Stephen Dorff plays a rescuer in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center." Reading today's critical responses to Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," I find it fascinating that the positive reviews and the negative reviews are saying essentially the same things. People…
9/11 is in the eye of the beholder: Michael Pena (center) in "WTC." That's a question everyone who sees Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie will have to answer for him- or herself. The studio's official line is that it's an inspirational…
View image: Channnnnnggggggg... From Sam Goldsmith: If there is any opening shot that truly shows the power of cinema, it comes from my favorite film, Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night." After crediting Miramax and Walter Shenson, the film makes…
View image From Tom Sutpen, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats: There is no more enigmatic image in the badly underappreciated canon of Richard Lester than the opening shot of his 1968…
From Jeff Levin, Rochester, NY: I’ve never seen an opening tighter or more ingeniously structured than the one for Philip Kaufman’s "Quills." It’s an opening that flips from dreamy to nightmarish and completely changes the nature of what you think…
A mighty zoom. It begins here... ... and ends here. It's been said that what "The Shining" is to the dolly/Steadicam shot, "Barry Lyndon" is to the zoom. Jeffrey Bernstein offers an in-depth exploration of all those slow, still-life zooms…
It was 20 years ago that Oliver Stone fired "Platoon" straight at the heart of American myths about the war in Vietnam, and scored a direct hit. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1986, Stone won for…
From Aaron Cutler, Philadelphia, PA:
Roger Ebert directs the show at the 2006 Overlooked Film Festival. Roger Ebert's wife Chaz sent an update on his recovery for publication on RogerEbert.com. Chaz writes: Roger was making good progress and was ready to go to his next…
From Bud Kroll, Scarsdale, NY:
Great Movies