The Alan Arkin-directed Elliott Gould vehicle, released on the day in 1971, is the comic equivalent of grimy classics like ‘Taxi Driver."

On the ensemble guy-talk comedy ‘Beautiful Girls,’ released on this day in 1996, in which one of the titular characters was… a 13-year-old Natalie Portman:

Makoto Shinkai was born on this day in 1973. A look back at his 2007 melancholy career highlight, ‘5 Centimeters Per Second’:  

The Alan Arkin-directed Elliott Gould vehicle, released on the day in 1971, is the comic equivalent of grimy classics like ‘Taxi Driver."

On the ensemble guy-talk comedy ‘Beautiful Girls,’ released on this day in 1996, in which one of the titular characters was… a 13-year-old Natalie Portman:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet prevented Harvey Weinstein from recutting "Amelie," which eventually became an Oscar-nominated, worldwide hit. It was released on this day in 2002:

‘Hero at Large,’ released 45 years ago this week, is “a real movie that occasionally involves superheroes, as opposed to a superhero movie that occasionally involves real people,” @DDayFilms writes.

“Produced while France was under Nazi occupation with both resistance fighters and regime collaborators among the cast and crew,” Sara Batkie writes, “it’s the rare romantic drama whose backstory might be even juicier than what made it on screen.”

The lovely indie “Jazzy” centers on the friendship between two Lakota girls. Our review:

A look back at the late David Lynch's forays into commercial advertisements, and how they reflect his personal work:

Decades before ‘Joker’ did its best ‘Taxi Driver’ impression, ‘Hero at Large’ used the exact same mean streets to tell a charmingly human comic book story when those were still the exception and not the super-powered rule.

The role of the intimacy coordinator in film and television productions has recently come under scrutiny again. Some thoughts:

RT @zach_vasquez: Along with feature films, shorts, and television, David Lynch also directed commercials. I wrote about their place in his…

Marcel Carné's lavish 1945 epic ‘Children of Paradise’ survived impossible circumstances to become a timeless testament to the resilience of art. It’s now streaming on the Criterion Channel:

An often overlooked portion of David Lynch's work were the commercials and promos he directed. @zach_vasquez looks at how the maverick filmmaker threaded the line between his personal and commercial artistic pursuits.

A commercial failure upon its release and all but forgotten since, the Paul Schrader / Michael J. Fox / Joan Jett team-up “Light of Day” (released on this day in 1997) doesn’t quite land, but has moments of electricity.

François Truffaut was born on this day in 1932. Our own Jason Bailey recently addressed the criticisms of his work from the world's foremost movie geek.

“This tender little movie sneaks up on you,” Kimber Myers writes of ‘Jazzy.’ “The final scenes reveal exactly how special a film writer-director Morrisa Maltz has made, and just how outsized its emotional impact is with its tale of a girlhood friendship.”

‘Zardoz’ (released on this day in 1974) may have a reputation as one of the worst films of the '70s, but John Boorman's twisty sci-fi demands far more than your memes.

A commercial failure upon its release and all but forgotten since, the Paul Schrader / Michael J. Fox / Joan Jett team-up “Light of Day” (released on this day in 1997) doesn’t quite land, but has moments of electricity.