“Billy Wilder has a mind full of razor blades.” That’s William Holden’s assessment of writer-director Billy Wilder -- and few pictures illustrate Holden’s point better than Ace in the Hole (1951). Way ahead of its time and eerily prescient about ours, Wilder’s film casts Kirk Douglas as a ruthless reporter who milks a story about a man caught in a mine cave-in to advance his career. The film was inspired by a real-life 1925 incident in which spelunker Floyd Collins became tra

Preston Sturges had one of the greatest winning streaks in screen history. Over a five-year period in the 1940s, he wrote and directed...