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This article contains mentions of suicide.

It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday classic that tells the story of George Bailey being visited by a guardian angel. The movie initially performed poorly but became a Christmas classic after its copyright expired, and it could be broadcast without fees. The film revolves around the Bailey family, with George as the central character who ultimately realizes the value of his own life.

Although Christmas plays only a small role in It's a Wonderful Life, the movie has become a holiday classic, and its story revolves around the Bailey family. The 1946 drama film tells the tale of George Bailey — a man who contemplates suicide and is visited by a guardian angel. The angel, Clarence Odbody, shows George what it would be like in his hometown of Bedford Falls if he had never been born and how his family would have turned out if he had never existed.

“I’m stuck here in this mudhole for life, doing the same full work day after day,” George tells a stranger he meets while leaning over a bridge. George has come to the bridge on a frigid winter night with the intention of throwing himself off and ending it all. “Other men are leading exciting lives, but I – well, I’m just a small-town bank clerk,” he vents. “I never did anything really useful or interesting, and it looks as if I never will. I might just as well be dead. Sometimes I wish I were. In fact, I wish I’d never been born!”

You probably know the above exchange as a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1946 classic starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Henry Travers as the lovable, doddering angel second-class Clarence Odbody. But the above quotation actually comes from the short story “The Greatest Gift,...

Clockwise from top left: Dracula (Universal Pictures), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Columbia Pictures), Dracula: Dead And Loving It (Columbia Pictures), Nosferatu The Vampyre (Anchor Bay Entertainment: Screenshot/YouTube)Graphic: AVClub

Count Dracula is one of the most adapted characters in history. In fact, more actors have taken on the...

It’s the Gold Standard of Christmas movies and likely the oldest feature still broadcast on network TV during the holidays: Frank Capra’s sentimental favorite is his most human movie, the kind of show that convinced people that raising a family is a great idea. Although we’re now a full three generations removed from the world events that surround the story of George Bailey, his problems haven’t dated. Paramount’s anniversary disc gives us a new encoding from a 4K scan, a repressing of the older colorized version, a good making-of piece by Craig Barron and Ben Burtt, a reel of home movies from the film’s wrap picnic in the summer of ’46. . . and a set of ‘Bailey Family Recipe Cards.’

It’s a Wonderful Life 75th Anniversary

Blu-ray

Paramount

1946 / B&w + Colorized / 1:37 Academy / 130 min. / Street Date November 16, 2021 / Available from /

Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,...

Do rediscovered ‘lost’ movies always disappoint? This Depression-era pre-Code science fiction disaster thriller was unique in its day, and its outrageously ambitious special effects –New York City is tossed into a blender — were considered the state of the art. Sidney Blackmer and a fetching Peggy Shannon fight off rapacious gangs in what may be the first post-apocalyptic survival thriller.

Deluge

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1933 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 67 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Peggy Shannon, Lois Wilson, Sidney Blackmer, Lane Chandler, Samuel S. Hinds, Fred Kohler, Matt Moore, Edward Van Sloan .

Cinematography: Norbert Brodine

Film Editor: Martin G. Cohn, Rose Loewinger

Special Effects: Ned Mann, Williams Wiliams, Russell Lawson, Ernie Crockett, Victor Scheurich, Carl Wester

Original Music: Val Burton

Written by Warren Duff, John F. Goodrich from the novel by Sydney Fowler Wright

Produced by Samuel Bischoff, Burt Kelly, William Saal

Directed by Felix E. Feist...

Gabriel Over the White House

DVD-r

The Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 86, 102 min. / Street Date October 20, 2009 / available through the Warner Archive Collection / 17.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone, Arthur Byron, Dickie Moore, C. Henry Gordon, David Landau, Samuel S. Hinds, Jean Parker, Mischa Auer.

Cinematography: Bert Glennon

Film Editor: Basil Wrangell

Original Music: Dr. William Axt

Written by: Carey Wilson, from a book by T. F. Tweed

Produced by: William Randolph Hearst, Walter Wanger

Directed by Gregory La Cava

A Review Revisit.

The unique political fantasy Gabriel Over the White House has become painfully topical lately. This is an update of a 2009 review. To my knowledge nothing has changed with the product — I saw a re-promotion of Twilight Time’s 1984 disc and thought, Gabriel is twice as relevant and at least as scary.

Unstable times in America have produced some pretty strange political-religious message pictures.

“Can’T Buy Me Love”

By Raymond Benson

Frank Capra was a superstar Hollywood director in the 1930s. He had a string of critically-acclaimed and successful pictures after joining Columbia Pictures and elevating the studio from “poverty row” to a force that competed with the big leagues. Two of Capra’s Columbia movies won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Capra became the first filmmaker to win the Oscar for Best Director three times, all within five years. You Can’t Take it With You was Capra’s second Best Picture winner and his third Best Director achievement.

Sometimes his films have been called “Capra-corn,” because they are usually steeped in Americana, explore themes of social class inequality, feature casts of eccentric—but lovable—protagonists and greedy, heartless villains, and contain stories about the Everyman’s struggle against the Establishment. Capra was also one of the developers of the screwball comedy,...

Frank Capra won his third Best Directing Oscar for this Kaufman and Hart adaptation. Star Jean Arthur is radiant, and relative newcomer James Stewart seems to have lifted his 'aw shucks' nice-guy personal from his role. With Lionel Barrymore, Ann Miller, Dub Taylor, Spring Byington and a terrific Edward Arnold. You Can't Take It with You Blu-ray + Digital HD Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 1938 / B&W / 1:37 flat / 126 min. / Street Date December 8, 2015 / 19.99 Starring Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Samuel S. Hinds, Donald Meek, H.B. Warner, Halliwell Hobbes, Dub Taylor, Mary Forbes, Lillian Yarbo, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson. Cinematography Joseph Walker Art Direction Stephen Goosson Film Editor Gene Havlick Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin Written by Robert Riskin from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart Produced and Directed by Frank Capra

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

One of Frank Capra's brightest, most entertaining features,...

Adolphe Menjou movies today (This article is currently being revised.) Despite countless stories to the contrary, numerous silent film performers managed to survive the coming of sound. Adolphe Menjou, however, is a special case in that he not only remained a leading man in the early sound era, but smoothly made the transition to top supporting player in mid-decade, a position he would continue to hold for the quarter of a century. Menjou is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Day today, Aug. 3, as part of TCM's "Summer Under the Stars" 2015 series. Right now, TCM is showing William A. Wellman's A Star Is Born, the "original" version of the story about a small-town girl (Janet Gaynor) who becomes a Hollywood star, while her husband (Fredric March) boozes his way into oblivion. In typical Hollywood originality (not that things are any different elsewhere), this 1937 version of the story – produced by...

Jean Arthur films on TCM include three Frank Capra classics Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, January 5, 2015, on Turner Classic Movies, including three directed by Frank Capra, the man who helped to turn Arthur into a major Hollywood star. They are the following: Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; George Stevens' The More the Merrier; and Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night. One the most effective performers of the studio era, Jean Arthur -- whose film career began inauspiciously in 1923 -- was Columbia Pictures' biggest female star from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s, when Rita Hayworth came to prominence and, coincidentally, Arthur's Columbia contract expired. Today, she's best known for her trio of films directed by Frank Capra, Columbia's top director of the 1930s. Jean Arthur-Frank Capra...

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ sequel could get killed by Paramount (photo: James Stewart and Donna Reed in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’) What would the world be like if any one individual human being had never been born? In most cases, the world would quite possibly be an infinitely better place, but the overwhelming majority of (delusional) humans want to feel good about themselves and their place on our overpopulated, fast-rotting planet. Hence movies such as Frank Capra’s 1946 sentimental fantasy drama It’s a Wonderful Life, released the year after the end of World War II — which reportedly left about 60 million human beings dead (plus countless other non-humans), in addition to millions more maimed, homeless, and/or psychologically destroyed. Starring James Stewart as Small Town America family man George Bailey, who almost kills himself but is prevented from doing so by an angel with way too much time in his hands,...

Sky Movies HD have got quite a good season coming up called ‘Movies You Never Got Around To Watching But Always Wanted To See’ and this sort of thing is perfect for people who aren’t sure what movies they should watch.

Their week of films starts Monday 11th Oct – Sunday 17th Oct and includes classic and groundbreaking movies like Jurassic Park, Jaws, Cool Hand Luke and Dead Poets Society.

Have a look at the list below including the date and time it will air and I’ve given trailers for each movie, when it’s on TV and some of my favourite clips for some of the movies too.

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Mon 11th 5.45pm Dead Poets Society

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Welker White, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles

Synopsis: Set in an exclusive boys preparatory school in 1959, a newly appointed English teacher uses unconventional techniques to inspire his students in classic poetry.