William Holden in "S.O.B."

Mini William Holden Centennial celebration. We're beginning, oddly enough, with his final film. Here's Tim Brayton...

The 1981 film S.O.B. wasn't meant to be William Holden's final film: the star died in a household accident a few months after the film premiered, at a mere 63 years old. But it offers a pleasing symmetry to his career to end this way: Holden's big breakthrough, in 1950, was the acid-laced Hollywood satire Sunset Blvd., and there's a comforting rightness that it was with an acid-laced Hollywood satire that his career would end.

Not that S.O.B. has anything on Sunset Blvd., though it's a compelling oddity, and it's one of the few films made by writer-director-producer Blake Edwards after his 1960s heyday that offers all that much to chew on. The film is a deeply caustic fable of how superproducer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) churned out the biggest money-loser in Hollywood history one day, went insane from the stress of it, and decided to turn his family-friendly musical into a pornographic extravaganza...

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Blueprints: "The Disaster Artist"

Jorge Molina continues with the 2017 Oscar nominated screenplays...

One of the most overused film tropes out there is the big pep talk that a leader gives his or her team before they get into some sort of defining battle. It’s meant to inspire, motivate, eliminate any form of self-doubt, and give them the necessary strength to embark on their journey. 

But what if the task at hand is the production of what would become one of the canonically worst films of all time? And what if its leader is a proto-European actor with a lot of heart and devotion, but almost no social skills? Let’s take a look at how the writers for The Disaster Artist managed to inject these doomed elements with sincerity...

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Months of Meryl: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep...

 #6 — Sarah Woodruff, an outcast of ill repute in Victorian England, and Anna, the philandering actress playing her...

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Doc Corner: 'Dawson City: Frozen Time' is a Masterpiece 100 Years in the Making

by Glenn Dunks

If you have ever watched a Bill Morrison film, then you will have surely remember him for the way his films appear as if they are deteriorating before your eyes. Best known for works such as Decasia that are assembled out of weathered, beaten and sometimes even partly destroyed reels of film celluloid, Morrison’s films often play with the concept that film – the physical, tactile product of film itself just as much as the broad term for motion pictures as we know them – is not something we should ever be flippant about.

His movies are made out of parts of other movies, its true -- clips and excerpts taken from decaying reels that most could consider at home in a rubbish tip. Many may find his aesthetic challenging, but there is something so delightfully classical about the way he repurposes any image that sits atop a filmstrip. His work breathes new life into old, unwanted, and unused works so that they may be seen anew in a new light, a new form and allow somebody’s hard work to prosper once more...

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Bonnie & Clyde's 50th Anniversary

by Eric Blume

It’s difficult to believe that it’s fifty years this month that Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic Bonnie & Clyde debuted in theaters.  On one hand, it’s been part of the American film imagination for so long, that it’s been colossally influential on many other movies.  Yet every time you watch it, it feels as fresh, vital, and new as if it were just shot.

Surprisingly, the movie starts with Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie behind bars… holding onto the bars of the headboard of her bed...

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