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Grand Tour.Grand Tour (2024), director Miguel Gomes’s sixth feature and first to play in competition at Cannes, is a return to the globe-trotting style of his pre-pandemic work. In this follow-up to his remarkably resourceful Covid comedy The Tsugua Diaries (2021), which he codirected with his wife and frequent collaborator Maureen Fazendeiro, the Portuguese filmmaker exhibits an equal but opposite kind of inventiveness as he turns a two-page passage from W. Somerset Maugham’s The Gentleman in the Parlour, a 1930 collection of the English author’s travel writing, into a peripatetic odyssey across Southeast Asia. In 1918, Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a civil servant for the British government, spontaneously flees Rangoon the day his fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), arrives to be married. As Edward sets off by boat to Singapore, and from there to Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Osaka, and Shanghai, telegrams from Molly inexplicably arriving all the while, the story blossoms into a surreal,...

Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour takes its title from an established travel itinerary known as the Asian Grand Tour, a popular option with Westerners seeking a broad but surface-level introduction to the continent in the early 20th century. Proceeding from Mandalay to Rangoon (present-day Yangon) to Singapore, and then on through Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, and Osaka, before ending in Shanghai, the tour was ideally designed to satisfy the era’s popular taste for Eastern exoticism in an efficient, tourist-friendly package.

It’s easy to see the appeal for Gomes, a director for whom boundaries of space and time have always been ripe for cinematic manipulation. Grand Tour retraces the steps of the journey with the imagination and playfulness of his best work, indulging its globetrotting impulses while casting a satirical eye on its uncomfortable basis in colonial conquest.

Gomes’s film actually takes its titular tour twice, utilizing a diptych...

Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

Fritz Lang’s M is the greatest serial killer movie ever made. Of course, there have been dozens, even hundreds, of films on the subject with various innovations and evolutions along the way from the early days of cinema all the way to the most recent twists on the subgenre in MaXXXine and Longlegs. A few can be counted among the greatest films of all time regardless of genre, but all of them owe at least some measure of influence to M. Whether it is the best or not is a matter of opinion, but there is no real argument regarding its greatness. M is a true cinematic masterpiece, a touchstone of innovation in image, sound, performance, structure, editing, writing, and practically every other element of filmmaking. But as with most great films, audiences have been drawn to it again and again over the past ninety-plus years because of its...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s whirlwind career of 40-plus movies made within just over a dozen years kicked off with Love Is Colder Than Death. It ended, all too soon, with a sendoff that may as well have been called Death Is Hotter Than Love. Even if it hadn’t wound up being Fassbinder’s final cinematic will and testament, Querelle, an uber-horny but otherwise unorthodox adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel Querelle of Brest, would still feel like a film precariously perched between rowdy, profane life and that liminal, insatiable zone that always follows la petite mort.

But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.

Ryan Murphy is looking to part ways with a historic mid-century home designed by iconic architect Richard Neutra — to the tune of $33.9 million.

The clean-lined house in Bel Air, California is known as The Brown House and was built in 1955 by the late architect, who was known for pioneering the idea of indoor-outdoor California living and whose houses have since been owned and prized by such entertainment names as Flea, Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch, stylist Jeanne Yang, and directors Josef von Sternberg and Marc Forster.

Feud and American Horror Story creator Murphy purchased the Brown House in 2022 and set about renovating it and decorating it in an eclectic style that wasn’t slavish to its mid-century roots. As he wrote in Architectural Digest earlier this year, “Instead of surrounding ourselves in one particular midcentury style that had long gone out of fashion (and was actually uncomfortable), why not invite...

On the indie side of filmmaking life, Sean Price Williams has seen it all. He’s worked with the Safdies, Alex Ross Perry, Nathan Silver, Robert Green, and Athina Rachel Tsangari, and often more than once. He’s the premier chronicler of New York City independent movies behind the camera, typically shooting on celluloid, and bringing surreal, gritty poetry to character-driven stories that feel on the ground like portraits of versions of ourselves.

One of the most unabashedly movie-loving cinematographers working today, Williams last year moved to directing for the sprawling, scratchy-edged tale of East Coast youth, “The Sweet East,” which remains in theaters and features stars like Jacob Elordi, Simon Rex, Jeremy O. Harris, and Ayo Edebiri.

But even more recently than that directorial debut, he released a “1000 Movies” book via Metrograph Editions, a simple, unadorned paperback that offers, rather than commentary, pages listing his favorite essential films and...

One of the world’s great true-life train heist stories is set to return to the big screen in China. Filmmaker DaMing Chen and veteran producer Chris Lee have partnered to develop a feature adaptation of James Zimmerman’s acclaimed nonfiction book, The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China.

The new film, like the book, will recount the improbable saga of a 1923 incident once known as the “Lincheng Outrage,” which was sparked when Chinese bandits raided a luxury express train bound for Beijing and took over 300 international hostages — captivating the world and stirring up a six-week geopolitical showdown. A subject of popular fascination a century ago, the event inspired no less than Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 romance/adventure classic Shanghai Express, starring Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong, as well as two later Paramount Pictures remakes.

Zimmerman’s book...

Some apotheosis of film culture has been reached with Freddy Got Fingered‘s addition to the Criterion Channel. Three years after we interviewed Tom Green about his consummate film maudit, it’s appearing on the service’s Razzie-centered program that also includes the now-admired likes of Cruising, Heaven’s Gate, Querelle, and Ishtar; the still-due likes of Under the Cherry Moon; and the more-contested Gigli, Swept Away, and Nicolas Cage-led Wicker Man. In all cases it’s an opportunity to reconsider one of the lamest, thin-gruel entities in modern culture.

A Jane Russell retro features von Sternberg’s Macao, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Raoul Walsh’s The Tall Men and The Revolt of Mamie Stover; streaming premieres will be held for Yuen Woo-ping’s Dreadnaught, Claire Simon’s Our Body, Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father, the Devil, the recently restored Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles, and The Passion of Rememberance.

Alexander Payne (Adapted Screenplay Oscar wins for Sideways with Jim Taylor and The Descendants with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash) at JFK airport with Anne-Katrin Titze on the Wc Fields poster in The Holdovers: “I remember that. I had that poster in my room growing up.”

In the second instalment with Alexander Payne, director of the Golden Globe-nominated The Holdovers (screenplay by David Hemingson), starring Dominic Sessa and Golden Globe nominees Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, we start out discussing the Oscar-shortlisted score by Mark Orton after my recommendation of Wurzel-Sepp, an apothecary shop in Munich from 1887. From there we move on to the Trapp Family recordings of The Little Drummer Boy and Silent Night, plus Cat Stevens in the soundtrack; the influence of Marcel Pagnol’s Merlusse, Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Robert Donat in Sam Wood’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Cat Person (Susanna Fogel)

The talk of the internet in late 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s New Yorker story about a date gone horribly awry lit a short-lived fire of discourse surrounding gender and power dynamics. About five years later does the big-screen adaptation arrive, and while it expands details of the original text in a few compelling ways, its new third-act addition calamitously renders the whole experience a pointless, heavy-handed, misjudged exercise that relies heavier on horror tropes than any sense of humanity. – Jordan R. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)

This film, in the best possible way, is a time machine. Comfortable, bittersweet, and very funny, it captures a moment that is nostalgic without the syrup. Paul Hunham...

Mark Shelmerdine, the Emmy-nominated producer who remade Alexander Korda’s dormant London Films label into an independent production powerhouse behind projects including I, Claudius, has died. He was 78.

Shelmerdine died Oct. 26 in Santa Barbara after a long illness, friend and fellow producer Brian Eastman told The Hollywood Reporter. After being diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer in 2016, he had a life-saving liver transplant in 2018.

In the 1980s, Shelmerdine co-founded the Los Angeles branch of BAFTA and the Association of Independent Television Producers, which helped shape the sector that now dominates British TV production. He also published self-help books written by his late wife, Susan Jeffers.

The first of three children, Shelmerdine was born on March 27, 1945, in Buckinghamshire, England. His father, Dick, worked as a police office in Singapore and the Bahamas and as a postmaster in Gloucestershire, England.

Shelmerdine started out as an accountant at Coopers & Lybrand and Taylor Clark Ltd.

Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.

November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Wes Anderson has done it all: India by train, Rhode Island by foot, the Mediterranean by sub, France by bike, faux-Germany by hotel, apple-orchard America by fox, animated Japan by dog, motel Texas by friends, New York City by family. But––despite the feeling that this couldn’t possibly be true––he’s never told a story in western America. In setting he hasn’t gone further west than Houston. Until Asteroid City: Arizona desert by quarantine. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli)

Manuela Martelli’s debut film opens with a sequence that perfectly captures the tone and themes Chile ‘76 will explore. Carmen (played by Aline Kuppenheim) is at a paint shop,...

The desert will again be a hotbed of deceit and larceny in luxurious black-and-white as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival returns to Palm Springs this Thursday through Sunday, with the quintessential noir classics “The Killing” and “Double Indemnity” bookending a marathon weekend that otherwise tends toward more rarely screened ‘40s and ‘50s titles.

Several sons or daughters of the original actors or directors will be on hand, but of special interest to festival attendees will be the presence of one of the actual filmmakers: James B. Harris, 94, Stanley Kubrick’s producing partner for several of his best early films, who’ll be able to speak first-hand about the making of 1956’s “The Killing,” the crime drama that turned out to be Kubrick’s first real masterpiece.

“I’m just utterly thrilled that ‘The Killing’ will show and Jimmy will be the guest on opening night,” says the festival’s longtime guiding light,...

A ruby-and-diamond bracelet that legendary star Marlene Dietrich commissioned from Van Cleef & Arpels in 1937 and wore to the Academy Awards in 1951 is headed to the auction block. It will be offered as part of Christie’s upcoming June 7 sale in New York, titled “The Magnificent Jewels of Anne Eisenhower.”

Interior designer and jewelry collector Anne Eisenhower.

Eisenhower — an interior designer who died last year and was a granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower — was also privately a collector of many pieces of exceptional jewelry, from a Panthère de Cartier brooch to a Tiffany and Co. Art Deco diamond bracelet on which a rose is depicted by rubies and emeralds. Both are included in the auction, which has a total of 31 lots.

But it’s Dietrich’s bracelet, which Eisenhower anonymously purchased at auction in 1992, that is the undisputed star of the sale as well as the lot with the highest estimate — $2.5 million to $4.5 million.

Christoph Hochhäusler’s slow-burn urban noir Till the End of the Night starts with time-lapse footage of the film’s first set, a well-to-do and apparently lived-in apartment flat, being built from scratch out of an empty room. Sadly, what looks to be challenging piece of Brechtian deconstruction is literally a plot point, as well as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the layers of deceit in the story that follows.

Perhaps because it was elevated to the Berlinale competition, where it won one of the festival’s gender-neutral supporting actor prizes for Thea Ehre, or perhaps because it seems like it’s going to break new ground in the genre with the central pairing of a gay male cop and a trans female convict. But whatever it is that might bring undue scrutiny to a serviceable piece of pulp entertainment, Till the End of the Night disappoints not because of what...

Mubi is exclusively streaming restored versions of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom I (1994) and The Kingdom II (1997), and will be premiering episodes of The Kingdom: Exodus (2022) beginning November 27, 2022.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Lars von Trier. Photo by Peter Hjorth.While many may proclaim the death of the author, and even more acknowledge that cinema is an art far more collaborative than the idea of a film's auteur suggests, there are nevertheless certain directors whose name on a film carries undeniable connotations. Among contemporary filmmakers, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier is one of the hardest to ignore. But this is not to say one knows exactly what one is getting with every von Trier picture. On the contrary, not only are his stylistic tendencies extensive and varied, but the stories he tells, even those ostensibly contained within thematic trilogies,...

Writer/Director Lucky McKee discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Tár (2022)

Speed Racer (2008)

The Matrix (1999)

Gloria (1980) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Howling (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Old Man (2022)

Don’t Breathe (2016)

Avatar (2009)

Band of the Hand (1986)

May (2002)

The Piano (1993)

The Crying Game (1992)

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Star Wars: Episode VI – Return Of The Jedi (1983)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones (2002)

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith (2005)

The Dark Crystal (1982) – Bernard Rose’s trailer commentary

Cockfighter (1974) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary

Days of Heaven (1978)

Sweetie (1989)

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Do The Right Thing (1989) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

A History Of Violence (2005)

Se7en (1995)

Straw Dogs (1971) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary,...

Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star in Hollywood. Born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, her career spanned both silent and sound film, appearing in more than 60 movies, including television, stage, and radio.

During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea in 1922 at the age of just 14 and in The Thief of Bagdad in 1924 which thrust her into international stardom.

She was cast in stereotypical supporting roles in her early career and left Hollywood to further her talents in Europe starring in notable roles in Piccadilly; Chin Chin Chow; Daughter of the Dragon and Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express in 1932 with Marlene Dietrich.

She would go on to portray Chinese Americans in a positive light in roles in the late 1930s and after WW2 would return to the spotlight in the 1950s with several television appearances. She died on February 3, 1961, leaving...

Fatih Akin has teamed up with Berlin-based UFA Fiction on his miniseries about German star Marlene Dietrich, starring Diane Kruger.

Based on the biography “My Mother Marlene,” by Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, the five-part series, tentatively titled “Marlene,” is produced by UFA Fiction and Akin’s Bombero International in Hamburg.

Currently in production, the miniseries chronicles Dietrich’s life as an artist, lover, German emigrant and mother as well as a woman who created her own rules and lived by them, whatever the cost.

“‘Marlene’ will be not only the first series I have written and directed but also the greatest challenge in my film career,” said Akin, the series’ creator.

“It is the continuation of my successful collaboration with Diane Kruger. Nobody is better cast than her. Marlene was not only a cinematic icon, but a woman in exile, German immigrant in America, resistance fighter and so much more.

Another example of a tasteful but passionless festival film, Saim Sadiq’s feature debut Joyland errs on the side of arch family drama when its most interesting aspects remain almost in the periphery, promising a much better film. Simply put, what seemed like a modern iteration of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel should have a little more spice, though sadly such comparison might just be the exact projection a critic makes when frankly bored by a film.

In this modern melodrama we find, residing in the Pakistani city of Lahore, the Rana family, who (while dysfunctional) remain a tight unit. But the most problems arise with our lead, the son Haider (Ali Junejo), who can’t stop getting himself into trouble. Early on, asked to kill a goat to prove his place as a man by his quietly intimidating, wheelchair-bound father (Salmaan Peerzada), he falters and his wife...

Stanley Donen's 1952 film "Singin' in the Rain," starring Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, and the obnoxiously chipper Gene Kelly, was once held up in the pages of /Film as the Platonic ideal of movie musicals. It is a certainly a dance showcase of the highest order, and an unapologetic Hollywood nostalgia piece. Silent films are on the way out, sound pictures are on the way in, and singing and dancing are all set to be the future of cinema. "Singin' on the Rain" is also a jukebox musical. The songs are all old standards, including the title number, which came from "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" as did "You Were Meant for Me." "You Are My Lucky Star" was from "The Hollywood Revue of 1936," and "Good Morning" came from Busby Berkeley's 1939 film "Babes in Arms." Kelly and Donen concluded their film with a very, very long -- a Very long...

Last week Warner Bros. announced that it was shelving the upcoming HBOMax release Batgirl along with an almost finished sequel to their animated film Scoob. All of this, while announcing massive layoffs in various departments across the board and the cancelation of various projects in early development. Kevin Smith even mentioned that a DC Project he had been working on was shut down on the latest episode of Hollywood Babble-On alongside co-host Ralph Garman.

The surprising part of this is the shelving of almost finished projects. The Batgirl film has already cost them 90 Million and was done enough to do some test screenings. Weirdly this is not the first time completed movies have been put up on the shelf, never to see the light of day. We’ve rounded up ten shelved movies from well-known creators or star well know actors.

Conversations With Vincent – dir. Tim Burton

I don’t...

“There is an air of quiet death in this house, and I do not like the way it smells,” Reynolds Woodcock announces over breakfast in “Phantom Thread.” Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary (“Phantom Thread” co-star Vicky Krieps) appears to feel the same way about Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, the difference being she has finally got used to its odor. It doesn’t help that, by Christmas 1887, a quiet death is exactly what “Elise,” the now-40-year-old spouse of ruler and busybody Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), seems destined for.

No chance. In the hands of Krieps and Austrian director Marie Kreutzer (who directed the Golden Bear-nominated “The Ground Beneath My Feet”), the Empress Elisabeth of “Corsage” is an irreverent, often immature, and tremendously endearing first lady with an insatiable desire to determine her own future. Having helped establish the doomed Joint Monarchy and reigned in Vienna for longer than any ruler’s wife,...

As millions brace for a legal decision that would irrevocably, detrimentally shape our future, it can be hard to localize the attendant feelings—fear, anger, helplessness—in anything but the present moment, much less cinema. Yet abortion has been subject for consideration since the silent era, reflecting concerns of their time and creators. So we can see in It Happens to Us: Abortion in American Film, Metrograph’s series curated by Emma Myers and featuring work ranging from Josef von Sternberg to Jenny Slate.

We’re proud to present an exclusive trailer for the retrospective, from which 50 of proceeds will go towards Naral Pro-Choice America and additional U.S. reproductive rights orgs. True to the urgency of this exact moment it pulls no punches, interspersing famous faces with statistics on the indisputable nature of abortion’s necessity.

Says Myers:

“I’ve been trying to make this series happen for quite...

Audrey Diwan’s Happening launched New Directors/New Films in April, mesmerizing viewers with the story of a brilliant literature student from a working-class background seeking an abortion to keep her life from derailing. In 1963 France the procedure was illegal. The suspense builds with each week a new chapter title as she seeks help from doctors, friends, the boy she slept with, and her body continue to change. Everyone backs away, judgmental, terrified of being thrown in prison for helping, or both.

‘Happening’ took the Golden Lion in Venice last year. Star Anamaria Vartolomei won the César Award for best newcomer Deadline review here. Diwan and Marcia Romano wrote the screenplay based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Annie Ernaux.

IFC Films releases ‘Happening’ (L’événement) in four theaters this weekend – IFC Center/Lincoln Plaza in New York, the Landmark/the Grove in LA, expanding thereafter a bit faster than anticipated.

Conrad Nagel, the handsome matinee idol and co-founder of the Academy Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was the host of the fifth annual Academy Awards on Nov. 18, 1932. The evening marked Nagel’s second stint at Oscars host; the then-academy prez had hosted the festivities two years earlier. He turned on the charm in his sophomore outing at the glamorous banquet at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel honoring films released between Aug. 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. (Nagel would later co-host the first televised Oscars with Bob Hope in 1953.)

Eight films vied for Best Picture: John Ford’s medical drama “Arrowsmith”; Frank Borzage’s marital drama “Bad Girl”; Mervyn LeRoy’s examination of tabloid journalism “Five Star Final,” Edmund Goulding’s stylish drama “Grand Hotel”; Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code musical comedies “One Hour with You” and “The Smiling Lieutenant”; and Josef von Sternberg’s luscious pre-Code melodrama “Shanghai Express,” starring his muse Marlene Dietrich.

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Organized crime has always made for good entertainment.

Our cultural obsession with movie mobsters goes all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s. The first mob movie was Josef von Sternberg's "Underworld" in 1927, and was quickly followed up by a number of pre-code crime flicks like Howard Hawks' "Scarface" and Mervyn LeRoy's "Little Caesar." By the 1980s and early '90s, mafia movies were huge crowd-pleasers. Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather," Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," and Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" have all become revered film classics, and helped reignite interest in these stories.

In 1999, the HBO series "The Sopranos" took television by...

The post The Real Mob Couldn't Stop Talking About The Sopranos – Here's Why appeared first on /Film.

The Dog Days Aren’t Over: Graf Puts a New Coat of Paint on the Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic, aka the German Republic, which lasted from 1918 to 1933, is one of the most romanticized periods of a cultural renaissance in literature or cinema. Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) heralded the rise of Marlene Dietrich, while Christopher Isherwood’s experiences resulted in his Berlin Stories (1945), which gave us the penultimate Cabaret (1972). But this period of chaotic excesses, Germany’s “Golden Twenties,” which mirrored the hedonistic onslaught across the Atlantic with America’s own Roaring Twenties, of course came crashing down into one of the darkest chapters of world history as the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler forever changed our conception of modern man’s capability for hatred and penchant for cruelty.…...

Sensing a potential trend in the possible nominations of three major Oscars categories — best director, actor and actress — we could see a first-time occurrence for the Academy Awards on Tuesday. However, if you read the tea leaves put forth by the nominations for the DGA and SAG, there’s a strong possibility that all three of those categories may not include a first-time nominee — a first in Oscar history.

For best actor, the SAG lineup recognized all former nominees and winners — Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield, Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Even the ones on the bubble are once-nominated or crowned, including Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”), Bradley Cooper (“Nightmare Alley”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”). The closest first-timers in the running seem to be Golden Globe nominees Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”) and Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza...

The public considers the Academy Awards as a Hollywood event. True, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is headquartered in Southern California, and most of the best pic contenders are American and/or in the English language. But Oscar history proves they have been an international event from the beginning.

In the first year (1927-28), there were nominations for directors Herbert Brenon (born in Ireland) and Lewis Milestone (born in Moldova), plus a special award to Charlie Chaplin (from the U.K.).

The next five years saw two noms apiece for directors Ernst Lubitsch (Germany) and Josef von Sternberg (Austria). And the second best actress Academy Award was given to Canadian Mary Pickford.

The early years of Oscar featured a slew of non-Americans. Aside from mega-star Chaplin, the list of early Academy Award winners includes Emil Jannings, George Arliss (U.K.), Claudette Colbert (raised in the U.S. but...

For this perplexing British production Peter Sellers fronts a solid cast in a numbingly literal tale of seven men buried alive in a wartime warehouse of supplies and foodstuffs — and who are forced to stay there for years, praying for rescue. Stories of this kind usually come with a heavy moral or dramatic pyrotechnics, but after the opening barrage that drives the men underground, the balance of the film is a slow march toward the inevitable. The supply of candles lasts for an entire two years . . . and then runs out. Excellent extras cover the production in detail, and a 1945 documentary about the Channel Islands is an unexpected delight.

The Blockhouse

Region Free Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. (both versions) / Street Date January 17, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Peter Sellers, Charles Aznavour, Jeremy Kemp, Per Oscarsson, Peter Vaughan, Nicholas Jones, Leon Lissek, John Levene, Alfred Lynch.

Cinematography: Keith Goddard

Art Directors: Low Austin,...

Something strange happened to Penélope Cruz as she rehearsed on the set of “Parallel Mothers.” Whenever the crew would come to collect the doll she was using as a stand-in for a flesh-and-blood baby, Cruz tensed up. She became combative. It didn’t matter that it was only a toy — she refused to surrender her child.

“It freaked me out,” remembers Cruz. “When the prop department would take the doll, I went psycho. It was my baby. I felt something deep in myself that was like if you take the fucking doll from me, I’m going to hit you.”

That primal instinct and protective flame would serve Cruz well when it came to putting “Parallel Mothers,” the story of two women whose children are switched at birth, on the screen. The film, which marks her eighth collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, is one of the most psychologically rich and surprising of their partnerships,...

Julia Child saved America from the Jell-o salad, yes, but the documentary “Julia” reminds us that that’s but one of her many accomplishments. From “Rbg” directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West, it’s a film that falls squarely into what we might start calling the CNN Films house style — a portrait of a beloved figure that reminds you why that figure is beloved.

Still, as personality-based docs go, it’s one that offers both a comprehensive examination of one person’s accomplishments and importance as well as some moments of reflection about its subjects human frailties and shortcomings.

Cohen and West unpack the legend :Julia McWilliams was born to a wealthy family in Pasadena, Calif., and she escaped her father’s efforts to marry her off by enlisting during WWII, where she did office work for the Oss. Assignments to Sri Lanka and China brought her close to cartographer Paul Child,...

This ‘dawn of sound’ classic from Josef Sternberg is an important early entry in the gangster genre, a romanticized tale of urban crime with little violence but a full measure of romantic revenge. Star George Bancroft is the title underworld kingpin, who risks everything to hold his girlfriend Fay Wray the way he holds onto power — with his fists and with his gun. The highly sentimental story has some odd ideas about prison rules on Death Row; although packed with ‘Sternbergian’ touches the visuals aren’t as overtly poetic as is his norm. It’s an interesting study from the first year of ‘all talkie’ pictures: the audio is highly creative but the dialogue delivery is slow — perfect for anyone learning English!

Thunderbolt

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1929 / B&w / 1:20 Movietone (?) / 85 min. / Street Date July 20, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall, Eugenie Besserer, James Spottswood,...

The year of 1969 saw the moon landing of the Apollo 11’s Eagle module, Richard Nixon sworn in as the 37th president of the United States, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village ushering in the gay rights movement, the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family, the landmark Woodstock Music and Arts Fair which attracts 400,000, the tragic and violent Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway and even Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...

With Cannes Film Festival now just around the corner, updates are coming in for our most-anticipated cinematic event of the year. The Un Certain Regard––which has now confirmed its full jury with Andréa Arnold (President), Mounia Meddour, Elsa Zylberstein, Daniel Burman, and Michael Covino––has unveiled its opening night film.

Arthur Harari’s Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle will premiere on the first night of the festival. Shot in Japanese, this international coproduction tells the story of the soldier Hiroo Onoda that was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944, to fight against the American offensive. As Japan surrenders, Onoda ignores it, trained to survive at all costs in the jungle, he keeps his war going. He will take 10 000 days to capitulate, refusing to believe the end of the Second World War.

As the Cannes synopsis reads, “Between Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Josef von Sternberg...

French filmmaker Arthur Harari’s “Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle” will open the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes’ Official Selection.

The film tells the story of soldier Hiroo Onoda who was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944 to fight against the American forces. As Japan surrenders, Onoda ignores it, and, as he is trained to survive at all costs in the jungle, he keeps his war going. He will take 10,000 days to capitulate, refusing to believe the end of WWII.

The cast includes Endō Yūya, Tsuda Kanji, Matsuura Yūya, Chiba Tetsuya, Katō Shinsuke, Inowaki Kai and Ogata Issei.

“Between Kon Ichikawa’s ‘Fires on the Plain,’ Josef von Sternberg’s ‘Anatahan’ and ‘They Were Expendable’ of John Ford, with lighting by Tom Harari, the director’s brother, ‘Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle’ is a staggering internal odyssey, an intimate and universal view of the world and the history,...

It is the second film by French director Arthur Harari.

French director Arthur Harari’s second feature Onoda - 10 000 Nights In The Jungle has been revealed as the opening film of Un Certain Regard at Cannes next month.

This brings the number of films due to be showcased in the section to 20.

The film follows real-life Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda who was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944, to fight against the US offensive. When Japan surrendered, Onoda, who has been trained to survive in the jungle, refused to capitulate and kept his war going. It took 10 000 days...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their lineup for next month and it’s another strong slate, featuring retrospectives of Carole Lombard, John Waters, Robert Downey Sr., Luis García Berlanga, Jane Russell, and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman. Also in the lineup is new additions to their Queersighted series, notably Todd Haynes’ early film Poison (Safe is also premiering in a separate presentation), William Friedkin’s Cruising, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorama.

The new restorations of Manoel de Oliveira’s stunning Francisca and Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli will join the channel, alongside Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, Bong Joon Ho’s early short film Incoherence, and Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Rosetta.

See the lineup below and explore more on criterionchannel.com.

#Blackmendream, Shikeith, 2014

12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet, 1957

About Tap, George T. Nierenberg, 1985

The AIDS Show, Peter Adair and Rob Epstein, 1986

The Assignation, Curtis Harrington, 1953

Aya of Yop City,...

It’s Marlene Dietrich, before Josef von Sternberg and The Blue Angel — and much of her mystique is already present. This sophisticated German silent observes a precarious, dangerous love triangle. Two men are entranced by the same woman: one deserts his bride on their wedding night and the other may have killed to possess her. Neither seems to get what he wants, yet Dietrich’s ‘woman one longs for’ is not a scheming femme fatale … maybe. The fluid, very modern direction of Curtis Bernhardt will be a revelation — this obscure Marlene Dietrich starrer is a superior piece of filmcraft.

The Woman One Longs For

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1929 / B&w / 1:33 Silent Ap. / 78 min. / Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt / Street Date June 8, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Uno Henning, Fritz Kortner, Frida Richard, Oskar Sima, Karl Etlinger, Bruno Ziener, Edith Edwards.

Cinematography: Curt Courant, Hans Scheib

Art direction:...

by Cláudio Alves

A cabaret performer and silent film actress during the Weimar years, Marlene Dietrich left Berlin at the dawn of the 1930s. She abandoned Germany, traveling to Hollywood with director Josef von Sternberg who'd go on to make Dietrich into Tinseltown's most glamorous star. The pair of creative partners and off-screen lovers shot seven films together, all of them classics whose sensuous allure and grotesque opulence make for some of the weirdest pictures to come out of Hollywood at the time. Theirs was a cinema of provocation, hedonistic spectacles that overwhelmed the senses even as they moved at a lethargic pace as if the films themselves are bodies recuperating in the aftermath of an orgasm. As an avowed fan of Marlene Dietrich, this septet represents some of my favorite flicks, their dreams of celluloid working as siren songs that never fail to seduce and enchant.

The Criterion Channel...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Cowboys (Anna Kerrigan)

Hearing writer/director Anna Kerrigan talk about the origins of her latest film Cowboys is to understand the love she has for Montana and the way it provides a respite from the noise of city life. With that sense of comfort in nature’s majesty, however, also lies the potential for disconnect where politics are concerned since those who call that state home aren’t always the most diverse or understanding when it comes to lifestyle choices that fall outside the “norms” of their conservative religious worldview. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Kerrigan would seek to bridge that gap creatively. She chose Montana’s...

After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.

Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.

Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...

Finally, a horror shocker that needs to make no excuses! Harry Kümel’s interpretation of the Elizabeth Báthory legend excels in all departments and succeeds in each of its aims. Erotic Eurohorror meets Sternbergian visual decadence, making a vivid (and bloody) statement about classic screen exoticism. Given the full glamour treatment, silky Delphine Seyrig is striking as the deceptively congenial vampire queen. It’s a rare throwback to the beginnings of erotic Eurohorror — sex and death, together again! Blue Underground takes the leap to 4K Ultra HD and stacks the extras with key interview content, and a soundtrack CD.

Daughters of Darkness

Ultra-hd + Blu-ray + CD

Blue Underground

1971 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 100 min. / Le Rouge aux Lèvres, Les Lèvres Rouges Street Date October 27, 2020 / 59.95

Starring: Delphine Seyrig, John Karlen, Danielle Ouimet, Andrea Rau, Paul Esser.

Cinematography: Eduard van der Enden

Film Editors: Denis Bonan, Gust Verschueren

Original Music: François de Roubaix

Written by Pierre Drouot,...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.It was often said that women wanted to be with Cary Grant and men wanted to be Cary Grant, but perhaps no one was more consumed by the perception of Cary Grant—the handsome, unremittingly suave and stylish movie star—than Grant himself. “Even I want to be Cary Grant,” the actor once mused. Indeed, Grant’s public and on-screen persona was a carefully crafted, meticulously honed, and ultimately triumphant development, as much to suit the needs of his ascending celebrity as it was to shroud an unhappy childhood, a series of romantic passions and disappointments, and a latent dark side fostered by uncertainty and doubt. It was, however, and in any and all cases, resoundingly successful. Grant was the epitome of the movie star, a Hollywood icon and one of its most entertaining,...

A bona fide film classic, George Stevens’ movie is less revered as an excellent adaptation of Theodore Dreiser than for its intense, almost hallucinatory romantic scenes between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. A guileless poor boy tries to succeed above his economic background and entangles himself between two very different women. I guess the Academy wasn’t ready to take the glamorous young MGM beauty seriously: both Clift and their co-star Shelley Winters received acting nominations, but not Liz. Stevens’ first ‘fifties picture is perhaps the most balanced of his ‘heavy’ and ‘important’ works, a tragedy that’s too deeply felt to be merely ponderous.

A Place in the Sun

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 8

1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 122 min. / Street Date August, 2020 /

Starring: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle, Fred Clark, Raymond Burr, Walter Sande, Ted de Corsia, Kathleen Freeman, Kasey Rogers, Douglas Spencer, Ian Wolfe.

Cinematography: William C. Mellor...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Filmmaker, libertine, and decadent visionary Rainer Werner Fassbinder went through more doomed romances in the 1970s, the peak of his epic career, than even the most tragic poet could fit into a lifetime. For one, there was his affair with Moroccan actor El Hedi ben Salem, the star of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” a time marked by alcohol and drug abuse, psychological torment by all parties involved, and which ended with Salem going on a stabbing spree and later killing himself. But then there was Armin Meier, an orphaned butcher whom Fassbinder cast in “Chinese Roulette,” “Satan’s Brew,” and “I Only Want You to Love Me.” After their eventual split, Meier downed four bottles of sleeping pills during the week of Fassbinder’s birthday,...