After more than a year of pandemic-induced stay-at-home orders, audiences are eager to hit movie theaters and reunite in a dark room with a larger-than-life big screen and booming sound. As theaters slowly open up, studios are gleefully releasing titles in preparation for what is hopeful to be a profitable and exciting big summer launch. Will…

“I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land. In Dixie Land where I was born in, early on a frosty mornin’, Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.” – Chorus from Dixie “And I want to thank, on behalf…

As a development coordinator at a production company, a significant portion of my job involves reading scripts, primarily from emerging and early career writers. Having read hundreds if not thousands of scripts from writers of all backgrounds over the past couple years, certain trends have made themselves incredibly apparent, and none more so than the…

John Ford, who was once accurately described as a “tough, two-fisted, hard-drinking Irish sonofabitch,” has justifiably gone down as one of the greatest directors ever. On the surface, his films seem simple and uncomplicated, very much in the studio style of directors of the period from the 1930s though the mid-’60s. But on closer examination,…

Welcome to Black Writers Week at Rogerebert.com, a celebration of storytellers in diverse fields for Juneteenth week. Because I’m Black and my mother is Black and my father is Black and my sisters and brothers and friends and neighbors were Black, I grew up seeing no difference between them and say Jackie Kennedy or Sidney…

Ned Beatty felt like somebody you knew. He had that fantastic everyman energy that allowed him to jump from genre to genre as one of film history’s best character actors. Not only did he always find a way to fit into whatever project needed him, but he engendered that “hey, it’s that guy” energy that…