Free Republic

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Frank Capra’s beloved Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. It debuted December 20, 1946, just a year after World War II ended. (Remember, the film begins and ends with the expected return of war hero Harry Bailey.)The film offers several Catholic perspectives. How many movies today would begin with eight people praying? But, in a world afflicted by the culture of death, I want to salute the pro-life focus of this film.In response to those eight prayers heard in heaven, God summons the angels—his messengers—to help. “At exactly ten forty-five p.m. earth...

"Collateral Beauty" has already had a bit of a hammering from film critics and fans, and things have just gotten worse. According to Entertainment Weekly, the film has now given star Will Smith the worst wide debut of his career. Ouch. Despite featuring Smith and a host of other big names, including Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, and Kate Winslet, the movie opened to just $7 million in ticket sales this weekend. That puts it at fourth place in the US box office, well behind the top-ranking "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," which took an estimated $155 million in its...

Movies including La La Land, Moonlight and Hacksaw Ridge will compete for the top film prizes at the 2017 Golden Globes. The musical, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, has been nominated for the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy prize alongside Deadpool, Florence Foster Jenkins, Sing Street, and 20th Century Women, while Moonlight and Hacksaw Ridge are up for the Best Motion Picture – Drama as well as Lion, Manchester by the Sea and Hell or High Water. Manchester by the Sea's Casey Affleck, who won the best actor Critics' Choice Award on Sunday (11Dec16), could continue his...

Robert De Niro is striking a more diplomatic tone regarding President-elect Donald Trump, whom he previously said he'd like to "punch ... in the face." “I would only say that we’re all hoping, waiting and hoping, that he will lead the country in a way that’ll benefit everyone and benefit our neighbors around the world,” De Niro told ITK on Tuesday when asked what message he’d want to share with Trump. “That’s all,” the "Godfather Part II" star said.

As for many of you, last Tuesday was a very bad day for me.... Is our next president a demagogue or democrat? ...I have been involved in politics for more than 50 years, and this is certainly not the first time I've been on the losing end. It always hurts. And this one maybe hurts more than the rest — partly because we didn't really lose. Our side got more popular votes, while Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney or John McCain. ...The Founding Fathers provided tools to combat the demagogues they knew might come along. We merely need...

Industry insiders share their Nov. 8 plans as comedy legend Carl Reiner preps a Trump pinata and Ben Silverman welcomes all to his home but doesn't expect "many public Trump supporters." ...Should Trump defy the polls and prevail, Lost City of Z director James Gray says, “I won’t recognize our country anymore if it wants a scumbag white nationalist to be its president. You can quote me on that: I hate that guy.” Ali Wentworth would rather go down under with husband George Stephanopoulos: “If Trump wins, we’ll start looking at real estate in Sydney, Australia. No crime, no guns."...

Marvel Studios' "Doctor Strange" is expected to draw a massive audience this weekend, providing some much needed medicine for Hollywood during a bruising fall box office season. Analysts expect the visually stylish Benedict Cumberbatch comic book movie to collect $65 million to $75 million in ticket sales from the United States and Canada through Sunday. Some more optimistic industry observers predict the film, about a former neurosurgeon who harnesses mystical powers, may reach $80 million in domestic grosses... "Doctor Strange is a C-level Marvel character, and the fact that you can pull an $80-million debut is ludicrous when you think...

Natalie Babbitt, author of the beloved children's novel Tuck Everlasting, has died after battling cancer. She was 84. Babbitt, who also was an illustrator, had been diagnosed with lung cancer recently and died at her home in Hamden, Conn., on Monday, said her husband, Samuel Fisher Babbitt.

Tammy Grimes, the throaty actress and singer who conquered Broadway at the age of 26, winning a Tony Award for her performance in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," and went on to a distinguished stage career, died on Sunday in Englewood, N.J. She was 82... Ms. Grimes made films, including "Play It as It Lays," "The Last Unicorn" and "Slaves of New York," and appeared in dozens of television movies and series (including her own short-lived sitcom, "The Tammy Grimes Show," in 1966). But the starring role in the film version of "Molly Brown" (1964) went to Debbie Reynolds, who had...

A full film found on You Tube. There will be no talking points spoken, there will be planes, Buster, and nations pitted against one another Buster Keaton: The Navigator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kW5Q3mrZg Take Five! and imagine

What we have here is the end of an era. One of the few remaining famed original horror movie hosts, John Zacherle, known affectionately to fans as Zacherley, The Cool Ghoul, has passed on at the age of 98! That's quite a run and we're all a lot creepier as a result of his illustrious career! Zacherley was an American television host, radio personality and voice actor known for his long career as a television horror host broadcasting horror movies in Philadelphia and New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Best known for his character "Roland/Zacherley," he also did...

Full title: Female Victims, Male Abusers, Revenge of the Sisters in the Very Boring, Very Politically Correct Girl on the TrainThe Girl on the Train, last week’s top box-office film, is so thoroughly lousy that it augurs a horrible future for the American movie-going plebiscite. This woman’s revenge story (dramatized in triplicate, with Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, and Rebecca Ferguson as suburban white women who suffer psychic abuse by a male) promotes perverse “feminist” sisterhood... In [André] Téchiné’s new film, Being 17, a white French youth falls in love with an Algerian teenager while contending with adolescent urges and stress...

Hollywood is poised to out the A-list star who raped tragic ’80s child star Corey Haim and has brazenly gotten away with the abuse for almost three decades. RadarOnline is choosing not to name the superstar sexual predator at this time, but can reveal that he is one of the most recognizable faces in the industry. The closeted perv has never come out as gay — and even has children of his own. But in truth, the star behind the family-man facade is an evil monster who has led an extraordinarily twisted double-life. “This dirty little secret is an open...

Three years in the making, "Sam & Me" is a dark comedy that imagines, "What if Uncle Sam crashed on my couch?" It personifies the dysfunctional relationship between taxpayer and government. The movie is pro-freedom and pro-faith. More details at www.samandmefilm.com. To watch, visit https://vimeo.com/ondemand/samandme The film is absolutely free to the first 50 Freepers who use the promo code Freep at checkout.

When you think of Disney movies, you think of safe, wholesome fun for the entire family. But based on this list, maybe instead you should think about sad orphans and the literal embodiment of death appearing in a man's eyes shortly before he meets his grisly demise. Here are some of the most controversial moments hidden in Disney movies...

Full title: Actor Jon Polito, known for roles in Coen brother films 'The Big Lebowski' and 'Miller's Crossing,' dead at 65 Actor Jon Polito, who was best known for his roles in Coen brother films like "The Big Lebowski," "Miller's Crossing" and "Barton Fink," has died. He was 65.

<p>Just what we need in these fractured times — a smart parable about open-mindedness and unification.</p> <p>Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner play academics enlisted by the military to make contact when alien spacecraft land on Earth in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi drama.</p>

The media pumped up film " Southside With You", the story of the first date between Michelle & Barack Obama bombs badly on it first weekend release with a miserable three (3M) revenue intake. The movie finished #13 among the movies this weekend, not a good showing at all. Nothing more needs to be said!!! The horrible revenue numbers speak for themselves.

Virtually every film in modern memory ends with some variation of the same disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental." The cut-and-paste legal rider must be the most boring thing in every movie that features it. Who knew its origins were so lurid? For that bit of boilerplate, we can indirectly thank none other than Grigori Rasputin, the famously hard-to-assassinate Russian mystic and intimate of the last, doomed Romanovs. It all started when an exiled Russian prince sued MGM in 1933 over the studio's Rasputin biopic,...

Cinema in the early years of the 21st Century has experienced something of an existential crisis. Terms such as ‘TV-like’ or ‘television-esque’ were once intended as insults; now, in a period most commentators consider a new ‘golden age of television’ – a Don Draper here, a Walter White there – that is no longer the case. So, if television has evolved to a point where it is no longer considered an inferior art form, what does this mean for cinema? Perhaps it is no coincidence that David Lynch’s mind-bending mystery-drama Mullholland Drive has been named by BBC Culture’s critics’ poll...