Woody Allen's and Diane Keaton's Oscar-winning masterpiece Annie Hall was a major hit in 1977, and laid out the blueprint that rom-coms and relationship comedies have been following ever since, as its self-aware, realistic dialogue, hilarious cast of supporting characters, and postmodern structure have become a sort of international standard. So for tonight's double feature, we decided to pair it with one of the most recent and best examples: Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World!

James Cameron's Avatar films own two of the top slots in box office history (alongside Thron's cherished Titanic), and The Way of Water's success has Disney on track to deliver three more trips to the ever-more-stunning world of Pandora. But tonight MG pairs it with another blue alien film you may not have heard of - and one, we speculate, that might have been an important influence on the filmmakers: René Laloux' visionary animated masterpiece from 1973, Fantastic Planet!

Steven Spielberg told Tom Cruise that he saved Hollywood with his and Joe Kosinski's magnificent sequel to 1986's Top Gun, and it's true that it both revitalized post-pandemic theatergoing - but it also served to remind us of that 80's feeling of much fun movies and movie stars could be, and served as a sort of swan song for one of that decade's unsung greats: Val Kilmer. So tonight MG takes a look at two of his Top films: the breathtaking Top Gun: Maverick, and the waiting-to-be-redicovered slapstick classic Top Secret!

Marvel and DC continue to dominate global box office, but with Michelle Yeoh's Oscar-Nominated indie darling Everything Everywhere All at Once and Brad Pitt's long-legged, star-powered Bullet Train, MG believes we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!  These non-franchise hits suggest that audiences are finally craving more than just spandex-of-the-week storytelling, and Hollywood is starting to listen - but will it be enough to bring crowds back to the megaplex? 

Auntie Mame was a big hit for both star Rosalind Russell and Warner Brothers in 1958, winning best picture at the Golden Globes and getting nominated for six Oscars - in fact, the character's signature line "life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" was one of the most-quoted for decades...but for some reason, this winning comedy has fallen out of the public eye. Martini Giant thinks it deserves a fresh look, however, as in many ways, it's more radical and boundary-pushing than many films today!

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#1958 #mortondacosta #rosalindrussell #comedy #drama #romance

Cross-dressing comedies were a Hollywood staple for countless decades, from Some Like it Hot to Mrs. Doubtfire - and many, for obvious reasons, have become pretty cringeworthy watches in modern times. But MG argues that Sydney Pollack's classic 1982 comedy Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman as Dorothy Micheals - while still 80's-dated in many ways - actually remains a powerfully empathic work of great depth and humanism - while still delivering on its slapstick conceit! 

Few actor-director partnerships are as enduring or iconic as the one that Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese have enjoyed, from the visceral 70's masterpieces Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, to iconic biopic Raging Bull, to the genre-defining criminal histories of Goodfellas and Casino - and with each outing, the pair has set new standards in character, performance, and storytelling that have changed the course of cinema. But tonight MG wants to spotlight the most-often forgotten collaboration: 1982's painfully awkward and socially prescient The King of Comedy!

We at MG love pop film - Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are popcorn masterpieces. But these have been the rare exception to the wave of mindless, bland franchise pictures that have dominated film culture for more than a decade, and it's hard to believe there was a time - not too long ago - when a gorgeously crafted adult drama could hold its own at the box office. So please join us as we refresh our belief in film as art, and take a loving look back on Wong Kar-wai's achingly beautiful In the Mood for Love!

What better way to end the year than a double feature of end-of-the-world classics? First up we have Stanley Kubrick's apocalyptic comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring the incredible Peter Sellers as three of his greatest characters, and George C. Scott in what is arguably a career best performance as the infinitely quotable General Buck Turgidson - followed by the scrappy, little-seen New Zealand breakout, The Quiet Earth, which turns the standard wake-up-and-everyone's gone plot in bizarre quantum directions!

It's sort of amazing that Martini Giant has been going for years without covering one of the great film artists of the 20th century - Alfred Hitchcock - so we intend to make up for it by starting a new tradition with our first annual Hitch for the Holidays! Tonight we take on two of the master's finest collaborations with the perennially charming Cary Grant: first up, the moody postwar thriller “Notorious” with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, followed by the very blueprint for mistaken identity movies, “North by Northwest!”