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Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Grand Illusion (1937) is showing July 27 - August 26, 2017 in the United States as part of the retrospective Jean Renoir.Considering Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion today in no small part involves an awareness of status and stature, the most prominent (or maybe just the most intimidating) aspect of which surely being the cherished status the film continues to enjoy in the canon of film history. To this day, it remains a singular achievement, not only as one of Renoir's foundational masterpieces, but also as a film of its time whose contents have remained timeless. Released in 1937 to great acclaim, it bid farewell to one era of European history and warfare as another, far darker one was about to begin; thus, more than the grimly comical The Rules of the Game (made and released two years closer to the brink...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. John Carpenter's Christine (1983) is showing May 4 - June 3 and Starman (1984) is showing May 5 - June 4, 2017 in the United Kingdom.ChristineWas it too dark? Too bleak? Too gory? Did it have the misfortune of opening when American moviegoers were flocking to E.T.? Either way, when John Carpenter's The Thing landed in the summer of 1982, with an apocalyptic cliffhanger and the most surreally grotesque, tactile, gooey monster effects you never realized could be put on film, it fizzled. "It was hated," Carpenter later recalled at a screening in Los Angeles. "Hated by fans. I lost a job. People hated me. They thought I was this horrible, violent—" He trailed off and joked, "And I was." The audience laughed, because by now The Thing's exalted place in movie geek culture is secure: an exquisitely paranoid horror classic and arguably the crown...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jack Hill's Spider Baby (1967) will be showing January 24 - February 23 and Pit Stop (1967) will be showing January 25 - February 24, 2017 in the United States.Quentin Tarantino, unsurprisingly a gushing fan of Jack Hill, once famously compared the exploitation specialist to venerable Hollywood icon Howard Hawks, presumably on the basis of his distinctly personal preferences and his unassuming, across-the-board genre dabbling. Of course, those genres explored by Hawks—from westerns to screwball comedies—were considerably different than those in which Hill excels, but the point is well taken: within his respective niches, Hill does it as well as anyone, with skill and without pretense. This includes quintessential Blaxploitation classics like Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), and some of the finest women-in-prison films ever made—yes, there are some very fine women-in-prison films—namely The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage...

We change things up by focusing on a boutique label, Twilight Time, that has found success through a unique business model. Mark and Aaron happen to be big fans, and feel that we have directly contributed towards some of their profits. We talk about the company, their business model, why they have succeeded, and we address some common critiques. We also review a few discs each, and finally count down our favorite Twilight Time titles.

About Nick Redman:

London-born Nick Redman, one of Hollywood’s leading producers of movie music, is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker. An Academy Award nominee as producer of the 1996 Warner Brothers documentary, The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, he went on to write, produce, and direct A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers (1998), which became a prize-winner at multiple film festivals.

As a consultant to the Fox Music...

The close up has been a powerful device in horror films for nearly a century now. The close-up shot is used in horror to create atmosphere and increase the audience’s fear by zooming in on facial expressions of the characters at hand. Conversely, close-ups are an equally effective tool used to emote objects, from Freddy Krueger’s blades in Nightmare on Elm Street to Abigal’s doll face in The Conjuring. The technique can identify an object or body part in a forest to hint at a clue to a bigger mystery. By holding on the close-up, jump scares are also used to bring about a moment of terror for the audience by centering the jump up close in frame. Although the scope isn’t as wide an establishing shot, there is tremendous amount of versatility and direction that can be gathered from the close-up. Here are a couple...

We’re more than halfway through August, dear readers, and the summer movie season is almost over. But there are always new trailers for me to watch and analyze. This week’s installment of Trailer Trashin’ takes a look at the teaser for Quentin Tarantino’s next film The Hateful Eight.

Premise: In post-Civil War Wyoming, eight strangers seek shelter in a haberdashery during a blizzard. But they soon get involved in a plot of betrayal and deception. Will they survive, and are they really who they say they are?

My take: Back in November 2013, Quentin Tarantino announced that his next film would be The Hateful Eight, his second Western after Django Unchained (2012). But in January 2014, after Tarantino had given copies of his first draft screenplay of the film to a few trusted colleagues, a copy of the script was leaked online. Tarantino was furious, filed a lawsuit against the gossip blog Gawker,...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Above: Jim Jarmusch photographed by Wim Wenders.The lineup for the 2015 Locarno Film Festival has been revealed, and includes new films by Hong Sang-soo, Andrzej Zulawski, Chantal Akerman, Athina Rachel Tsangari.A sad ending to an ambitious enterprise: The online, Us-based film publication The Dissolve has had to fold after only two years. Best of luck to their talented staff of editors and writings.Some good news from the online-film-criticism scene: the Norweigan film magazine Montages has launched its English-language international edition.!Portuguese great Manoel de Oliveira passed away last April at the age of 106. The documentary short Um Século de Energia, above, seems to be his final film.Critic Mike D'Angelo, a contributor to The Dissolve among many other publications, has written in defense of the "first-person review."If you were annoyed,...

25: The Dark Knight Rises

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan

2012, USA

The Dark Knight Rises feels as if it was made up of two equal halves, with the most critical moment of the film breaking the movie in half, almost literally. While the second half may have been a let down, the first half is incredibly ambitious to say the least. The opening sequence, a gravity-defying skyjacking, is a tour de force – wildly choreographed, vivid, visceral, and chock full of suspense. That aerial extraction alone is worth the price of admission. Production-wise, effects-wise, Nolan’s movie (with sequences shot with Imax cameras) is staggering. There was an opportunity here for Nolan to stretch the boundaries of what is possible in the genre, alas, the final act becomes a little too conventional – complete with a doomsday device and a ticking-clock countdown. But for every quibble,...

1. An Unassuming Man

We’Re At Comic-con.

Rian Johnson Sits At The Center Of A Press Table Before The Throngs Of Journalists. Joseph Gordon-levitt Sits To His Left, Emily Blunt Sits To His Right. A Journalist Stands Up In The Back And Proceeds To Ask Mr. Gordon-levitt About His Remarkable Year, Specifically All The Top Flight Directors He’S Worked With. It Is At This Moment That Joe, Who Has Spend Much Of The Conference Smiling And Joking In A Relaxed State, Suddenly Sits Up A Straight And Takes On A Tone Of Utmost Seriousness. He Says:

“I do think...

I think the only thing to really say about today's unveiling of Sight & Sound's latest installment in their decennial list of the 50 greatest films of all time is to acknowledge it as a list of truly great films. The hubbub over the ordering is a little like pissing in the wind as the major headline is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo capsizing the 50 year reign of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which has been the number one film on the list since it began in 1952. So Vertigo sits at number one, climbing steadily in the eyes of the participants of the every-ten-year poll made up of 846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors. A secondary poll of 358 film directors from all over the world -- including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and Mike Leigh -- and they didn't go with Kane either, or Vertigo for that matter. Nope, Yasujiro Ozu's...

When Michelle Collins left Bwe several months ago, she compiled this list of her favorite posts of all time. In honor of Bwe’s final week, we’ve reposted this handy guide in case you find yourself suffering from BWEthdrawal in the coming weeks and wish to peruse some bona fide literary classics. She also would like us to clarify that she did not write the title of this post. Take it away, Michelle: Well, my time at Best Week Ever is coming to a close. But before I go, here are 37 things I am proud to have done over the last 6 years. Please note that putting this list together has given me life-altering anxiety this week because I can’t believe it’s over! So, presenting The Final Countdown: 37 Things I Did For Best Week Ever: 37. Fell In Love With Knut. Met Him. Then Mourned Him. Our...

Well, my time at Best Week Ever is coming to a close. But before I go, here are 37 things I am proud to have done over the last 6 years. Please note that putting this list together has given me life-altering anxiety this week because I can’t believe it’s over! So, presenting The Final Countdown: 37 Things I Did For Best Week Ever: 37. Fell In Love With Knut. Met Him. Then Mourned Him. Our journey with Knut was a deep one. We fell in love with the little scamp from birth, as did the other 1000 billion people living in China and beyond. But, like a little Lindsay Lohan except not quite as pale, the attention got to little Knuty, right around the time he started growing up into a less small, way filthy dirtier full grown polar bear. I was one of the millions to go to Berlin and meet Knut.

From animated flicks to epic dramas, Zagat Survey has released The World's Best Movies! 20,773 moviegoers voted and they collectively watched 2.4 million films this year. Wow!

Did your favorite films resonate with the survey participants?

Take a look at the article below taken from Zagat.com:

Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse: Each film in the guide has been rated on Zagat's signature 30-point scale in four categories: Overall Quality, Acting, Story and Production Values, followed by an editorial review complete with surveyor comments in quotation marks. In addition, the guide boasts over 60 top lists and indexes ranging from genre and year of release to Oscar winners.

"This new Survey puts the ratings and reviews of over 20,000 avid moviegoers at your fingertips so that no matter what your age, sex or preference, there's an easy way to find the perfect film for every occasion," said Tim Zagat, CEO and Co-Founder of Zagat Survey.

Surfers are dangerous. They have their own language. They carry automatic weapons. They look like the grunge-rock children of hippie communists. They do a mean Reagan impression. These are but a few of the lessons learned in Point Break, this week’s video-store necessity. (We are discussing it in honor of fellow bank robbery flick Takers.)

Directed by Hurt Locker auteur Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break is a great action movie…and an even better romance. Surfing, skydiving, gun-play, and more thinly-veiled homoeroticism than a frat house watching 300. If you love this movie half as much as we do, you still love it an infinite amount.

DVD Playhouse—June 2010

By

Allen Gardner

The White Ribbon (Sony) On the eve of Ww I, a small village in Germany is struck by a series of tragic, seemingly unconnected events until the townspeople, and the audience, start to connect the dots. Shot in stark, beautiful black & white, director Michael Haneke has fashioned a haunting metaphorical drama that is as coldly chilling as anything made by Ingmar Bergman, and darkly unsettling as anything from the canon of David Lynch. A rich, tough, brilliant cinematic experience you’re not likely to forget. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bd bonuses: Interviews with cast and crew; featurettes. Widescreen Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.

Alice In Wonderland (Disney) Tim Burton’s take on the Lewis Carroll classic finds young Alice (Mia Wasikowska), a 19th century girl who finds herself in an unhappy engagement to a boorish suitor, tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, where she encounters magical cakes,...

The curtain has been raised on J.J. Abrams next (and super secret) movie project. It indeed is called Super 8 and Abrams is directing from his own screenplay. The producers are Steven Spielberg, Abrams and Bryan Burk. The film is a co-production between Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Abrams' Bad Robot.

This information comes not from an official announcement from Paramount Pictures but by the title credit card seen at the end of the Super 8 teaser trailer, set to begin showing in front of screenings of Iron Man 2 beginning tomorrow.

A description of the trailer follows. If you want to stay unspoiled, leave now!

 

The trailer begins:

We see a quick display of blurry images and hear the background chatter of what sounds like a police radio band. Smash cut to a black screen and the following sentence:

"In 1979, the U.S. Air Force closed a section of Area 51."

Cut to...

The Cannes Film Festival has just announced it’s film line-up for 2010, and there are several Criterion alum both in and out of competition.

Mike Leigh’s latest, Another Year, will be screening at the festival, where in 1993, his Criterion film, Naked, won both the Palm d’Or and Best Director. Abbas Kiarostami, he of Taste of Cherry (which also won the Palm d’Or), and the upcoming Criterion release: Close-Up, will be showing off his latest film: Certified Copy. Finally, the Criterion heavy weight champion, Jean-Luc Godard, will quite possibly stun us all with his latest, and rumored last film, Socialisme. This will be Godard’s first film to be shot digitally.

Other Criterion Collection names to note on the list: Kate Beckinsale (Last Days of Disco) and Benicio del Toro (Che, Traffic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) will both serving on the Competition Jury. Mathieu Amalric, of A Christmas Tale,...

Chicago – Attention martial arts fans, Buena Vista Home Video recently released a wave of martial arts films on Blu-Ray under the title “The Ultimate Force of Four” box set, including one of Jet Li’s best films, the spectacular “Hero,” from director Zhang Yimou. “Hero” is easily the highlight of the quartet of recent HD releases but “Iron Monkey,” “The Legend of Drunken Master,” and “Zatoichi” will all satisfy fans in 1080p (as long as they’re not purists about audio tracks).

Three of the four titles are merely HD imports of special features and films already available on standard DVD. The exception is “Hero,” which includes an all-new featurette and a digital copy, but is actually one of the most divisive Blu-Rays of the year. Miramax/Buena Vista has made the baffling choice to include a higher caliber quality of audio for the dubbed tracks on “Hero,” “Iron Monkey,...