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Beatlemania was in full swing in 1964 when “A Hard Day’s Night” was released, and the opening credit sequence wastes no time dropping us in the middle of it.

Without knowing too much about screenwriter Andy Greskoviak, I’m going to take an educated guess that he worked retail around the holidays. Or, if “Black Friday” isn’t based on some personal, firsthand experience, then he did some amazingly thorough research and really nailed it.

The two most important men in a boy’s life are his father and his father figure. His father is the one he is biologically related to, and his father figure is the one who he looks up to as a role model on how to be a man. In the case of Anthony Soprano…

The truth is a fickle thing. What did and did not happen can vary—sometimes subtly and sometimes greatly—depending on the memory and perception of the person telling the story. In “The Last Duel,” which is based on actual history, we get three versions of roughly the same events…

“Cry Macho” is proof that writers don’t have to go over the top to create an original story. It’s the small choices a writer makes that can give the yarn being spun a fresh feeling. Take the attitude of…

One of the many joys that cinema brings to me—international cinema in particular—is the education it provides. Seeing different cultures, with different ideas, and different ways of life is an enlightening experience. It’s also fun…

I can be a simple man of easy pleasures when it comes to selecting a movie I want to watch. “On the Rocks” is one such selection, because it’s very simple: I see it stars Bill Murray and Rashida Jones. I then see it’s directed by Sofia Coppola. I watch.

The book and film industries have a closer relationship than most people realize — Los Angeles Times reports that books have always been a huge source of raw material for Hollywood. But with the rise of streaming services…

Much like teenagers, some movies are late bloomers. “Joe Bell” is a case in point. The titular character is played by Mark Wahlberg. He’s a macho, hard-nosed, sports-loving, prideful, hot-headed 45 year-old man. We first meet him on the road—literally walking along the side of it…

To understand the concept of “Free Guy,” one must first understand the term non-player character, or NPC for short. These are what in movie terms would be called extras, or background characters. They’re not an integral part of the story…

“Space Jam: A New Legacy” hits me in one of my soft spots. Granted there aren’t many, but they are there, and positive, affirming movies about fathers and sons are one of them. The icing on the cake is that the father is basketball superstar LeBron James…

For a silly, 96-minute Marx brothers movie, the story is fairly sophisticated. Groucho plays a quick-witted conniver named Otis B. Driftwood who’s latched on to wealthy widow Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont). They’re in Milan…

It’s the battle of the Emmas in Disney’s latest live action character study based on a previous animated work. “Cruella” is the story of villainous fashion designer Cruella De Vil, first seen in 1961’s “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” then again in…

I’ll start off by addressing the elephant in the room: Why make a “Black Widow” movie now, given her fate in “Avengers: End Game?” My take is that nothing lasts forever, everyone dies, and on a long enough timeline all things come to an end.

I can’t help but be a little depressed by “State of the Union.” It’s not because the movie is depressing. If anything, it’s inspirational and affirmational of the goodness and decency of humanity in the way one would expect from director Frank Capra…

It’s quite possibly the most extreme of all cinematic rarities to have the words “mob gangs” and “family film” in a movie’s description, but here we are. “Bugsy Malone” is a G-rated 1976 family film about two rival mob gangs in 1920s New York City battling for control.

Nothing hits closer to home than literally having the action of a movie take place in your hometown. While major cities like Chicago, New York, L.A., Miami, and London are used to such a thing, the same cannot be said for the place I grew up: Brookfield, CT. Our previous cinematic claim to fame was…

History is the final judge in all things. Upon its initial release in 1938, “Bringing Up Baby” was not well regarded. I clearly remember watching it for the first time around two decades ago on TCM in part because of the introduction by host Robert Osborne, who noted…