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Over 50 years ago, Sidney Lumet released "Serpico," a powerful indictment of NYPD police corruption that was based on a true story. Decades later, New York's "boys in blue" are still being consistently called out for corruption, but at the time of the film's release in 1973, "Serpico" felt like it might just cause a sea change in the way America — or at least Hollywood — saw its law enforcement systems. "Sidney Lumet's 'Serpico,' the first in what threatens to be an avalanche of movies about policemen, picks up the old cop film and brings it with lights flashing and sirens blaring into the middle of the Watergate era," Vincent Canby wrote in his original review for the New York Times.

"Serpico" may not have ended up changing the world, but the movie based on the book of the same name by Peter Maas was a box office and critical hit,...

Eve Babitz, the “dowager groupie” who wrote Slow Days, Fast Company and was known for her relationships with the likes of The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison and Steve Martin, and Joan Didion, the author of Play It As It Lays and The White Album, who wrote Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson’s A Star Is Born, are unquestionably two of Los Angeles’ most-revered writers.

A new book – Didion & Babitz written by Lili Anolik – highlights the relationship between the pair, helped by the author unearthing scores of previously unseen letters.

The book, which published today by Simon & Schuster’s Scribner, also explores their contrasting relationship with Hollywood (the town) and Hollywood (the industry).

Didion wrote a slew of screenplays with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, including the aforementioned A Star Is Born, 1971’s The Panic In Needle Park, which starred Al Pacino, 1981’s True Confessions, which starred Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall,...

"The Godfather" is one of the greatest movies ever made, and the story about the making of the film has become the stuff of legend. The behind-the-scenes shenanigans that went into Francis Ford Coppola's American masterpiece have become so ingrained in the popular culture that someone even made an entire TV show about the making of the film ("The Offer," which premiered in 2022). If you're a film buff, you likely know the details: Coppola was still a young director at the time, and he had to fight hard to maintain his specific vision for the project. In the end, Coppola got his way, and "The Godfather" became a box office smash that took home several Oscars. But getting there was not easy.

One of the many clashes Coppola had with the studio, Paramount, involved casting of the film. The cast members of "The Godfather" are so pitch-perfect that it's...

Al Pacino nearly died of Covid in 2020, the iconic actor says, recalling his harrowing experience in a recent episode of The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast.

At the height of the pandemic, the Oscar, Emmy and Tony award-winning actor contracted a life-threatening Covid infection. Pacino said that he wasn’t feeling well, “unusually not good.” When the 84-year-old actor broke into a fever, a nurse was called in to cure his dehydration. That’s when the situation became dire.

“I was sitting there in my house, and I was gone. Like that. I didn’t have a pulse,” Pacino told the Times.

In “minutes” an ambulance arrived at his house. Pacino said there were about six paramedics and two doctors in his house dressed in outfits that “looked like they were from outer space or something.” When he opened his eyes, Pacino recalled the medical professionals saying, “He’s back.

Much has been made of the incestuous portrayal of the Menendez brothers in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” But the actors behind the widely discussed Netflix original want viewers to know this element of the series isn’t necessarily based on fact.

“To be honest with you, I don’t remember reading any of that in my research. So if he did suggest that, it was a suggestion as it is at this dinner party where he talks for 20 pages,” Nathan Lane told TheWrap of Vanity Fair reporter Dominick Dunne.

During the dinner party in question, Dunne (Lane) entertains his guests with an onslaught of questions and theories about the case, questioning why the brothers didn’t bring up their alleged abuse sooner.

“Then he suggests maybe this is a possible scenario, and they cut away to Kitty walking in on them in the shower,” Lane explained. “That...

Anamaria Vartolomei, the breakout star of Audrey Diwan’s Venice prizewinning “Happening,” is under the spotlight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival playing strong women in a pair of movies, “Being Maria” and “The Count Monte Cristo.” Both movies are supported by Chanel for which Vartolomei is an ambassador.

Vartolomei says since starring in Diwan’s drama “Happening,” which was set in the 1960s and centered around the then-illegal act of abortion, she has continued being lured to demanding roles with political and social themes.

“I think movies are the expressions of my engagements as a woman, and as such I often star in films that are engaged because when you’re an actress you contribute to change and we must continue to wage this battle that other women have led before,” says Vartolomei, who was wearing a glamorous dark khaki and black silk jacquard muslin dress by Chanel.

The Criterion Channel is closing the year out with a bang––they’ve announced their December lineup. Among the highlights are retrospectives on Yasujiro Ozu (featuring nearly 40 films!), Ousmane Sembène, Alfred Hitchcock (along with Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Parker Posey. Well-timed for the season is a holiday noir series that includes They Live By Night, Blast of Silence, Lady in the Lake, and more.

Other highlights are the recent restoration of Abel Gance’s La roue, an MGM Musicals series with introduction by Michael Koresky, Helena Wittmann’s riveting second feature Human Flowers of Flesh, the recent Sundance highlight The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me, the new restoration of The Cassandra Cat, Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, and more.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam, 1988

An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli,...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. “Woman of the Hour” premieres on Netflix Friday, October 18.

Almost every woman has a story: A stranger who followed her through a parking garage. A cab driver who asked uncomfortably personal questions. A date who became frighteningly obsessive. A friend who wouldn’t take no for an answer. The frightening banality of these events is the engine that drives “Woman of the Hour,” the directorial debut from actress Anna Kendrick.

Based on the true story of serial killer Rodney Alcala — who was convicted in 1980 for the murders of seven women and girls, but is suspected of killing more than 100 — “Woman of the Hour” is a more mainstream study of the tension between heterosexual desire and implied violence also evoked in Jane Campion’s “In the Cut.” Unlike that film, however, “Woman of the Hour” leaves the...

There’s a plethora of free streaming sites and apps out there, but which ones are offer the widest selection? And most legit? We’ve rounded up the best streaming sites for anyone who wants to watch their favorite movies without having to pay for a subscription.

The trade-off: Sitting through commercials. Free-ad-supported TV (Fast) can be a mixed experience, depending on the platform: Ads might cut in at odd moments or the same ad might might run three times in a row, but hey, it’s free, right?

As the major streamers add their own ad-supported sites, such as Amazon’s Freevee, the options for free streaming should continue to grow. (Movie availability on each platform are subject to change.)

Crackle

You can currently stream classic movies such as the 1949 Humphrey Bogart movie “Tokyo Joe” or the ’80s comedy “Just One of the Guys” on this free ad-supported site.

Al Pacino says he doesn’t remember much of the 1970s. So, The Godfather, Serpico, Scarecrow, Dog Day Afternoon, …And Justice For All are some of the greatest movies ever, let alone of the 1970s: all a blur. But unfortunately, he remembers Gigli and 88 Minutes, Revolution, Righteous Kill, and too many more all too well. He is a guy that always goes over the top, and sometimes it results in brilliance and other times, it causes Mr. Pacino to become a parody of himself. But is his legacy strong enough, and is Al in the middle of another comeback?

It’s a diverse career of ups and downs and whatever he was thinking with Jack and Jill. And so let’s find out: Wtf Happened to… Al Pacino?

But to truly understand what happened to Al Pacino, we go back to the beginning. And the beginning began when he was born on April 25th,...

There are two types of Al Pacino performances. The first is the kind that announced him as an acting virtuoso in the 1970s. They're fully inhabited, imbued with a coiled intensity, and forever on the verge of crescendoing to rage or, on rare occasions (most movingly in Jerry Schatzberg's "Scarecrow"), joy. This is Pacino at his very best: restless, yet modulated. When he blows his top in "Dog Day Afternoon," screaming "Attica" at the cops posted outside the bank he's attempting to rob, the moment is earned. He's given us keen insight into the mental machinery that drives Sonny, and has us cheering along with the crowd, even though we're still not sure why he's been driven to such dead-end desperation.

The second type is the grotesque self-parody that's been grist for impressionists — none better than Bill Hader — and soundboard prank callers since he stole Denzel Washington's Oscar...

If there's a basic, no-frills definition for movies, it's that they're made to be seen. Cinema is a populist medium, attempting to reach as wide an audience as possible for as long as possible.

Perhaps that's why the feeling of "discovering" a movie can be so powerfully enjoyable. It gives you the sense, however false, that you're stumbling upon a secret piece of entertainment made just for you. If you happen to discover such a movie in the wee hours of the morning, so much the better — the surreal setting only serves to make what you're watching seem that much more unreal, richer, and special.

It's that sensation that the programming block on Turner Classic Movies known as "TCM Underground" sought to capture every Friday night-turned-Saturday morning. Begun by Eric Weber in 2006 and continued by programmer Millie De Chirico starting in 2007, TCM Underground made it its business to curate some of the most obscure,...

Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel, "The Godfather," is one of the most acclaimed films of all time. Whether or not you've seen the film, you'll likely recognize some of the iconic lines such as, "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse," or "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli," or the all-star ensemble cast that Coppola assembled which included the likes of Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and many more.

Robert Duvall, who had previously worked with Coppola on "The Rain People" before "The Godfather," played Tom Hagen, the informally adopted son of Brando's Vito Corleone and consigliere and lawyer for the Corleone family. This wouldn't be the final collaboration between the two, as Duvall would go on to appear in a number of Coppola's future films including "Apocalypse Now"; "The Conversation"; and, of course, "The Godfather Part II."

Despite a number of collaborations,...

Alfredo James Pacino, or Al Pacino as he's more widely known, is one of Hollywood's most iconic actors, known for his intense and riveting performances across a varied but often gritty portfolio of films. Whether playing a mob boss, a cop, a coke-addled drug lord, or even the Devil himself, the nine-time Oscar nominee and Academy Award winner has brought his signature vigor and smoldering intensity to each and every role.

Not only has the octogenarian delivered outstanding performances throughout his more than 50-year career, but many of the films he's starred in are considered all-time classics. That's a real win-win for all of us, if you ask me. How do you rank a filmography as great and iconic as his? It's not going to be easy, but we're about to try. Join us as we dive into Al Pacino's impressive roster of movies and rank the 15 best.

If you...

Chicago – In one of my trips to New York City, I saw him in the distance on the street (this actually happens often in NYC. Pay attention!). Actor Paul Sorvino, Paulie Cicero of ‘Goodfellas’ legend, as well as many other films/stage/TV/opera work, was unmistakably walking right towards me. “Hey Paulie,” I instinctively said. “Hey,” he said back. Fast forward several years later, Mr. Sorvino was honored by the Chicago Film Critics Awards in 2013, I was a newly minted Chicago Film Critic, and I met him again (see below). Paul Sorvino died on July 25th, 2022, in Jacksonville, Florida. He was 83.

Paul Anthony Sorvino was born in Brooklyn, and studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After a stint in advertising, he made his Broadway debut in 1964 in the musical “Bajour.” Six years later, his was in his first film, Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa” (1970), and one...

The 1997 book "Monster: Living Off the Big Screen" by John Gregory Dunne was required reading in film school for the better part of a decade. Dunne is the screenwriter behind "The Panic in Needle Park," the 1976 version of "A Star is Born," and the largely forgotten 1996 romance "Up Close & Personal," about which "Monster" was written. The book details the soulless process of how a screenplay gets turned into a movie over the course of many, many years, often shedding every piece of artistic daring for comfortably commercial reasons. "Up Close" took eight years to write, and the finished film has very, very...

The post Spike Lee's Malcolm X Was Decades In The Making appeared first on /Film.

Many Netflix watchers are catching up with actor-director Griffin Dunne’s documentary about his aunt, “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold,” following the news that the prolific writer died December 23 at age 87 from Parkinson’s. When President Barack Obama gave Didion the National Humanities Medal in 2012, he called her “one of our sharpest and most respected observers of American politics and culture.”

Didion not only chronicled the literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s but astutely dissected her home state of California. After graduating from Uc Berkeley, she landed a job at Vogue in New York, where she penned movie reviews — until her pan of “The Sound of Music.” After marrying Time staffer John Gregory Dunne in 1964, the couple moved to Los Angeles and wound up becoming the ultimate Hollywood insiders. When Didion and Dunne later moved to New York City in 1988, they had lived in Los Angeles for 24 years.

Many Netflix watchers are catching up with actor-director Griffin Dunne’s documentary about his aunt, “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold,” following the news that the prolific writer died December 23 at age 87 from Parkinson’s. When President Barack Obama gave Didion the National Humanities Medal in 2012, he called her “one of our sharpest and most respected observers of American politics and culture.”

Didion not only chronicled the literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s but astutely dissected her home state of California. After graduating from Uc Berkeley, she landed a job at Vogue in New York, where she penned movie reviews — until her pan of “The Sound of Music.” After marrying Time staffer John Gregory Dunne in 1964, the couple moved to Los Angeles and wound up becoming the ultimate Hollywood insiders. When Didion and Dunne later moved to New York City in 1988, they had lived in Los Angeles for 24 years.

Joan Didion, the journalist, novelist, and screenwriter of such films as the 1976 “A Star Is Born” died Thursday at her home in Manhattan at the age of 87. The New York Times reported that the cause was Parkinson’s disease.

Didion was born in Sacramento in 1934. The fifth-generation Californian found some of her most important material for her earliest writing in the culture and chaos of her home state. Her career began after she won a pair of writing contests put on by magazines during her time at Uc Berkeley. One of those wins led her to begin writing at Vogue.

She worked her way up to features editor at the fashion magazine. In 1963 she published her first novel, “Run River,” about the unraveling of a marriage that also serves as a commentary on the history of California.

Around that time and while living in New York she struck up a friendship,...

Joan Didion, the storied author and New Journalism icon best known for books like Play It as It Lays, The White Album, and The Year of Magical Thinking, died Thursday, The New York Times reports. She was 87.

Didion died at her home in Manhattan after a battle with Parkinson’s disease, a spokesperson for her publisher, Knopf, confirmed. “Didion was one of the country’s most trenchant writers and astute observers,” the statement read. “Her best-selling works of fiction, commentary, and memoir have received numerous honors and are considered modern classics.

Joan Didion, the author revered for her coolly dispassionate essays and novels such as “Play It as It Lays,” has died, her publisher confirmed to The New York Times on Wednesday. She was 87. Along with her late husband John Gregory Dunne, Didion co-wrote screenplays for the films “True Confessions,” “A Star Is Born,” “The Panic in Needle Park” and “Up Close and Personal.”

It was the 1968 essay collection “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and 1970 novel “Play It as It Lays,” which she also adapted for a 1972 film, that secured her reputation as a sharp-eyed observer of the culture and people of California and beyond.

Another essay collection, 1979’s “The White Album,” assembled from her pieces in Esquire and other magazines, took on subjects that defined the era such as Charles Manson and the Doors, further cementing her place as one of the foremost chroniclers of the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s.

With lines...

Move over, Clint Eastwood — the 91-year-old “Cry Macho” director isn’t the only nonagenarian American director intent on staying busy. At the age of 94, filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg hasn’t directed a movie since 2000’s “The Day the Ponies Come Back,” but still feels like he could make his swan song. “I’ve recently decided I’d really like to do one more film,” the New York-based director said in a phone interview with IndieWire last week, sounding a bit raspy but energized nonetheless. “I don’t know what it is yet.”

He added that he recently heard an interview on Wnyc with author Atticus Lish about his novel “The War for Gloria.” Curious, Schatzberg sought out the book and has been thinking about it adapting it. “Most of my friends can’t believe I’m the age I am because I don’t act it,” Schatzberg said. “I don’t really think about it.

Jerry Schatzberg is among the great American filmmakers who changed the landscape in the 1970s, but his name is one that has taken some time to get the recognition it deserves. While he may not have landed with the same initial impact as a Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese, the years have been kind to films like The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow, invigorating a passion that ranks them as some of the decade’s very best.

A renowned photographer with work in magazines such as Vogue and Esquire, Schatzberg is also responsible for the iconic cover of Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. This was all done before he made his feature debut with 1970’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child, starring then-fiancée Faye Dunaway. That would begin a career working with some of the best actors the world has ever seen, from Al Pacino and Gene Hackman...

Next month’s Criterion Channel selection is here, and as 2021 winds down further cements their status as our single greatest streaming service. Off the top I took note of their eight-film Jia Zhangke retro as well as the streaming premieres of Center Stage and Malni. And, yes, Margaret has been on HBO Max for a while, but we can hope Criterion Channel’s addition—as part of the 63(!)-film “New York Stories”—opens doors to a more deserving home-video treatment.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy, Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc duology, and Criterion’s editions of Irma Vep and Flowers of Shanghai also mark major inclusions—just a few years ago the thought of Hou’s masterpiece streaming in HD was absurd.

I could implore you not to sleep on The Hottest August and Point Blank and Variety and In the Cut or, look, so many Ernst Lubitsch movies,...

Joe and Anthony Russo’s Cherry has its moments. But the film, an adaptation of Nico Walker’s hit 2018 novel of the same name, is, for the most part, a misfire and a missed opportunity. The Russo brothers, best known of late for helming a spate of Avengers epics — most recently 2019’s Endgame — bought the rights to Walker’s autobiographical bestseller within months of its release, for reasons anyone who’s familiar with the novel or its backstory can easily guess.

Cherry — Walker’s novel — is a topically wide-ranging, tonally flexible,...

From portraying a mob don and an AIDS-stricken attorney to a comic strip villain and a Nazi hunter, Al Pacino has done it all. In honor of his long and distinguished career (and his 80th birthday), we offer up this retrospect that showcases his expansive diversity.

N.Y.P.D (1968) • A then 28-year-old Pacino made his TV debut on this ABC police procedural plan the victim of a shooting.

Me, Natalie (1971) • Pacino had a small role in this film starring Patty Duke about a girl who struggles with her appearance.

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) • Pacino played a small-town crook leading a woman down a path of heroin addiction. His work in this film caught the eye of director Francis Ford Coppola

The Godfather (1971) • And then came “The Godfather” and his first Academy Award nomination. Need we say more?

Serpico (1973) • Pacino earned his second Oscar nomination playing New York City policeman Frank Serpico,...

It took some time for the good-natured ribbing to begin at Wednesday evening’s National Board of Review Awards, held in Manhattan at Cipriani’s Midtown location, an impressive high-ceilinged former bank well-suited to hosting dozens of stars. But it was clear early on that the jittery charms of Josh and Benny Safdies’ “Uncut Gems” were poised to dominate the evening, thanks to an energetic introduction from actor Timothée Chalamet.

Though the filmmaking brothers, along with co-writer Ronald Bronstein, accepted the Best Original Screenplay award from the bonafide Safdie enthusiast in the first half of the evening, it wasn’t until their star Adam Sandler made his way to the stage that the real fun began.

Sandler, comedian king and star of such dramatic-leaning gems as “Punch-Drunk Love” and “The Meyerowitz Stories,” has appeared to relish this year’s packed awards season, thanks to a film that’s earned him...

If you’ve already binged your way through the latest season of “Handmaid’s Tale” and all of “Catch-22,” worry not because Hulu is here to cure your mid-vacation content slump with a whole new slate of titles coming to the streamer this July.

Watch Kristen Bell reprise her role as the titular character in Season 4 of “Veronica Mars,” dropping July 1. Or if you aren’t in the mood to return to the seaside town of Neptune as Mars investigates a mysterious string of bombings and murders, you can relax with Ice-Cube’s hilarious one-liners in Steve Carr’s family comedy “Are We Done Yet?” and his spin-off series “Are We There Yet?”

Alongside classic favorites — all five “Rocky” movies, “King Kong,” and “The Polar Express” are among some notable additions — the streaming service also came through with both brand-new and returning original shows. Watch the series premiere of “Four Weddings and a Funeral,...

Hulu is out with its list of new content coming in July, and highlights include the “Veronica Mars” revival and the series premiere of the new “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” We also have the list of everything that’s being removed from the streaming service at the end of July.

Season 1-3 of the original “Veronica Mars” series will be available starting July 1, so you can brush up on all the background knowledge you’ll need to fully enjoy Season 4 when it drops July 26, with Kristen Bell returning the starring role as the title character after almost 15 years. Here’s everything we know about the revival so far.

The new Mindy Kaling-produced “Four Weddings and a Funeral” series comes July 31, with “Game of Thrones” star Nathalie Emanuel in the lead role. Original star Andie MacDowell will return as a guest star.

Also Read: Summer TV Premiere Dates: Here's...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWanuri Kahiu on the set of RafikiRafiki director Wanuri Kahiu has announced her latest project, an adaptation of Octavia Butler's 1980 Wild Seed, produced by Viola Davis and written by novelist Nnedi Okorafor. Butler's novel follows two immortal African beings whose tumultuous rivalry takes them across pre-colonial West Africa to a plantation in the American South. Recommended VIEWINGFrom March 20–April 2, Vdrome is screening Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil's documentary Inaate/Se/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place/it flies. falls./]. The film "imagines new indigenous futures, looking simultaneously backward and forward." The new trailer for Hong Sang-soo's Grass is at once simple and cryptic, conveying one of many mysteries encountered by a young writer observing intimate interactions in a bustling cafe. The dreamy, video game-inspired images of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever come to life in a new trailer.

Martin Bregman, a talent manager and film producer whose credits include classic like “Scarface,” “Serpico,” and “Dog Day Afternoon”, died Saturday of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 92. NBC 4 first reported the news.

Born in New York City in 1926, Bregman entered the entertainment industry first as a nightclub agent before moving into personal management. As a manager, his clients would eventually include at various times luminaries like Alan Alda, Woody Allen, and Barbra Streisand among others.

Bregman’s greatest impact on Hollywood was the result of his relationship with Al Pacino. Bregman discovered Pacino performing in an Off Broadway play in the 1960s, and became his manager. He helped Pacino land his first starring film role in the 1971 drama “The Panic in Needle Park.” It was that role which brought Pacino to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, leading to Pacino’s breakthrough as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather.”

Also...

Above: Spanish poster for Serpico (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1973). Artist: Jano.Al Pacino, who is currently being fêted by the Quad Cinema in a 33 film retrospective, came of age in the 1970s, a golden age of American poster design. The one sheet for his first major film, The Panic in Needle Park, though it doesn’t give you a good look at Pacino, is a classic of its time: an arresting black and white photo (taken, I would hope, by director Jerry Schatzberg who was an accomplished photographer before he was a filmmaker), a stop-you-in-your-tracks tagline (overwhleming the film’s title) and that very ’70s white border. He doesn’t appear on the posters for his second major film, The Godfather, but after that, throughout the 70s and into the early 80s his face (and especially those soulful eyes) and name became ubiquitous. And of course, the poster for Scarface has...

This article marks Part 2 of the 21-part Gold Derby series analyzing Meryl Streep at the Oscars. Join us as we look back at Meryl Streep’s nominations, the performances that competed with her, the results of each race and the overall rankings of the contenders.

In 1978, Meryl Streep, already renowned for her work on the New York stage, grabbed the attention of moviegoers across the country with her Oscar-nominated turn in the Best Picture champ “The Deer Hunter.” That year, however, would seem minor in comparison to what was on the horizon in 1979.

Streep was about to work with three of the decade’s hottest directors – Woody Allen, at his most in-demand after “Annie Hall” (1977) and “Interiors” (1978); Robert Benton, whose “The Late Show” (1977) was a big hit; and Jerry Schatzberg, who won critical acclaim with “The Panic in Needle Park” (1971) and “Scarecrow” (1973).

The resulting trio of Allen’s “Manhattan,” Benton’s “Kramer vs.

The New York Film Festival kicks off later this week, sending us straight into the second half of a very busy fall festival season. In preparation for the festival, we’ve pinpointed its most exciting offerings, from never-before-seen narratives to insightful new documentaries, and plenty of previously-screened features looking to capitalize on strong word of mouth coming out of fellow tests like Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. In short, there’s plenty to experience in the coming weeks, so consider this your roadmap to the best of the fest.

Read More:Bryan Cranston Enters Oscar Race with New York Film Festival Opener ‘Last Flag Flying’

Ahead, 13 essential titles — from buzzy world premieres to highlights from the 2017 circuit— that we can’t wait to see at this year’s New York Film Festival.

“Arthur Miller: Writer”

Documentaries about family members are always a dubious proposition. Some can also come across as overindulgent exercises,...

In the first scene of Good Time, the latest from directors Josh and Benny Safdie, Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) barges into an office where a social worker is interviewing his brother Nick (Benny Safdie), who has a mental disability and impaired hearing. From there, the two brothers are off to the races, as Benjamin Mercer writes at Reverse Shot:Almost immediately after, Connie is hauling Nick along with him on an ill-conceived robbery of a bank branch in Flushing, Queens. “Do you think I could have done that without you standing next to me, being strong?” Connie reassures Nick right after the job—and just before a paint bomb goes off in their bag of stolen cash, filling the cab they’re in with red vapor and sending it off the road. The accident, an eye-poppingly entropic moment staged by the Safdies and captured as if on the fly by cinematographer Sean Price Williams,...

Netflix is adding two new documentaries to its crowded 2017 roster: “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.” and “Voyeur,” both of which will premiere at the 55th New York Film Festival and launch globally on Netflix later this year.

Read More:Documentary, Now: Three Rock Stars Who Run The Fast-Changing Nonfiction World

Author Joan Didion’s nephew, actor-director-producer Griffin Dunne, has been laboring on this portrait of his aunt for years. The film spans more than 50 years of essays, novels, screenplays, and criticism, as Didion chronicled America’s cultural and political tides, from the literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s to her home state of California, where she wrote “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and “The White Album” and such film scripts as “The Panic in Needle Park.”

Dunne unearths a trove of archival footage and interviews his aunt at length about the many people she met and...

Netflix is adding two new documentaries to its crowded 2017 roster: “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.” and “Voyeur,” both of which will premiere at the 55th New York Film Festival and launch globally on Netflix later this year.

Read More:Documentary, Now: Three Rock Stars Who Run The Fast-Changing Nonfiction World

Author Joan Didion’s nephew, actor-director-producer Griffin Dunne, has been laboring on this portrait of his aunt for years. The film spans more than 50 years of essays, novels, screenplays, and criticism, as Didion chronicled America’s cultural and political tides, from the literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s to her home state of California, where she wrote “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and “The White Album” and such film scripts as “The Panic in Needle Park.”

Dunne unearths a trove of archival footage and interviews his aunt at length about the many people she met and...

Two weeks ago I wrote about Film Forum’s retrospective of New York in the 70s and collected all the Polish posters I could find for the best known films in the series. This week I want to concentrate on the films which are less well known and whose one sheets are maybe less iconic yet no less interesting. The 70s was a great period in American movie poster design. The illustrative style of classic Hollywood was out and instead a new reliance on photographs and, especially, type. The one thing that strikes me about the posters below is how heavily they rely on explanatory text and taglines (“Watch the landlord get his”...“Their story is written on his arm”...“If you steal $100,000 from the mob, it’s not robbery. It’s suicide”...“The tush scene alone is worth the price of admission”). The only two posters here that feature...

Above: Polish poster for Escape from New York (John Carpenter, USA, 1981). Designer: Wieslaw Walkuski.For three weeks in July, New York’s Film Forum is running a stellar series of more than 40 1970s New York-set films. As soon as I heard about the program I wanted to do a poster article on it, given that the 1970s was a heyday for American poster design. However, when I started to look at the posters I realized that many of them were so well known that rehashing their posters wasn’t that interesting. But in my search I started to notice how many of the films had Polish counterparts. It is interesting that so many of these American productions were released in Poland and it may have had a lot to do with the counter-cultural, anti-establishment bent of most of the films.While poster design in the U.S. had moved quite decisively from illustration to photography-based in the late 60s, Polish poster art was still mostly drawn and painted in the 1970s. There are a couple of exceptions here but the photos are collaged or posterized in a way that is quite different from the way they would be used in the U.S. Another interesting note is that very few of the posters make use of New York signifiers, with the obvious exception of the Statue of Liberty for Escape from New York, and a silhouetted skyline for Manhattan (notably the two films with the most New York-specific titles). Otherwise the posters seen here are typically idiosyncratic, eccentric, beautiful, alluring, occasionally baffling and, with the possible exception of Serpico, always strikingly unlike their American counterparts. This selection also feels like a tour of great Polish poster art in the 70s, with most of the major artists represented: Jakub Erol, Wiktor Gorka, Eryk Lipinski, Andrzej Klimowski, Jan Mlodozeniec, Andrzej Pagowski, Waldemar Swierzy, Wieslaw Walkuski and more. It seems as if every major designer got a crack at at least one of these challenging, thrilling films.Above: Polish poster for Manhattan (Woody Allen, USA, 1979). Designer: Andrzej Pagowski.Above: Polish poster for Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, USA, 1976). Designer: Wiktor Gorka.Above: Polish poster for All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, USA, 1979). Designer: Leszek Drzewinski.Above: Polish poster for Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, USA, 1975). Designer: J. Czerniawski.Above: Polish poster for The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, USA, 1971). Designer: Marcin Mroszczak.Above: Polish poster for Diary of a Mad Housewife (Frank Perry, USA, 1970). Designer: Eryk Lipinski.Above: Polish poster for Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1976). Designer: Andrzej Klimowski.Above: Polish poster for Klute (Alan J. Pakula, USA, 1971). Designer: Jan Mlodozeniec.Above: Polish poster for Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, USA, 1977). Designer: Andrzej Pagowski.Above: Polish poster for The French Connection (William Friedkin, USA, 1971). Designer: Andrzej Krajewski.Above: Polish poster for Serpico (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1973). Designer: Jakub Erol.Above: Polish poster for The Panic in Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg, USA, 1971). Designer: Tomas Ruminski.Above: Polish poster for Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, USA, 1969). Designer: Waldemar Swierzy.Above: Polish poster for The Anderson Tapes (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1971). Designer: Jan Mlodozeniec.See New York in the 70s at Film Forum from July 5 to 27.Posters courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

If the Safdie Brothers' last feature, Heaven Knows What, evoked The Panic in Needle Park with its cinema verite observation of the New York City heroin subculture, their impressive follow-up, Good Time, sees them continuing to draw inspiration from the gritty American movies of the 1970s, albeit with their own distinctive street edge. Led by Robert Pattinson giving arguably his most commanding performance to date as a desperate bank robber cut from the same cloth as Al Pacino's Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, this is a richly textured genre piece that packs a visceral charge in its restless widescreen...

Drug addicts! Who in 1970 really knew what life was like for them? Jerry Schatzberg, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne's story of hell on the streets of NYC provided a stunning debut for Al Pacino -- and should have done the same for Kitty Winn. It sounds too tough to watch, but it's riveting. The Panic in Needle Park Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Ship Date June 14, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Raul Julia, Joe Santos, Paul Sorvino Cinematography Adam Holender Film Editor Evan Lottman Original Music Ned Rorem Written by Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne from the novel by James Mills. Produced by Dominique Dunne, Roger M. Rothstein Directed by Jerry Schatzberg

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We all know how the 1970s upheaval in Hollywood brought new talent to film -- actors,...

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, June 14th, 2016.

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Follow-Up Brian’s tweet about The Thing News Twilight Time – September/October Titles Arrow Video – September titles The Deadly Trackers Blue Sunshine Kino Lorber – Moving Violations, The Park Is Mine The Transformers: The Movie Scream Factory Sale Raising Cain The Thing Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Links to Amazon Airport: The Complete Collection Black Dog La Chienne Edvard Munch (1974) (Masters of Cinema) Gold Here Comes Mr. Jordan (The Criterion Collection) Jaws 2 Jaws 3 Jaws: The Revenge Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 2 Star Trek XI Star Trek Into Darkness Too Late for Tears Woman on the Run X-Files: The Event Series The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) on Blu-ray Inserts (1975) on Blu-ray The Member of The Wedding (1952) on Blu-ray The Panic in Needle Park...

A few thoughts on last night's Girls coming up just as soon as you pay the $100 gown rental fee... It's funny to think that, when Girls started, Marnie seemed like the normal, relatable member of the group. Some of this was just her physical proximity to Hannah, and how emotionally big and difficult both Jessa and Shoshanna seemed at the time, but she definitely came across as much more sensible than the others at the beginning. And if she wasn't the sanest person on the show, then Charlie was. Jump ahead four years, and where the other Girls — even Hannah — have found some level of maturity and fulfillment, Marnie has turned out to be the most annoying, narcissistic, oblivious member of the quartet, often to great comic effect, but in a way that seemingly rendered her useless as a dramatic character, because who could ever feel sympathy for Marnie? Yet somehow,...

1961 Spanish poster for Funny Face (Stanley Donen, USA, 1957). Artists: “McP” (Ramon Marti, Joseph Clave, Hernan Pico).Of all the posters I’ve selected for Movie Poster of the Day over the past three months, I would not have expected this Spanish Funny Face to be the most reblogged and “liked” of all, but I am pleasantly surprised that it is. A gorgeous poster, credited to a triumvirate of artists, that repaints photographic images from the Us half-sheet in unexpected shades of purple and orange, it somehow caught Tumblr’s attention. Or maybe it was just those eyes.It tends to be true that the posters that catch fire the most are unusual and striking designs for well known films, like the Japanese Beetlejuice, the Polish Ran, the British Breathless, and the French On the Waterfront. Which makes it all the more heartening that the fourth most popular poster was a...

After working with Lars von Trier, Peter Weir, Joss Whedon, Ron Howard and many more directors over the last few decades of his career, Paul Bettany debuted his first directorial effort, from his own script, at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Shelter, starring Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Mackie, will now get a release next month and the first trailer has landed. The story follows our leads who fall in love while living homeless on the streets of New York.

While we didn’t get a chance to catch it at Tiff, Variety said, “While Bettany says he was inspired by gritty ’70s New York dramas, Shelter is quite different from the likes of The Panic in Needle Park and the like, which were less catch-all in terms of social issues and more straightforward in presentation. Instead, the tetherless uncertainties of homelessness are evoked to sometimes almost dreamlike effect...

The story of how the directorial brothers Benny and Joshua Safdie found their muse and star, Arielle Holmes, for their latest feature seems like a shadowy tale from a gritty Craigslist missed connection. After Joshua and their producer Sebastian Bear-McClard spotted her on a subway platform while working undercover for research on an abandoned genre film, they approached her. A subsequent series of no call, no shows seemed like a dead end, but then Holmes reached out, admitting that she’d been homeless, out of touch and had recently attempted to take her own life and was just recently released from the hospital. Since then, her life has been transformed since Heaven Knows What became a festival hit, winning the C.I.C.A.E. Award in Venice and the Tokyo Grand Prix and Best Director prizes at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Riding a wave of critical acclaim despite its white knuckled edge,...

Another forgotten gem from the mid-1970s receiving a new Blu-ray treatment is 1975’s Report to the Commissioner, a textured police procedural examining changing social mores and the generalized internal corruptions we’re used to in these scenarios, resulting in tragic circumstances thanks to the sincere ignorance of its protagonist. Yaphet Kotto, a regular supporting player in a number of Blaxploitation features from the decade, is a standout as a weary, sympathetic detective numbed by the machinations of law enforcement. It’s a greatly overlooked title of the era, featuring a variety of recognizable names in early roles as street hoods, and based on a novel by James Mills (The Panic in Needle Park, 1971), adapted for the screen by Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961) and Ernest Tidyman (Shaft; The French Connection, both 1971). Though its narrative is, at times, a bit rough around the edges, this deliberately paced thriller features rich characterizations and excellent chase sequences.

With the first half of 2015 officially coming to a close, it’s time for our mid-year list of best theatrical releases. As seems to be the trend, a bulk of these titles were selections premiering in the late fall circuit of 2014, a move sometimes granting offbeat art-house selections a bit more breathing room (though not always). Here’s a glance at what represents the best of the year thus far, including two directorial debuts, one posthumous work, and one studio feature:

10. The Salt of the Earth – Dir. Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

Premiering at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, German auteur Wim Wenders explores the prolific career of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, here with the help of his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado serving as co-director. Known for capturing catastrophic events in striking fashion, the documentary finds the artist in search of something positive after decades documenting human nature at its worst.

Living Through Oblivion: Safdie Bros. Lens Devastating Tale of Desperation and Depravity on the Streets of NYC

The story of how the directorial brothers Benny and Joshua Safdie found their muse and star, Arielle Holmes, for their latest feature seems like a shadowy tale from a gritty Craigslist missed connection. After Joshua and their producer Sebastian Bear-McClard spotted her on a subway platform while working undercover for research on an abandoned genre film, they approached her. A subsequent series of no call, no shows seemed like a dead end, but then Holmes reached out, admitting that she’d been homeless, out of touch and had recently attempted to take her own life and was just recently released from the hospital.

Having dropped out of school at 15 to become a homeless heroin junky running the mean streets of New York City, Holmes’s tale of depravity and desperation struck the Safdie’s with a fascinating idea.

Josh and Benny Safdie’s explosive Heaven Knows What opens with the faces of two young junkies—Harley (Arielle Holmes) and the hooded Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones, wearing long, Tommy Wiseau-like dark hair)—huddled together in the frame. Moments later, Ilya pleads for Harley’s death—“If you love me, you would’ve killed yourself by now,” he tells her—and she attempts to oblige by digging a razor into her left wrist. This is the world of Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park, 40 years later, and part of the shock of the Safdies’ film is that the particulars of its heroin subculture so closely resemble those of Schatzberg’s. In Panic, a gum-chewing Al Pacino swiped a TV set from a parked va...