Film

Film

It was a revolutionary moment in cinema. This idea of indie film was born. Soderbergh and Richard Linklater, Spike Lee. Paul Thomas Anderson a little after. My story about Boogie Nights goes like this. So, some guy sends me a script. I never heard of the guy. I called him up and I go, Bro, are they gonna even let you make this movie?

After breaking box-office records with a string of $40 million openings, the studio released Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, which just bolstered its status as the season's most formidable Oscar contender by sweeping the first week of precursor awards. And if, for some reason, One Battle stumbles before the finish line, the title that's best positioned to likely win in its stead is another Warner Bros. movie: Ryan Coogler's Sinners, which, like OBAA, has shown up everywhere it's needed to this season.

Amazon has restocked one of the most popular box sets in the Criterion Collection. Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975 is in stock for $112.48 (was $225). This is great timing on Amazon's part, as the Criterion Collection half-off sale ends this weekend (December 7). At the time of writing, Amazon estimates orders placed today will arrive before Christmas. This gorgeous collection of 15 classic Godzilla movies routinely sells out during these 50% off sales at Amazon, but fortunately Amazon restocked its supply this time around.

Devouring the new Nick Cave documentary on Sky, I am reminded how critics go wild for arty musicians who constantly change direction and dabble in everything. This is its own kind of myth. I know plenty of artists who keep moving one week they're sewing fish scales on to jackets, the next they're painting mirrors or putting seahorses in samovars. The problem is, no one cares.

It is significant that the new Paramount regime's first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Russell Crowe's hair-raising performance as Hermann Goring in Nuremberg is the latest example of the veteran actor's high-risk, high-reward approach. He has a knack for taking on difficult, baggage-laden roles that could have gone spectacularly badly only to deliver the goods and make you want to stand up and yell bravo! You'll struggle to find many other actors working today with an oeuvre as eclectic, varied and downright impressive as the Wellington-born star's. Here are his 20 greatest performances.

"Can we go again?" asks Jay Kelly (George Clooney), a movie star shooting a scene in which the tough guy he's playing dies of a gunshot wound on the soundstage reproduction of a rain-slicked alleyway. "I think I can do it better." These lines from the opening scene of Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly will become the film's wistful recurring theme.

(Yes, Fackham rhymes with a crass kiss-off to the aristocracy.) Written by British Irish comedian and TV presenter Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, Fackham Hall has plenty of material to work with the historical soap's grand finale just premiered in September, 15 years after Julian Fellowes's series started going upstairs-downstairs with ludicrous portent and wastes none of it.

Why were these people on the topic? Well, allegedly when Baldoni met with a then-"very pregnant" (his words) Lively to convince her to do the film, they discussed whether or not she would circumcise her fourth child. In the process, he told his soon-to-be co-worker (along with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and a handful of other staff in the room) that he himself was circumcised.

Anyone who has sat in the dark and watched the beautiful, glowing images of a silent film come to life on the screen has plenty to thank Kevin Brownlow for. Since the 1960s he has been on a quest to collect, preserve and restore these fragile artefacts of early cinema thousands of which were lost, binned, or melted down for their silver content. He even won an honorary Oscar in 2010 for his efforts.

When Quentin Tarantino insulted Paul Dano's acting abilities in There Will Be Blood, he inadvertently assembled the Avengers of Hollywood stars who have Dano's back. On The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino said Dano's acting was "a giant flaw" in the Oscar-nominated movie and that he was the "weakest" actor in SAG. Not every director agrees.

Even shrunk down on a tiny Zoom display, it is difficult not to be slightly in awe of Jafar Panahi. Probably the world's most famous dissident filmmaker, he is also one of Iran's most prolific - this despite a 20-year filmmaking ban, during which he has made six feature films in secret. One of them, 2011's meta-documentary This Is Not a Film, was smuggled out of Iran on a USB concealed inside a birthday cake.

In Hal Hartley's new film Where to Land, a 58-year-old director of romantic comedies applies to become a groundskeeper at a graveyard. The director, played by frequent Hartley collaborator Bill Sage, is putting together his last will and testament, taking stock of his life in both the material and metaphysical sense. Joe, Sage's character, must make a list of his belongings-his kitchen table, the china from his first marriage, the rights to his films-while looking to contribute something more "useful and perennial" to the world.

When actor Andy Garcia arrived in Los Angeles, seeking a career in entertainment, he had no idea that he'd end up becoming a longtime resident. "I moved to Los Angeles in 1978, looking for work as an actor," Garcia says. "I lived in Hollywood in a storefront apartment on Sycamore and Fountain. I lived there a couple of years, moved, and have been in Los Angeles ever since."

Everyone in my life will be seeing this video.

Have you seen this man lope around, as he does in Jay Kelly through Italian forests and expansive villas? He's awful at it. And it's so endearing! The film blurs the line between fact and fiction by featuring clips from Clooney's real movies and crediting them to the titular actor, insisting Kelly is one of the last A-listers in an industry shedding Hollywood's old guard.