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Whether you're getting ready to deck the halls or return to Saturnalia, the holiday season is very much underway. Don't worry, there's still plenty of time to shop for the pop culture lovers in your life, and The A.V. Club is once again here to help. Film Editor Jacob Oller,...

“Paris Has Fallen” immerses viewers in the sumptuous yet politically tense atmosphere of the British Embassy in Paris, contrasting diplomatic etiquette with the chaos of terrorism. This backdrop is more than just a stage; it represents the delicate ties between nations, particularly in a post-9/11 world when trust can be a façade.

The series is a spin-off from the blockbuster “Has Fallen” film franchise, which, although widely derided by reviewers, has carved itself a niche in contemporary action filmmaking by combining explosive thrills with a critique of world politics.

The narrative revolves around Jacob Pearce, a character-driven by a desire for vengeance after being betrayed by his country during a terrible service in Afghanistan. His motivations are complicated, grounded in themes of grief and betrayal that resonate with contemporary societal anxieties about loyalty and national identity.

The initial attack on the embassy, disguised as a celebratory gathering, quickly escalates into a tense siege,...

With turkeys packed in bellies and holiday gift shopping now officially underway, it’s getting to be that time of year where we look back on 2024 and reflect on what’s most important: The movies that made it all bearable. Kicking things off, the storied French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema has released its top 10, which include some selections from IndieWire’s own 2023 best-of list. Though our official 2024 list is not yet locked in, we also share some items on our 2024, so far best-of list. The list only includes movies that opened theatrically in France in 2024, hence the crossover.

Serving as the hub for the French New Wave and launching the careers of legendary talents such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema has been in publication since 1951 and continues to offer a bold, distinct voice in the world of film. One of its more unique choices over...

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After a 14-year run as a feature filmmaker in England (which began during the silent era), Alfred Hitchcock was lured to Hollywood by the bold producer David O. Selznick to direct a big-screen adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's thriller novel "Rebecca." Though the two headstrong men clashed throughout the making of the movie, the finished 1940 film was a commercial and critical smash, topping the box office for the year and taking home the Academy Award for Best Picture. If there had been any doubts as to whether the British director's precise manner of visual storytelling, already perfected in triumphs like "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes," would translate to Hollywood, they were instantly dispelled.

"Rebecca" would prove to be the least Hitchcockian movie the director would make in America, as the master of suspense wasted no time in reverting...

A new stage adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is in development, with Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok attached as the playwright.

Glass Half Full Productions (Potus, Betrayal) and Aaron Glick (Kimberly Akimbo, What the Constitution Means to Me) are producing the adaptation, which is in early stages of development and aiming for Broadway. Majok comes to the project after winning the 2018 Pulitzer prize for drama for her Broadway play, Cost of Living.

In addition to writing Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, Majok wrote the libretto for the new musical Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett, which premiered last summer at the American Repertory Theater.

“The relevancy of mind domination and the end of the world in our current age needs no words; what struck me most in Fahrenheit 451 was its lens on our loneliness. How our yearning for connection and...

Nicolas Cage is one of our most impressive living actors, and a big part of that is because of his intense love of cinema. He's a true student of the craft, with an obsession for older films that has led him to an extensive knowledge of all the medium has to offer. Cage's passion for his projects has led to him becoming the subject of many memes, mostly using his most over-the-top performances, but the man really knows his stuff. So, when Rotten Tomatoes asked Cage for his five favorite films of all time, he came a little over-prepared, offering his top 13 favorite films instead. He said that he simply couldn't narrow it down to five because "there's different movies for different reasons in different lifetimes," which is the most Nicolas Cage thing he could have said.

The actor often looks back to older cinema for inspiration and compares...

Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection will collect six of the Master of Suspense’s classics on 4K Ultra HD + Digital: Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds.

Releasing on November 26 via Universal, the six-disc set is limited to 5,150. It’s housed in premium book-style packaging featuring artwork by Tristan Eaton along with photos, bios, and trivia.

In 1954’s Rear Window, “A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.”

It’s written by John Michael Hayes (To Catch a Thief), based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story “It Had to Be Murder.” James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr star.

Rear Window special features:

Audio commentary by Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Well-Made Film author John Fawell Rear Window Ethics – 2000 documentary Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael...

Martin Scorsese was a fan of a director who contributed to the French New Wave films. If you are guessing François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard, you’re so wrong. Scorsese admired the films of female director Agnès Varda, who was known for her film Cléo from 5 to 7. The Departed director struck up a friendship with Varda in the ’70s and shared that he might have sought her approval for ideas.

Martin Scorsese in Hugo | Credits: Gk Films/Infinitum Nihil

Further praising the director, Scorsese shared that Varda broke all the rules of filmmaking and made films of varying shapes and sizes. Unlike Truffaut or Godard, Varda wasn’t a film critic, nor was she knowledgeable about films. She was a photographer who stumbled upon the art of filmmaking.

Martin Scorsese Respected One Female Director Who Contributed To French New Wave Films Agnès Varda | Credits: Harald Krichel, licensed under Cc By-sa...

With nine Oscar nominations and two wins, Denzel Washington's legacy as one of the finest actors in Hollywood is well-established. But even without the accolades, the man's talent speaks for itself. Often this is literally the case. Alfred Hitchcock once told Francois Truffaut, "The chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well" — something that frequent Hitch collaborator James Stewart had down to a tee. Even Stewart's quiet charisma arguably can't quite match Denzel's effortless magnetism, though. The man can make doing nothing look good like no other. But he can also do a lot when required, and has demonstrated his adaptability across one of the most impressive filmographies in Hollywood.

In 2017, Washington spoke to The Inquirer about his approach to acting at the age of 60. "I'm trying to get better," Washington told the outlet, "This ain't dress rehearsal. I really don't know how many...

“The first version is the work of a talented amateur,” said Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut of his 1934 thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” remade by Hitch himself in 1956. “The second was made by a professional.” Few are the filmmakers who gather sufficient career mileage and goodwill to take a second pass at their own work; fewer are those who make something worthwhile in the process. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not unlike Hitchcock, is the kind of tireless genre craftsman who seems to approach every feature as a test of his own proficiency: “Serpent’s Path,” a brisk, harsh and, yes, clinically professional update of his own 1998 thriller of the same title, passes said test without a moment’s strain.

There’s no urgent reason to remake “Serpent’s Path” except, one presumes, the primarily self-serving pleasures of doing so. The original, a cold-blooded little revenge tale that twists itself into ever more perverse psychological contortions,...

Catherine Deneuve will preside over the 50th edition of the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars.

As part of her honorary role as president of this milestone edition, Deneuve will be delivering the opening speech at the ceremony. The gala event will take place on Feb. 28 at the Olympia concert hall and will be broadcast on French pay TV group Canal+, a media partner of the Cesar Awards.

“Who better than an extraordinary actress to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Césars? Thanks to exceptional talent, a unique career and timeless grace, Catherine Deneuve embodies the very essence of the seventh art,” said the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma.

The French star, whose career spans nearly seven decades, has starred in a raft of iconic films directed by some of the world’s most revered filmmakers, from Luis Buñuel (“Belle de jour”) to François Truffaut (“Le Dernier Metro...

“Diciannove” (Italian-to-English translation: “Nineteen”) begins with a gushing nosebleed, a blood clot splattering out of Leonardo’s (Manfredi Marini) face on the morning he’s headed to university. Think of this — scuzi — on-the-nose metaphor as one of an adolescent system flushing itself out.

Giovanni Tortorici’s deliciously directed and slippery debut premiered in the Orizzonti section devoted to rising filmmakers at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. Now, it heads to Toronto, where the playful but deceptively kindhearted “Diciannove” will continue its search for a distributor. (It’ll happen.) The 28-year-old Tortorici, who hails from the city of Palermo in Sicily just like his movie’s lead, worked as an assistant director on Luca Guadagnino’s 2020 young-adult-centered limited series “We Are Who We Are” before the “Call Me By Your Name” director made him his personal assistant. Tortorci showed Guadagnino his script — which follows Leonardo from London on a business school stint...

There is the faint sound of a callback to Francois Truffaut in Venice Film Festival competition title And Their Children After Them (Leurs Enfants Après Eux), a sunlit story of three teenagers set in a moribund French steel town in the 1990s. Check, for example, those fundamental French subjects: first love and sexual awakening, nature and the spontaneity of youth, the consuming love of family and corresponding desire to break free. It is an echo that grows fainter by the minute, however, as that lightness of touch is weighed down by a repetitive narrative and the charmlessness of its central characters.

Gormless working-class boy Anthony (Paul Kircher) pursues Steph (Angelina Woreth), a pretty girl from a couple of yards the other side of the tracks, from one summer to the next. They meet first at the picturesque local lake, where Anthony has just stolen a canoe along with his cousin (Louis Memmi). That night,...

When people recognize Bruno Gouery on the street he usually gets one of two reactions. Some fans are delighted to see the eccentric Frenchman Luc from Emily in Paris. Others are moved to (genially) scold him as one of those gay men who murdered Jennifer Coolidge on The White Lotus.

“When they know me as Luc, people come up to me with a lot of joy and with a smile,” Gouery says, speaking over Zoom from Paris. “But when it’s from White Lotus they say, ‘You killed Jennifer!’ But either way,...

This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

On the surface, George Lucas’ “Star Wars” has little to do with José Padilha’s “Elite Squad.” One is a fantastical space opera about princesses and droids, the other is a ‘90s-set thriller about police brutality and institutional corruption. And yet — in Brazil — the two films are bound together by an almost identical cultural footprint. “Elite Squad” is as close to a bonafide Brazilian blockbuster as it gets. Not only is Wagner Moura’s Capitão Nascimento perhaps the country’s most well-known fictional character, but his lines are still quoted to this day, often by people who don’t even know their origin.

The launch of “Elite Squad” in 2007 was an event unto itself. Before the movie could be released in theaters, it was leaked through bootleg DVDs that cost — at today’s exchange rate — approximately $1 Usd.

“I was lucky and so excited to discover [Jacques Rozier’s] Adieu Philippine earlier this year in France, because it is very little known and not available in the U.S. It’s my new favorite French New Wave film,” Richard Linklater recently said as he works on post-production on his forthcoming film about the French New Wave.

Now, audiences will finally have the chance to discover Rozier’s rather unheralded work thanks to new restorations coming from Janus Films. “Jacques Rozier: Chronicler of Summer,” a retrospective of the French New Wave filmmaker’s influential career, featuring all five of his features and a selection of short films, will kick off at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center from August 16 through August 22. Featuring several new restorations of Rozier’s signature works, including 4K restorations of Near Orouët (1971) and Maine-Océan Express (1986), the first trailer and poster for the series have arrived.

When IndieWire recently ranked the 25 best films of Alfred Hitchcock, it was probably no surprise to anyone that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the director’s sole attempt at a light romantic comedy, didn’t make the cut. Even Hitchcock himself tended to underrate the film, as when he told interviewer François Truffaut that “since I didn’t really understand the type of people who were portrayed in the film, all I did was photograph the scenes as written.” From a filmmaker who regularly dismissed movies he considered uncinematic as mere “photographs of people talking,” this was the ultimate self-directed insult.

Yet even a casual reappraisal of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” newly available in an exquisite Blu-ray special edition from Warner Archive, undermines Hitchcock’s claims about his own movie. While it would be a bridge too far to declare the film a masterpiece on a par with “Psycho” or “Rear Window,...

Newsa.I. Artificial Intelligence.Voting is underway to ratify IATSE’s tentative agreement with AMPTP, as union leaders try to assuage the fears of members about new allowances for AI. Results will be announced tomorrow, July 18.Agnieszka Holland, James Gray, Andrew Haigh, and Kleber Mendonça Filho, are among the members of the main competition jury of next month’s Venice Film Festival, led by Isabelle Huppert. An AI company called Flawless is developing technology to dub films and television programs into different languages with “perfectly lip-synced visuals,” playing to the aspirations of non-English-language productions, especially, to reach a subtitle-averse market in the US.In PRODUCTIONTimothée Chalamet will star in and produce Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, apparently inspired by the professional ping pong player Marty Reisman. This is Safdie’s first solo outing as a director since The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008), having shared the credit for his last five films with his brother,...

“The Exorcism” is a movie directed by Joshua John Miller starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins and Sam Worthington.

Russell Crowe returns to our screens for the second time this year in a film all about exorcism. In “The Exorcism”, we are taken into the fictitious production of an Exorcist (1973) remake. Crowe portrays a downtrodden actor tasked with playing the exorcist, a role he struggles with due to personal problems.

The script cleverly plays with the concept of a film within a film, an idea that is neatly wrapped up within a horror film. Regrettably, it’s not Russell Crowe that is at fault here, but the film itself, which fails to build a coherent and enticing narrative. It seems to be caught in a grey area between being a jump-scare horror flick and a well-rounded character drama.

Anthony Miller, Crowe’s character, is a struggling actor whose career has been...

When Harrison Ford quipped about his girlfriend turning Spielberg down, it was more than banter—it was a spark that led to the creation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Ford’s charm and a bit of behind-the-scenes magic helped shape this Spielberg classic.

Harrison Ford as Jacob Dutton in 1923 | Paramount Network

Despite no sequel in sight, this quirky collaboration between Ford and Spielberg resulted in a masterpiece that stands alone. Discover how a cheeky comment from Ford played a pivotal role in bringing a beloved film to life, leaving us craving for more.

How Harrison Ford’s Persuasion Brought E.T. to Life and Kept Its Magic Untouched The Harrison Ford cameo in ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ | Amblin Entertainment

Imagine the 1982 sci-fi film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial without the lovable alien we all know. It almost didn’t happen, and we have Harrison Ford to thank for its creation. Back in...

While its often the world premieres that get the most buzz out of any major film festival, look to their restorations lineup (if they are smart enough to have one), and a treasure trove of classics sure to be better than most premieres await. Ahead of their official lineup being unveiled on July 23, the Venice Classics slate is here, featuring films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Frederick Wiseman, Howard Hawks, Nagisa Ōshima, Anthony Mann, Lina Wertmüller, and many more.

“The programme of Venice Classics includes the commemoration of several important anniversaries.” said Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “First and foremost, the centennial of the birth of Marcello Mastroianni, the most beloved and celebrated Italian actor in the world, whom we will see in The Night (La notte), one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s finest films. It has been fifty years since the death of Vittorio De Sica, who in The Gold of Naples...

Venice Classics will screen restorations of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Night and Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold Of Naples as part of an 18-film programme at the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-Septemer 7).

The Night, a 1961 black-and-white drama depicted a day and night in the life of a disillusioned novelist and his alienated wife, will play in the 100th anniversary year of the birth of its lead actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

De Sica’s 1954 The Gold Of Naples is formed of six episodes inspired by Giovanni Marotta’s short stories, and plays...

Spirited AwayImage: Gkids

Now that we’re used to HBO Max shedding the best part of its name to become just Max, we can concentrate on what really matters: the movies. Max’s impressive library includes most films released by Warner Bros., along with HBO original movies, plus titles from...

George Sikharulidze’s feature debut “Panopticon” is, the director says, a very personal movie.

The film, screening as a world premiere in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s main competition, is a coming-of-age story about a young man floundering to find himself in the absence of any meaningful parental authority.

Sikharulidze, who grew up in a rough neighborhood of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, in the 1990s, where he lived with his grandmother, mother and sister, says he was inspired to draw on his own experiences in his first film by watching François Truffaut’s seminal 1959 film “The 400 Blows.”

“I am a graduate of New York University’s Media and Communications program,” the New York-based director tells Variety. “At the time, I was not sure that I wanted to make films, but saw a couple of movies, including the Truffaut, that led me to go to Columbia Film School to study directing.

In the 1970s, American films underwent a massive shift, thanks to a new generation of talent infiltrating the business. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Brian De Palma introduced a new, more energetic language into films, largely thanks to their studious backgrounds studying movies and reading the essays of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut; this generation of filmmakers is traditionally called the Film School Generation. These artists tended to look after each other, seemingly understanding their mutual unspoken goal of revolutionizing movies and exploring the limits of what the medium was capable of. 

Two Film School Generation directors once entered an alliance one might not expect. Francis Ford Coppola had already won many, many Oscars for his "Godfather" movies and for "The Conversation," making him a legitimate Hollywood darling. George Lucas, meanwhile, rewrote the language of the Hollywood blockbuster with "Star Wars" in 1977. Aesthetically, the two filmmakers could not have been more different,...

At the heart of House of the Dragon‘s second season is an unresolvable tension, and I don’t mean the one between the Greens and the Blacks.

On one hand, both Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), the daughter that Viserys I (Paddy Considine) chose to succeed him on the Iron Throne, and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), mother of the son (Tom Glynn-Carney’s Aegon II) who actually did, want desperately to avoid all-out war, or at least to minimize the destruction when it comes. It’s an eminently reasonable and humane stance, held by two of the show’s more reasonable and humane main characters. Of course we want what they want.

On the other hand … what, we’re going to tune into a show about a succession crisis involving dragons and not root to see them burn each other to a crisp?

This contradiction is not new or unique to House of the Dragon...

Tony Lo Bianco, the Brooklyn actor who oozed criminal charm in the gritty 1970s New York City dramas The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, has died. He was 87.

Lo Bianco died Tuesday night of prostate cancer at his horse farm in Poolesville, Maryland, his wife, Alyse, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lo Bianco was also memorable as a smooth-talking con man with a lonely nurse (Shirley Stoler) for a girlfriend/accomplice in Leonard Kastle’s documentary-style The Honeymoon Killers (1970), which Francois Truffaut once said was his favorite American film.

In another cult classic, the horror thriller God Told Me To (1976), directed by Larry Cohen, Lo Bianco starred as a New York cop who investigates a series of bizarre murders orchestrated by the leader of a religious group (Richard Lynch).

He received a best actor Tony nomination in 1983 for playing Eddie Carbone in a revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge,...

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) on Monday added a David Lynch short and an episode of his iconic series Twin Peaks to its Franz Kafka retrospective and unveiled the program of its Out of the Past section, featuring classic, cult, rare and “unfairly overlooked” films, screened in their original or restored versions.

Among the highlights are restored versions of Wim Wenders’ 1984 neo-Western drama Paris, Texas and Two English Girls, François Truffaut’s 1971 period drama about a love triangle.

The Wenders film is part of a three-film program presented by Alexandre O. Philippe, the creator of documentary essays about the history of cinema, offering perspectives on the American landscape in cinema. He will also present his 2021 documentary The Taking (2021), which explores American mythology through the socio-philosophical dimensions of the American landscape.

Also part of the Out of the Past program is Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s documentary about...

Illustration by Stephanie Monohan.In 1980, the writer and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum published Moving Places: A Life at the Movies. His first book, in its novelistic way, theorizes the author’s own relation to the movies that accompanied him throughout his life. Rosenbaum’s childhood in Alabama as the son of movie exhibitors in the 1940s and ’50s is placed alongside his life in the late ’70s as a working film critic (sometimes literally; the book occasionally is formatted with double-columned pages). What served as the go-between, the time-machine, the weft thread of memory was the movies themselves; movies seen became movies forgotten, then later recalled and reencountered. What then surfaces in Rosenbaum’s writing is more than the films themselves, but the context in which he saw them: a summer camp, a town scandal, memories from the family living room—the routine events that color and are colored by the films we see.

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.

The Boys in the Boat (George Clooney)

This is, from start to finish, an underdog sports picture. Edgerton puts a welcome spin on the gruff-but-caring coach archetype, and Turner does the same with his lead character. Soft-spoken, stern, and handsome, this is a role someone like Ronald Reagan would have excelled at bringing to the screen some 80 years ago; Turner, luckily, is more interesting to look at and a better actor. Alexandre Desplat’s score is maybe the most playful thing about this film, and it works when it needs to. The race sequences are unquestionably Boys‘ highlight, Clooney making use of zoom lenses and well-placed cameras to capture the speed and fluidity of each competition. There is a real tension mined in these scenes,...

Announced from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Projeto Paradiso – a Brazilian private foundation that supports local film and TV professionals – is teaming with the Centre des Écritures Cinématographiques (Ceci) – an artistic cultural center in Moulin d’Andé, France – on a new screenwriting residency for Brazilian filmmakers. The initiative, part of the Projeto Paradiso Residencies Program, has also received support from the French Embassy in Brazil.

Applications for this year’s first residency will be invite-only and distributed to screenwriter-directors working on their second or third feature. The program is looking for projects destined for a theatrical release, with no restrictions on genre or theme. Any selected project must plan to work with a French co-producer.

According to Josephine Bourgois, executive director of Projeto Paradiso, “This opportunity is intended for Brazilian filmmakers who need space, time, and structure to develop their creative freedom. In addition to flexible personal and pedagogical support,...

With 13 features made since 2007, and six in the past four years, French DJ-turned-director Quentin Dupieux is clearly no slacker. Not only has he helmed all these films — he’s also written, shot and edited them, as well as composed many of their scores.

Starting with his surreal deadpan début, Rubber, and up through last year’s Yannick and Daaaaali!, Dupieux has had an impressively prolific run, gradually improving with each new movie while honing a style and tone that are completely his own.

If, however, there’s one drawback to this incessant activity, it’s that his films all have very short running times because they tend to lack classic denouements. They’re well-executed, high-concept affairs blending comedy, sci-fi, horror and other genres in fun ways, but they often play out like long second acts without real endings.

Dupieux was perhaps aware of this flaw when he decided to call...

These auteurs are ready for their close-up.

When Quentin Dupieux’s comedy about an ill-fated film set, “The Second Act,” opened the Cannes Film Festival May 14, it will be just one of several movies about filmmaking and filmmakers to touch down on the Croisette. After all, directors Christophe Honoré, Paul Schrader and Josh Mond are among the other prominent filmmakers who are ready to premiere semi-autobiographical stories.

Honoré’s in-competition comedy, “Marcello Mio,” casts Chiara Mastroianni as a version of herself who — after a director compares her to her late father, Marcello Mastroianni — dresses in drag and takes on his identity. Schrader’s in-competition drama, “Oh, Canada,” focuses on a documentary filmmaker (Richard Gere) telling his life story in a doc. Mond’s drama “It Doesn’t Matter” follows two friends chronicling their lives on video. Leos Carax’s 40-minute “C’est pas moi” is partly a self-portrait, with footage from his films and life.

As Cannes Film Festival kicks off, the Paris-based international sales company MK2 Films has revealed it has acquired three films and made substantial investments in new restorations, set against the backdrop of a strong presence at Cannes Classics.

MK2 Films has entered into a collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation on the global rights (excluding the U.S.) for two films directed by artist Niki de Saint Phalle: “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” (1976) and “Daddy” (1973). “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” has been restored in 4K by L’Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna-Paris) under the supervision of Arielle de Saint Phalle and with funding from Dior. It was presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, New York Film Festival and the new Los Angeles Festival of Movies. “Daddy” will soon be available in a restored version. MK2 Films described it as a “unique feminist work by one of...

When Roger Corman died on May 9 at age 98, the film world lost one of its great independent film legends. Over the course of his seven decade career, Corman directed over 55 films and received more than 500 producing credits, creating work that helped serve as the launchpad for major Hollywood stars and filmmakers like Peter Fonda, Frances Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme. And yet, from his first film to his last, Corman remained true to his roots of low-budget, independent, lowbrow-yet-brilliant genre filmmaking.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman was smart enough to attend Stanford University studying industrial engineering, but quit his first job in the field after only four days. Looking to go into the film industry, he worked his way up at 20th Century Fox from mail room messenger to story reader. But after he didn’t receive credit for the success of “The Gunslinger,...

We’re always sad to report about the death of an important person from the industry, but that is also part of our reality and we have to honor the work that these people put into the history of cinema. This is why we are sad to report that it has been announced that legendary indie director Roger Corman passed away in his come in Santa Monica, CA, on May 9, 2024 at the age of 98. Roger Corman never became a mainstream author, but he was a pioneer of independent cinema and one of the most important filmmakers in history.

No official cause of death was revealed, but the news was confirmed by Corman’s family yesterday, who also issued the following statement: “His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just...

Though Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is about to debut in theaters and on Netflix––just after his under-the-radar documentary God Save Texas: Hometown Prison came to Max––the ever-prolific American was recently in Paris for Nouvelle Vague, his chronicle of the making of Godard’s Breathless. (If not more: casting notices for Jean-Pierre Léaud around the time of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Martin Lassale around the time of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket popped up.) With filming recently wrapped, one might expect a fall premiere––expectations bolstered by today’s unveiling of our first real look, courtesy (who else!) Cahiers du cinéma.

Therein one can find Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard (previously unveiled in a cast-and-crew portrait) and filming of a scene on the Champs-Elysees. Meanwhile, Jean-Louis Fernandez shared a set photo suggesting the production design team should be paid handsomely.

Find them below:

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Uncropped

Director Dw Young's Uncropped rediscovers and re-evaluates the photography of James Hamilton, who for over four decades worked as a staff photographer at Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Observer and The Village Voice, among other publications.

Hamilton's breadth of work covered street photography, photojournalism, and film set photography for George Romero, Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson. In his career he has photographed a who’s who of creative heavyweights: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Isabelle Huppert, Cary Grant and Liza Minnelli. His photojournalism saw him travel across the US, his images bringing to life the words of the investigative reporter in exposing the interesting side of America and documenting the horror of international theatres of conflict.

In conversation with Eye For Film, Young discussed his disinterest in biopics and Hamilton's cinephilic knowledge. He also spoke about creating an historical document and his hopes that Uncropped will not.

Paris-based international film sales company Pulsar Content has formed a strategic partnership with Digital District Entertainment, a leading post-production, VFX and production facilities company, with offices in France, Belgium and India. The partnership will create “a streamlined and cost-effective production process for international film projects,” according to a statement.

Pulsar Content’s Cannes lineup includes Un Certain Regard’s “Niki” by Céline Sallette, Antoine Chevrolliers’ “Block Pass,” premiering in Critics’ Week, and Camila Beltran’s “Mi Bestia,” premiering at Acid.

Dde’s Cannes lineup includes Julien Colonna’s “Le Royaume” in Un Certain Regard and Patricia Mazuy’s “Visiting Hours” in Directors’ Fortnight.

The companies have previously worked together on several films, including “The Deep House” by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, which sold to Blumhouse for the U.S. and Universal for international territories. They also teamed up on Edouard Salier’s “Tropic” and “Mads” by David Moreau.

Dde...

It is the spring of “Baby Reindeer.” Netflix’s addictive limited series about a struggling comedian (Richard Gadd) working at a bar who makes the biggest mistake of his life when he gives a lonely woman (Jessica Gunning) a cup of tea on the house is the most watched series currently on the streamer and viewership is growing. And the fact that it’s based on a true story, makes “Baby Reindeer” even more creep and chilling. It’s a must-see voyeur thriller.

The same was true in the fall of 1987 with Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction.” Audiences flocked to the hard R-rated thriller which starred a wild-haired Glenn Close as an editor with a publishing company who has one-night stand with a happily married attorney (Michael Douglas) whose wife and daughter are out of town. Though it’s “understood” that it’s just a fling, Close’s Alex just won’t let go.

Annette Insdorf is synonymous with Columbia University, at which she has been a film professor since 1987 and served as director of undergraduate film studies for decades. A former translator for François Truffaut, she is also the longtime moderator of the 92nd Street Y’s “Reel Pieces” series, the author of numerous important books on film (most notably Indelible Shadows: Film and Holocaust) and a regular presence at film festivals like Cannes and Telluride.

Insdorf agreed to share with The Hollywood Reporter her perspective about recent unrest on Columbia’s campus over the Israel-Gaza conflict, which in the last 24 hours resulted in the NYPD raiding Hamilton Hall (which had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters), resulting in many arrests.

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Things have indeed been tense on Columbia University’s campus, but I’m trying to keep a sane perspective. Since the number of protesters is a tiny fraction of the student population, I...

Signage at the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, CA.

Once again, it was time for our favorite film festival, the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, and as usual, the Stars were shining brightly!

Movie lovers from around the globe descended upon Hollywood for the 15th edition of the festival, which took place Thursday, April 18 – Sunday, April 21. Over four packed days and nights, fans were treated to a lineup of great movies, appearances by legendary stars and filmmakers, fascinating presentations and panel discussions.

There were quite a few big-name notables, both on the red carpet and introducing some of our favorite classic films.

Thursday’s opening night gala was a stunner, with the 30th anniversary screening of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). Many of the iconic film’s stars walked the red carpet for a reunion that included John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel.

This set the...

When interviewed by the Chicago Tribune in 1973, the critic and trailblazing French New Wave actor/filmmaker Francois Truffaut famously stated that he'd yet to see a truly "antiwar" movie, adding, "Every film about war ends up being pro-war." His argument, in essence, was that the very act of making war cinematic tends to infuse it with qualities that make it more entertaining and, as a result, less horrifying. In contrast to that, Truffaut's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" director Steven Spielberg -- then on the heels of helming his WWII drama "Saving Private Ryan" -- once told Newsweek that "every war movie, good or bad, is an antiwar movie." In his case, Spielberg reasoned that by portraying warfare as convincingly as plausible, it becomes impossible for a film to be pro-war since war is, itself, an inherently horrific thing.

If there's a middle ground between these two camps of thought,...

While it was fascinating to see the results of the 2022 Sight & Sound poll, we’re just as curious to see what lies outside the established canon. As part of a comprehensive project at the essential resource They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, Ángel González polled nearly 839 critics on the best films that didn’t receive a single vote on the Sight & Sound poll, which they’ve now compiled into a massive Beyond the Sight & Sound Canon, which initially features 1,030 films but expands to a whopping 14,558 total films.

As a preview, we’ve collected the films that received at least 20 votes in this new poll, which is 263. It’s led by Spike Jonze’s Her, and they’ve also noted the directors that were most represented. Fritz Lang leads the pack with eight films mentioned, while François Truffaut has seven, and Anthony Mann, Clint Eastwood, Eric Rohmer, John Ford, Samuel Fuller,...

Steven Spielberg is one of the wisest men in Hollywood and is known to give all kinds of advice to his peers, whether they are part of his films or not. After all, there is no one who wouldn’t want to get advice from someone who has such a wealth of knowledge. However, John Carpenter has one notable Steven Spielberg movie, which he claimed was pretentious.

Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg has been a part of many iconic franchises over the years, as he has been responsible for films such as the Jurassic Park franchise, Indiana Jones film series, Saving Private Ryan and many other films. That is why his opinion carries a lot of weight when it comes to anything related to films, but that doesn’t mean all of his films are equally well-received.

Suggested“Don’t you think these tunnels are like my mother’s womb?”:...

Between last week’s release of his under-the-radar documentary God Save Texas: Hometown Prison and the June release of his wildly entertaining crowdpleaser Hit Man Trailer: Glen Powell Shapeshifts for Richard Linklater’s Comedy, Arriving in June”>Hit Man, Richard Linklater is embarking on his next film. Set to shoot this month and April in Paris, his new feature will capture the beginnings of the French New Wave, centered on the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 debut masterpiece Breathless.

We now have our first piece of casting as our new Jean Seberg has been unveiled. Zoey Deutch has revealed her Seberg look on Instagram, with hair colorist Tracey Cunningham confirming it’s for the role of the French New Wave Icon, who made her breakout in Godard’s debut. The film will mark a reunion following Everybody Wants Some!! for Linklater and Deutch, who will deliver the latest portrayal of...

In his book “The Films in My Life,” director and enthusiast François Truffaut wrote, “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema.” Juan Pablo Reinoso’s new documentary “Mad Props” satisfies Truffaut’s criteria beautifully, expressing not only the joy of making cinema but also the joy of watching cinema, exploring both through the eyes of Tom Biolchini, an Oklahoma banker who obsessively collects movie props. Reinoso follows Biolchini as he travels the world meeting other collectors who lovingly display their acquisitions, everything from Indiana Jones’ whip to various title characters from Joe Dante‘s “Gremlins” to an entire house from “The Outsiders” purchased by House of Pain’s Danny Boy O’Connor and filled with artifacts from that Francis Coppola classic. As the film progresses, Reinoso broadens his scope to include interviews with actors and various prop and creature makers...

There is a sense of a running gag in Hors du Temps (renamed Suspended Time for the English-language market). In his complex, autofictional 2022 TV series Irma Vep, Olivier Assayas cast as the director of a film called Irma Vep — a film he had, in fact, made in real life 20 years earlier — the actor Vincent Macaigne, who cheekily developed a version of Assayas that not only picked up on his distinctively reedy voice, but also nobbled his quirky irritability and sensitivities.

That character was called Rene, but he was not a million miles from Paul, the character Macaigne plays in this account of two brothers confined with their partners for the duration of the Covid lockdown. They have returned to the house where they lived as boys and where they have rarely returned since: a vine-covered cottage in a picturesque hamlet. It is a glorious summer, just like the remembered summers of childhood.

Le chinoise.Most serious writing about Jean-Luc Godard tends to be both high-flown and forbidding, rather like the films it’s discussing. Translations from French to English or vice versa can make things even dicier. But according to the literary scholar Fredric Jameson, who contributes an enthusiastic preface and afterword, Reading with Jean-Luc Godard—a compendium of 109 three-page essays by 50 writers from a dozen countries, announced as the first in a series—launches “a new form” and “a new genre.”The brevity of each entry tends to confirm Jameson’s claim. The book can be described as an audience-friendly volume designed to occupy the same space between academia and journalism staked out by Notebook while proposing routes into Godard’s work provided by his eclectic reading—a batch of writers ranged alphabetically and intellectually from Louis Aragon, Robert Ardrey, Hannah Arendt, and Honoré de Balzac to François Truffaut, Paul Valéry,...

With the advent of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, many have predicted the end of physical media. The story comes up every year it seems, with DVDs, Blu-rays and even UHDs still present, whereas those relying solely on streaming start protesting as more and more of these services embrace advertisements in their content. However, this debate, which seemingly is based on ownership, misses the point of creating a large collection of movies, as people who do so may actively (or unknowingly) preserve these cultural artifacts. This side to the debate gets another meaning entirely, when viewed from the perspective of an authoritarian regime repressing all modes of expression or censoring them, which is one of the aspects of Ehsan Khoshbakht's documentary “Celluloid Underground”.

The story of the feature is about the biography of the director, who left his home country Iran for London as the political...