Tom and Jerry were originally called Jasper and Jinx, but only in their first cartoon, the Oscar-nominated "Puss Gets the Boot," in 1940. After the name change, their Hannah-Barbera shorts would be nominated an additional dozen times, winning seven statues for their funny, fast-paced, violen…

ViacomCBS has been heavily advertising Paramount+, its new streaming service, with an ad campaign that has some of its biggest stars — everyone from James Corden to Beavis and Butt-Head — on an expedition to scale Paramount Mountain.

Almost 50 years ago, there was another Hollywood movie about Billie Holiday. "Lady Sings the Blues" starred Diana Ross as the talented but troubled jazz singer. Ross was good in the role, but the film was a muddled mess of dramatic situations that didn't exactly stick to the truth, that play…

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the Oscar-nominated writers of the 2011 hit comedy "Bridesmaids," finally reunite to stir up more funny business in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar." The duo, BFFs in real life, wrote the script and co-star as a pair of fluffy-haired best friends who leave t…

For the fourth filmed version of Noel Coward's hit stage play "Blithe Spirit," director Edward Hall and his battery of script writers have managed to keep much of the ditzy original flavor of the Coward piece - it's still set in 1930s England - but also make it accessible to and funny for mo…

I can't recall the last film that has been so praised, so nominated by so many film and critics groups as "Nomadland." Categories include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and others. It's also been collecting heaps of …

I started watching this movie - reluctantly, because someone told me it was about people caught in a time loop, a genre that has worn out its welcome for me. And right there, in the first few minutes, it was as if I was caught in my own time loop, of seeing exactly this sort of film again an…

Christopher Plummer, the elegantly voiced, Oscar-winning actor perhaps most fondly remembered for "The Sound of Music," died Friday at his home in Connecticut, his manager said in a statement. He was 91.

Fans of "The Matrix" trilogy will recognize, early on, that there are some similarities between those films and "Bliss." Both are about certain people having choices of living in two different existences. Both involve ingesting special drugs to go from one "place" to the other. Both feature …

You are going to love this or you are going to turn it off, 15 minutes in, after or during a spell of head scratching. There will be no middle ground.

If the kind of movie that you enjoy watching is one that presents a few characters, tosses them together to tell a story, and gets you emotionally involved, then "Palmer" could be for you. But if those characters aren't developed enough to understand their motivations, if the gears that turn…

Here's what "The Little Things" is, and what it isn't. It's a serial killer drama about a couple of cops on the trail of who they think is committing the crimes. It's not an exploitative story that shows the horrific murders happening. It spells out how the two cops, each of them with very d…

"No Time to Die," the latest film in the James Bond series and one of the most anticipated movies of 2021, has been delayed again.

Gangster films have long been a staple of Hollywood, and they've come in all sorts of different guises. There were the early, straightforward good guys vs. bad guys offerings such as "Little Caesar" and "The Roaring Twenties," the lean, violent ones including "Reservoir Dogs" and "Mean Stree…

ViacomCBS' newly rebranded streaming service Paramount+ will go live on March 4, the company announced Tuesday.

For her feature film directorial debut, actress Regina King sets four men in a motel room in 1964, then has them talk - to and about each other, about themselves, and about philosophical, political, and social issues of the day.

People who watch movies with Tom Hanks in them are usually there more because of Tom Hanks than the movie. With the exception of his frightening killer in "Road to Perdition" and the repulsive author (one of six different characters) he played in "Cloud Atlas," Hanks has been drawn to portra…

Forget the ludicrous mini-series "Tiger King," which premiered right around the same time as the pandemic hit America. Forget Tony the Tiger, whose voice and visage have sold millions of boxes of Frosted Flakes. Forget, if you're an old hippie, Tiger Balm, the cooling, menthol-infused cream …

There's a special sort of small British film that doesn't have a precise label, but often has adjectives such as feelgood or laidback attached to it. Top of my head: "Waking Ned Devine," "Calendar Girls," "The Full Monty," "Happy-Go-Lucky." Frequently they're much more about characters and w…

No one would argue that feminist-WWII-action-horror films are in short supply these days. Throw in a bit of soap opera sensibility, and it's safe to say that "Shadow in the Cloud" is a hybrid that's one of a kind. It's also, in just about every way imaginable - with the exception of one outs…

Delaying a Fast & Furious movie is no easy feat.

The box office numbers are in, and Warner Bros. says "Wonder Woman 1984" is a hit.

December has always been one of Hollywood's blockbuster months. Hit films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, "Avatar" and Disney's Star Wars films have all brought in big box office numbers during the holiday season.

There's plenty to recommend about "The Midnight Sky," the film adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton's spare and elegant 2016 science fiction novel "Good Morning, Midnight."

This new Pixar film keeps two main characters at its fore: An adult human named Joe, and a very, very, very old soul - with a sardonic teenager's sensibility - named or, actually, numbered 22.

For fans of 2017's "Wonder Woman," there's something familiar and comforting about the opening scenes of "Wonder Woman 1984." We're back on the island of Themyscira, circa 1900, populated only by women, all of whom are as athletic as they are stunningly beautiful, and by little Princess Dian…

William Goldman, the famed screenwriter of classics like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All The President's Men," once said that "nobody knows anything" in Hollywood. If there was one quote that summed up the entertainment industry in 2020, that would be it.

Gal Gadot did not burst, sight unseen, onto the American movie landscape as the golden tiara-wearing, glowing lariat-twirling, eternally truth-telling Wonder Woman. She had already been a recurring character - the weapon-savvy Gisele - in the "Fast & Furious" franchise, and had minor rol…

When am I going to learn not to judge a book by its cover, or a movie by its title, or by what I think is its premise? I almost passed on watching "The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee." The title is too long and formal. And I was led to believe that it was a comedy about the Australian actor Paul …

The 1970s life of Jean and Eddie (Rachel Brosnahan and Bill Heck), in some Pittsburgh suburb, seems routine, kind of humdrum. She makes him breakfast every morning, he heads off to work, she stays home and putters around. No kids, just the two of them. He comes home. Same thing next day. The…

Do you have a favorite Bee Gees song? How about a favorite Bee Gee? For the younger members of this readership, do you know who the Bee Gees were?

It's December. It's officially pre-awards season, when all the film critics and voters begin thinking about Top-10 lists and nominees. Here's a hot tip for those folks - and for normal moviegoers: Be sure to see "Mank." It's the equivalent of one-stop shopping if you're looking for candidate…

In a momentous decision that could upend the way movies are distributed in the future, Warner Bros., the world's second-largest movie studio, announced it would stream all of its 2021 movies at the same time they hit theaters.