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(Welcome to Now Stream This, a column dedicated to the best movies streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and every other streaming service out there.) The American Friend Now Streaming on The Criterion Channel Release Date: 1997 Genre: Neo-Noir Director: Wim Wenders Cast: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain Wim Wenders‘ deliberately paced blend of neo-noir and tone […]

The post The Best Streaming Movies to Watch Right Now: ‘The American Friend,’ ‘The Empty Man,’ A Quiet Place Part II,’ ‘Barb and Star,’ and More appeared first on /Film.

In 2018 we've published 70 interviews whose subjects have ranged from old masters to emerging new voices, and including some unexpected conversations, including those with curators (Dave Kehr of the Museum of Modern Art), as well as archival finds (a 1971 talk with Jerry Lewis).Below you will find an index of our conversations throughout the year, listed in order of publication date.Blake Williams (Prototype)Samira Elagoz (Craigslist Allstars)F.J. Ossang (9 Fingers)Jerry LewisAndré Gil Mata (The Tree)Christian Petzold (Transit)Raoul Peck (Young Karl Marx)Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf)Penelope SpheerisTed Fendt (Classical Period)Dominik Graf (The Red Shadow)Blake Williams ("Stereo Visions")Arnaud Desplechin (Ismael's Ghosts)Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz)Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote)Esther GarrelPhilippe Garrel (Lover for a Day)Jonas MekasJohann Lurf (★)Karim Aïnouz (Central Airport Thf)Juliana Antunes (Baronesa)Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage)Wang Bing (Dead Souls)Donal Foreman...

Wim Wenders' The American Friend, shot by Robby Müller, and starring Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper with cameos by Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Jean Eustache, Gérard Blain, and Peter Lilienthal, will screen in the tribute to Dan Talbot Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that it will honour Dan Talbot, founder of New Yorker Films and director of the recently closed Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, with screenings of five films and a Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet short film programme in the Retrospective section of the 56th New York Film Festival.

Lincoln Plaza Cinemas closed on January 28, 2018 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Bernardo Bertolucci's Before The Revolution, starring Adriana Asti and Francesco Barilli; Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man For Himself with Jacques Dutronc, Nathalie Baye, Isabelle Huppert, and the voice of Marguerite Duras; Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage Of Maria Braun, starring Hanna Schygulla; Louis Malle...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Films by Bonello, Rivette, Akerman, Carax, and more screen in “The Female Gaze,” a retrospective of female cinematographers. Read our piece on it here.

Metrograph

The rarely screened work of Yoshishige Yoshida gets a three-title outing, while a look at the films of actor and director Gérard Blain is underway.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Films by Martel, Denis, Akerman, Todd Haynes, and more screen in “The Female Gaze,” a retrospective of female cinematographers. Read our piece on it here.

Metrograph

The films of actor and director Gérard Blain is underway, with films by Hawks and Chabrol in the mix.

The restoration of Wanda continues...

Gérard Blain in Jusqu'au bout de la nuitPossibly the most exciting retrospective to hit Toronto so far this year, at least judging by the merits of rarity, “Rebel Without a Cause: The Cinema of Gérard Blain” will offer a glimpse into a still deeply mysterious figure of French cinema. Blain, who died in 2000, is an icon who’s near sixty-year long filmography began with being one of the nation’s most sought-after actors (going as far as to being dubbed “the French James Dean”) and soon pivoted to directing uncompromising dramas that drew comparisons to Robert Bresson. While his two best known directorial efforts, Le pélican (1974) and A Child in the Crown (1976), had been respective carte blanche programming choices of Olivier Assayas and Mia Hansen-Løve in previous Tiff seasons, Gérard Blain’s work as a director remains wholly underseen in North America and much of Europe. That’s why this series is definitely an event,...

Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film is a major new open access publication collecting essays and dialogues with contributions from Steven Shaviro, Lev Manovich and dozens of other scholars. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum and David Cairns on F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Kristin Thompson on Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Inhumaine, a letter from Danièle Huillet, Jane Fonda on feminism, essays on Gérard Blain, Matthew Barney's River of Fundament, Transparent, Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, the All The President’s Men title sequence, a new trailer for Bi Gan's Kaili Blues—and Paul Thomas Anderson has directed a video for Radiohead. » - David Hudson...

Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film is a major new open access publication collecting essays and dialogues with contributions from Steven Shaviro, Lev Manovich and dozens of other scholars. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum and David Cairns on F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Kristin Thompson on Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Inhumaine, a letter from Danièle Huillet, Jane Fonda on feminism, essays on Gérard Blain, Matthew Barney's River of Fundament, Transparent, Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, the All The President’s Men title sequence, a new trailer for Bi Gan's Kaili Blues—and Paul Thomas Anderson has directed a video for Radiohead. » - David Hudson...

Wim Wenders goes neo-noir in this wonderfully moody character-driven crime tale. Soulful art framer Bruno Ganz is the patsy in a murder scheme, but Dennis Hopper's sociopath / villain has a change of heart and befriends him. This modern classic looks great and features movie directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in major guest roles. The American Friend Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 793 1977 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 127 min. / Der Amerikanische Freund / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 12, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller. Cinematography Robby Müller Art Direction Heidi & Toni Lüdi Film Editor Peter Przygodda Original Music Jürgen Knieper Written by Wim Wenders from the novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith Produced by Renée Gundelach, Wim Wenders Directed by Wim Wenders

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Fourteen years ago Anchor Bay released a Wim Wenders DVD collection with excellent extras provided by the director himself.

Danièle Delorme and Jean Gabin in 'Deadlier Than the Male.' Danièle Delorme movies (See previous post: “Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 Actress Became Rare Woman Director's Muse.”) “Every actor would like to make a movie with Charles Chaplin or René Clair,” Danièle Delorme explains in the filmed interview (ca. 1960) embedded further below, adding that oftentimes it wasn't up to them to decide with whom they would get to work. Yet, although frequently beyond her control, Delorme managed to collaborate with a number of major (mostly French) filmmakers throughout her six-decade movie career. Aside from her Jacqueline Audry films discussed in the previous Danièle Delorme article, below are a few of her most notable efforts – usually playing naive-looking young women of modest means and deceptively inconspicuous sexuality, whose inner character may or may not match their external appearance. Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (“Open for Inventory Causes,” 1946), an unreleased, no-budget comedy notable...

Very few movements in film history have been as rewarding, and yet as undervalued among film fans, as that of the New German Cinema. With names like Rainer Werner Fassbinder now beginning to be muttered in broad collections of film fans, the world of German filmmaking that came to light in the late 1960s has birthed some of the greatest auteurs of its generation, even a handful that are still turning out some of their best work. Most notably filmmakers like Werner Herzog have transitioned from this movement into worlds that they themselves have broken the ground on.

Same could be said for one Wim Wenders.

Best known for masterpieces like Wings Of Desire and Paris, Texas, the filmmaker is to this day pushing the boundaries of what cinema can do. With 3D films like Pina and his startlingly poignant Salt Of The Earth, Wenders has had a more than productive career spanning 5 decades,...

Hatari!

Written by Leigh Brackett

Directed by Howard Hawks

USA, 1962

Hatari! is essentially about a group of men with a job to do, which makes it a perfect vehicle for John Wayne and Howard Hawks. Hawks reveled in stories about professional people who take their job seriously, and more often than not, Wayne played a character who was the best man for the job. As in their other collaborations — two Westerns before and two after — this film highlights what these two can best bring to the cinematic table. While Hatari! mostly falls into the action/adventure category (though throughout its 157-minute runtime, relatively little is concentrated on extensive action), it ends up being an entertaining and amusing character study, something perhaps more in line with Hawks than Wayne.

This was Leigh Brackett’s third screenplay for Hawks (with two more to follow) and as usual, she expertly captures the banter...

Italian neorealist film director and screenwriter who made Last Days of Mussolini, starring Rod Steiger

Carlo Lizzani, who has died aged 91, after falling from a balcony at his home, was a screenwriter and director of Italian neorealist cinema who made more than 40 feature films, as well as documentaries and television series.

His first professional experiences in the film world were as an actor, playing cameos in two powerful neorealist films: Il Sole Sorge Ancora (The Sun Still Rises, 1946), directed by Aldo Vergano; and Caccia Tragica (Tragic Hunt, 1947), Giuseppe De Santis's first feature film.

In 1947 Roberto Rossellini summoned Lizzani to Berlin where he was preparing to shoot Germania Anno Zero (Germany Year Zero). Lizzani did research with East German locals which Rossellini would find useful when the film was being made without a definitive shooting script. Lizzani said later: "Rossellini filmed the story of the boy [Edmund] as if growing up...

The French actress Bernadette Lafont has died, at 74. Fresh-faced and with an energetic spontaneity that could make her seem a barely containable force on screen, Lafont was one of a handful of performers who helped shape the face of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and 1960s. She was still a teenager when she made her debut, alongside her then-husband Gerard Blain, in Francois Truffaut’s debut short, Les Mistons (1957). A year later, she and Blain co-starred in Claude Chabrol’s first film, Le Beau Serge. She subsequently appeared in Chabrol’s A Double Tour (1959 ...

Actor with a natural and rebellious style, she helped to launch the French New Wave

Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".

Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...

(Claude Chabrol, 1958/59, Eureka!, 12)

Coined in 1957 by the French journalist François Giroud to describe a rebellious generation of young French people polled by L'Express, the term "nouvelle vague" was rapidly applied to an amorphous group of innovative film‑makers, the most vociferously self-publicising of whom were the critics working for Cahiers du Cinéma, who embraced "la politique des auteurs".

The first of them to direct a feature film was Claude Chabrol, co-author in 1957 of the first book on the Cahiers hero Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol used his wife's windfall inheritance to make what has been called the first new wave movie, Le beau Serge, followed immediately by a companion piece, Les cousins. Both were shot in a naturalistic manner by key nouvelle vague cameraman Henri Decaë, and star Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.

In Le beau Serge, Brialy plays a Parisian who goes back to his home village to save the life...

Elsa Martinelli reads the article in Cinema Retro #23 about the filming of Howard Hawks' Hatari! (Photo copyright: Roland Schaefli. All rights reserved.

By Roland Schaefli

When Elsa Martinelli checked out our “Hatari!” article in issue #23 of Cinema Retro while attending the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, she enlightened us about how she induced baby elephants to follow her around in the film. Not surprisingly, we ended up following her everywhere. Here are a few highlights of one of our discussions.

We did an article about the making of “Hatari!” and how the locations look today.

Oh. They must have changed a lot.

Not that much. The Ngorongoro Crater (where the pre title sequence was shot) is full of tourists, of course.

Back then, we were to first to actually go down there. But you were very lucky to travel there nowadays. You know, we were there four months and...

As a sidebar to the on-going Summer in France programme, Tiff will be hosting a complete two-day retrospective on one of France’s rising young talents in Fathers and Daughters: The Films of Mia Hansen-Løve, the first of its kind in North America.

At age 30, Mia Hansen-Løve has only three films under her directorial belt, but she’s been able to establish herself as “one of the brightest talents in French cinema” (Le Monde). Hansen-Løve will be there in person to introduce each film.

Screenings include:

Tout est pardonné (All Is Forgiven)

France | 2007 | 105 min. | 14A

Thursday August 23 at 6:30 Pm

- Hansen-Løve’s debut feature, which tells the story of a drug-addicted father unable to connect with his family and his daughter who tries to reunite with him, will be making its Toronto premiere.

Father of My Children (Le Père de mes enfants)

France/Germany| 2009 | 110 min. | PG

Friday August 24 at...

by Nick Schager

[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the con-man documentary thriller The Imposter.]

European and American sensibilities collide in both form and content in The American Friend, German New Wave auteur Wim Wenders' 1977 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game that blends Euro artiness and American pulp via the story of the unlikely relationship forged between Yankee hustler Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) and German picture framer Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz). Like Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge, Wenders' film encases film noir fatalism in tonal and aesthetic chilliness. It's a marriage that makes it not only Wenders' best film—given an intricate narrative to work with allows for fewer of the director's pretentious proclivities—but a simultaneously stark and suspenseful portrait of alienation, blindness, and the search for (and confrontation of) one's true self. At the bleak heart of that quest is Jonathan, who's dying of a rare blood disease and is first introduced with his...

Le beau Serge

"The story of Les cousins could be straight out of one of the Balzac novels that the film's lead character Charles peruses at a second-hand bookshop," suggests Andrew Schenker in Slant: "Ambitious provincial comes to Paris and receives his moral education in the hotbed of corruption and/or decadence that characterizes life in the capital. In Claude Chabrol's film, his second directorial effort following his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, the milieu in question is the debauched world of students, young women, and older hangers-on that the director delineates with superb specificity of detail and a virtuoso display of sickening verve." Criteron's presentation, he adds, "is a fitting testament to the late director's brilliance."

Criterion's also releasing Le beau Serge today and the essays by Terrence Rafferty that accompany each have been posted in Current. When Le beau Serge premiered out of competition in Cannes, notes Rafferty,...

Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Boccaccio ’70 (1962)

Synopsis: Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe’s biggest stars in Boccaccio ’70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Federico Fellini (8½), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard) and Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through four stories of unashamed eros. Modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron, they are comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy. Monicelli’s “Renzo e Luciana” (cut out of the original American release) is a frothy tale of young love and office politics in the big city. Fellini’s notorious “Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” features Ekberg as a busty model in a milk advertisement whose image begins to haunt an aging prude. Visconti’s “Il Lavoro” stars Romy Schneider as a trophy wife enduring her husband’s very public affairs,...

DVD Playhouse—September 2011

By Allen Gardner

In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.

X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...

Criterion will issue two long-unavailable early films by the late, great French New Waver Claude Chabrol (Inspector Bellamy) on Sept. 20.

Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.

The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.

In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...

It’s always sad to write about anybody who dies in the film business, but today’s loss is a big one. Claude Chabrol, a fellow critic and one of the founders of the French New Wave, which is a very big part of the Criterion Collection, has died at the age of 80. And like most filmmakers, he was working right until the end which is what all artists do when they love the medium as much as they do. So I wanted to take a few minutes out of your time to showcase a top 10 of his films. Sadly he isn’t featured within the Collection, but he is one of many directors that deserves a place within its walls. So without further adieu, let’s get into the wonders of Claude Chabrol.

10. Le Beau Serge (1958)

Why not start this list with Chabrol’s first film? It was an...

New York -- As the Tribeca Film Festival unveiled lineups for its Midnight, Restored/Rediscovered and new Encounters sections Tuesday, co-founder Jane Rosenthal explained the downsizing of her star-filled slate.

"Everyone told us there was so much to choose from last year, so hopefully this raises the bar for pictures and allows us to be a bit more selective," said Rosenthal, recovering from a flu that left her virtually unable to talk Monday. "Our curatorial program is a stronger program for it."

Organizers on Monday had announced the elimination of two NY/NY sections and plans to screen 159 features this year, down from 174 in 2006 (Hr 3/13).

Rosenthal added that the number of screening venues, which increased and expanded uptown last year, will increase and allow for more screenings of each film. The AMC Loews Kips Bay 15, AMC Loews 72nd Street 1 and Clearview Chelsea West will be added.

She seemed most enthusiastic about DJ Spooky's "Rebirth of a Nation," a "remix" of D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic "The Birth of a Nation" that deconstructs the controversial film. In an equally unusual event, film archivist Paolo Cherchi Usai will screen historical films to the "Passio of Arvo Part" music at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Trinity Church.

The new Encounters program -- developed by festival executive director Peter Scarlet, managing director and programmer Nancy Schafer and senior programmer David Kwok -- will "focus on people stretching themselves, either the subjects or the filmmakers," Rosenthal said. The 23-film slate will include world premieres from actors-turned-producers Rosario Dawson ("Descent") and Benicio Del Toro ("Lovesickness") and actors-turned-directors Mary Stuart Masterson ("The Cake Eaters"), James Franco ("Good Time Max") and Diego Luna ("Chavez").

Other features in the new section are "The Air I Breathe," featuring five actors (Forest Whitaker, Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Andy Garcia and Kevin Bacon) as characters in life-altering situations; Italy's Ellis Island-themed Oscar entry "Golden Door" (Nuovomondo); and "Suburban Girl," Marc Klein's adaptation of the best-selling novel "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing."

Martin Scorsese and Scarlet have curated Restored/Rediscovered, preserving and presenting rare films. Cinda Firestone's prison riot docu "Attica," Grigori Chukrai's post-Stalin-era Russian love story "The Forty-First" (Sorok Fervyi) and actor Gerard Blain's 1973 French directorial effort "The Pelican" (Le Pelican) made this year's cut.

The 11-film Midnight program follows the offbeat, more commercial taste of similar late-night fest sections. Films include Michael Addis' fame docu "Hecklers," featuring Jamie Kennedy; Jim Hickey's gross-out comedy "Dirty Sanchez," featuring the eponymous U.K. comedy troupe; and John Erick Dowdle's serial killer thriller "The Poughkeepsie Tapes."

The entire 2007 Tribeca slate encompasses 244 films, including 75 world, 32 North American and 18 domestic premieres. Some 4,550 films were submitted to the fest, including 2,250 features.