Like "Training Day," which earned its star a Best Actor Oscar, "Safe House" presents Denzel Washington as a sort of satanic tempter, complete with devilish goatee -- a sly, superior figure of dark aspect and apparently dark designs. Again, the ...

The first ceremony for the Academy Awards of Merit (the now- trademarked nickname "Oscar" had yet to be coined) took place on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner at the then-spanking-new Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The ceremony lasted only 15 ...

Today, this newspaper launches its 16th annual "Beat Beifuss at the Oscars" contest, which has drawn more than 23,000 participants since its debut in 1997, when "The English Patient" was named Best Picture.

Angelina Jolie is an actress of "physical perfection" (according to Vogue magazine) as well as a celebrated humanitarian (she's a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). She combines her profession and her passion to make her ...

Once lauded as the master of "gynecological horror," David Cronenberg applies his directorial speculum to the human cranium in "A Dangerous Method," a confident and fascinating film about the relationship between big brains Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and their ...

Albert Nobbs is a strange "little man" in an unshowy little movie titled "Albert Nobbs," and I took a shine to them both.

Missi Pyle is almost single-handedly responsible for the PG-13 rating attached to "The Artist." According to the classification and rating administration of the Motion Picture Association of America, "The Artist" -- considered the front-runner for this year's Best Picture Oscar ...

"The Artist" is terrific entertainment. Already famous and perhaps overhyped as the first black-and-white silent film of the modern era, this salute to the romance of the movies is novel, funny and refreshing. It's a celebration of joyful uninhibited performance, ...

From its wordy title to the impressive vocabulary and compulsive list making of its possibly autistic young narrator hero, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is a motion picture that never liberates itself from the printed page.

The genitals are exposed while the motivations are mysterious in "Shame," an elegantly composed but overwrought film about a man who apparently wants to obliterate himself through sex -- to fornicate away the pain, so to speak.

The pioneering African-American fighter pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen deserve a more memorable and less cornball movie tribute than "Red Tails," a George Lucas production that perhaps was motivated as much by the Marin County mogul's desire to top the ...

Meryl Streep has 16 Academy Award nominations — more than any performer. She already has two Oscars. I don't begrudge her more, but this year I'd rather see Viola Davis win Best Actress for "The Help" (which might happen) or ...

A kid whacks another kid in the face with a stick at the start of Roman Polanski's "Carnage."

“Glee” meets God in “Joyful Noise,” a lively gospel musical set in a cheerful if economically depressed Georgia small town that’s the apparent embodiment of the “postracial” America that some people hoped would be inaugurated the same day as Barack ...

In 2011, we lost some big entertainers -- literally. From singers and actors to longtime local talent, we say so long one last time.