Maureen O'Hara

Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" may be the best-loved Yuletide movie, but certainly nipping at its heels is the delightful 1947 fantasy "Miracle on 34th Street." Edmund Gwenn won the supporting actor Oscar for his enchanting turn as Kris Kringle,...

In the Dec. 28 Movies section, we talked about how some recent movies had less than enjoyable endings, then shared some of our favorite movie conclusions and asked to hear yours. And did we ever hear from you! Here are some of the responses (out of...

St. Patrick's Day is a good excuse to rent a DVD of your favorite movie about Ireland. Here are some of our favorites. Angela's Ashes: Based on Frank McCourt's autobiography, the film 1999 adaptation is an excellent portrayal of one family's attempt to...

It's all in the numbers now. "25 Days of Christmas." "24-hour Merrython." "20 Merriest Christmas Videos." "Studio 60" and "Adam-12." So those last two are titles of series whose holiday episodes air this week. You get the point. The tube hosts so...

1800s * 1889 Rancher Miguel Leonis, known for his rough ways, becomes the area's first recorded traffic death, after getting sloshing drunk and falling out of his wagon in the Cahuenga Pass. Mothers Against Drunk Cowboys is born. 1897 In the dark of...

Friday's the day we indulge in a curious fascination with coffin dwellers, mummies, cadavers, bloodsuckers, skeletons and monsters stitched together from assorted, dismembered body parts. Then we move on to trick-or-treats. Well, not all of us. There...

(PG). A very BIG boy raised among elves heads for New York City to find his birth father. Both goofily sophomoric and smartly hilarious, it just may become that rare thing, a Christmas classic. With Will Ferrell, Zooey .Deschanel, James Caan, Bob Newhart,...

The Star Wars saga becomes available in striking display Tuesday when "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones" is released on DVD, the first major live-action film created directly from the digital source and digitally mastered by THX. Now viewers...

Ever since 1947, "Miracle on 34th Street" has been known as a lovable piece of holiday schmaltz. The cable-friendly classic has a uniquely American way of critiquing capitalism while propagating the big lie that Mr. Macy would have been perfectly happy...

1. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra; 1946) 4 stars The most well-loved of all Christmas movies. One dark Christmas Eve, a good man, building and loan manager George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), is brought to despair by fate and the machinations of evil...

1. THIS LAND IS MINE (Jean Renoir; 1943) 3 1/2 stars Mostly ignored in America, this is a better film than its reputation. A timid, childlike but brainy French schoolteacher (Charles Laughton), hopelessly in love with colleague Maureen O'Hara, must...

1. THE LADY VANISHES (Alfred Hitchcock; 1938) 4 stars Trains are perfect settings for murder-mysteries and thrillers, as Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" proves -- with Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood as lover-sleuths, Paul Lukas as a suave...