News

In the pre-season promotion for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol, Norman Reedus repeatedly said he believed the finale was the best hour of The Walking Dead that had ever been made. Inevitably, it isn’t, but it’s a shame because while it cannot compete with the likes of "The Grove "or "Terminus," it’s not a bad episode. “Au Revoir Les Enfant” (Goodbye Children) gives us some vastly needed closure and the promise of a better future.

Much of the first half of the episode takes place at the racetrack where Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) are deciding who will go on Ash’s (Manish Dayal) plane back to the US with Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi). As with so much of this season, Daryl’s motivations for offering to stay behind remain muddy. Is he offering to stay behind out of nobility, or does...

Daryl’s European vacation, if you can call it that, seems to be nearing its end. “Au Revoir Les Enfants” suggests an exit strategy is on the horizon, though with this franchise, a clean getaway is about as likely as finding fresh baguettes in the apocalypse. The extremely brief summary hints at an attempt to leave […]

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: “Au Revoir Les Enfants” – Escape from France or Another French Twist?...

The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced that Sidonie Dumas, CEO of Gaumont, will be honored with this year’s International Emmy Directorate Award.

Dumas will receive the honor at the 52nd International Emmy Awards gala in New York on Nov. 25.

Paris-based television and film production Gaumont is the world’s oldest continuously operating film studio — it celebrates its 130th anniversary next year — with a library that includes such iconic titles as Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part and Louis Malle’s Au Revoir les Enfants, as well as more recent blockbusters, from Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element to Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano’s Untouchable.

Dumas, who has been head of Gaumont since 2010, was a major force in shifting the company’s focus to the small screen, helping deliver global hits including Netflix’s Lupin — featuring Untouchable star Omar Sy — and Narcos.

Other series greenlit under...

The Walking Dead is over. Long live The Walking Dead. The zombie franchise has continued in the form of spinoffs and expansions, one of which takes fan favorite character Daryl Dixon to the shores of sunny, rotting, fetid France. The first season debuted last year to pretty good reviews. Now the second season is on its way. Will lightning strike twice in the French countryside? Will it hit a zombie? Because that would be helpful.

Early buzz is good, and the show is upping the ante by bringing Daryl's longtime bestie Carol (Melissa McBride) into the mix. Carol showed up at the end of the first season but will play a much bigger role this time around.

The fun kicks off a couple Sundays from now. Here's the complete release schedule for all six episodes:

Episode 201: "La gentillesse des étrangers" — Sunday, September 29, 2024Episode 202: "Moulin Rouge" — Sunday, October 6, 2024Episode 203: "L'Invisible" — Sunday,...

Before we dive into Winona Ryder’s picks from the Criterion Closet, we have some breaking news that takes precedent. In a stunning reveal this week, a poster on Reddit shared a photo with the Criterion community showing that their famous closet wasn’t an actual closet, but rather a set placed within a van.

The closet, is actually a van.

byu/throgmortal incriterion

A spokesperson for Criterion responded to IndieWire’s request for comment by confirming that its videos are actually filmed in a closet in Criterion’s office in New York City. Nevertheless, this photo may imply Criterion has plans of taking their closet on the road and social media is abuzz with intrigue.

Iconic actress Ryder stopped by the closet ahead of her film “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” premiering at Venice Film Festival and spoke of the space as if it were a holy sanctuary.

“I am so lucky...

Donald Sutherland was a decorated Canadian actor with an impressive career spanning several decades. While he never received an Academy Award nomination, he received two Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy for his work. Sadly, he died in June 2024 at 88 years old. Here’s what to know about his wife, Francine Racette, who survives him, as well as his past wives and five children.

Who is Donald Sutherland’s wife, Francine Racette? Donald Sutherland and Francine Racette at ‘The Hunger Games’ premiere in 2012 | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Donald Sutherland was married three times. He married his third wife, Francine Racette, in 1972 after meeting her on the set of Alien Thunder, a Canadian drama.

Racette was born in Quebec and worked as an actor. She appeared in American and French films throughout her career. Racette graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1966 and became known for her performances in Au revoir les enfants,...

Die französisch-schweizerische Schauspielerin erhält am 9. August im Rahmen des Locarno Film Festival den Leopard Club Award.

Irène Jacob erhält beim Locarno Film Festival den Leopard Club Award (Credit: Stephane Cardinale – Corbis / Gettyimages)

Die in Paris geborene und in Genf aufgewachsene Schauspielerin Irène Jacob wird am 9. August vom Locarno Film Festival mit dem Leopold Club Award ausgezeichnet. Tags darauf wird Jacob Festivalangaben zufolge ab 10.30 Uhr für ein Publikumsgespräch zur Verfügung stehen. Im Rahmen eines Tributes zeigt das Locarno Film Festival Krzysztof Kieslowskis „Drei Farben: Rot“ aus dem Jahr 1994. Drei Jahre zuvor war Jacob, die ihr Debüt 1987 in Louis Malles „Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder“ gefeiert hatte, für ihre Rolle in Kieslowskis ersten Film außerhalb Polens, „Die zwei Leben der Veronika“, in Cannes als beste Darstellerin ausgezeichnet worden und hatte eine César-Nominierung erhalten.

Der Künstlerische Direktor des Locarno Film Festival, Giona A. Nazzaro, sagt über Irène Jacob: „Irène Jacob ist eine der geheimnisvollsten und erhabensten Erscheinungen des Kinos.

French-Swiss actress Irène Jacob, best-known for her star-making turns in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Veronique (1991), and Three Colors: Red (1994), will be honored at this year’s Locarno Film Festival with the Leopard Club Award for her contribution to contemporary cinema.

The award ceremony will take place at Locarno’s Piazza Grande on the evening of Friday, Aug. 9 and be followed the next morning by a public conversation with Jacob at Forum @Spazio Cinema. The festival will screen Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Red in tribute.

“Irène Jacob is one of cinema’s most mysterious and sublime presences,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro. “Her every performance manifests the elusive precision of a presence so completely identified with the film’s images as to become virtually part of the cinematography. Her skill in surrendering herself to the directors’ gaze and then, on the contrary, to vigorously embodying the character,...

In “The Successor” — a provocative psychological thriller with a lot more actual psychology than the genre typically offers — Paris-based fashion designer Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) stands on the precipice of a breakthrough in his career. He’s poised to take his place as creative director of the fashion house Orsino, following the death of its eponymous founder. If this were a tale of corporate ambition (à la “Succession”), or perhaps a Roman palace intrigue, here is the moment that Ellias would assume the throne. But instead of feeling victorious, he clutches his chest. The anxiety is almost too much. And then the police arrive.

It’s taken more than a decade, but Ellias has done everything he can to distance himself from his biological father. As such, there’s an ironic perversity to the news he gets right after his stunning solo show for Orsino: His dad, Jean-Jacques, is dead,...

There is what you might call a “spoiler” in the title of Céline Sciamma’s new movie, a key to unlocking her look at childhood that’s hiding in plain sight. The French filmmaker’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire begins not with love, but with death: An eight-year-old named Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) has just lost her elderly grandmother. Her mom (Nina Meurisse) is packing up everything in the house she grew up in, located on the edge of a forest. Dad (Stéphane Varupenne) is helping out the best he can.

New York-based distribution company Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films have jointly acquired U.S. distribution rights to Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino’s Venice Special Jury Prize winner “Il Buco,” about a group of speleologists who in 1961 discover Europe’s deepest cave.

The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of Grasshopper Film with Nadine Rothschild of Paris and Berlin-based Coproduction Office on the eve of the U.S. premiere of “Il Buco” at the New York Film Festival.

Gratitude, which is based in Los Angeles and Mumbai, is headed by Anu Rangachar, a producer and the former programmer for the Mumbai Film Festival.

With “Il Buco” Frammartino, whose dialogue-free “Le Quattro Volte” made a global splash in 2010, has segued with another similarly eclectic pic that has no dialogue or music.

His latest work reconstructs the young cave scientists’ journey to explore the depth of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth in the pristine Calabrian hinterland.

Irene Jacob (“Three Colours: Red”), a critically acclaimed film and theater actor, is set to preside over the Lumière Institute in Lyon, succeeding to Bertrand Tavernier, the revered French filmmaker who died in March.

Tavernier led the institution for nearly four decades and worked closely with Thierry Fremaux, the Lumière Institute’s managing director, and Cannes Film Festival’s general delegate, to host the annual Lumière festival, a star-studded celebration of heritage films and cinema masters. Lyon is actually the birthplace of the Cinematograph and its creators, the Lumiere brothers.

Kicking off on Oct. 9, the event’s 13th edition will pay homage to Tavernier with a special tribute on Oct. 10.

Jacob, who is originally from Switzerland, is the granddaughter of Maurice Jacob, a scientist and humanist who lived in Lyon all his life and has a street named after him in the city. A passionate film buff, Jacob has been...

Film directors have been exploring their own childhood memories on screen for decades, and the honor roll of notable films that have come from that exploration ranges from Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” to George Lucas’ “American Graffiti,” from Louis Malle’s “Au Revoir les Enfants” to Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” Mike Mills’ “20th Century Women” to Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” from John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory” to Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” Writer-director-actor Kenneth Branagh has now tried his hand at the genre, and to say that “Belfast” brings out the best in him would be an understatement.

Visually stunning, emotionally wrenching and gloriously human, “Belfast” takes one short period from Branagh’s life and finds in it a coming-of-age story, a portrait of a city fracturing in an instant and a profoundly moving lament for what’s been lost during decades of strife in his homeland of Northern Ireland.

To shoot Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino’s eclectic dialogue-free drama “Il Buco,” about a group of speleologists who in 1961 discover Europe’s deepest cave, veteran Swiss director of photography Renato Berta and Frammartino first had to do some soul searching.

“To prepare, with Michelangelo, we watched lots of movies together that we agreed and disagreed about,” he says. Then, after those discussions, “the photography came as a consequence.”

The ace cinematographer and bold experimenter, who has worked with European greats such as Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Éric Rohmer, Manoel de Oliveira, and who lensed Louis Malle’s 1987 Venice Golden Lion winner “Au revoir les enfants,” had never grappled before with what Frammartino describes as “the challenge of this cave’s utter darkness.”

“But after shooting 120 movies I am not interested in doing the type of things I’ve done before,” Berta points out.

Set in the 1960s, “Il Buco” — which...

After becoming the 13th person to win two Directors Guild of America Awards, Alfonso Cuaron is poised to join an even more exclusive group: two-time Best Director BAFTA winners.

The “Roma” director is our odds-on favorite to take home the prize at Sunday’s ceremony, with 31/10 odds over Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), Spike Lee (“BlacKkKlansman”), Bradley Cooper (“A Star Is Born”) and Pawel Pawlikowski (“Cold War”). He previously won for his direction of “Gravity” (2013), for which he also won the Oscar.

Only eight people have double Best Director BAFTA Awards, the most wins in the category. The most recent to join this club was Joel Coen, who took home his second statuette for “No Country for Old Men” (2007) to go with his win for “Fargo” (1996).

See DGA Awards: Complete winners list in all 11 categories

None of the eight two-time champs have gone on to win the Oscar for both films.

Xavier Legrand first began his career as an actor, as a supporting character in the classic 1987 French film Au Revoir les Enfants. But Legrand has slowly made a name for himself behind the camera, receiving an Oscar nomination for his 2013 short film Avant que de tout perdre. Now the filmmaker is making waves with his […]

The post ‘Custody’ Trailer: This Venice Film Festival Silver Lion Winner is a Chilling Domestic Abuse Thriller appeared first on /Film.

By Emily Kubincanek

The authenticity in Louis Malle's autobiographical Au Revoir Les Enfants is incredible. We celebrate its 30th anniversary.

The article The Intimacy of Memory in ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ Still Resonates Today appeared first on Film School Rejects.

Actress Sara Forestier and director Hélène Angel on the set of Elementary Photo: Unifrance The French, without wishing to sound chauvinistic, hold their education system in high regard. Cinema has reflected that interest in films from Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduite in 1933, through the gentle documentary about life in a country infant school Etre et Avoir (2002) by Nicolas Phlibert to Laurent Cantet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Class (2008), set in a raw inner city school. And let’s not forget Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive (2003), Louis Malle’s 1987 Au Revoir Les Enfants, Julie Bertuccelli’s School of Babel (2013), and Christophe Barratier’s 2004 The Chorus.

Joining the throng is director Hélène Angel with Elementary (Primaire) in which Sara Forestier plays a primary school teacher who has no time for a personal life and lives in an apartment in the grounds with her ten-year-old son.

Angel says: “Education is...

It’s beginning to look a lot like fall festival season. On the heels of announcements from Tiff and Venice, the 55th edition of the New York Film Festival has unveiled its Main Slate, including a number of returning faces, emerging talents, and some of the most anticipated films from the festival circuit this year.

This year’s Main Slate showcases a number of films honored at Cannes including Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or–winner “The Square,” Robin Campillo’s “Bpm,” and Agnès Varda & Jr’s “Faces Places.” Other Cannes standouts, including “The Rider” and “The Florida Project,” will also screen at Nyff.

Read MoreTIFF Reveals First Slate of 2017 Titles, Including ‘The Shape of Water,’ ‘Downsizing,’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name’

Elsewhere, Aki Kaurismäki’s Silver Bear–winner “The Other Side of Hope” and Agnieszka Holland’s Alfred Bauer Prize–winner “Spoor” come to Nyff after Berlin bows.

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series started last Friday and continues the next two weekends — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints.

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series started last Friday and continues the next two weekends — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints.

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series starts this Friday, March 10th. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional,...

The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional, we also offer a silent film with live music, and audiences are sure to delight in the Poor People of Paris...

‘Toni Erdmann’ (Courtesy: Tiff)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

It’s not too often that foreign-language films get recognized for anything at the Oscars beyond the best foreign-language film category — but it does happen. And, believe it or not, it happens more for best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay than many other categories. A prime example of that is Toni Erdmann, Germany’s submission this year that is proving to be a cross-category threat, which could score a nomination — or a win — for its writing.

The story of Toni Erdmann — which has a solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 91% — follows a father who is trying to reconnect with his adult daughter after the death of his dog. It sounds simple enough but, of course, the two couldn’t be more unalike. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and where it won the Fipresci Prize. Since then, it...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor are joined by Keith Enright to discuss Eclipse Series 2: The Documentaries of Louis Malle.

About the films:

Over the course of a nearly forty-year career, Louis Malle forged a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile cinematic storytellers, with such widely acclaimed, and wide-ranging, masterpieces as Elevator to the Gallows, My Dinner with Andre, and Au revoir les enfants. At the same time, however, with less fanfare, Malle was creating a parallel, even more personal body of work as a documentary filmmaker. With the discerning eye of a true artist and the investigatory skills of a great journalist, Malle takes us from a street corner in Paris to...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor are joined by Keith Enright to discuss Eclipse Series 2: The Documentaries of Louis Malle.

About the films:

Over the course of a nearly forty-year career, Louis Malle forged a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile cinematic storytellers, with such widely acclaimed, and wide-ranging, masterpieces as Elevator to the Gallows, My Dinner with Andre, and Au revoir les enfants. At the same time, however, with less fanfare, Malle was creating a parallel, even more personal body of work as a documentary filmmaker. With the discerning eye of a true artist and the investigatory skills of a great journalist, Malle takes us from a street corner in Paris to...

Irène Jacob Cuts Deep

By Alex Simon

French-Swiss actress Irène Jacob cemented her status as one of her generation’s greatest talents through her work with legendary Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski: The Double Life of Veronique (1991, for which she was awarded Best Actress at Cannes) and the final chapter of his Three Colors Trilogy, Red (1994).

Jacob comes from an accomplished family: her father Maurice was a renowned French physicist, her mother a successful psychotherapist, and her three brothers are composed of two scientists and a musician. After making her film debut in Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants in 1987, Jacob has literally not stopped working. Her latest film, written and directed by her co-star Arnaud Viard, is Paris Love Cut, Viard’s semi-autobiographical tale of a filmmaker trying to balance his personal life, career and sanity in an increasingly shifting landscape. Jacob is delightful as Viard’s very patient (and very pregnant) fiancée.

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor are joined by Keith Enright to discuss Eclipse Series 2: The Documentaries of Louis Malle.

About the films:

Over the course of a nearly forty-year career, Louis Malle forged a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile cinematic storytellers, with such widely acclaimed, and wide-ranging, masterpieces as Elevator to the Gallows, My Dinner with Andre, and Au revoir les enfants. At the same time, however, with less fanfare, Malle was creating a parallel, even more personal body of work as a documentary filmmaker. With the discerning eye of a true artist and the investigatory skills of a great journalist, Malle takes us from a street corner in Paris to...

Pablo Larraín (Courtesy: Andrew Cowie/Afp)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

There’s one director this year that has a chance at being a major crossover success by having two separate films nominated in both the best picture and best foreign language film categories: Pablo Larraín. This filmmaker has Jackie as well as Neruda and could join an elite group of directors who been able to have films — or even one film — in both of these major categories.

Jackie, which stars Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is considered a frontrunner in the Oscars race this year by this site’s namesake, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg. Neruda, which follows an inspector who hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is Chile’s submission for best foreign language film this year and is considered a major threat in that contest. This would be a great feat — especially for someone who,...

"The Furniture" our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber

This week marks 50 years since the release of Is Paris Burning? (not to be confused with documentary classic Paris is Burning) an epic that hasn’t quite stood the test of time. In the tradition of The Longest Day, it harnesses a cast of thousands to tell the story of a single, crucial moment of World War Two: The liberation of Paris. French stars like Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon take roles in the Resistance, while the likes of Kirk Douglas and Glenn Ford play American generals. There are cameos from Simone Signoret, George Chakiris and Anthony Perkins, to name only a few.

Directed by René Clément with a script by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, you’d think it would be more popular. Still, it’s worth revisiting, and not only for its two Oscar nominations (art...

Showtime’s “The Affair” has cast French actress Irène Jacob in a major role for Season 3, TheWrap has learned. Jacob will play Juliette Le Gall, who is running from her own secrets. She’ll be a new love interest of Noah’s (Dominic West) and will help him process a trauma from his past and understand himself a little better. Jacob is a BAFTA and César Award nominee. She was first introduced to audiences with “Au Revoir les Enfants,” a film directed by Louis Malle in which she played a piano teacher. Also Read: Emmy Contender Maura Tierney on Telling Her Mom 'I Hate You'.

The Eighth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-produced by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema.

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, and we’re especially pleased to present Jacques Rivette’s long-unavailable epic Out 1: Spectre Additional restoration highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s A Married Woman and Max Ophüls’ too-little-seen From Mayerling To Sarajevo. Both Ophüls’ film and Louis Malle’s Elevator To The Gallows – with a jazz score by St. Louis-area native Miles Davis — screen from 35mm prints. All films will screen at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (47- E. Lockwood)

Music fans will further delight in the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra’s accompaniment and original score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s...

Thanks to everyone for supporting our site by buying through our affiliate links.

A note on Amazon deals, for those curious: sometimes third party sellers will suddenly appear as the main purchasing option on a product page, even though Amazon will sell it directly from themselves for the sale price that we have listed. If the sale price doesn’t show up, click on the “new” options, and look for Amazon’s listing.

I’ll keep this list updated throughout the week, as new deals are found, and others expire. If you find something that’s wrong, a broken link or price difference, feel free to tweet at me.

Deals On Amazon Us

Criterion Collection World War 2 films for (up to) 50% off Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films for $39.99 Au revoir les enfants for $22.49 The Bridge for $19.99 The Human Condition for $39.49 Ivan’s Childhood for $23.99 Overlord Blu-ray for $21.89 Roberto Rossellini...

Peter Bradshaw recommends Louis Malle's 1987 autobiographical film, which takes place in a boys' boarding school towards the end of the second world war, explores French guilt surrounding antisemitism and the events that took place during the Holocaust. Au Revoir les Enfants returns to the cinema on 30 January with a re-release by the BFI in conjunction with Holocaust Memorial Day Continue reading...

Re-released in cinemas to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Louis Malle’s 1987 film offers an unrivalled depiction of childhood, memory and war

• Why Au Revoir les Enfants is the one film you should watch this week – video review

Louis Malle’s quasi-autobiographical masterpiece Au Revoir Les Enfants from 1987 is now re-released in cinemas in the same week as Holocaust Memorial Day. It remains breathtakingly good. There is a miraculous, unforced ease and naturalness in the acting and direction; it is classic movie storytelling in the service of important themes, including the farewell that we must bid to our childhood, and to our innocence – a farewell repeated all our lives in the act of memory. The scene is Nazi-occupied France in 1944 and the wealthy, urbane parents of 12-year-old Julien (Gaspard Manesse) have sent him away to a Catholic boarding school in the country. Here he makes the acquaintance of a shy, clever...

★★★★★ William Faulkner once made the sage point that "the past is never dead. It's not even past." Louis Malle's Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the Us novelist's musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories. For years the director only ever discussed a childhood experience with an older brother, who was also there to bear witness. As with Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002) or even Spielberg's Schindler’s List (1994), filmmakers tackling the Holocaust have acknowledged that these delicate projects needed to be made at what felt like the appropriate moment.

Well, almost as successful as the last one, this eighth addition finished with two films completely unguessed and one film that was eventually figured out, but only after I gave a hint on Twitter. To be honest, I'm a little surprised no one figured out numbers 12 and 14, though I wasn't the least bit surprised it took a hint for anyone to guess number four, that was a tough one even I debated including, but thought it would be fun to see if anyone could figure it out. Number one clearly kept some people guessing as it appears if you put a spider in any screen capture Enemy will be everyone's first guess... says something about the effective nature of that film ehc That said, here are the answers to this latest graphic. If you want to browse the graphic before seeing the answers don't scroll below the image below or...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Set in 1960s Poland, Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white drama Ida focuses on faith and identity after family secrets are revealed. Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a young orphan brought up in a convent preparing to take her vows to become a nun. When told she must visit her aunt, her only living relative, Anna discovers she’s Jewish, her name is actually Ida and her parents were killed in WWII. Anna/Ida and her aunt embark on a journey to learn more about the family’s history and discover the truth about what happened.

The film landed on the Oscar shortlist for best foreign-language film and was nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category.

A number of foreign films focused on WWII have done well at the Oscars throughout the years. Ones based on real events include The Counterfeiters (2007), about the Nazis’ attempt to...

It's that time of year again and it's time to update the list for the second half of 2014 as Barnes & Noble has just kicked off their 50% off Criterion sale and as impossible a task as it is to cut things down to just a few titles, I have done my best to break Criterion's titles down into a few categories. Hopefully those looking for box sets, specific directors or what I think are absolute musts will find this makes things a little bit easier. Let's get to it... First Picks I was given the Zatoichi collection for Christmas last year and being a collection that holds 25 films and another disc full of supplementary material it is the absolute definition of a must buy when it comes to the Criterion Collection. It is, once again, on sale for $112.49, half off the Msrp of $224.99, and worth every penny. I spent the entire year going through it.

Barnes & Noble has just kicked off their 50% off Criterion sale and while it's impossible to suggest titles that will suit everyone looking to beef up their collection at this perfect time of year, I will do my best to offer some suggestions. Let's get to it... My Absolute First Pick I am almost done going through this collection and it was a collection I got for Christmas under these exact circumstances. Typically priced at $224.99, you can now get this amazing set of 25 Zatoichi films for only $112. Box sets, in my opinion, are what sales like this were made for. Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman Next Ten Recommendations It isn't easy so this is a collection of just some of my favorite films (of all-time and within the collection) and a little variety, though pretty much my standard, go to Criterion first picks, especially if you are just starting out. Persona Breathless...

We move into the top 20 now, where the films become incredibly spiritual. One major component seen in many of these religious films: the overtones meant to instill a sense of mystery and wonder. You see it in films set in both sweeping landscapes and intimate settings. Whether or not any of the films on this list are condoning the acceptance or rejection of faith and religion is almost beside the point. The real point is that it is so influential on our culture that movies will always be made about it.

courtesy of lassothemovies.com

20. Babette’s Feast (1987)

Directed by Gabriel Axel

The 1987 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner (beating Au Revoir Les Enfants), Babette’s Feast is the story of two devout Christian sisters whose father – the leader of a small Christian sect in Denmark – has died. Unfortunately, Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodjil Kjer) find they have no way to gain new members,...

The title Babette's Feast doesn't immediately jump out at me as a film I need to see immediately, but to know this Danish film bested Au Revoir Les Enfants (read my Blu-ray review here) at the 1988 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film certainly causes me to change my mind. While I wouldn't say director Gabriel Axel's film is better than Malle's Enfants, which is a personal all-timer of mine, but it is a multi-layered story with drama in corners you can't expect heading in. Adapted from the 1950 short story of the same name (read it here) by Karen Blixen (writing as Isak Denisen who also wrote the story that inspired Out of Africa), the film takes place in a small village in 19th century Denmark, a town Denisen described as a "child's toy-town of little wooden pieces". The story centers on two sisters who grew up here under the watchful eye of their father,...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 363 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies, the Up docs and Decalogue) and of those 363, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 362 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies and Decalogue) and of those 362, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

Our critic has been awarded an OBE for services to film. Here he reflects on a life of cinema and chooses extracts from five of his movie reviews

Casting my mind back to my Observer debut, it occurred to me that, had I been celebrating half a century of writing on films for the paper in 1963, I would have been reflecting on a career begun by reviewing the arrival of Charlie Chaplin and going on to Dw Griffith's Birth of a Nation. But the Observer didn't have a movie critic until the mid-1920s, when the Honourable Ivor Montagu (a peer's son, table tennis champion, lifelong communist, the man who saved Hitchcock's bacon by re-editing The Lodger) joined the paper. He was succeeded in 1928 by the Manchester Guardian's critic, CA Lejeune, who helped create the view widely held in Fleet Street that reviewing films was women's work. Indeed, her first...

Driven by a fierce intellectual curiosity that would find the filmmaker hungrily roving from subject to subject, both in the narrative sense and the journalistic one (he shot around ten documentaries in his career), French filmmaker Louis Malle, who was born eighty years ago today, on October 30th, 1932, was a cinematic explorer who turned over many and various stones. In his long, venerable career, he aspired to do it all: elegant mystery-noir pictures ("Elevator To The Gallows"), humanist dramas (many centered around childhood; rites of passage and traumas like “Murmurs Of The Heart" and “Au Revoir Les Enfants"), documentaries of all kinds (including one with Jacques Cousteau, “The Silent World,” that brought them both to the international stage with a Palme d’Or win and a Best Documentary Oscar), romantic caper flicks ("Atlantic City"), lustful and licentious sexual dramas ("Damages," "The Lovers")...

I enjoyed another solid week of movie watching, though it got cut a little short on Saturday as I fell a little ill in the afternoon, either from something I ate or... I don't really know what actually, but no matter. The night before I was able to finally see the much talked about Richard Gere corporate thriller Arbitrage, which has people talking a lot about Gere for a potential Oscar nomination as well as boasting about Nate Parker as an up-and-coming actor. Both conversations are definitely worth having. For Parker, he doesn't really get enough time on screen to make much of a ruckus on the Supporting Actor front, but there is a great little "Do you believe him?" angle to the story that I really liked. And with Gere, the opening of the film does a fantastic job of making the "Silver Fox" look more vulnerable than I ever believe I've seen him.

Sight & Sound magazine has announced the results of its latest critics' poll to decide the greatest film of all time. Philip French charts the history of the poll

In the early 1950s, the British Film Institute was transformed by Denis Forman and Gavin Lambert. Forman was appointed director of the BFI in 1948, and one year later, he invited Lambert to edit what Lambert recalled as "the institute's terminally boring magazine Sight & Sound and bring it back to life". Both left the institute in 1955, Forman to help create Granada TV, Lambert to become a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist, and by then the National Film Theatre had been established on the South Bank, and Sight & Sound had become one of the world's pre-eminent film journals.

Among Lambert's innovations was a worldwide poll of critics to vote each decade on the top 10 films of all time, an immense undertaking that utilises the resources...

It's that time of year and Barnes and Noble is selling Criterion Collection titles at 50% off (shop here). The problem is, what do you buy? Well, hopefully I can help you with that as I believe there are certain titles from Criterion that are absolute must owns for any cinemaphile and taking into account you are considering buying Criterion Collection titles in the first place, I'm certainly talking to you. So, with that said, let's dive in as I'll give you what I consider to be the top 15 must own Criterion Blu-ray titles as well as a few alternate considerations here and there. 15.) The Thin Red Line Why Should You Buy It? What else is there to expect other than an absolutely gorgeous film from Terrence Malick and that's exactly what you get from The Thin Red Line, but on top of the film you also get a wealth of special features,...

0:00 - Intro / In-House Stuff / R.I.P. Richard Dawson 10:40 - Review: Moonrise Kingdom 43:10 - Headlines: - Independence Day 3D, The Expendables TV Show, Stallone and DeNiro in Grudge Match, One Shot is Now Jack Reacher, G.I. Joe Delayed to Add More Channing Tatum? 52:15 - Other Stuff We Watched: The Big Chill, The Freshman, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Quick and the Dead, Get Lamp, Contraband, Nothing But Trouble, The Terrorists, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Rushmore, I Shot Jesse James, Buck Privates, Humain, trop humain 1:39:10 - Junk Mail: The Power of Rotten Tomatoes, Episodes 1-85, Cinema Studies, Documentaries and Fictional Films that Go Together, Comedies with Great Action, Clever Ways of Giving Exposition in a Movie, Update on Jay's Bowel 2:05:35 - This Week's DVD Releases 2:10:00 - Outro

Film Junk Podcast Episode #371:...