By Movie StarAlfred HitchcockAudrey HepburnAva GardnerBarbara StanwyckBasil RathboneBette DavisBilly WilderBob HopeBoris KarloffBurt LancasterBuster KeatonCarole LombardCary GrantCharlie ChaplinClara BowClark GableClaudette ColbertDana AndrewsDeanna DurbinDebbie ReynoldsDoris DayElizabeth TaylorErnst LubitschErrol FlynnEsther WilliamsFranchot ToneFred AstaireFred MacMurrayGary CooperGene KellyGeorge CukorGinger RogersGloria SwansonGrace KellyGreer GarsonGregory PeckGreta GarboHarold LloydHedy LamarrHenry FondaHoward HawksHumphrey BogartIda LupinoIngrid BergmanIrene DunneJack BennyJack LemmonJames CagneyJames StewartJane RussellJean ArthurJean HarlowJeanette MacDonaldJeanne CrainJoan CrawfordJoan FontaineJohn FordJohn WayneJudy GarlandKatharine HepburnKay FrancisKirk DouglasLana TurnerLauren BacallLillian GishLon ChaneyLoretta YoungLouise BrooksMae WestMarilyn MonroeMarion DaviesMarlene DietrichMary AstorMary PickfordMickey RooneyMiriam HopkinsMyrna LoyNatalie WoodNorma ShearerOlivia de HavillandOrson WellesPaul NewmanPaulette GoddardPreston SturgesRichard WidmarkRita HayworthRobert MitchumRudolph ValentinoShirley TempleSidney PoitierSpencer TracySteve McQueenTeresa WrightTyrone PowerVincent PriceVivien LeighWilliam HoldenWilliam PowellWilliam WylerWoody Allen By HolidayNew Year's DayPresident's DayValentine's DayEasterMother's DayFather's DayMemorial DayJuly 4thLabor DayColumbus DayHalloweenThanksgivingChristmasBlack History MonthWomen's History Month All Blogs4 Star Films (3507)50 Most Influential Disney Animators (58)A Person in the Dark (367)All Good Things (815)Backlots (412)Caf? Muscato (572)Caftan Woman (904)Carole & Co. (3081)Cary Grant Won't Eat You (492)Cinema Crossroads (42)Cinematic Catharsis (932)Cinematically Insane (268)CineMaven's Essays from the Couch (152)Classic Cinema Gold (319)Classic Film & TV Cafe (1286)Classic Film Review (14)Classic Movie Hub Blog (1970)Classic Movie Man (979)Classic Movies (3247)Classic Reel Girl (95)Comet Over Hollywood (1341)Creme de la Creme (32)Criterion Blues (770)Critica Retro (1466)Curtains (58)Durnmoose Movie Musings (1105)Film Reviews and Anything Else I Get Inspired by (27)Finding Franchot: Exploring the Life and Career of Franchot Tone (161)Flickers in Time (2221)GlamAmor (587)Hitchcock Master (147)Hollywood Revue (532)Hometowns to Hollywood (857)How Sweet It Was (86)In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood (154)Lady Eve's Reel Life (733)Le Mot du Cinephiliaque (945)Love Letters to Old Hollywood (150)MacGuffin Movies (362)Movies Silently (1029)Noir and Chick Flicks (1998)Noirish (1273)Once Upon a Screen (420)Outspoken and Freckled (140)Phantom Empires (60)Pop Culture ImagineMDD (103)Serendipitous Anachronisms (82)Shadows and Satin (1009)Silver Scenes - A Blog for Classic Film Lovers (1937)Smum County (115)Stardust and Shadows (120)Studies in Cinema (118)The Baz (163)The Blonde At The Film (331)The Bogie Film Blog (147)The Cinema Dilettante (110)The Giddy Blog (152)The Great Katharine Hepburn (240)The Hitless Wonder Movie Blog (1771)The Jeanette MacDonald Blog (94)The Man on the Flying Trapeze (643)The Old Hollywood Garden (463)The Timothy Carey Experience (1181)The Vintage Cameo (134)The Wonderful World of Cinema (629)Timeless Hollywood (73)True Classics (573)Virtual Virago (1634)Where Danger Lives (136)Wolffianclassicmoviesdigest (640)

I never went to summer school, and I genuinely enjoyed taking standardized tests. But I still feel an instant kinship for these kids and their world. I was a high school student decades later, and I’ve only taught in a classroom on a very limited basis. And yet, these experiences made me recog read more

Some Kind of Wonderful announces itself in all its ’80s glory with a montage of drums, synths, working-class grease monkeys tinkering on cars, and a pair of teens making out. There’s no doubt it’s a John Hughes movie, and though Howard Deutch was called back after Pretty in Pink t read more

Wargames is a movie for the age of “Star Wars,” and by Star Wars, I’m referring to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Because, despite detente, these are still the days of the Cold War, mutually assured destruction, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Warm and fu read more

The Barkleys of Broadway was initially conceived as a reunion. It was meant to star Fred Astaire and Judy Garland to capitalize on their successful partnership with Easter Parade. Taking nothing away from Judy, it does feel like there’s something propitious about Astaire and Rogers getting bac read more

Ralph Bellamy, Jack Carson, and Fred Astaire sounds like a stellar triumvirate for a movie, and Carefree does us a favor by getting the three men together. Bellamy takes up his usual post as the other man and jilted lover, Stephen Arden. Amanda Cooper (Ginger Rogers) can’t seem to make a decis read more

Taken in the lineage of movie musicals, Follow The Fleet feels like a prototype for On The Town, or maybe there were just more movies focusing on sailors on leave back in the day. It’s like romances set on ocean liners. With the proliferation of commercial air travel, it’s possible a who read more

Roberta opens with a troupe of musicians known as the Wabash Indianans who perform a wonderfully kooky organ routine in the middle of a train depot. It’s so inventive in fact, including the verbal gymnastics of Candy Candido, that they get sacked before they can even begin their gig in France. read more

Circle of Danger introduces us to our hero, Clay Douglas (Ray Milland), off the coast of Florida. He’s part of a team of salvagers culling the depths. For others, it’s a moneymaking proposition. For him, it’s solely mercenary. The first sign of real dough, and he parlays it into a read more

Movies like Easy Living would eventually go extinct with the advent and further proliferation of television. Now these kinds of programs would exist on cable or maybe streamers. It’s 1 hour and 17 minutes with solid stars, fairly impressive production values, and yet it’s certainly filli read more

Below, I highlighted some of the other movies and documentaries I watched in 2025 and managed to jot down a few thoughts. Thanks for reading! Like the modern biopic, it’s cheekily self-aware, but it’s also good fun. Koln 75 slaloms through time and space, German and English, while pledging an abidi read more

I compiled some reviews of a handful of the films that stood out to me from this past year. Please enjoy! I had the opportunity to spend a long summer in England when I was just a year older than Amelie. It’s that time as much as my time living and working in Japan, which makes me appreciate the read more

Although he’s not always easy to pin down across his oeuvre, Jonathan Demme’s collaboration with Tak Fujimoto in Married to the Mob elicits a visual style that can most easily be married with their work together in Something Wild. It feels free and easy yet still deeply empathetic throug read more

Back to the Future is a film I have deep reservoirs of affection for, and I know it’s far from a landmark statement — I’m hardly in the minority. However, I will say that as I began to watch Peggy Sue Got Married, I slowly became attuned to its world and the unfolding premise. Ther read more

With the passing of Claudia Cardinale in 2025, I took it upon myself to watch some of her movies that I had not seen before. Below, I included capsule reviews of two of her earlier performances: At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the picture. I thought it might be a comedia italiana o read more

Dan Dailey has the Texas charm played up a bit as he walks into the Sands Hotel on a first-name basis with everyone. He’s invested heavily in the place — meaning he’s lost a lot of money there. There’s a blatant absurdity in the premise of Meet Me in Las Vegas. Sitting on the read more

The movie opens with a snooty art docent bloviating to a rapt audience about the various paintings within the Pendleton family collection from Renoir to Whistler. The joke is that the latest member of the family, Jervis Pendleton III, has gone a bit off the rails. It’s reflected in his portrai read more

“She’s like a little bell who gives off a pure sound.” Leslie Caron always cast an image of a sweet young gamine presaging Audrey Hepburn, and thus, early in her career, it’s a masterstroke to cast her in the role of a destitute orphan with nowhere to go. Set in provincial Ho read more

Loretta Young must own a pair of the most luminous eyes in the history of Hollywood, and in black and white, she’s incandescent. More important than that, she’s one of the great sympathetic heroines of Classic Hollywood. In The Accused, she plays both a woman in danger and a working prof read more

The Unsuspected has a delicious opening dripping with a foreboding chiaroscuro atmosphere. It’s the dead of night. There’s a woman on the telephone tucked away in a back room. The familiar face of Audrey Totter picks up on the other end of the line. She’s out enjoying herself at a read more

The Chase opens as a wonderful contrivance of noir done up in a couple of successive visuals. A bedraggled man (Robert Cummings) stares through a shop window at a griddle laden with fresh bacon and hot cakes. He leans in so his hat brim mashes up against the glass, and proceeds to cinch up his belt read more