearing his own name) and the said character’s roommate Limpy Bill are in their shared apartment and hear the landlady approaching. Two weeks late with the rent and having pawned al the furniture, they glance around anxiously the somewhere to hide, then dart for the wall where their long coats are hanging, grab the hooks behind them and pull themselves up out of sight. The landlady is baffled, the threat of eviction postponed. It’s a simple but inspired comedy moment which also demonstrated the athleticism which marks out Lloyd’s particular brand of comedy.

The film is full of spirited gags like this, all building up to the famous scene in which our hero dangles from a clock face six floors up over a busy.

Carl Davis, the composer known for his BAFTA-winning score for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981), died of a brain hemorrhage on Thursday. He was 86.

Davis’ family issued a statement on social media, writing: “We are so proud that Carl’s legacy will be his astonishing impact on music. A consummate all-round musician, he was the driving force behind the reinvention of the silent movie for this generation and he wrote scores for some of the most loved and remembered British television dramas.”

Born in New York, Davis co-authored revue “Diversions” (1959), which won an off-Broadway Emmy and featured at the 1961 Edinburgh Festival. Davis moved to the U.K. in 1961 and was commissioned by the BBC to compose music for “That Was the Week That Was.” Subsequent work included BBC’s anthology play series “The Wednesday Play” (1964-70) and “Play for Today” (1970-84).

Davis then composed for several iconic British television shows, including...

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is twirling offstage and “The Crown” finally got to The Revenge Dress, so it has not exactly been a low-key television season when it comes to costuming. (Not to mention the genius Easter eggs hidden in Tanya’s costumes on “The White Lotus.”) But no one is surprised when shows with fabulous costumes continue to exhibit their skill at crafting fabulous costumes that serve as eye candy and character development. Here are five series that premiered during the 2022-2023 season that deserve attention from the 2023 Emmys for their costumes.

“1923” (Paramount+) “1923”Emerson Miller/Paramount+

The latest addition to Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” universe is a fascinating study of a society in transition from the rural world of “1883” to the more technologically oriented America that will see the Dutton family arriving at their home in helicopters on “Yellowstone.” Costume designer Janie Bryant straddles both worlds impeccably, with clothes...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Japan Society

One of Japan’s greatest directors, Shinji Somai, is subject of a retrospective that features many of his films in new restorations. Read our piece on Somai here.

Museum of Modern Art

A Rialto Pictures retrospective offers a smorgasbord of classic films, including The Conversation and That Obscure Object of Desire on 35mm.

Bam

A series on actor-director jobs includes Touch of Evil, Do the Right Thing, and Playtime on 35mm.

Anthology Film Archives

Three by Jean Cocteau screen in Essential Cinema, while Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One screens and a Jean Rouch retrospective begins.

Film at Lincoln Center

György Fehér’s remarkable, Béla Tarr-produced Twilight continues in a new restoration (read Z.W. Lewis on the film and its history here).

Museum of the Moving Image

Major League and a print of The Untouchables screen on Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

Schrader’s Affliction,...