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Theodore Honey (James Stewart) is a mathematician charged with discovering what caused the crash of a "Reindeer" airliner. As he travels to investigate, he realizes en route that he's flying on the very same type of airplane. Convinced it will suffer a similar accident, he deliberately sabotages it once it lands, and soon finds himself defending his sanity in an English courtroom. Fortunately, a sympathetic actress (Marlene Dietrich) and a stewardess (Glynis Johns) come to his defense.

Recently-released movies can now be graded on a new “Climate Reality Check” test, which will gauge on whether or not the film addressed the so-called “climate crisis.” “There’s a new ‘Climate Reality Check’ test — these 3 Oscar-nominated features passed,” headlined the article by Chloe Veltman at NPR. According to Veltman, the new test offers something similar to the much-ballyhooed “Bechdel Test” by grading movies on purely ideological grounds; in this case, environmentalism. Only three Oscar-nominated movies released in 2023 met the criteria for either having themes or strong mentions of the so-called “climate crisis”: Barbie, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning...

When the poet W.H. Auden called the years leading up to World War Two "a low dishonest decade" in his poem "September 1, 1939", you have to wonder if this was simply a case of perfect hindsight. Were sensible people really living for years with the near certainty that another war was on its way? If so, it must have been intolerable; if not, it would explain a lot. Proof of this dismal mood is actually abundant even in entertainment – like Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps, one of the director's earliest and greatest successes. It's the story...

For Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank, starring in “Ordinary Angels,” the true story about a woman who rallied her local community to save a young girl’s life, allowed her to use her platform to spread a message of hope and service at a time when it's desperately needed. The 49-year-old actress plays Sharon Stevens in “Ordinary Angels,” from Kingdom Story Company and Lionsgate, a hairdresser struggling with alcoholism and estrangement from her son. But after discovering the story of Michelle, a little girl in need of a liver transplant in the local newspaper, Sharon pours her energy into raising funds...

The film's team tells The Hollywood Reporter about studio tension, favorite improvised lines, residual checks, typecasting and the surprising path to classic status: "I don't know that there's a right way to market this movie."Office Space is celebrating its 25th anniversary following its delayed path to success, although hopefully no one would get their ass kicked for saying something like that. Released Feb. 19, 1999, director Mike Judge‘s enduring and endlessly quotable workplace satire follows computer programmer Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), who decides to stop caring about his day job and teams up with Initech co-workers Michael Bolton (David Herman)...

Barack Obama's daughter, Malia Ann, has received some negative reviews over a debut short film that she both wrote and directed. The 25-year-old showed her 18-minute film, The Heart, at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, which tells the story of a grieving son tasked with an unusual request from his late mother, previously screened at film festivals in Telluride and Chicago, where it received recognition in the best live action short category. In a "Meet the Artist" video for Sundance, Malia Ann said that her project "is about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret." She added...

Seems every week there’s another article out about people being Concerned over the possible dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI for short). A lot of the tech people involved in developing it are asking for some government guidelines and regulation, Somehow, they can’t seem to slow down on their own. Can’t afford to let someone else get it first, you see. The big worry is that somehow, any AI might determine that its goals are not in line with those of humans, and it will take over the world. The one movie that’s constantly referenced is The Terminator (1984), in...

Rob Reiner’s ‘God & Country: The Rise Of Christian Nationalism’ film opened up this weekend at the box office, and to the surprise of all progressives and no conservatives, it absolutely bombed, bringing in a mere $38,415 over an extended four-day weekend. The film opened in 85 theaters, averaging $451 a theater over four days, which is incredibly low. Assuming it had at least one showing each day (and likely it had several), it brought in around 112 dollars a day, or ten people a day spread across however many showings. We’ve talking three or five people per showing, on...

Like all Rob Reiner movies, Rob Reiner’s documentary, God & Country: The Rise Of Christian Nationalism, didn’t just tank at the box office, it was humiliated. In 85 theaters, Reiner’s bigoted attack on Christians who dared to vote for Donald Trump earned just $38,415 over four days. As one website put it, that’s “averaging $451 [per] theater over four days, which is incredibly low.” If you assume it only had “one showing each day (and likely it had several), it brought in around 112 dollars a day, or ten people a day spread across however many showings.” What, you’re telling...

One aggravating peculiarity of baby boomers – one of many, to be sure – was to imagine their parents and every preceding generation afflicted with a lack of self-awareness. From farm hand to Harvard man, they were all benighted rubes, overwhelmed by the speed of change and in thrall to authority and received wisdom. Irony was born out of thin air, in the smoky funk of a dorm room when someone put on a Lenny Bruce record after Rubber Soul. While it's far from the most egregious error their cohort ever forced upon the world (Earth Day and the music...

Martin Scorsese thinks Marvel films aren’t cinema. “The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes,” he wrote in a New York Times article in 2019, written after a wave of backlash from superhero fans and directors alike. Earlier that year, Marvel’s three-hour blockbuster Avengers: Endgame had garnered over $2.7 billion. For a while it was the highest-grossing film ever made. People turned up to see it in spandex catsuits. You couldn’t move for replica infinity stones. Some theaters, eager to fill the demand, screened the...

U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) hopes to bring an end to the Cold War by signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, much to the displeasure of the hawkish General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Scott's aide, Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) stumbles on shattering evidence that the General is plotting a coup to overthrow Lyman in seven days, "Jiggs" alerts the President, setting off a dangerous race to thwart the takeover.

...Nikolaj Arcel’s “The Promised Land,” Denmark’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar, has everything you want in an epic film: struggle, romance, period detail, violence, great acting, atmosphere, unforgettable images, a hero played by the great Mads Mikkelsen, a despicable villain and German potatoes. In yet another awards-worthy performance, Mikkelsen plays Ludvig von Kahlen, the 18th century bastard son of a maid and a land owner, who was sent off to the German army as a boy. Having returned to his native Denmark in 1755, Captain von Kahlen (Mikkelsen) has a plan to work the non-arable soil of the Danish “heath”...

Released on this date in 1974.

On Friday, political commentator Robby Starbuck released “The War On Children,” a feature-length documentary about the Left’s attempt to “sexualize” and “indoctrinate” children via, among other things, social media. “There’s a war on our children right now. Far left activists will stop at nothing to indoctrinate them, sexualize them, guilt them and punish them until they submit to their woke religion,” Starbuck wrote in his announcement post on X. “For too long the dots haven’t been connected to expose their battle plan. This film exposes EVERYTHING.” The documentary features interviews with notable voices who have spoken out on the sexualization...

...A recent open letter to the Writers Guild of America, written by a WGA member, is saying out loud what so many in the industry fear to say....... [T]he story has resulted in a flood of emails sent to Film Threat. These correspondences paint a picture of an industry where fear of speaking out could result in one being “blacklisted” as problematic... A phrase we heard over and over again is this: “male and pale is stale.”A Modern Black List I am a WGA member and wish to be anonymous.My email isn’t real as I don’t want to accidentally give...

Movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6amIq_mP4xMIt seems the average movie-goer is much more patriotic than Hollywood seems to believe. Few other reasons would explain the phenomenal box-office success of the Bollywood film “The Fighter,” which was released on Thursday, coinciding with India’s Republic Day on Friday. Directed by successful Bollywood director Siddharth Anand and starring famous Bollywood actors Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor, Variety reported that the film, which “revolves around the Indian Air Force,” achieved a worldwide gross revenue of $25.1 million it’s opening weekend. Of that $25.1 million, Variety reported that $20.8 million of that gross came from the...

Legendary Hollywood gems like the “Wizard Of Oz” and the Christmas classic “It’s A Wonderful Life” are both getting what director and writer Kenya Barris is calling a “diverse” reboot. Speaking to Variety at the Sundance Film Festival, Barris confirmed he’s working on scripts for both films and giving the Judy Garland 1939 movie a new look with a story told from a “different point of a view.” “The original ‘Wizard of Oz’ took place during the Great Depression and it was about self-reliance and what people were going through,” Barris told the outlet. “I think this is the perfect...

It's that time of year again when you're likely thinking of settling down for a traditional rewatch of It's a Wonderful Life. (It's streaming via Channel 4 online this year). When we think of Christmas movies, the movie will inevitably come up alongside the likes of Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol. Most Christmas movies follow a similar enough pattern: something dire happens and only a Christmas miracle can save the day. In the case of It's a Wonderful Life, that miracle actually came many years after the film's initial debut. When the movie bowed in 1946, it...

Best Picture American Fiction Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson and Jermaine Johnson, Producers Anatomy of a Fall Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion, Producers Barbie David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, Producers The Holdovers Mark Johnson, Producer Killers of the Flower Moon Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese and Daniel Lupi, Producers Maestro Bradley Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Fred Berner, Amy Durning and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers Oppenheimer Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan, Producers Past Lives David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, Producers Poor Things Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, Producers...