Have You Ever Seen

One day after the 2026 Academy Awards and right smack in the middle of Oscar Month is the one that won its own 4 trophies 25 years ago. A Beautiful Mind is a touching love story about a real-life paranoid schizophrenic: Nobel-Prize winner John Nash (and his put-upon wife Alicia). Ron Howard & his team play fast and very loose with the facts, including how Nash's condition manifested AND casting Je...

The 98th Academy Awards are finally less than a week away, so I've got an in-depth analysis of the major nominees. It's more wide open than it's been in a very long time, with seemingly only PTA (Best Director), Jessie Buckley (Best Actress) and a few of the technical awards feeling like they're locks. And maybe THEY aren't either! It wasn't an incredible year at the movies, yet these are mostly g...

Here Comes Mr. Jordan is Movie #2 in this 11th Annual Oscar Month. It's the rare film that won awards for the screenplay AND the story. Alexander Hall does a pretty good job directing his cast through a creative, body-jumping fantasy about the afterlife, angels and soul reincarnation. This is the first time Robert Montgomery has been featured on Have You Ever Seen...and him playing a goofy palooka...

Betting on everything is common these days, yet somehow Around The World In Eighty Days isn't on everyone's lips in 2026. And...it shouldn't be. You really feel that 3 hours. Michael Anderson's adventure comedy has posh David Niven circumnavigating the globe with his man-of-action valet, Cantinflas, and they have to do it in the title deadline...while being pursued by a man from Scotland Yard, who...

The final podcast on Have You Ever Seen in Black History Month talks for the 4th time about a movie with a primarily black cast. Otto Preminger often directed Issues Movies and here he's dealing with the Gershwin opera that's all about murder, rape, drug addiction, fishing and poverty…with some racism thrown in there too. Porgy And Bess is set-bound and melodramatic though. Bad print aside, the st...

As February winds down, I spend a lot of time in this 'un talking about 2 versions of Camille where a courtesan's life is ending because of tuberculosis. The main thrust of this 720th episode is George Cukor's take with Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor, then I zipped through a review of the 1921 Camille with Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. They're both weeper love stories where the men won't tak...

Black History Month has inspired me to cover 3 (of what will be 4) race-related movies in February, but Pinky is the most overt about that charged topic. Ethel Waters has a key role as Jeanne Crain's granny in Elia Kazan's complicated movie...while Crain plays a mixed-race woman who passes for white, dealing with mean-spirited racism in the south while her boyfriend just wants her to go back up no...

Presidents' Day? Bah! Let's talk about a movie a certain POTUS would NEVER watch. Stormy Weather is a somewhat biographical musical about the life of dancing legend Bill Robinson...with Lena Horne, Dooley Wilson, Fats Waller & Cab Calloway sharing the screen with Bojangles. Black people dominate director Andrew Stone's canvas, even though race isn't really the point here. Stormy Weather is just ab...

There's no better way to celebrate both Valentine's Day AND also my birthday than by talking about Hell Or High Water! David Mackenzie's layered Robin Hood-esque modern western was my #1 movie of 2016, partly because entire cast is fantastic. Jeff Bridges was nominated for his supporting work, but Ben Foster is even better. And Taylor Sheridan's Texas-set story they're all in is complex because we...

I'd like to know what's buzzin', cousins, as I bring you the 716th podcast on Have You Ever Seen. Preston Sturges was making a lot of hay in the early '40s, releasing The Lady Eve AND Sullivan's Travels the year before The Palm Beach Story came out. Palm Beach isn't as classic or as funny as THOSE two are, but it's an effectively zany, fast-talkin' rom-com. Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea make f...

After yesterday's episode about the unchosen 450 actors & actresses who were in fact nominated for the AFI's Top 100 Stars list, now it's time to begin a quest. I will review the films of MANY of the 180-ish folks who this podcast has never discussed. And since Eddie Cantor, Ann Sothern, George Murphy & the Nicholas Brothers are in Kid Millions and the Three Stooges are in Soup To Nuts, I'm knocki...

Surprise! I didn't say during Monday's episode that I'd be posting 2 podcasts later in the same week, but here's the first one. Here I'm talking about the American Film Institute's Top 100 Stars list, which was really 50 stars (25 men, 25 women). Although their odd numbering method isn't really the point…and neither is their dumb criteria. No, this 714th Have You Ever Seen podcast is REALLY about...

It may be Groundhog Day, but I'm talking about Show Boat, the Hammerstein & Kern Broadway musical that was turned into a big-budget movie. Any film with singing that also has subplots about deadbeat husbands, alcoholism and racism (and a scene with blackface) risks failing to pull off such a tricky balance, but Frankenstein director James Whale DOES make it work. He's got Irene Dunne, Allan Jones...

Character actor extraordinaire Edmond O'Brien's insurance investigator is actually the focus in Robert Siodmak's The Killers, but Burt Lancaster is quite powerful in his big-screen debut. And then there's the stunning Ava Gardner as the devious femme fatale. The entire cast is solid, the story is layered in its flashback structure (which is similar to Citizen Kane), plus, the main insurance-claim...

The fabulous Fargo was reviewed on this channel over 10 years ago, but you betcha believe that seeing it again a few weeks ago prompted some note-taking. So while the bright light in Joel & Ethan Coen's very violent comedy, the Oscar-winning France McDormand, is wonderful as the pregnant hero cop--and Macy, Buscemi, Stormare and Presnell are horrible, stupid or both--the point of this fresh Fargo...

Reviews about black movies on Martin Luther King Day haven't been a tradition on this channel, but episode #710 is all about Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil and a cast that (mostly) looks just like them. In A Raisin In The Sun, they're a tumultuous family who come into a windfall of insurance money…and how to spend it is the thrust of the drama. Put it all into…a house? An education? A ba...

Michael Clayton was released right in the middle of George Clooney's 15-year run of remarkably successful filmmaking. From 1998 to 2013, the charismatic star--who so often played it best when he played it weary--acted in, directed, wrote and/or produced some of the best projects around. He got money, awards...or both. And in Tony Gilroy's directorial debut, Clooney is intense and he's just terrifi...

Ealing Studios has an incredible legacy in England's film history, so they were overdue to get a talking-about on Have You Ever Seen. In The Lavender Hill Mob, Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway and a slew of character actors have plenty of fun being gold thieves trying to pull off the perfect crime. A Fish Called Wanda was another classic comedy directed by Charles Crichton, but he was just as sly a...

An uplifting and inspirational dramedy seems like a pretty good way to start 2026 on Have You Ever Seen...although emphasize the drama in that portmanteau because this one isn't big on comedy. Frank Capra made a lot of films about social justice, although this has an unfortunately still-relevant message. Gary Cooper plays the title character, a hair-trigger small-towner who goes to New York and is...

To wrap up 2025 with the 70th episode of the year (and the 706th show in the history of Have You Ever Seen), it was high time to yap about Tony Scott. Crimson Tide is one of the underrated director's best flicks. His mutiny-on-a-submarine movie stars Gene Hackman as a crass, demanding captain battling his thoughtful, by-the-book executive officer played by Denzel Washington. The often-glaring Denz...

Killer's Kiss was the maestro Stanley Kubrick's second film and it IS amateurish, especially by his incredibly high standards. The technical genius' cast is just okay in this...and they aren't as big and memorable as most of his casts would be in later works. Where's the lowered-brow glare?! Still, Jamie Smith, Irene Kane and Frank Silvera are rock-solid in this thriller about a boxer, a dancer an...

I can pick 'em because what better way to celebrate Christmas Eve than to talk about an island-bound whodunnit based on an Agatha Christie book?! Director Rene Clair gathered an ensemble cast of acclaimed character actors (including Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston and Judith Anderson) as a stealthy killer exacts sick justice on people accused of murder, using a nursery rhyme as the theme o' death....

With just a few days to go until Christmas, it's time for another movie set on the big day. Not-so-jolly ol' (not a saint) Nic Cage plays an ordinary and restrained regular guy in The Family Man while Tea Leoni is at her most likable and charming as his wife. After splitting up in college, Mister Successful gets a glimpse of what their life COULD have been. The controversial frat-boy Brett Ratner...

Animated dogs share a plate of spaghetti, furry love is in the air and a classic romance was born 70 years ago in Disney's Lady And The Tramp. The Cocker Spaniel with the great floppy ears charmed her rascally Tramp so much that he even settled down with his "pidge". And while this isn't at the level of Snow White or Pinocchio, it's a lighthearted, enjoyable dog romp that became a blockbuster. On...

We're halfway through the month and only 10 days away from Christmas, so it was time to start featuring red, white and green movies on Have You Ever Seen. And for the 701st episode, I'm prattling on about Jim Carrey playing  The Grinch. And does he! The rubber-faced Canadian was about as perfect as anybody could have been playing Dr. Seuss' iconic mean one...and he also brought dozens of over-the-...