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While an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, in 1971, Carrie Rickey took a course taught by Manny Farber called “A Hard Look at the Movies.” On the syllabus was Agnès Varda‘s “Cléo from 5 to 7,” a film that brought tears to Rickey’s eyes as soon as she saw the “Script and Direction by Agnès Varda” credit appear on screen. “I was stunned,” the film critic told IndieWire. “I never thought a woman could direct a movie. You get a little older and you realize the first feature film was directed by a woman, Alice Guy-Blaché, but Varda was the first female filmmaker I ever saw on screen.”

As the decades passed and Rickey saw more of Varda’s work, Varda expanded and deepened Rickey’s ideas not just about female filmmakers but about what it meant to be a filmmaker in general. Her interest in...

Stella Dallas.In the final scene of Stella Dallas (1925), the title character stands in a dark city street in the rain, peering through a window at her daughter’s wedding. This famous image inescapably suggests a viewer gazing at a movie screen: the lighted square of the window, framed by lace-trimmed drapes, even closely matches the aspect ratio of films from the time. This resemblance adds a subtle element of self-commentary to the scene, in which Stella is both punished and exalted. Having exiled herself from her child’s life so as not to hold her back, she gets to witness the fruit of her sacrifice while paying the bitter price, as a policeman curtly orders the bedraggled woman to move along.When I saw Stella Dallas, newly restored by the Museum of Modern Art, at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 in Bologna, I responded to this scene exactly as I was...

It’s not every day that Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson team up. But IndieWire has learned they will today: The three directors have scheduled an emergency call with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav about the layoffs of Turner Classic Movies’ top brass.

The network laid off much of its leadership yesterday, including executive VP and general manager Pola Changnon; senior VP of programming and content strategy, Charles Tabesh; VP of brand creative and marketing Dexter Fedor; VP of enterprises and strategic partnerships Genevieve McGillicuddy, who also served as the director of the annual TCM Film Festival; and VP of studio production Anne Wilson.

These people were responsible for everything from curating lineups, to shooting intros and outros, and for creating original shows, documentaries, and video essays that serve as major contributions to American cultural history.

Scorsese has often said he has Turner Classic Movies on...

Not since Julia Sugarbaker told Marjorie about the night the lights went out in Georgia has a female performer given audiences a feast of camp and fury like Kelly Reilly serves every week on “Yellowstone.” And I, a gay man, am here to say that she ate, no crumbs, she is Mother, and whatever we’ll be saying next year because we no longer live in a world that won’t discuss Reilly’s performance as Beth Dutton. With the first half of Season 5 now available to stream on Peacock with the rest of the series, I need to go on the record about something.

Yes, I watch “Yellowstone” (or as most publications call it “That Show Your Parents Love”). Yes, it is problematic and messy and sometimes cringe, and yeah, Ok, I do tend to bear down on the fast-forward button when the men are talking about, I dunno,...

Beloved Turner Classic Movies series “Reframed” is back for a second season, but this time with a twist.

While Season 1 focused on re-contextualizing problematic feature films, the upcoming season, premiering November 5, instead looks at groundbreaking movies that had racially diverse casts, showed queer romances, and de-stigmatized differences.

“Movies change our perspectives,” the trailer says. “Movies change us for the better.”

TCM, with the slogan “where then meets now,” will program a series of films that were “groundbreaking for their time due to their depictions of everything from Black or Asian leads, stories about the Jewish experience, films with trans characters and other marginalized groups/issues shown in a positive light,” per an official press statement.

Each selected film, ranging from “The Snake Pit” to “Brokeback Mountain,” will air along with a conversation between TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and a guest, including film historian Donald Bogle, filmmaker Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Closeup of Fay Wray from Doctor X after restoration work. Image from https://www.cinema.ucla.eduNEWSAfter working together in the film Rojo (2018), director Benjamin Naishtat and actor Alfredo Castro reunite to talk about the terror, pleasure and mystery involved in the process of creating a film. They agree that for both director and actor, the seed of creation is the irrationality of madness, and that uncertainty is an essential factor in filmmaking. Castro and Naishtat call for a subversive cinema that cannot be domesticated by current narrative paradigms and that is also capable of using the imagination as a means and a catalyst to reinterpret our history. To listen to this episode and subscribe on your favorite podcast app, click here.The great French film director Jacques Rozier is being evicted from his...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Killers of the Flower Moon (2021)From Osage News, the first official image from Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon, featuring Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio. Recommended VIEWINGFollowing the release of his series The Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins has also released The Gaze, a 50-minute non-narrative video piece that captures the show's background actors in moments of stillness. The film challenges the notion of the "white gaze" by pursuing what Jenkins refers to as "the Black gaze; or the gaze distilled." Shudder has released an official trailer for George A. Romero's The Amusement Park, a restoration of the long-lost 1973 film. Originally a commissioned work by the Lutheran Society, The Amusement Park was shelved for its terrifying depiction of elder abuse. The film will premiere on Shudder on June 8. Over at Ecstatic Static,...

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“A Biography Of A Film”

By Raymond Benson

Lately there has been a new trend in film books that are more like biographies than simply non-fiction treatises on the making of a movie. A “biography of a film,” as critic Molly Haskell calls it, treats a particular motion picture in the same way a researcher would examine a person’s life—from the inception to its lasting influence and impact today, meticulously illustrating each step and examining the personnel involved along the way. The recent Space Odyssey by Michael Benson (a “biography” of 2001: A Space Odyssey) is a fine example.

Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboy—Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic is one such biography of a film, and it is a magnificent tome. Besides dissecting the all-important sociological milieu that was in the background while Cowboy was being made,...

One could have watched the Critics Choice Awards last Sunday and thought they were re-watching the Golden Globes. Same nominees, mostly the same winners, same sweatshirt for Jason Sudeikis. Wait … didn’t the professional entertainment judgers generally blast the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for, well, for being what and who they are?

What happened to early critics’ winners like “First Cow”? How quickly they forget and go with the flow. In fact, this is the time critics — respect or resent them — are currently getting a taste of their own.

Consider “Malcolm and Marie,” the controversial film from Sam Levinson starring John Thomas Washington and Zendaya. It is basically one long argument about whether “that white lady of the L.A. Times” wrote a positive or negative review of Washington’s character’s film, seen through the racial lens. Washington ends his screed by saying he hopes the writer gets “f...

Like the National Film Registry but in a more 'in the now' kind of way the American Film Institute offers up a top ten list each year meant to denote American screen entertainments that are "culturally and artistically representative" of the artform that year. This year's jury included luminaries like Oscar winner Marlee Martlin, Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and Rian Johnson, Honorary Oscar winner Wes Studi, 2021 Kennedy Center Honoree Debbie Allen, Emmy winner Amy Sherman-Palladino, Director Lulu Wang, film historians like Molly Haskell, Mark Harris, and Leonard Maltin, and many more including critics from Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, TV Guide, and The Washington Post. Here's what they came up with after the jump...

The American Film Institute’s annual lists showcasing the top 10 movies and TV shows of the year always include multiple awards frontrunners and this year is no exception. The two juries — which are a mix of critics, academics, and film professionals — always celebrate the best of American cinema and television. Given its Broadway provenance, “Hamilton” landed a Special Award from the American Film Institute juries, as internationally-flavored Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” did last year.

This year’s crop is diverse, with films from lauded veterans Spike Lee, David Fincher, and Pete Docter alongside relative newcomers to the awards conversation like Shaka King, Chloe Zhao, and Lee Isaac Chung.

Like last year, eight of the ten films were directed by men, with two women, Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Regina King (“One Night in Miami”), also on deck for the honor. On the TV side, newcomers “Bridgerton,...

The American Film Institute’s annual lists showcasing the top 10 movies and TV shows of the year always include multiple awards frontrunners and this year is no exception. The two juries — which are a mix of critics, academics, and film professionals — always celebrate the best of American cinema and television. Given its Broadway provenance, “Hamilton” landed a Special Award from the American Film Institute juries, as internationally-flavored Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” did last year.

This year’s crop is diverse, with films from lauded veterans Spike Lee, David Fincher, and Pete Docter alongside relative newcomers to the awards conversation like Shaka King, Chloe Zhao, and Lee Isaac Chung.

Like last year, eight of the ten films were directed by men, with two women, Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Regina King (“One Night in Miami”), also on deck for the honor. On the TV side, newcomers “Bridgerton,...

Netflix leads the list of for the American Film Institute’s AFI Movies of the Year with four films, a record haul for them or any streamer in this annual prestigious list that often mirrors the lion’s share of future Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, David Fincher’s Mank, George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Aaron Sorkin’s ever-relevant The Trial of the Chicago 7 made the cut for Netflix in this pandemic-affected year Among other streamers Amazon Studios also had an impressive showing with two films including Sound of Metal and Regina King’s directorial debut One Night In Miami. Disney+ scored with Pixar’s animated Soul, while the Mouse House studio’s Fox acquisition Searchlight is there with Nomadland.

In a sign of these times, or at least the delayed potential contenders from what we would call major studio releases,...

Some heartfelt moments aside, this documentary is an exasperating, Hello-style hagiography that pays too little attention to Hepburn’s film work

There are some heartfelt moments in this documentary portrait of Audrey Hepburn, with touching contributions from her son Sean Hepburn Ferrer, and granddaughter Emma Ferrer – as well as spirited comments from critic Molly Haskell as well as Peter Bogdanovich, who directed Hepburn in his ill-fated 1981 movie They All Laughed. But by and large, it’s an exasperating, simpering, Hello-magazine-interview of a film, blandly celebrating her “iconic” presence in the horribly overrated Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which she was absurdly unrelaxed and self-conscious.

The film gives due weight to the unaffected loveliness and charm of her first leading role, in Roman Holiday. But amid the waffle, her very good performances in Stanley Donen’s Two For the Road and Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian are just ignored. The...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Joaquin Phoenix in Joker (2019). The first few details have emerged regarding Ari Aster's next feature, with Joaquin Phoenix in talks to star. Tentatively titled Beau is Afraid, the film (previously a 2011 short film by Aster) involves an anxious man's surreal and nightmarish trek to his overbearing mother's home following her death. Meanwhile, Spike Lee has announced his plans to direct a musical about the launch of launch of Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. Recommended VIEWINGNew York's Screen Slate and Collaborative Cataloging Japan recently hosted a Twitch discussion with legendary filmmaker Masao Adachi on Gewaltpia: Motoharu Jonouchi and the Japanese Avant-Garde. The stream will remain online through tomorrow, and then will be available to Screen Slate's Patreon supporters. Omelia Contadina, by Jr and Alice Rohrwacher in collaboration with the inhabitants of the Alfina plateau,...

An epic 15-disc box set featuring the films of Federico Fellini isn’t the only release arriving on The Criterion Collection this November. Following Roma and Marriage Story, they will also be adding another Netflix title to their library: Martin Scorsese’s mob epic The Irishman. Featuring a brand-new documentary on the making of the film, a video essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme, and program on the visual effects, and more, it looks like an essential pick-up even if you already have a Netflix subscription.

Also among the November lineup is Norman Jewison’s delightful romantic drama Moonstruck, featuring interviews with the cast and crew, an audio commentary from 1998 with Cher, Jewison, and John Patrick Shanley, and more. Claudia Weill’s landmark indie drama Girlfriends is also coming to Criterion, with interviews featuring the cast and crew, short films by Weill, and more. Lastly, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai...

After hosting a successful inaugural presentation of its popular classic film festival, Turner Classic Movies is gearing up for a new season of the network’s longest-running feature, “The Essentials.”

The network has announced that director Brad Bird will join TCM host Ben Mankiewicz starting May 2 with 20 new features to give fans a classic film education. Bird, the director of beloved animated features like “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” and “The Iron Giant,” will discuss a bevy of films from 1952’s musical classic “Singin’ in the Rain” to Cary Grant’s 1939 film “Gunga Din.”

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“I love jabbering about movies almost as much as I enjoy watching them,” said Bird in a statement. “Getting the opportunity to talk with him [Ben Mankiewicz] about indelible...

What She Said: The Art Of Pauline Kael screens at Webster University ‘s Moor Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave) screens Friday February 21st, Saturday February 22nd, and Sunday February 23rd. The film begins each evening at at 7:00pm. A Facebook event can be found Here

Regarded by Roger Ebert as having “a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades,” film critic Pauline Kael reigned, from the late 60s to the early 90s, as one of the most well-known, clever, and controversial figures in the industry. Having been one of the few female critics in a sea of men, unapologetic about her (often scathing) opinions, and underpaid for the influential work she did, Kael fought endlessly to preserve her title.

Pauline Kael, the New Yorker film critic for 25 years until the early 1990s, was a lightning rod of American culture.

As 2019 draws to a close, the busy cinephile can mostly be found in his or her natural habitat, the theater. However, there are lots of books to catch up with once Oscar season is finished—or, at least, dies down. Let’s start with two killer eBooks.

Read Also: The Film Stage’s 2019 Holiday Gift Gide

Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook (Seventh Row)

One of the finest film-related texts of 2019 was the Seventh Row team’s analysis of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, and this series of deep cinema exploration continues with Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook. Both eBooks are once again edited by two of the smartest, most readable writers on film art, Orla Smith and Alex Heeney. In Tour of Memories, Smith and Heeney study...

Cluny Brown

Blu ray

Criterion

1946/ 1.33:1 / 100 min.

Starring Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones

Cinematography by Joseph Lashelle

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

The last film completed by Ernst Lubitsch before his sudden death in 1947, Cluny Brown is the life-embracing work of a determined romantic – unintimidated by poor health let alone the World War that raged during the movie’s production.

The story of an unvarnished beauty who finds happiness in a leaky faucet, Jennifer Jones plays Cluny, the low-brow but high-spirited plumber’s apprentice and Charles Boyer is her romantically inclined guardian angel, Adam Belinski.

Belinski is a penniless refugee who drops by a posh party in search of cash and is mistaken for the maintenance man – just as Cluny arrives to unclog the pipes and save the day. She celebrates with one too many beverages (“My first sink and my first cocktail… I feel… ‘chirrupy’”) and is banished by her class-conscious...

In today’s film news roundup, “I Love Lucy” draws nostalgic fans to theaters, “Desolation Center” is set for release and “What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael” and “American Dharma” are sold.

Box Office

Fathom Events reported a Tuesday night showing of “I Love Lucy: A Colorized Celebration” drew more than 60,000 attendees with an estimated $777,645 at 660 North American sites.

The take left the one-night showing in sixth place for the day at the domestic box office. “I Love Lucy: A Colorized Celebration” featured five episodes of “I Love Lucy,” along with a featurette on the colorization of the shows.

The showing took place on Ball’s 108th birthday. Fathom, which is operated by the AMC, Cinemark and Regal chains, said some locations adding showtimes and auditoriums to meet fan demand.

Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said, “The incredible performance of ‘I Love Lucy: A Colorized Celebration’ demonstrates the...

Two minutes. Two minutes is the magic number for Ben Mankiewicz.

The primetime host of TCM has recorded hundreds of introduction segments for movies that air on the film lover’s cable haven. After much experimentation and market research, the TCM team has concluded that two minutes is the ideal length for the amuse bouche delivered by the host before the feature entrée is served.

“After you get to about 2:15, people are saying, ‘Go ahead and start the movie now,’“ Mankiewicz quips. He credits original TCM host Robert Osborne for perfecting the timing and tone of the set-up segment. “It’s an art. Robert really found it,” he says of the late TCM host, who died in 2017 at the age of 84.

Within his 120 seconds, Mankiewicz tries to share enlightening, surprising, or amusing anecdotes connected to the movie that is more than a dry reading of credits.

“We are programming...

Agnès Varda, “the mother of the French New Wave” who spent seven decades as a trailblazing filmmaker and documentarian, has died at the age of 90.

“The director and artist Agnes Varda died at her home on the night of Thursday, March 29, of complications from cancer,” Varda’s family said in a statement to the Afp. “She was surrounded by her family and friends,” the family said in a statement.”

The Cannes Film Festival tweeted Friday, “Immense sadness. For almost 65 years, Agnès Varda’s eyes and voice embodied cinema with endless inventiveness.

The Village Voice, which was founded in 1955 and left an indelible mark on New York’s cultural and political landscape for decades, has finally faced up to its daunting business reality and opted to cease editorial operations.

The news bubbled up in reports early this afternoon by Gothamist, the Associated Press and Columbia Journalism Review. Those outlets obtained a recording of a conference call with staffers conducted this morning by Peter Barbey, who bought the weekly from Voice Media Group in 2015.

“Today is kind of a sucky day,” Barbey said on the call. “Due to the business realities, we are going to stop publishing Village Voice new material.”

About half of the remaining 20 staffers were laid off as of today, with the other half winding down operations and focusing on digitizing the paper’s extensive archives. In 2017, the Voice had stopped publishing its print edition but remained online.

In a later statement,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.News Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria.The lineup for this year's Venice Film Festival has been announced. In-competition titles include Carlos Reygadas' open-relationship romance Where Life is Born (the auteur's first feature in 5 years), Shinya Tsukamoto's much-anticipated samurai film Killing, and Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale, a Gothic revenge story set in Tasmania. The Venice Documentaries section joins an eclectic range of heavy-hitters, from Gastón Solnicki (Kékszakállú) and once-retiree Tsai Ming-liang, to Errol Morris and Frederick Wiseman, whose Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library screened in competition at the festival last year.Meanwhile, the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival has followed suit, releasing the names of the films set to premiere at its Special Presentations and Galas. Notably, this edition reunites the festival with Barry Jenkins, whose James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk will have its world premiere.

Illustration by Sergio MembrillasLegendary film critic Molly Haskell once wrote after seeing Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather that the final image of the film where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has the door closed on his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), to conduct a business meeting has “reverberated through our culture” ever since. In terms of movies Haskell is specifically referring to the image’s metaphorical power of representing the course Hollywood would take in ignoring women for what is now, nearly fifty years. The image of Michael shutting the door essentially forces Kay into the fringes of his life and therefore the narrative of the movie, and I agree with Haskell that it has proven to be one of the more useful images in all of Hollywood, and filmmaking in general, ever since. What is ironic about the appearance of this culturally significant image in the early 70s is that...

The Awful Truth

Blu ray

Criterion

1937 / 1:33 / 91 Min. / Street Date April 17, 2018

Starring Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy

Cinematography by Joseph Walker

Written by Viña Delmar

Edited by Al Clark

Produced and directed by Leo McCarey

Thanks to Louis Armstrong and his fellow geniuses, the Jazz Age transformed a generation and dominated pop culture for close to two decades; Vanity Fair and Life recorded the nightlife of hot-to-trot sophisticates while early risers followed the seesaw romance of a willowy flapper named Blondie Boopadoop and her paramour Dagwood Bumstead, a lovesick Dick Powell wannabe.

It was Powell who helped popularize the uptempo rhythms pervading the fast and loose musicals of the era, in particular Paramount’s raucous output which flaunted hot jazz on the soundtrack whether it starred Crosby as a college crooner or W.C. Fields as a double-dealing misanthrope. Even Norman McLeod’s Alice In Wonderland began with a bouncy...

The story is shocking. Michelle Williams — front and center at the Golden Globes for her nominated performance anchoring “All The Money In the World” — made $80 a day in per diem for the film’s reshoots, while co-star Mark Wahlberg squeezed $1.5 million out of Sony as it endeavored to replace accused child rapist Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer. The attention-grabbing headline is likely the first of many that will shine a light on Hollywood’s gender and racial pay inequality.

On the surface, the circumstances surrounding Wahlberg and Williams’ additional photography fees are unique. Sony and Ridley Scott needed to quickly remove Spacey from its major holiday release, and Wahlberg held Sony over a barrel. Williams, like so many involved with the movie, was motivated to salvage the project and take positive action in the wake of the avalanche of ugliness dominating the film industry following the Harvey Weinstein revelations. “I...

It was the name on everyone’s lips at last night’s annual New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner: Tiffany Haddish. The breakout “Girls Trip” star was on hand to accept her award for Best Supporting Actress — a turn good enough to earn her the same win from other critics groups, including the African-American Film Critics Association, plus two nods from the Critics Choice Awards — and the comedian seemed destined to shake up the show from the outset. Nyfcc chair (and IndieWire’s own) Eric Kohn immediately deemed Haddish’s table his favorite, and the bar was busy slinging a signature cocktail name in her honor (the Tiffany Toast, made of Finlandia grapefruit vodka, yuzu citrus, and a hint of pomegranate).

Even people who weren’t in attendance were talking Tiffany, and when “Phantom Thread” actress Lesley Manville took the stage to accept the best screenplay award on behalf...

Over the course of half a century, Molly Haskell has stayed the course. “I always call myself a film critic first and a feminist second, because my first allegiance is to movies,” the long-time critic and author recently told IndieWire, a status she’s happily asserted during her enviable run as a critic for publications like The Village Voice, New York Magazine, and Vogue. As Haskell gears up to accept a Special Award for Career Achievement from the New York Film Critics Circle, she’s more secure in her beliefs than ever. It’s about time everyone else joined in, too.

While Haskell doesn’t currently have a “regular berth,” as she terms it, her writings regularly appear in a variety of publications, and she mixes those pieces up with interesting one-offs. Recently, she finished penning an essay for an upcoming release of Leo McCarey’s “The Awful Truth” for Criterion,...

An enormous talent onscreen, Jessica Chastain has become a fierce advocate for women’s rights offscreen as well. Whether on her personal Twitter account or as a jury member for the Cannes Film Festival, the actress is steadfast in her commitment to calling out misogyny, sexual misconduct, and the patriarchy. In her latest role, as the titular character in Aaron Sorkin’s “Molly’s Game,” Chastain proves she chooses her projects as carefully as she chooses her words. “Things aren’t working with the status quo, and I think they all need to be challenged and stretched a bit,” Chastain recently told IndieWire in an interview for our Spotlight Awards series. “This game that women have been forced to play just doesn’t work anymore.”

Read More:‘Mudbound’ Director Dee Rees on Mud as an Allegory for Race: Awards Season Spotlight Profile Based on an unbelievable true story, “Molly’s...

This devastating romantic melodrama is Max Ophüls’ best American picture — perhaps because it seems so European? It’s probably Joan Fontaine’s finest hour as well, and Louis Jourdan comes across as a great actor in a part perfect for his screen personality. The theme could be called, ‘No regrets,’ but also, ‘Everything is to be regretted.’

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Blu-ray

Olive Signature

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 87 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman, John Good, Leo B. Pessin, Erskine Sanford, Otto Waldis, Sonja Bryden.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Film Editor: Ted J. Kent

Original Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof

Written by Howard Koch from a story by Stefan Zweig

Produced by John Houseman

Directed by Max Ophüls

A young woman’s romantic nature goes beyond all limits, probing the nature of True Love.

New York Film Critics Circle, another early harbinger of film awards race results, weighed in with their picks for 2017’s best films Nov. 30. Fresh off her Gotham Awards victory, Saoirse Ronan of A24’s “Lady Bird” triumphed in the Best Actress category (making this her second Nyfcc win in only three years; the star earned the same title in 2015 for “Brooklyn”). Greta Gerwig’s film also earned Nyfcc’s top prize for best picture. Timothée Chalamet, another recent Gotham Award winner for Sony Pictures Classics’ gay romance “Call Me By Your Name,” became the Nyfcc’s youngest-ever winner in the Best Actor category. Read: Greta Gerwig Talks Directing ‘Lady Bird’ + Her Fear of Failure Tiffany Haddish picked up her first awards recognition of the season for her riotous performance in Universal Pictures’ “Girls Trip.” Winning in the supporting male category was Willem Dafoe for A24’s “The Florida Project,” which...

The prestigious New York Film Critics Circle, founded in 1935, is always a force in the early awards conversation. While Thursday’s vote was too early to catch late entries “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “All the Money in the World,” the critics like to set the tone for the awards season (while protesting that it has no bearing on how they vote). These critics picks do wield considerable influence in steering awards voters to see their winners. Since their founding, the Nyfcc’s Best Film has also been awarded the Best Picture Oscar 43 percent of the time.

Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions

This year, the Nyfcc pushed forward in the awards race writer-director Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” (A24), which won Best Film and Actress Saoirse Ronan — her second win after the Gothams for her winsome performance as a yearning Catholic schoolgirl, and the 23-year-old “Brooklyn” star’s second win...

Another day, another report from the precursor scene. Yes, today marks another notable point in Phase One of the season, as the New York Film Critics Circle is chiming in with their winners for 2017. Not only that, yesterday has the nominees announced for the 22nd annual Satellite Awards. We’re still early on in this point, but some contenders for Oscar attention are starting to get wins under their belts. Over the next few weeks, a glut of critics awards will start to give some films and performances a leg up in the race. Of course, until the Guilds chime in, no movie, no actor, no actress, and no filmmaker is truly out of it. As you’ll see, Nyfcc had their victors, which is always a prestigious bunch, while the Satellite nominations more or less included all the big contenders. For the latter, Dunkirk led with a strong 11 nods,...

My Fair Lady is back in Cineplex theatres as part of our Classic Film SeriesMy Fair Lady is back in Cineplex theatres as part of our Classic Film SeriesIngrid Randoja - Cineplex Magazine10/11/2017 1:20:00 Pm

By 1964, Hollywood’s Golden Age was coming to an end. The studio system was collapsing and counterculture pics such as Dr. Strangelove and The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night were attracting younger audiences. However, Hollywood could still count on musicals to draw crowds, especially those based on Broadway hits.

My Fair Lady was a smashing success on stage, which is why Warner Bros. paid an unheard of $5-million for the film rights. The story, based on George Bernard Shaw’s play "Pygmalion", finds arrogant professor of phonetics Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) wagering that he can train cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) to speak and act like a lady. Under his sometime cruel tutelage,...

Happy September, guys! This month’s home entertainment releases are wasting no time, as Tuesday looks to be another stellar day of horror and sci-fi titles coming our way. For those of you excited for Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is putting out The Final Cut version of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece in 4K Ultra HD, and Criterion is giving Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca their trademarked HD treatment with a stunning new release.

As far as new indie horror movies go, both A Dark Song and Raw come home this Tuesday and are well worth your time, and for those of you Winchester brothers fans out there, the 12th season of Supernatural is being released this week, too.

Other notable titles for September 5th include The Spell, The Atoning, The Basement, I Saw What You Did, and a 4K Ultra HD release of The Cabin in the Woods.

Blade Runner...

It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.

The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...

Don’t look to this noir for hardboiled cynicism – for his first feature Nicholas Ray instead gives us a dose of fatalist romance. Transposed from the previous decade, a pair of fugitives takes what happiness they can find, always aware that a grim fate waits ahead. The show is a career-making triumph and a real classic from Rko — which shelved it for more than a year.

They Live by Night

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 880

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 13, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig, Will Wright, William Phipps, Ian Wolfe, Harry Harvey, Marie Bryant, Byron Foulger, Erskine Sanford .

Cinematography: George E. Diskant

Film Editor: Sherman Todd

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Charles Schnee, Nicholas Ray from the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson

Produced by John Houseman

Directed by Nicholas Ray...

While the vast majority of our favorite films of last year have been treated with Blu-ray releases, one title near the top of the list we’ve been waiting the longest for is Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. It looks like it’s been worth the wait as The Criterion Collection have unveiled their September releases and it’s leading the pack (with special features also an interview with the director and Todd Haynes!).

Also getting a release in September, is Michael Haneke‘s Isabelle Huppert-led The Piano Teacher and the recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (arriving perfectly-timed to the end of the new Twin Peaks). There’s also Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic psychodrama Rebecca and the concert film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Check out the high-resolution cover art and full details on the releases below, with more on Criterion’s site.

We have another busy week of home entertainment releases on the horizon, as there are over two dozen titles making their way to Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday. For those of you cult film enthusiasts, you have a lot of options when it comes to adding items to your collections, as Alienator is being resurrected by Scream Factory, Arrow Video is unleashing a special edition set for Madhouse, and Mondo Macabre has given Paul Naschy’s Inquisition an HD overhaul as well.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also have new releases for The Hound of Baskervilles, Medusa, and Nicholas Ray’s classic noir They Live By Night to look forward to as well. For you TV lovers out there, the box sets for the final season of both The Vampire Diaries and Grimm are being released Tuesday, and for those who are on the hunt for some new action cinema,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWShttps://tribecafilm.com/stories/tribeca-2017-jury-awardsFilmmaker Ricky D'Ambrose, who has made several excellent video interviews with directors for the Notebook, is kickstarting his feature debut, Notes on an Appearance. Above is a beguiling, cryptic teaser for the project. The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped last week (read our coverage) and the many awards have been announced, including Keep the Change for U.S. Narrative, Son of Sofia for International Narrative, Bobby Jene for Documentary, and Treehugger : Wawona for the immersive storytelling Storyscapes Award.Recommended VIEWINGSpeaking of Tribeca, the festival hosted a The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II reunion and on-stage conversation with director Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and more. Lucky for us, they broadcast and recorded the whole thing.Bill and Turner Ross's stellar documentary 45365, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW in 2009, is now free to stream online.

Next month will mark the return of New York City’s Quad Cinema, a theater reshaped and rebranded as a proper theater via the resources of Charles S. Cohen, head of the distribution outfit Cohen Media Group. While we got a few hints of the line-up during the initial announcement, they’ve now unveiled their first full repertory calendar, running from April 14th through May 4th, and it’s an embarassment of cinematic riches.

Including the previously revealed Lina Wertmüller retrospective, one inventive series that catches our eye is First Encounters, in which an artist will get to experience a film they’ve always wanted to see, but never have, and in which you’re invited to take part. The first match-ups in the series include Kenneth Lonergan‘s first viewing Edward Yang‘s Yi Yi, Noah Baumbach‘s first viewing of Withnail and I, John Turturro‘s first viewing of Pather Panchali,...

With the new release of Mildred Pierce, the Criterion Collection appears to be solidifying a trend over the past couple years of providing a showcase for some of the greatest female actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Since late 2014, stars like Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night, The Palm Beach Story), Rita Hayworth (Gilda, Only Angels Have Wings) and Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) have made their first appearances in the Collection, in what can be considered career-defining roles. These additions seem to be addressing a notable blind spot for Criterion. As impressive as their reach has been in bringing many of the most iconic women from the past hundred years of world cinema to the forefront, the continuing absence of silver screen legends like Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Taylor, just to name a few, seems like a lingering oversight, a problem yet to be...

“Cain, Curtiz, And Crawford”

By Raymond Benson

Mildred Pierce is one curious piece of cinema. As film critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito point out in their fascinating conversation that is a supplement on this beautifully-presented Blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection, Pierce is a movie that almost doesn’t know what it wants to be. In many ways it is a woman’s picture, that is, a melodrama, but it’s disguised inside a manufactured film noir.

This reasoning is sound, for in spite of novelist James M. Cain being known for terrific pulp crime fiction (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), his 1941 novel Mildred Pierce is not a crime story, unless you want to say that a young woman having an affair with her stepfather is “criminal.” The book is indeed hardboiled and pulpy, but there is no murder in it.

On the other hand, Michael Curtiz...

Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Butterfly McQueen | Written by Ranald MacDougall, Catherine Turney | Directed by Michael Curtiz

The shadow of Casablanca will always loom over Michael Curtiz’s bumper filmography, but time has been nearly as kind to Mildred Pierce, an adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel. A Joan Crawford vehicle made in 1945, the movie is a solid and relevant story that was remade recently for television by Todd Haynes for HBO – albeit minus the murder subplot, which wasn’t in the original text.

Crawford plays Mildred Pierce-Beragon, a woman hauled in by the police following the shooting of her husband, Monte (a slithery Zachary Scott). Mildred is the prime suspect, but then the film flicks to flashback as she starts telling the story of her rises and falls, and we begin to learn of the machinations that ended in murder.

We meet the younger Mildred,...

Mildred Pierce

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 860

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2017 /

Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe, Butterfly McQueen.

Cinematography: Ernest Haller

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Film Editor: David Weisbart

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by: Ranald MacDougall from the novel by James M. Cain

Produced by: Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner

Directed by Michael Curtiz

James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce offers a venal and self-destructive view of America not with a story of respectable bourgeois society, not the criminal underworld. A de-classed, suburb-dwelling nobody fights her way onto the social register by using men and by hard work… and then watches as her obsessive goals blow up in her face In Cain’s worldview it’s every woman for herself. He drags in an odd personal theme,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries.NEWSLast weekend the generally derided yet fiercely observed Golden Globes winners were announced 2016, which included La La Land (Best Director, Screenplay, Song, Score and Actor, Actress and picture for a musical/comedy), Moonlight (Best Drama), and Elle (Best Foreign Language film, Best Actress for a drama).Okay, it's not strictly cinema news, but 18 episodes of new moving pictures directed by David Lynch counts as news to us! Showtime has revealed the number of episodes of the upcoming season of Twin Peaks, all directed by Lynch, and that the two-hour premiere of the show will be on May 21, immediately followed by the digital release of the third and forth episodes. Those film professionals who will be in Cannes at the time better plan on skipping their Monday morning screenings!Great news for those, like us, still enamored by celluloid: Kodak has...

Get in touch to send in suggest cinephile news and discoveries.NEWSAs the remarkably disheartening year of 2016 came to a close, we lost two great figures in the film industry: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Revisiting some of their best films over the holidays has given us new fortitude with which to start 2017.It looks like we're closer to seeing Terrence Malick's film centering on the Austin music scene. Previously called Weightless, it's now officially titled Song to Song and has a March release date—perhaps premiering at the Berlin Film Festival?And news from another of our favorite impressionists: Claire Denis seems to have pushed back shooting her Robert Pattison-starring sci-fi, High Life, to shoot a small movie starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu and Xavier Beauvois, Dark Glasses. Whichever we get first, we simply can't wait.Near the complete program of the International Film Festival Rotterdam has been announced,...

Update: The Before Trilogy on Criterion is currently $39.95. Pre-order while you can.

After The Criterion Collection hinted at it and some of the own crew confirmed it, it’s now been officially revealed that one of their most-requested releases will be arriving next year. Richard Linklater‘s Before trilogy will be joining the colelction just a few weeks after Valentine’s Day, on February 28th, featuring new 2K restorations of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset as well as Before Midnight.

Special features include a new discussion with Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke, moderated by Kent Jones, and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s documentary on the making of the most recent feature. There’s also the full feature-length documentary Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, and more. While we’re still waiting on cover art for the Linklater set, check out the full details on February’s line-up below, also including one...