Turner Classic Movies is not only a great TV station, but is also serves as an archivist.  Their moving year-end “Remembers” montages highlight not just the famous faces we lost, but the character actors, cinematographers, writers, and other cinematic artists who didn’t get publication-spanning obituaries at the time of their passing.  TCM has footage of all of almost all of the artists we lost in 2011 and they’ve once again woven a touching tribute.

In 2011, we lost some good ones including Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Falk, Cliff Robertson, Jane Russell, Elizabeth Taylor, Laura Ziskin, and Sidney Lumet.  As far as editing goes, I think the “TCM Remembers 2010″ video is better, but they’re both worth your time so I’ve included both after the jump.

Wings of Desire is one of those films that I’ve always wanted to see, but been weary of getting around to watching. Sure, it’s a well-respected classic of its time, often cited as one of the great films of the  1980′s, and held the cache of “the foreign film people who don’t watch foreign films love” much like films like Amelie or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But when the film came out Pauline Kael decimated it in her review. And I hate being the movie guy who doesn’t like films that everyone else likes, which is often the case. My review after the jump.

Has there ever been a movie with a less boy-friendly title than The Princess Bride? (I mean, no wonder a wary Fred Savage wrinkles his nose and asks, “Is this a kissing book?” when grandpa Peter Falk starts to read.) It’s something of a miracle that the younger me — two months shy of my tenth birthday — even saw it as a kid, but as memory serves, I was there on opening weekend, and now, with all the sophistication and insight that supposedly accompanies my decade-plus of experience as a film critic, The Princess Bride remains the one film I’d salvage in a desert-island scenario. Not Raiders, not Star Wars, but this, a mushy “kissing” movie.