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Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.

November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...

The jokes will extend well past April 1st on HBO and HBO Max.

“Barry” returns for its fourth and final season. After the shocking Season 3 finale which saw Barry (Billy Hader) getting arrested and Cousineau (Henry Winkler) being hailed as a hero, there will be plenty of consequences for both. The dark comedy premieres on April 16 with two episodes.

“A Black Lady Sketch Show” will also bring plenty of laughs when it returns for its fourth season. The sketch comedy series premieres April 14.

On the drama side, the limited series “Love and Death” premieres on April 27. It’s based on the true story of Candy (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pat Montgomery (Patrick Fugit) and Betty (Lily Rabe) and Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons) – two churchgoing couples enjoying their small-town Texas life… until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an axe.

For comic fans, the midseason premiere of the final season...

With its list of new releases for April 2023, HBO Max is premiering the final episodes of two major shows.

First up is the continuation of Titans season 4 on April 13. Returning after a four month hiatus, these next six episodes will be the last go around for HBO Max’s gritty live-action DC series. Arriving three days later on HBO proper is the fourth and final season of Barry. Bill Hader and the rest of the Barry team wrote themselves into a fascinating corner with the conclusion of season 3. And judging by the first teasers for season 4, this final batch of episodes will indeed catch up with our favorite actor/hitman in prison.

Other TV shows of note this month include the Pete Davidson-starring animated series Fired on Mars on April 20 (light ’em up) the the Elizabeth Olsen-starring true crime story Love & Death on April 27.

HBO Max’s...

Bill Hader stars in ‘Barry’ season 4 (Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO)

Bill Hader returns for one final season of Barry and the popular sketch comedy A Black Lady Sketch Show kicks off its fourth season on HBO Max in April 2023. Additional highlights of the streaming service’s April lineup include the debut of Love & Death, a limited series starring Elizabeth Olsen and Patrick Fugit; season two of Somebody Somewhere with Bridget Everett; and the return of 100 Foot Wave for a second season.

In addition, the Titans mid-season premiere arrives on April 13. HBO Max offers this description of the fourth and final season’s remaining episodes: “The Titans – with the exception of Gar – are returned to the Temple of Trigon and rush to find Sebastian and Mother Mayhem before Sebastian summons Trigon. Along the way, they come across a prophecy that may require Kory to make a huge sacrifice to save the world.

In the final season of HBO Max’s “Barry,” premiering on April 16, Barry’s arrest for the murder of Cousineau’s girlfriend leads to a shocking conclusion. Barry (Bill Hader), a hitman who stumbles into acting, explores the dark, often comedic underbelly of both LA gangsters and Hollywood. Henry Winkler stars as Cousineau, Barry’s acting teacher and the man forced to confront the reality of his former student.

Watch the “Barry” season 4 trailer:

Another crime story will come to HBO Max in April, although this one is based on a true story. “Love & Death” revolves around the murder of Betty Gore (played by Lily Rabe) in a small Texas town in 1980. Her husband Alan (Jesse Plemons) has an affair with Candy (Elizabeth Olsen), who attends their church. Suddenly, the thrills turn deadly. Candy picks up an ax, whacks her rival over 40 times, and then claims self-defense. The new...

One of the most time-consuming aspects of being a cinephile is worrying about the health and longevity of TCM. The venerable broadcast television channel dedicated to classic Hollywood cinema has grown since its 1994 launch into a kind of preservationist and enthusiast's empire that includes an annual film festival, an original film distribution arm, a releasing imprint, and a slew of diverse programming initiatives (not to mention a wine club). TCM certainly seems to be in better health than most entities dedicated segments of the film ecosystem that are -- by virtue of not being focused on the biggest, brightest, latest thing -- not exactly profit drivers. It has survived both a massive merger between AT&T and its parent company, Time Warner, and a subsequent divestment of AT&T and acquisition by Discovery in all but five years, after all.

But the brand's new overlord, Warner Bros. Discovery, shelving completed films...

Warner Bros. will commemorate its 100th anniversary with a block of programming on Turner Classic Movies starting April 1.

TCM will broadcast remastered and newly restored versions of 10 classic Warner Bros. films, each featuring an introduction from a filmmaker or film expert culled from the network’s ongoing partnership with the Film Foundation, a non-profit preservation and exhibition organization. The program coincides with the April 13-16 run of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

On April 13, a new 4K restoration of 1959’s “Rio Bravo,” Howard Hawks’ classic western starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson, will premiere on TCM and serve as the opening night film of the festival. Dickinson will attend the in-person event, while Martin Scorsese will introduce the film on TCM’s small-screen presentation. Similarly, Warner Bros. will premiere a new 4K restoration of Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden,” starring James Dean, on...

Turner Classic Movies is devoting the entire month of April to celebrating the 100th anniversary of its landlord, Warner Bros., with hundreds of films from every decade of the studio, plus a variety of interstitials, documentaries, shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons, as well as interviews with stars and directors focusing on the cinematic achievements of the storied movie factory.

Related Story Warner Bros’ 100th To Be Celebrated At TCM Classic Film Festival With Steven Spielberg & Paul Thomas Anderson; ‘Rio Bravo’ Restoration With Angie Dickinson Set For Opening Night Related Story 'Unorthodox' & 'Deutschland 83' Creator Anna Winger Says Her Netflix War Drama 'Transatlantic' Was Inspired By Comedy In 'Casablanca' Related Story 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King' Extended Edition Back In Theaters To Mark 20th Anniversary Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in ‘Casablanca,’ 1942

Viewers got a taste of the...

Warner Bros. will be top of the world on TCM in April when the network devotes the entire month to films and more from the studio that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, it was announced Wednesday.

TCM will shower viewers with scores of Warners movies, from every decade of its sister studio’s history, plus interstitials, documentaries, trailers, archival interviews, shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons.

“Warner Bros.’ history is TCM history. Where would this network be without films like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon or A Star Is Born? We are thrilled to be honoring the studio that has given us so many iconic films since 1923,” Pola Changnon, general manager of TCM, said in a statement.

The network also will debut the restorations/remasters of 10 iconic Warner Bros. films — complete with introductions from filmmakers and film experts — as part of its multiyear partnership with The Film Foundation.

The titles...

F.J. Ossang. Photo by Locarno Festival / Sailas VanettiA punk poet and musician, F.J. Ossang’s shorts and features produced since the early 1980s pull vividly from silent cinema, particularly German Expressionism, as well as American noir, to reinvent cinema's legacy for a new era. His latest movie, 9 Doigts (9 Fingers), which premiered in competition at the Locarno Festival and has now traveled to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, begins as a cryptic gangster film—shot in silken black and white 35mm—before the criminals make a break for a cargo ship, plunging the film in the kind of feverish maritime malaise found in Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line, Georges Franju’s 1973 TV adaptation of that novel, and pre-Code tropical hothouses like Safe in Hell (1931).But as beautiful as the setting and photography is—and as delirious as some of the cynical, doom-saying criminals are, each prone to mythopoetic threats...

9 DoigtsThis year at the Locarno Festival I am looking for specific images, moments, techniques, qualities or scenes from films across the 70th edition's selection that grabbed me and have lingered past and beyond the next movie seen, whose characters, story and images have already begun to overwrite those that came just before.***The bracing discovery a one-act opera by Arnold Schönberg in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s From Today Until Tomorrow (1996), which is playing in the festival's Pardo d’onore tribute to Straub. Encountering a film by the husband and wife duo of Straub-Huillet is always at double meeting: one, with the perspective of their filmmaking, but also with whatever source material they are transforming into cinema, whether Bach’s music, dialogues by Cesare Pavese, or in this case, a short opera from 1928 by Schönberg. Where most adaptations for the cinema smother their sources to supposedly be more optimized for the seventh art,...

Viewers expecting to see a lighthearted  'Cisco Kid' swashbuckler got a surprise with William Wellman's movie: it's a tragedy about a genuine historical California bandit who may have been an outlaw terrorist, avenging murderous discrimination against Mexican-Americans in the Gold Rush days. Hangings, rape and massacres -- not your average popcorn matinee fare for 1936. The Robin Hood of El Dorado DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1936 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 85 min. / Street Date May 26, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 18.49  Starring Warner Baxter, Ann Loring, Bruce Cabot, Margo, J. Carrol Naish, Soledad Jimenez, Carlos De Valdez, Eric Linden, Edgar Kennedy, Charles Trowbridge, Harvey Stephens, Marc Lawrence. Cinematography Chester Lyons Film Editor Robert J. Kern Original Music Herbert Stothart Written by William A. Wellman, Joseph Calleia, Melvin Levy, from a book by Walter Noble Burns Produced by John W. Considine Jr. Directed by William A. Wellman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I'm always...

Tod Browning’s “Freaks”

Before R-ratings, anti-heroes and gratuitous violence and nudity in mainstream Hollywood movies, there was the Hays Code. As a form of self-policing the industry, virtually every movie released up until 1968 needed that stamp of approval if it wanted distribution. And while it helped produce all of Old Hollywood’s true classics for several decades, it often included ridiculous rulings like not being able to show or flush a toilet on screen, not allowing married couples to be shown sleeping in the same bad or always making sure criminals, even protagonists of the movie, got punished in the end.

But before the Hays Code was nothing, and it was a gloriously weird, scandalous time for the movies. Certain Hollywood films in the early ’30s as “talkies” were rapidly taking hold have since been labeled “Pre-Code” films that never received Hollywood’s stamp of approval.

Every Friday in September,...

I must have been about 12 years old when I first saw Tarzan and His Mate. I loved the Tarzan movies. Tarzan was the undisputed King of the Jungle and was the greatest, Cheetah was man’s best friend, Boy was annoying, and Jane was the Queen of the Jungle and a young male’s introduction to the allure of the female. The uncensored version, with a naked Jane silhouetted while changing clothes in a backlit tent and the spectacular underwater ballet scene would have been a revelation to me; Tarzan and Jane are frolicking in their favorite swimming hole, Tarzan in his usual loincloth and Jane naked – not naked from the waste up, or presumed naked as they hid her behind some lake flora or rocks – Jane was naked.

Madam Satan

Most film fans knowledge of Pre-Code Hollywood movies doesn’t go much further than King Kong, Frankenstein, and a few other titles.

This is my second year in a row reviewing The TCM Classic Film Festival, which is quickly becoming one of the largest, most important, and most fun fests in Los Angeles. Like last year, I ran from screening to screening, giddy with excitement and wired from the constant stream of images.

The festival ran from Thursday through Sunday. I was only able to attend the last two days, but over the course of the weekend I managed to watch ten feature films and a 90-minute program of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Usually, when I go to things like this I try to watch as many film noir and pre-code movies as I can. On Saturday, I was determined to make variety my theme of the day, and TCM made this easy for me. At any given time, there were five or six movies playing — everything from silent films and early classics to musicals,...

The new Film Quarterly is out and, of the four pieces online, the standout for me is Caetlin Benson-Allott's: "Since Marey's motion studies at the end of the 19th century, film has been a tool for providing visible evidence, a record of things seen. The development of digital imaging technology over the past twenty years has transformed that original empirical function. Advancements in CGI enable convincing depictions of things impossible to see in everyday life: dinosaurs, hobbits, viruses. It has become necessary to speak of 'hypervisibility' to describe the way movies can realistically render such previously hard-to-envision phenomena. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion tries to contest this prevailing logic by insisting on the limits of visibility."

Also: Editor Rob White talks with Göran Hugo Olsson about The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Joshua Clover on Contagion, Justin Lin's Fast Five and Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes...

Each year New York residents can look forward to two essential series programmed at the Film Forum, noirs and pre-Coders (that is, films made before the strict enforcing of the Motion Picture Production Code). These near-annual retrospective traditions are refreshed and re-varied and re-repeated for neophytes and cinephiles alike, giving all the chance to see and see again great film on film. Many titles in this year's Essential Pre-Code series, running an epic July 15 - August 11, are old favorites and some ache to be new discoveries; all in all there are far too many racy, slipshod, patter-filled celluloid splendors to be covered by one critic alone. Faced with such a bounty, I've enlisted the kind help of some friends and colleagues, asking them to sent in short pieces on their favorites in an incomplete but also in-progress survey and guide to one of the summer's most sought-after series. In this entry: what's playing Friday,...