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Churchill is an abidingly popular role with big-time actors once the receding hairline and expanding girth of middle-age set in. Sometimes the player is too evidently suited to the part - one thinks of Robert Hardy on telly in the Eighties - and the jowly gravitas gets clanked around as if Winnie wandered Chartwell and Westminster in never-was-so-much-owed mode 24/7. On the literal face of it, the man who brought both Sid Vicious and Commissioner Gordon to the silver screen is one of the least obvious cinematic Winstons ever, and he wears his lavish prosthetics with a very light touch....

I have some personal knowledge regarding the movie The Post and its subject matter, the Pentagon Papers. At the time the Pentagon Papers began to be published in the summer of 1971, my father was highly placed in the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department and participated in the decision-making process regarding prosecution of the Pentagon Papers cases. I have a specific recollection around that time of my father at the breakfast table with the family, on several mornings, suddenly breaking out in a cursing rage. I was perplexed by this behavior, but after a while, a pattern emerged....

Star Wars’ roots in mythology are so well-established that they have become a sort of legend in themselves: Somewhere in a hallowed office in the ’70s, George Lucas, poring the ancient pages of Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, struck the molten iron of the sci-fi zeitgeist to create a new myth, a fantasy set in the stars, with futuristic light sabers and a misty philosophy which feels like long, long ago. Every subsequent Star Wars film has attempted to recapture Lucas' initial magic, with mixed success. Each trilogy is wildly different, from the archetypal myth of the originals to...

Having fallen in love with Star Wars from the time that I first saw it in the late 1970s, it brings this 45 year-old no pleasure to concede that, for various reasons, the latest installment in the SW saga is simply not a good film.  Much has already been written about The Last Jedi’s poor story-telling, sorely underdeveloped and misused characters, and rampant Political Correctness. Most of the commentary has been spot-on in these respects.  However, little to no attention has been drawn to that which is most disturbing about TLJ: It is the first anti-Star Wars Star Wars movie.TLJ...

Faith-based films continue to maintain their momentum at the box office and 2017's list of top-grossing inspirational movies produced by Christians includes films about loss, the journey to faith, and even the first religious animation film in nearly 20 years. Here is a list of the seven highest-grossing Christian films of 2017 in order of top-earnings. 1. "The Shack" grossed $57,386,418 (Lionsgate) "The Shack" is based on The New York Times best-selling novel of the same name. The film was released on 2,888 silver screens on March 3 and as the film's synopsis says, the cinematic journey takes viewers on...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) in a tweet Tuesday compared President Trump to British leader Winston Churchill. Huckabee said he had just been to see the film “The Darkest Hour,” which dramatizes Churchill's experiences as prime minister during World War II, calling it a reminder of “what real leadership looks like.” “Churchill was hated by his own party, opposition party, and press. Feared by King as reckless, and despised for his bluntness,” Huckabee tweeted. “But unlike Neville Chamberlain, he didn't retreat. We had a Chamberlain for 8 yrs; in @realDonaldTrump we have a Churchill.”

Not fit for 21st Century PeeCee police approval per CNN's Carol Costello! #Hillaryarius! The sexism is everywhere!!! CNN sees that Mr. Potter is the Liberal seeking to put the people in the straight jacket of his "public housing" and George Bailey is the "Donald Trump" seeking to make Bedford Falls great again by freeing the people from the dictatorial power of "Progressive" Potter... (censor! Can't allow that truth out!) As with all (misnamed) "progressives" Potter sought to own and control ALL aspects of life in Bedford Falls, seeing only George Bailey as standing in his way! He seeks and thinks...

Doctor Who fans have shared their delight after the Time Lord regenerated into a woman for the first time ever - with actress Jodie Whittaker keeping her Yorkshire accent for the role. Tonight's Christmas special Twice Upon A Time marked the exit of both leading star Peter Capaldi and showrunner Steven Moffat. But the hour-long episode also heralded a new beginning for the long-running BBC sci-fi series as it welcomed the first female Doctor ever.

Now that the Last Jedi has been out for a few days, I am wondering who here has seen it? I saw some of the reviews said it was great, but they also said the force awakens was great, and I hated that movie because of the utter lack of originality. Without providing too many spoilers, how was it?

Unlike "Dunkirk" it was ALL acting. Coming off the Trump victory the timing of it's release is interesting. Too many not-so-subtile similarities. He's gruff, his own party abandons him, his family keeps him going and he has to deal with a bunch of wusses who are too cowardly to see what's going on. He's alone and he get's his inspiration from the common people he meets on the subway. Theater was pretty much filled-matinee. Upon leaving I observed that most everyone was older. BTW FDR was useless. Chamberlain still thought they could negotiate for peace.

It is a Fact of Life that black-and-white movies are superior to movies in color, and that’s true of Christmas movies in particular, too. It’s true even if you exclude the obvious and over-watched It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street, and it’s especially true if you look at the hideous fare that usually makes lists of best Christmas movies, from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Bad Santa to Die Hard. So here are five black-and-white classics that embody the real Christmas themes of spiritual transformation and rebirth, and demonstrate once again why the best outdoor Christmas scenes...

To say I’m not a fan of what Disney is doing to Star Wars is putting it mildly. Disney paid $4 billion dollars to buy the franchise and now they want to make money, but the older generations — those who watched movies before the advent of Hulu and Netflix — aren’t the target audience for this new trilogy. No, the millennials and their willingness to spend their disposable income on entertainment are the real target. To that end, Disney has introduced a new cast of characters who have begun to remake the galaxy far, far away in their own narcissistic, millennial image. (There...

(CNN)Parents like to see themselves as purveyors of possibility. We want our children to inhabit a world in which identities are both mutable and equal, and imagination and empathy reign supreme! But young children, as dictated by their tastes in popular culture, have something else in mind. They're drawn to worlds in which identities are fixed, order trumps imagination and transgressions are met with routine punishment. This clash between what parents desire for their children and what children desire for themselves is most easily observable in cartoon preferences. So often, the more parents dislike a show, the more their children...

As always, the Christmas season is all-but drowning in new movies, a fact amplified even more by the now-standard pre-Christmas monster (Star Wars, The Hobbit, etc.) that now kicks the year-end blitz into high gear. There has been a lot of talk about whether merely being one of the biggest movies of all time is good enough for The Last Jedi, but we should note that at least part of the comparative downturn for the eighth Star Wars episode is due to a deluge of kid-friendly competition this time out. [snip] Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Downsizing debuted on Friday in wide release,...

The first year of President Trump stirred the makers of popular culture into a frenzy of resistance. Any list of the year's cultural winners and losers revolves around how the entertainment elites offended Americans in the red states by trying too hard to correct their outdated patriotism and other traditional values. Loser: the National Football League. Ratings took a dramatic hit, and attendance at games dropped, resulting in thousands of empty stadium seats and, in some cases, half-empty stadiums. Worse, the disdain shows no signs of abetting. The media tried not to draw the conclusion that kneeling for the national...

Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour butchers history to make the British prime minister a much less decisive figure than he actually was. Because an irresolute and small-minded age applies its own neuroses backward to history, because actors love to portray internal torment, and because we fancy ourselves so sophisticated that we know the official story of the past to be a ruse, movies about important historical figures have become less inspiring and “more human,” at times even iconoclastic... Now it’s Churchill’s turn to be shrunken down to a more manageable size. In Darkest Hour, which is set across May and June...

It’s not news that Star Wars has always been derivative. The first trilogy borrowed greedily from Flash Gordon and Japanese samurai movies, and set a precedent for future klepto-cinema. While The Last Jedi continues a similar tradition, it also follows another strange progression—the history of human warfare.

P.T. Barnum always has been regarded as a great entrepreneur and show business pioneer who saw things no one else did, perhaps realizing the business was just one big circus. The new musical The Greatest Showman avoids the pitfalls of typical biopics to become more of a fantasia of song and dance, a joyous exercise in pure entertainment that is made for the holiday crowd. If it doesn’t get swallowed up by other family fare like another Jumanji, another Star Wars, another Pixar toon and even Fox’s own Ferdinand, audiences will discover than true rarity: an original movie musical. Although...

Watercutter thumbs her nose at "the so-called alt-right" who resent the diverse cast, and also at "the misogynist, racist, classist, dark side of the populace that’s always been present, wielding power in one form or another." In case you don't get the hint, that "dark side of the populace" is Donald Trump voters: "The movie isn't here to Make the Galaxy Great Again," she sneers.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Jurassic World (2015) Marvel's The Avengers (2012) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Beauty and the Beast (2017) Finding Dory (2016) Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) The Dark Knight Rises (2012) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) Toy Story 3 (2010) Iron Man 3 (2013) Captain America: Civil War (2016) The Hunger Games (2012) Wonder Woman (2017) Frozen (2013) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011) The Secret Life of Pets (2016) Despicable Me 2 (2013) The Jungle Book (2016)