They don’t make ’em like they used to. That’s a line you’re bound to hear anytime you talk to someone fixated on the yesteryears of cinema. Their position: Movies are a paradise lost. But if you know even the surface … Continue reading Grand Illusions: Dispatch from the 16th TCM Classic Film Festival
As the story goes, writer/producer/director extraordinaire Francis Ford Coppola started working on Megalopolis in the early 1980s. Back then, Coppola was coming off one hell of a decade. The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Apocalypse Now… He was … Continue reading MEGALOPOLIS
Loving cinema is a one-way street. Oh, I love movies. Hell, I love certain movies more than some of the people in my life. But I realize that adoration isn’t reciprocated. I Know Where I’m Going! doesn’t give a damn … Continue reading MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER
I guess you could say the low point arrived on March 27, 2022, with the broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. No, the “slap heard ’round the world” wasn’t it—though that cast a pall over the proceedings, didn’t it?—but the … Continue reading Cinema 101
Released in 1989, New York Stories is an omnibus film, three shorts stitched together by a city. And though two of the directors’ oeuvres are inseparable from the city streets, tenements, and high rises that dot the New York skyline, it is … Continue reading NEW YORK STORIES
Some movies never grow old. They exist outside of time and space, always there, always waiting for us to return. Case in point: The Godfather Part I and II. Director Francis Ford Coppola’s saga tells the story of the Corleone crime family, whose evolution … Continue reading THE GODFATHER
What the studios want now is ‘risk-free’ films but with any sort of art you have to take risks. Not taking risks in art is like not having sex and then expecting there to be children. Here’s a tip to … Continue reading Born On This Day — April 7, 1939
There’s something in my heart that isn’t yet fulfilled. Maybe it’s a sickness. But I’m definitely not satisfied. It’s not to do with money—I’m richer than I ever thought I would be. It’s not fame—I’m more famous than I’ve ever … Continue reading In Their Words — Sunday, April 7, 2013
The study of cinema is the study of directors, or more accurately, the study of auteurs. Single visions brought to life via a committee. Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Ford, all of these names immediately pop into our minds when we think of … Continue reading The Archers
Michael J. Cinema 
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