Films

Director Stanley Kubrick changed the look of science fiction films and helped Hollywood discover a new audience with this eye-popping epic. To make Arthur C. Clarke’s tale of a space monolith triggering human evolution seem as realistic as possible, the director pioneered the use of front projection to help actors blend seamlessly into fantastic landscapes….

When director-choreographer Bob Fosse had a massive heart attack while completing Lenny (1974) and preparing the musical Chicago for its Broadway premiere, he did the unexpected. He turned the experience into a movie. Drawing on his own history of overwork, drug use, and womanizing, he and playwright Robert Alan Aurthur co-wrote the story of Joe…

Bette Davis played so many strong-willed, self-destructive characters that her fans often clamored for her to play someone kinder. They got their wish with this sumptuous adaptation of Rachel Field’s 1938 best-seller. As the young governess to four children of an unhappily married duke (Charles Boyer) and his mentally unstable wife (Barbara O’Neil), she is…

30TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Director Rob Reiner and writer Aaron Sorkin marry the political drama to the romantic comedy in this film. Michael Douglas stars as a widowed Democratic president who finds himself drawn to a lobbyist (Annette Bening) for an environmental organization. At the same time, there is plenty of wheeling and dealing over legislation…

Groucho Marx’s favorite of all his movies was not available in its original form for more than 80 years. The Marx Brothers’ second feature was also their last film adapted from one of their Broadway productions. In fact, Animal Crackers was the play they were performing at night while filming their debut feature, The Cocoanuts…

Hailed by many as one of the greatest war films ever made and a landmark film about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola’s film combines an epic vision of war and its consequences with deep philosophical questions.  Drawing on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the film follows a U.S. Army Captain (Martin Sheen) sent upriver…

30TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Thirty years ago, young audiences were convinced pigs could talk after seeing this charming Australian fantasy. Farmer James Cromwell, in the film that brought him to prominence after over two decades in the business, wins the piglet Babe at the county fair. He plans to use him to win best ham at…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION It took more than 40 tries for director and writer Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale to get this science-fiction comedy into production. The five years they spent pitching the idea to studios, however, gave the writers a chance to fine-tune their script to near perfection. As a result, they created a…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION This cinematic adaptation of P.C. Wren’s popular novel—shown here in a world premiere restoration—was one of Paramount’s most popular films of the 1920s. Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, and Ralph Forbes star as three brothers forced by scandal to flee England and join the French Foreign Legion. There’s high drama as they deal…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION The historical epic was an important genre that Hollywood used to combat the rise of television in the 1950s. But even grandiose productions like Quo Vadis (1951) and The Ten Commandments (1956) were dwarfed by MGM’s remake of the legendary 1925 silent film. It took three years to prepare Italy’s Cinecitta Studios…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION With Joseph H. Lewis directing and John Alton in charge of cinematography, this guarantees one of the most vividly shot of all film noirs, a symphony in chiaroscuro in this world premiere restoration. Star Cornel Wilde’s Theodora Productions co-produced with screenwriter Philip Yordan’s Security Pictures, and they’re both at the top of…

Although he won Oscars for dramatic performances in The French Connection (1971) and Unforgiven (1992), the late Gene Hackman was also adept at comedy. In Mike Nichols’ uproarious adaptation of the French farce La Cage Aux Folles (1978), he not only held his own against a nightclub full of drag queens, but he also managed…

It took fourteen years for an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, to come to life. It had already been unsuccessfully optioned once with another script before director Ridley Scott joined the project. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher had originally envisioned Robert Mitchum in the lead role of Rick Deckard, but…

Noël Coward’s stage comedy about a writer whose flighty first wife starts haunting him and his more conventional second wife after an ill-advised séance provided the reassuring image of life continuing beyond the grave for audiences during the horrors of the London Blitz. He handed the film rights to director David Lean, who directed his…

Director David Lynch’s breakthrough film establishes one of his trademarks: exposing the seedy underbelly of a seemingly idyllic small town. After the fiasco of Dune (1984), Lynch took a salary cut to maintain complete control over this film. The result was a contentious, very personal mixture of surrealism, film noir, and coming of age tale….

Although initially dismissed by critics because of its use of studio sets to tell a story set in the Scottish Highlands, this Gene Kelly-Vincente Minnelli collaboration has been re-evaluated more recently. What once were considered failings are now viewed as assets in the use of cinematic magic to create a world of make believe. More…

What’s now considered one of the greatest screwball comedies was originally thought to be too fast paced for audiences to follow. Nor did it help that Katharine Hepburn’s popularity was at an all-time low, and the film’s commercial failure cemented her label of box-office poison. Thanks to television and revival screenings, however, it has since…

Director Michael Schultz drew on his theatrical background to give this ensemble comedy a natural flow. He had the cast do read throughs and staged rehearsals on a soundstage before doing a run-through at the shooting location: a Los Angeles car wash not far from MacArthur Park. He also had the score recorded during pre-production…

After seven musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, RKO wanted to shake things up a bit.  The studio made their eighth picture a screwball comedy, which was in vogue at the time. Instead of playing an entertainer, Astaire is a psychiatrist. An old friend (Ralph Bellamy) asks him to treat his fiancée (Rogers), who…

75TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION It’s hard to believe that 75 years ago, one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories, Walt Disney Productions, could have gone broke. The loss of the European market during World War II had left them $4 million in debt. Rather than quit, however, Walt Disney focused on creating one of his most beloved…

30TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION As if we would miss this 30th anniversary screening! Director Amy Heckerling transports Jane Austen’s Emma to the glitz and glamour of Beverly Hills in this classic teen comedy. This was Heckerling’s second film that focused on high schoolers after her feature directorial debut, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). The film…

With a premise ahead of its time and no major stars attached, this 1970 science fiction thriller was initially a box-office failure for Universal upon its release. As technology continues to advance, however, it’s developed a cult following. Eric Braeden stars as Dr. Charles Forbin, the creator of Colossus, a super-computer designed to control U.S….

Director Otto Preminger had his cinematographer Leon Shamroy shoot this melodrama as if it were a film noir, something that’s even clearer in this shimmering nitrate print. There’s nary a murder or criminal to be found, but its portrayal of three tortured souls who aren’t even sure of their own motivations fits in with the…

Character actor Edward Arnold was born to play the legendary railroad magnate Diamond Jim Brady. Both had risen from childhoods of extreme poverty to find success in their fields: Arnold as a stage actor and Brady selling railroad equipment. Arnold even met Brady twice when the high-living millionaire came backstage to visit the actor’s female…

Norma Shearer was ready to push her career in a new, sexier direction when MGM bought the rights to Ursula Parrott’s steamy tale of divorce and infidelity, Ex-Wife. Her only problem was that the studio’s production chief, Irving G. Thalberg, was her husband, and he couldn’t imagine his wife playing a woman who responds to…

Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen gave filmgoers a close encounter of the first kind in this visually striking science fiction film. When a flying saucer buzzes the car of a space scientist played by Hugh Marlowe and his new wife (Joan Taylor), the couple spearheads a program to contact the aliens. Although they originally claim…

The depiction of interracial friendships was a breakthrough in the on-screen portrayal of race relations in the United States. Sidney Poitier featured in a trio of what some critics now call “black-white buddy movies.” The first of these was this adaptation of Robert Alan Aurthur’s teleplay A Man Is Ten Feet Tall, with Poitier as…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION Leading man Robert Young considered this romance “the best love story ever written” and, years later, named his personal dream home “The Enchanted Cottage.” He stars as a scarred World War II veteran who retreats to a remote New England cottage. His only human contacts are a blind pianist (Herbert Marshall), his…

After 11 years of trying to establish herself in Hollywood, during which time she delivered critically acclaimed performances in films like Scarface (1983) and Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Michelle Pfeiffer finally shot to stardom in this comedy-drama. Her role as Susie Diamond, a former escort and aspiring singer, proved to audiences and critics that she could…

Prepare for a trip “where no one has ever been before.” At least, that’s what the opening titles to this science-fiction feature promise. When a defecting Russian scientist is critically injured, the U.S. government shrinks a submarine and its crew to sail through the man’s bloodstream and destroy an otherwise inoperable blood clot threatening his…

Harold Lloyd scored his biggest box office hit 100 years ago with this college football comedy. He also popularized the college film, which remained a Hollywood mainstay until the 1940s. As naïve student Harold Lamb, he enrolls in Tate University with his head filled with crazy notions of college life picked straight out of a…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION 40TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Memorializing his father’s many achievements was a voyage of discovery for George Stevens Jr., who produced, directed, wrote, and narrated this documentary. Along with clips from his iconic films—such as Woman of the Year (1942), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Giant (1956)—and interviews with his father’s frequent…

During the making of the second of their six big screen pictures together, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster became lifelong friends. While their first collaboration, I Walk Alone (1948), had cast them as rival gangsters, in their second, however, they played allies. They star as gunfighter Doc Holliday (Douglas) and lawman Wyatt Earp (Lancaster), who…

US PREMIERE RESTORATION One of the greatest behind the scenes craftsmen of the Western genre was cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr. He created indelible images for key works by John Ford (The Last Hurrah (1958)) and Orson Welles (The Lady from Shanghai (1947)) while also specializing in outdoor action. Although he spent most of his career…

Van Johnson shot to stardom with a big assist from co-star Spencer Tracy in this inspirational World War II aviation drama. Tracy stars as a pilot who crashes during his final mission over Europe. In heaven, he’s assigned to provide unseen guidance to a young pilot (Johnson), only to watch the newcomer fall in love…

30TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Thirty years ago, director Michael Mann made cinematic history by bringing together two of the generation’s most respected actors, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, into the same scene. Although they had previously co-starred in The Godfather Part II (1974), they never shared any screen time together. That changed when Mann cast…

Director and co-writer John Huston revisited the themes of his earlier hit The African Queen (1951) for this World War II drama. He throws together two opposites: a tough Marine (Robert Mitchum) and a novice nun (Deborah Kerr), marooned together on an island in the South Pacific. In addition to the threat of capture by…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION One of the screen’s most likable stars, Paul Newman, went over to the dark side as “the man with the barbed-wire soul” in this revisionist Western. Hud only cares about himself and clashes with his father (Melvyn Douglas) over how to deal with an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease on their Texas ranch,…

Something magical happened whenever William Powell and Myrna Loy got together in front of the camera. Their easy banter made them one of the most popular screen teams. It got even better when they were directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the man who first brought them together in Manhattan Melodrama and then made them stars…

Some of the best science fiction films of the 1950s were directed by Jack Arnold. Working with the art and special effects departments at Universal, he brought to life Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Tarantula (1955). His finest hour came with THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), adapted by Richard Matheson from his own novel…

50TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Fifty years ago, director Steven Spielberg scared people out of the water and changed the way Hollywood released movies. In his second big-screen picture, he captured something magical in Peter Benchley’s tale of a great white shark stalking the waters off the New England coast. With Roy Scheider as the town’s new…

Although Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda had teamed up for an earlier screwball comedy, they never hit the perfect blend of hilarity, glamour, and sex appeal until Preston Sturges brought them together for one of his best films. She’s a cardsharp preying on wealthy travelers when she spots Fonda, the heir to a millionaire brewery….

The official title of this martial arts comedy is Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, a nod to the Motown founder who produced it. Despite the presence of Motown artists on the soundtrack, it’s very much an expression of director Michael Schultz’s commitment to telling a positive story starring a Black action hero. Young Leroy Green…

The names Carrot Top and Reynardo cast a magic spell on any of the millions who’ve fallen in love with this musical fantasy. Leslie Caron was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the title role, playing an orphan who gets a job at a traveling carnival and treats the puppets in the show…

This adaptation of Broadway’s ninth longest-running musical is one of the most buoyant, enjoyable songfests on screen. The Greek locations are beautiful, the familiar numbers from ABBA’s greatest hits are inventively staged, and the plot…well, it doesn’t really matter. Meryl Streep is a single mother running a resort hotel. On the eve of her wedding,…

Eighty-five years ago, Tyrone Power made the transition from romantic leading man to swashbuckler with this remake of the 1920 silent. His Don Diego returns from Spain to 18th century Los Angeles and discovers that the city is being bled dry by a corrupt mayor (J. Edward Bromberg) and his enforcer (Basil Rathbone). To restore…

Like many pre-Code films, this comic crime tale was kept out of circulation for decades when the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934 made it unreleasable. When it re-surfaced in 1970 as part of a festival lineup of early Fox Films, critics hailed it as a bawdy delight. Spencer Tracy stars as a street…

Eighty years ago, Joan Crawford’s career seemed all but over. After making her a star, her first studio of the decade, MGM, had squandered her popularity in a string of disappointing pictures. She left in 1943, signing with Warner Bros. but turning down scripts for two years. That changed with this adaptation of James M….

Initially, writer Steven King was reluctant to trust Hollywood with his tale of a psychopathic fan holding her favorite romance novelist prisoner. He didn’t think most directors would stick to the story as he had told it. He was such a fan of Stand by Me (1986)— adapted from his story “The Body”—that he only…

50TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION You don’t need to know the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow to gain entry to this 50th anniversary screening of the most successful Monty Python film. The group of comic performers and writers, some of whom had gone to college together, first teamed up in 1967 and launched their trend-setting series,…

Although the picture performed well at the box office and has been compared to Warner Bros.’ Busby Berkeley musicals, this low-budget pre-Code film from Universal is all but forgotten. Yet it’s a fascinating look at how much a creative director (Karl Freund) can do with limited resources. Out-of-work singer Roger Pryor lands a job in…

Ninety-five years ago, Marie Magdalena von Losch took the screen by storm when she entered to growl out “Quand l’Amour Meurt” dressed in a tuxedo and smoking a cigarette. At the number’s end, she kissed a woman in the audience, threw a flower to French Foreign Legionnaire Gary Cooper, and the legend that was Marlene…

How do you follow a fire-breathing dinosaur, overgrown dragonfly larvae, and a Pteranodon? If you’re legendary kaiju director Ishiro Honda—who brought the original Godzilla to the big screen—your next subject is a giant moth. That’s the secret to this Japanese monster film’s success. When a corrupt businessman discovers a lost civilization worshiping a giant egg,…

MGM took a chance producing this tribute to the British and their endurance on the home front during World War II. At the time the film went into production, many Americans were opposed to the country entering the war. During production, however, the attack on Pearl Harbor drastically changed opinions, and the picture became one…

Bette Davis delivered one of her most versatile performances in this moving, intelligent romance that captured the spirit of American women audiences during the first year of World War II. Charlotte Vale (Davis) is the repressed, unattractive daughter of a powerful New England matriarch (Gladys Cooper). After a nervous breakdown sends her to a sanitarium,…

The corn really is as high as an elephant’s eye—if it were standing on another elephant—in this adaptation of the hit musical that launched the career of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. A year before director Fred Zinnemann started filming in Arizona (because Oklahoma was too modern to play itself), crew members planted the…

Of the nine films Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made together, this sports comedy is often ranked amongst the best of their matchups, with Tracy as a roughhewn sports manager and Hepburn as a headstrong college coach who signs with him to go pro in golf and tennis. It was also the second of two…

When a string of murders threatens to shut down his studio, a wise-cracking PR man (Reginald Denny) sets out to find the killer in this sprightly comic mystery. His investigation via closed-circuit television provides a behind-the-scenes look at studio operations and their personnel, like the film’s cinematographer Karl Struss. The English-born Denny had become a…

Although the role has been played by great actors such as Emil Jannings and Richard Burton, Charles Laughton’s depiction of Henry VIII is most often hailed as the definitive interpretation. The image of him tearing apart a roast chicken while complaining that “Manners are dead!” is indelible. But he also has moments of great pain…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION This world premiere restoration of Warner Bros.’ highly fictionalized George Gershwin biopic features nearly 13 minutes of never-before-seen footage, including musical numbers cut from the original U.S. release. Although completed in 1943, the picture was one of many held back from release in favor of more topical pictures dealing with World War…

One of the funniest performances in Broadway history came to the screen when Rita Moreno re-created her Tony-winning work in Terrence McNally’s stage hit. For years, she had entertained friends with her creation of Googie Gomez, the world’s worst Latina cabaret act. When McNally saw her do her routine at a party, he added the…

You may want to stock up on hot dogs, water pistols, and bathroom tissue for this midnight screening of one of the original cult films. Although a hit on the London stage, this musical had only limited success on Broadway and the film version, shot on a shoestring, opened to tepid reviews and box office….

Returning to the techniques that had combined live action with animation in his short film “Alice’s Wonderland” (1923), Walt Disney created an ingenious nightmare sequence for this pre-Code romantic comedy. When automotive tycoon Walter Connolly falls on hard times, his daughter, Janet Gaynor, decides she needs to learn how to run a house without servants….

Often hailed as one of the greatest films of the 21st century, Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece opened the door for Japanese animation to audiences around the world. It clearly established that animated films could appeal to adults as well as children. Inspired by the daughters of family friends with whom he often vacationed, Miyazaki crafted the…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION Director Elia Kazan and cinematographer Boris Kaufman bathed William Inge’s tale of repressed teenaged passion in rich autumnal colors. Its deep palette suggests a fading small-town America on the verge of the Great Depression in this world premiere restoration. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty star as high-school sweethearts whose hormones overtake their…

OFFICIAL OPENING NIGHT GALA SCREENING When George Lucas produced and co-wrote the second Star Wars film, he had transformed the definition of a sequel. Earlier sequels had been low-budget knockoffs of the original, but Lucas created a new concept of a film franchise, one that expanded upon both the story and the themes of the…

Two acting powerhouses fight it out in this Tennessee Williams adaptation, and the audience comes out the winner. Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor) has been in shock since her cousin was killed during a European vacation. Her aunt (Katharine Hepburn) wants her lobotomized so she cannot reveal what happened. The doctor charged with evaluating Holly is…

75TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION Even after 75 years, this remains the definitive Hollywood exposé. From the opening underwater shot looking up at William Holden’s corpse to the final image of Gloria Swanson advancing on the camera, this is one of the most cogent expressions of Billy Wilder’s cynical yet still romantic world view.  The tale of…

Although introduced in comics in 1938, Superman’s early big-screen incarnations consisted of a cartoon series produced by Max Fleischer of Popeye fame, two serials, and a low-budget 1951 feature. So, when producers Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler got Warner Bros. to invest $55 million dollars in a feature film, it was something of a revolution….

For his fourth Hollywood film, director Alfred Hitchcock continued to pursue the vein of psychological suspense he had successfully mined in his first, Rebecca (1940)—not to mention his earlier British films such as Blackmail (1929) and Sabotage (1936). He focuses on the emotional life of Lina (Joan Fontaine), a sheltered Englishwoman who impulsively elopes with…

As a young man, Gene Kelly had dreamed of playing professional baseball. His career may have gone in another direction, but he lived out his childhood dreams when he and co-choreographer Stanley Donen sold MGM the story for this musical. Kelly and Frank Sinatra are members of the fictional Wolves baseball team whose lives are…

US PREMIERE RESTORATION Director George Stevens blends both visuals and dialogue together in this philosophical romantic comedy, proving that he is a master of his craft—even during lengthy discussion scenes. The plot pits a blue collar activist (Cary Grant), who is being framed for murder, against a law professor (Ronald Colman), who is about to…

Clark Gable joins Doris Day in this romantic comedy. Despite their age difference, Gable’s magnetic personality allowed him to maintain his career as a sex symbol even well-into his late 50s. He stars as a newspaper editor who doesn’t believe in higher education. When he catches journalism teacher Day insulting his work, he signs up…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman originally wanted to launch their James Bond series with Thunderball. Although a battle over rights forced them to postpone the adaptation, it ultimately worked out in their favor. With the success of their first three pictures, they were able to make this their biggest Bond…

A barber’s chair, oatmeal and a large sled were some of the ingredients from which director George Pal made magic in the first big-screen adaptation of H. G. Wells’ 1895 novella. Wells had long dreamed of seeing his tale of time travel filmed, but it was his son Frank who put the wheels in motion….

Contemporary critics and audiences were shocked when director Ernst Lubitsch released a comedy about the Nazi occupation of Poland, particularly with its depiction of the Third Reich as everyday people who just happen to be monsters. It also has a special poignancy as the last film made by the luminous Carole Lombard before her tragic…

70 years ago, Alfred Hitchcock put together one of the screen’s sexiest co-starring couples when he paired Cary Grant as a reformed jewel thief with a diamond-studded Grace Kelly. When someone is robbing the Riviera’s elite using his old M.O., Grant sets out to find the culprit and clear his name. Kelly comes along for…

Seventy years ago, Humphrey Bogart reunited with director Michael Curtiz for their sixth film together. After a trio of hard-hitting dramas, including the classic Casablanca (1942), it seemed only logical that they would end their association with a light-hearted holiday comedy. Of course, Bogart had recently scored a comic hit in Sabrina (1954), while Curtiz…

Director David Lynch described this violent romantic crime film as the story of two iconic characters “finding love in Hell.” Thirty-five years ago, it was met with mixed reviews and poor box office, but over time it has come to be viewed as one of his best dissections of American life. Like his Blue Velvet…

WORLD PREMIERE RESTORATION The fantasy New York director Sidney Lumet created for this screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical is even more vivid in this world premiere restoration. Actual locations like Coney Island and the World Trade Center are transformed by the artistry of cinematographer Oswald Morris and production designer Tony Walton to create…