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Exclusive: Netflix has won out in a tug of war for Richard Linklater’s Breathless homage Nouvelle Vague after its Cannes Film Festival debut in the competition.

We understand the deal has closed for a hefty $4 million, a record domestic outlay for a French-language movie.

This is an interesting one. Breathless is viewed as a cinema classic and Nouvelle Vague a love letter to cinema. Could there be longer theatrical play either in the U.S. or overseas before it hits Netflix? At least domestically, we hear it’s likely to just be the usual awards-qualifying two-week window.

Nouvelle Vague launched to warm words at the Cannes Film Festival two weekends ago. In the right hands, the talk has been that the film could figure in the awards race.

Netflix is coming off an eventful awards season with Spanish-language movie Emilia Pérez, which scored 13 Oscar nominations and two wins. There...

When the jazzy, jittery opening of Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” begins with slow, vertically crawling title cards in Bauhaus-like font, you know you’re about to be thrown back in cinematic time.

Shot on film with the grainy warmth that evokes a sleepy 1970 New England municipality as much as it does actual movies from the ‘70s, “The Mastermind” is Reichardt’s version of a heist movie — meaning that the filmmaker hijacks conventions laid by filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Melville and Sidney Lumet for a spin that still retains her patient bent for long, luxuriating takes. Here, Josh O’Connor plays J.B. Mooney (what a name!), an art thief who falls down a hole of his own digging, as a poorly hatched job to rip off a series of Arthur Dove abstract paintings from a fictional Massachusetts museum sends his private and family lives careening out of his grasp.

“The Mastermind...

Arguably the worst film in competition in Cannes this year is a strong candidate for the festival’s Best Director prize, and rightfully so. The follow-up to 2018’s Un Certain Regard entry Long Day’s Journey into Night — which asked viewers to don 3D glasses for its spectacular climax, an unbroken, hourlong tracking shot — Resurrection is both breathtaking at times and airless at others. During the first press show the aisles of the screening room resembled scenes from Otto Preminger’s Exodus, and it was hard to tell how many of those who stayed in their seats were even conscious of that fact. It will have its admirers, for sure, and at least 40 minutes of it are pure visual genius, but it’s hard to imagine a more willfully obscure movie that’s been shown here since Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.

Bi Gan is certainly a stylist, and the film luxuriates in that,...

Multiple domestic buyers are in the mix to buy Richard Linklater’s Breathless homage, Nouvelle Vague, which launched to warm words at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend.

We expect a deal to get done in the next 48 hours and it should be at the higher end for a U.S. acquisition of a French-language movie. In the right hands, there’s talk the film could figure in the awards race.

The film reconstructs the story behind Godard’s cinema classic. French actor Guillaume Marbeck portrays Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg and newcomer Aubry Dullin portrays Jean Paul Belmondo. Characters in the movie include cinema legends Godard, Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Pierre Melville, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda and Jacques Rivette.

Following the Competition title’s world premiere at Cannes on Saturday, the audience at the Palais gave the movie an 11-minute ovation. Our critic Pete Hammond...

In 1983, Jim McBride attempted an English-language remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 cinema landmark, Breathless with Richard Gere. It broke one of Godard’s cardinal rules: It was in color. Although not as terrible an idea as Gus Van Sant’s disastrous shot-by-shot 1998 color remake of Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho — which, like Godard’s forever-influential movie the year before, also broke all the rules of its genre — it is dismissed today with the original still finding new life with young audiences each generation, as France’s New Wave also continues to do.

With the truly wonderful Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), premiering today in Competition at Cannes (where else?), Richard Linklater smartly has not attempted a remake of Breathless but rather a certain regard and respect for the wildly creative cinematic period Godard and his contemporaries achieved with the French New Wave. A cinema revolutionary in spirit and deed himself — just watch his...

In “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s ingenious and enchanting docudrama about the making of “Breathless,” the 29-year-old Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) never takes off his sunglasses. He wears them on the set and in the office, in restaurants and at the movies.

The omnipresent round dark shades serve several functions. First and foremost, they’re authentic — Godard, in the late ’50s and early ’60s, really did wear his sunglasses all the time, almost as a form of branding. They were instrumental in lending him his mystique: that of an intellectual artist who was cool, who knew how to keep his distance, who had things on his mind he was too hip to share. Yet the sunglasses also accomplish something else. In a biopic, no actor looks exactly like the person they’re playing. But the unknown French actor Guillaume Marbeck, with a bushy widow’s peak and a chiseled poker face,...

Variety received 92 nominations from the Los Angeles Press Club during the 2024 calendar year for the organization’s annual SoCal Journalism Awards. Its reporters earned nods in 57 categories, including print journalist of the year for Daniel D’Addario, online journalist of the year for Clayton Davis, and entertainment journalist of the year for Owen Gleiberman and Chris Willman. In addition to being recognized for best traditional news organization website in the online category, the org further received kudos across magazine and entertainment journalism, video, audio, online content, and social media.

In addition to dominating the entertainment journalist category, Variety took three nominations for commentary/ analysis of TV: Jenelle Riley for “This Emmys Season, Don’t Forget About: Heidi Gardner, the Scene Stealer of ‘SNL’,” Brian Steinberg for “TV Talkers From Pat McAfee to Rachel Maddow Gain New License to Blast Bosses On-Air” and Aramide Tinubu for “Kamala Harris’ Speech Was Powerful and Heartfelt,...

The action cinema of John Wick, Havoc and John Woo’s The Killer has constantly evolved as it’s travelled between filmmakers and eras.

Now on Netflix, writer-director Gareth Evans’ Havoc is an ultra-violent stew of influences. It’s set in a benighted US city, but was shot in Wales; its bullet-strewn action is directly inspired by Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo.

Then again, action cinema has always been a particularly international genre, taking in disparate bits of American westerns, low-key French thrillers and more besides. When John Woo directed A Better Tomorrow, released in 1986, its contemporary gangland setting and ferocious shoot-outs changed the look and feel of action cinema forever. Widely credited with inventing what was later dubbed the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre, it made a star out of its lead, Chow Yun-fat.

Woo continued to hone his signature style – slow-motion photography, close-quarters action, and his characters’ habit of holding...

Exclusive: Richard Linklater’s Cannes Competition-bound Nouvelle Vague, his homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 New Wave classic A Bout de Souffle (Breathless), has been boarded for international sales by Vincent Maraval’s Goodfellas.

The anticipated French-language film reconstructs the story behind Godard’s cinema classic and is a fitting addition this morning to the Cannes lineup.

Characters in the film are understood to include cinema legends Godard, Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Pierre Melville, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda and Jacques Rivette.

French actor Guillaume Marbeck is portraying Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch plays Breathless star Jean Seberg and newcomer Aubry Dullin portrays Jean Paul Belmondo.

There are rumours the film is shot in black and white and in 4:3 ratio. Arp Selection produces and distributes in France. Screenwriters include Holly Gent, Vince Palmo, Michèle Halberstadt and Laetitia Masson.

Related: Cannes Competition: Aster, Trier, Dardennes, Reichardt, Ducournau & Wes Anderson Among Lineup...

Isabel Sandoval, the Hollywood-based Filipino filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed “Lingua Franca,” is putting the finishing touches on her latest feature “Moonglow,” a romantic noir set against the backdrop of Marcos-era Philippines in 1979.

The film is selected for the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf), the project market that operates concurrently with Hong Kong FilMart.

The Filipino-language thriller follows Dahlia, a disillusioned police aide who steals money from the safe of her corrupt police chief boss, distributing it to slum dwellers whose homes were destroyed. Unaware of her actions, the police chief assigns Dahlia to investigate the theft alongside his nephew Charlie — who happens to be Dahlia’s former lover.

“I’ve always been enamored with the methodical, slow-burn thrillers of Jean-Pierre Melville,” Sandoval told Variety. “The idea of marrying those sensibilities with the lyrical camerawork and romanticism of Max Ophüls is how the film started.”

With a budget of $1.08 million,...

Named one of the 10 best films of Cahiers du Cinéma back in 2023, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s crime thriller The Temple Woods Gang is finally getting a proper U.S. release later this year from Several Futures. However, New York City audiences will have a chance to see it next week as part of a special screening at L’Alliance New York. The March 12 screening will be followed by a conversation with Paola Raiman, Chloé Folens, and Taddeo Reihnardt, film programmers from Le Clef Revival in Paris as part of their NYC tour, and critic/translator Nicholas Elliott. Ahead of the special event, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the U.S. trailer and poster.

Here’s the synopsis: “A gang of small-time criminals in a working-class French suburb stage a daring heist against a mysterious foreign tycoon and pay the consequences in the latest and possibly greatest feature from under-sung French-Algerian master Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche.

Ah, what a relief after the year-end self-importance of The Brutalist and Nosferatu to have some good January pulp in our filmgoing lives again. Seven years in the making, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera finally brings us back into the world of weary, hard-drinking cop Big Nick (Gerard Butler) and aspirant master-thief Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.). A film that even its biggest fans gave the backhanded compliment of “douchebag Heat,” the original Den of Thieves strangely endured––if partly due to a mixture of ambition and sleaze, almost like the grizzled anti-heroes at its center.

The previous film ended with a bloody, foiled Los Angeles heist leaving Nick on the trail of Donnie, who had fled to London after being revealed as something of a secret criminal mastermind. The sequel opens on an airplane-diamond heist in Antwerp, Donnie now part of a highly skilled, mostly Slavic team of thieves called The Panthers.

The undisputed star director of French noir is Jean-Pierre Melville. The writer and director helmed some of cinema's coolest and most thrilling films that blended the best of Hollywood noir tropes with the boundary-pushing elements of the French New Wave. His best films include 1967's Le Samourai, as well as Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge. He died while eating dinner, aged 55 in 1973, struck down in the prime of his career. Before he passed away, though, he managed to produce one final noir film that was intensely gripping and, once more, redefined the genre.

“The Stoic” stands out as an incredibly honest and introspective film that grapples with themes of justice and personal philosophy in a world full of Hollywood movies. The story is centered on a lone killer, only known as “The Stoic,” who faces off against a gang of cruel thieves in the lonely countryside of Britain.

The character, played with quiet intensity by Scott Wright, is not just a one-dimensional hero but a complex figure wrestling with Stoic philosophy—a mix of action and contemplation that feels fresh and relevant.

As directed by Jon Eckersley, “The Stoic” tries to find its place in the independent film world by taking a simple approach that is very different from the flashy looks of mainstream movies. The narrative of the film moves along at a slow but steady pace, allowing audiences to become fully immersed in the minds of its characters while also questioning standard narrative techniques.

Lenny Borger, who served as Variety‘s Paris correspondent and film reviewer throughout the 1980s and who championed French cinema for decades as a researcher and subtitle expert for numerous films including Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” died Dec. 23 in Paris. He was 73.

Producer Serge Bromberg reported that he died after a long illness.

Borger was raised in Brooklyn, and moved to Paris in 1977 to work on his doctoral thesis. Abandoning his academic work, he began covering the French film scene for Variety and served as a correspondent and film reviewer from 1978 to 1990.

During that time he also began working on providing the English subtitles for French films, and Bertrand Tavernier gave him his first subtitling job for the 1980 “A Week’s Vacation.”

Film critic and Amazon executive Scott Foundas called Borger “a kind of medium, channeling the linguistic spirit of a given film and making it live anew for English-speaking audiences the world over.

To this day, Jean-Pierre Melville is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history, and his works have inspired some of the most popular film characters in modern cinema. Every major director from Michael Mann to Quentin Tarantino has cited Melville as an inspiration for their works, even musicians such as the Arctic Monkeys have noted Melville’s influence on their music. Melville was considered one of the Godfathers of the French New Wave film movement in the 1960s, but he’s best known for his stylized crime thrillers of the late '60s and '70s.

Sometimes, the one thing we want out of movies is for them to play on our emotions, senses, and logical reasoning with enough aplomb and effectiveness to make us feel them in our bones — to physically overwhelm us, tense up our nerves, draw sweat from our palms, make our eyes open wide involuntarily.

No kind of movie does that better than a good thriller, whether we're talking tight, single-location potboilers that keep turning up the heat, mind-exploding puzzle films that make you guess and hold your breath for answers, gritty unsentimental crime capers, deep forays into disturbed and traumatized psyches, or carefully-plotted twist-o-ramas. There are countless great thrillers out there, but, if you're looking for a worthwhile one to queue up on Prime Video, you've come to the right place. Here, we've compiled a list of 15 excellent thriller movies available at no additional charge to U.S. Prime Video subscribers.

Every lover of the crime genre eventually finds their way to Jean-Pierre Melville. One of the leaders of the French New Wave, Melville adopted the aesthetic of classic Hollywood noir and gangster movies and infused them with a European modernity. His best films were stylish, cool, and detached, often centered on loners who find themselves ensnared in dangerous situations. Perhaps the best among them is Le Samouraï, his 1967 thriller that's as sharp and precise as a katana sword. With Le Samouraï, Melville explores the emptiness at the heart of gangster movies, and the ways in which killing for a living will eat away at your soul.

Le Samoura holds a special place in cinematic history. Director Jean-Pierre Melville was considered the Godfather of French New Wave during his career, but his 1967 crime thriller cemented him as the Godfather of modern-day Neo-Noir cinema as well. Le Samoura is the first installment in Melvilles crime trilogy, which includes Le Cercle Rouge and Un Flic, all of which star Alain Delon. However, Le Samoura stands out from the rest of Melvilles work, in large part due to the main character. Le Samoura follows Parisian hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a stoic, silent man who lives by a code not unlike that of Bushido a way of life native to the Samurai of Japans Edo period.

New York-based Rialto Pictures is gearing up for the release of Studiocanal’s 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 musical comedy “A Woman Is a Woman.”

The film, Rialto’s first release of 2025, stars Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film will hit selected U.S. theaters on Feb. 7.

The new restoration, which premiered this year in Locarno, was made from the negative 35mm original copy, digitized by Paris-based post production company Hiventy and realized by Studiocanal with the collaboration of France’s National Center of Cinema (Cnc).

Rialto’s biggest success this year was the 75th anniversary of “The Third Man,” Rialto Co-President Adrienne Halpern told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

‘The Third Man’

The 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, was carried out by Deluxe Restoration on behalf of Studiocanal.

French production-distribution-sales powerhouse Studiocanal, which holds one of the largest film libraries in the world with some 9,000 titles, has completed its Jean-Pierre Melville collection with the acquisition of his 1950 classic “The Terrible Children” (“Les Enfants Terribles”).

This latest high-profile addition joins the ranks of the studio’s Melville lineup, which includes “Army of Shadows,” “Le Cercle Rouge,” “Bob le Flambeur,” and “Le Doulos.” This acquisition solidifies Studiocanal’s position as a leading player in both the French and international film markets

A subsidiary of the Canal+ Group, Studiocanal’s acquisition policy focuses not just on contemporary film rights, but on the preservation and restoration of cinematic treasures. By securing rights from other studios and investing in the preservation of older titles, the company not only controls distribution and remake rights but also breathes new life into some of cinema’s most revered works.

Ahead of the International Classic Film Market...

Over the years, Quentin Tarantino has built quite a reputation for being an amazing filmmaker, screenwriter, and even actor. Although he will go down in history for his work on films like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and more, those movies were not what should be considered his original cult classic hit. In fact, before Tarantino became a household name with his work, his passion for storytelling and a knack for writing sharp, gritty dialogue paved the way to success.

Quentin Tarantino | Image by Gage Skidmore, licensed under Cc By-sa 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the years, many fans have realized that the genesis of his career began with a story he sold to fund his debut film, Reservoir Dogs. This original cult hit was True Romance, a script that Tarantino wrote and sold, which became a stepping stone that enabled him to make his directorial debut.

The Quentin Tarantino script that...

Singer-songwriter Benjamin Booker is back with his first new music in seven years, “Lwa In the Trailer Park,” which will appear on his upcoming album, Lower.

“Lwa In the Trailer Park” signals a major shift artistic shift for Booker from the blues, punk, and Americana-inspired sounds of his first two albums to something more experimental and noisier (Booker co-produced the album with celebrated producer Kenny Segal). But Booker’s songcraft and knack for melody remain tight as ever, as he sings in hushed tones over blown-out drums and screaming guitars,...

The gangster genre has a rich cinematic lineage that played a significant role in the development of American, French, Japanese, and Hong Kong cinema. Some of film history's greatest auteurs have excelled in the gangster genre, evolving gangster moviemaking from a B movie genre into one of international cinema's most popular genres. In the United States, filmmakers like Raoul Walsh greatly shaped gangster cinema during Hollywood's Golden Age. Throughout the New Hollywood movement, directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian De Palma pushed the genre toward unprecedented critical and commercial heights.

Overseas, auteurs Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki made existentialism cool with their highly stylized gangster movies produced during the 1960s. In Hong Kong, John Woo and Johnnie To combined the gangster genre with action cinema to create some of the most thrilling movies ever made. Many of the best gangster movie directors of all time account...

Few films have been as massively influential on the action genre as John Woo‘s “The Killer”, where the director’s choreographed shootouts and Chow Yun Fat‘s virile charisma dazzled as never before. 35 years later, the Hong Kong director is back with a Paris-set, English- and French-language remake of that film, also called “The Killer” (not to be confused with David Fincher’s 2023 film of the same name). This was a strange idea to begin with, one that had been kicking around Hollywood for decades (the film is co-produced by Universal). And as it turns out, a rather misplaced idea too.

Where to watch

The main story is almost identical, with one major difference: now the titular character, Zee, is a woman (played by Nathalie Emmanuel). She still is a supremely effective contract killer who can shoot her way through any situation – until she decides to spare the life...

Above: Official poster by Yves Tinguely for the 12th New York Film Festival in 1974.The twelfth edition of the New York Film Festival, which took place 50 years ago this week, in September 1974, could have been convincingly called the New York European Film Festival. Out of the seventeen new feature films playing, all but two were European: seven French, three German, two Italian, two Swiss, and one British. Though festival director Richard Roud wrote in the program that “one of the most exciting developments in world cinema these past two years has been the re-emergence of the American film,” there was in fact only one American film in the main lineup (the world premiere of John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence) though there was also a program of four American shorts by Mirra Bank, Martha Coolidge, William Greaves, and an exciting upstart named Martin Scorsese. There was just one...

Certain directors will always pique the interest of any fan of cinema. Names like Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and David Fincher bring excitement and anticipation without even a shred of information about their next film. The Coen Brothers are no different. These Minnesota-born siblings spent their teenage years absorbing everything they could about filmmaking. During their decades-spanning partnership, they've created films in every conceivable genre: screwball comedies, neo-noir, and yes, even the gangster picture.

Some of the Coen Brothers' genre experiments have turned out better than others, but to their eternal credit, their batting average is incredibly high. For every Hail, Caesar!, there are, generally speaking, three all-time classics such as No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. As good as each of those films is, the Coen Brothers' most underrated movie is Miller's Crossing a forgotten gangster film from early on in their career capable of rivaling the genre's best.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSChicken Run.After earlier claims that they were “not in jeopardy,” the 29-location Landmark Theatre chain now faces foreclosure, though IndieWire reports that may not be such a bad thing.After releasing a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that included phony, apparently AI-generated pull quotes attributed to real film critics, Lionsgate has issued an apology and ceremonially fired a marketing consultant.The fast-food chain Chick-Fil-a plans to launch a streaming service, which will apparently include game shows and reality programming.FESTIVALSAhead of its premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, we are pleased to share the first poster for Sofia Bohdanowicz's Measures for a Funeral (2024), designed by Charlotte Gosch of studio other types.

The Oldenburg International Film Festival, often dubbed Germany’s Sundance, will this year pay tribute to one of the country’s most revered filmmakers, Dominik Graf, with a special retrospective.

The 31st edition of the festival, running from Sept. 11 to 15, will spotlight Graf’s prolific career, as one of Germany’s few masters in genre filmmaking.

Graf, 71, began his career in the 1970s, inspired by American indie directors like Sam Fuller and Robert Aldrich and French auteurs such as Jean-Pierre Melville, using arthouse techniques and storytelling for crime, comedy and other genre tales.

The festival’s retrospective will showcase six of Graf’s most influential films, including thrillers Die Katze (1988) and Die Sieger (1995/2018 director’s cut), both of which have become genre-defining in German cinema and exemplify Graf’s distinctive, taut, economical approach to plot and character.

Alongside his feature film work, Graf is credited with setting new standards for...

Quentin Tarantino's films are heavily influenced by French crime dramas, especially Jean-Pierre Melville's raw and moody style. Melville's films merge American gangster pictures with French sensibilities, creating a unique visual and narrative style. Le Doulos influenced Reservoir Dogs by injecting violence, style, and a narrative structure that builds to an extremely dramatic payoff.

From exploitation films to classic Western television series, and even as far back as the Golden Age of Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's movies have always amalgamated the tastes he developed throughout his childhood, consuming everything he could get his hands on. From the very beginning of his career with Reservoir Dogs, Qt has worn his inspirations on his sleeve, drawing liberally from gangster movies of the past, especially Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos.

Boasting a moody atmosphere, a narrative full of twists and turns, and Jean-Pierre Melville's unmistakable sense of pessimism, Le Doulos epitomizes a particular...

It had been over two decades since Hong Kong director John Woo stunned audiences with his hyper-stylized action classic, The Killer. Released in 1989, the film pushed boundaries with its balletic gunplay and tragic melodrama. Chow Yun-fat gave an unforgettable performance as a dedicated assassin struggling between his deadly profession and humanity. With influences like Jean-Pierre Melville, Sergio Leone, and John Cassavetes, Woo pioneered what became known as “Heroic Bloodshed.” He brought swift-paced action and complex character drama together in a wholly unique way.

Hollywood soon came calling for Woo to export his brand of mayhem stateside. Films like Broken Arrow, Face/Off, and Mission Impossible 2 dazzled worldwide crowds with the director’s expertly staged set pieces. However, it had been 20 years since Woo last delivered a stand-alone Hong Kong production. Fans wondered if he’d ever return to the wellspring of his signature style.

In 2024, that question was answered. With a...

A remake of John Woo’s groundbreaking action movie “The Killer” has been in the works since shortly after it premiered in 1989, but it took until 2024 for it to finally materialize — from Woo himself.

Over the years a number of filmmakers took a stab at adapting the beloved Hong Kong action movie, about a hitman (played by frequent Woo collaborator Chow Yun-Fat) who accidentally blinds a young girl, including “Alien” principals Walter Hill and David Giler, “Top Gun” writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr., and Korean-American filmmaker John H. Lee. There would be announcements made every so often, but very little forward momentum.

While development creeped along, Woo made his way to Hollywood, directing a series of highly regarded, star-filled action movies like “Hard Target,” “Broken Arrow” and “Mission: Impossible II,” which grossed more than half a billion dollars worldwide back in 2000. The style he developed in Hong Kong...

Some people think remakes have to be as good as or even better than the original to be worth making, but that’s a high bar and it’s covered in vaseline. All a remake actually has to do is justify its own existence. Maybe it’s got a new style, maybe it’s got a new context, but either way there just needs to be some reason to watch this new version instead of the old one, at least once.

Unfortunately, the only reason I can think of to watch John Woo’s Peacock-exclusive remake of “The Killer” is because it’s the only version that’s currently available on streaming. It’s not good filmmaking and that’s not even good capitalism. The law of supply and demand falls apart when the only supply most people can access is of inferior quality.

The original “The Killer,” also directed by Woo,...

It’s been more than 30 years since John Woo first came to Hollywood, and it often feels like he’s been looking for a way back to Hong Kong ever since — or at least a way back to the iconic action filmmaker he was when he worked there in the ’80s and early ’90s. Orgiastically blending the muted cool of a Jean-Pierre Melville neo-noir with the explosive melodrama of a Martin Scorsese crime epic and the florid grandiosity of a Chinese opera, Woo’s elevated style clashed with the meat-and-potatoes ethos of American blockbusters. The same ecstasy that defined Cantonese-language classics like “Hard Boiled” and “A Better Tomorrow” seemed more like self-parody after being translated into “Mission: Impossible 2,” and last year’s dreadfully generic “Silent Night” suggested that Woo had lost whatever was left of his voice as an artist.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly filled with...

Alain Delon's iconic performance in Le Samourai tops his celebrated career, inspiring filmmakers worldwide. The classic hitman movie influenced a genre, inspiring directors like John Woo and Jim Jarmusch. Delon's cool, stoic portrayal of Jef Costello in Le Samourai became a symbol of French cinema worldwide.

Often hailed as one of France's finest film actors, the entertainment world suffered a significant blow with the passing of Alain Delon on August 18, 2024. Delon enjoyed an illustrious 60-year acting career, appearing in some of the most acclaimed French films on record. Whether playing infamous grifter Tom Ripley in Purple Noon, Corey in the classic crime film The Red Circle, Tancredi Falconeri in The Leopard, etc., Delon matched a smoldering intensity with handsome good looks each time out.

Yet, among his 107 screen credits since 1949, one movie starring Alain Delon tops them all. The classic 1967 neo-noir assassin movie Le Samourai features Delon's quintessential movie performance.

Alain Delon influenced Asian actors and directors, including Hong Kong directors John Woo (The Killer) and Johnnie To. These filmmakers admired Alain Delon when he played gangsters in Melville’s films.

Johnnie To wanted to work with Alain Delon. He offered him the lead role of Vengeance, that of Francis Costello in 1967, as an allusion to Jeff Costello in Le Samouraï, which was played by Alain Delon. After Alain Delon refused, Johnny Hallyday was chosen by Johnnie To. Vengeance made its international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2009. It is screened at the Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie in Vesoul as part of a retrospective devoted to Asian films.

In the comedy You Shoot, I Shoot by Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung, actor Eric Kot plays a hired gun who identified himself as Jef Costello. He dresses like him and talks to him through a poster of...

It is with great sadness that we report legendary French actor Alain Delon has died at the age of 88. Widely hailed as the most beautiful movie star of all time thanks to his ocean blue eyes and statuesque, sculpted cheekbones, Delon — star of Le Samourai, Plein Soleil, Rocco And His Brothers and much, much more — brought an insouciant cool to cinema on- and off-screen, and an ineffable capacity to convey the depths of a brooding soul in the level of those self-same eyes. Delon passed away at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and family, on 18 August.

Born on 8 November 1935 to cinema projectionist (and later La Régina cinema director) father François Fabien Delon and pharmacist and cinema usher mother Édith Marie Suzanne Arnold, you could say that the movies ran in Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon's blood. After a turbulent series of school expulsions, spells in prison,...

The legendary, and legendarily handsome, international movie star Alain Delon passed away on Sunday, August 18, 2024. He was 88.

Delon was best known for playing heavies and tough guys, but he had incredible range, portraying all kinds of roles in his 60-plus-year career. Most American film students have experienced the bolt of electricity seeing Delon for the first time in an acclaimed international hit like René Clément's Tom Ripley adaptation "Purple Noon," or Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and his Brothers" (1960) or the same director's massive historical epic "The Leopard" (1963). Delon made several films with Clément, and was often paired with most of the best European directors of his generation, including Michelangelo Antonioni (he was in "L'Eclisse"), Louis Malle ("Spirits of the Dead"), Joseph Losey ("The Assassination of Trotsky"), Agnès Varda ("One Hundred and One Nights"), and even Jean-Luc Godard ("New Wave"). Anyone with a subscription to the Criterion Channel has likely...

Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.

That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”

The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith...

Alain Delon, the French star who shot to stardom during the 1960s with films like Il Gattopardo (1963) and Le Samoura (1967), has passed away at the age of 88 years old in Douchy, France, in the company of his family. Delon was reported to have spent his last months on his estate, and his family has confirmed he died peacefully in his home, per a Variety report.

Born in Sceaux, France, in 1935, the actor is considered one of the most influential leading men of his generation. His work with directors like Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Victoni, and Jean-Luc Godard was internationally acclaimed and always put him in the spotlight as one of the valued European actors everyone sought for their films in the '60s and '70s. However, he wasn't very keen on participating in every movie he was offered. His career was primarily based on French cinema.

Related 15 Best...

The death of Alain Delon leaves a 70-year body of onscreen work to be admired.

Following the French screen legend’s death at age 88 on Sunday, fans are remembering the memorable performances he served with such directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Luchino Visconti and Jean-Pierre Melville, earning a Palme d’Or and being inducted into France’s Legion of Honour during his storied career.

After a rough upbringing and serving in the First Indochina War, Delon was discovered at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, despite having no training as an actor.

“I came down with a girl that I liked, who loved me… I took it all in, did the red carpet but even then, I felt at home… not least and I say this without pretension because it was made clear to me that I was not bad looking,” he told a Cannes masterclass in 2019.

Amid his affair with actress Michèle Cordoue,...

Alain Delon, the striking French leading man known for his uncommonly beautiful, coldly calculating villains in Le Samouraï and Purple Noon, has died. As confirmed by his family to France’s Afp news agency, Delon died Sunday after years of health complications stemming from a 2019 stroke. He was 88.An icon of French cinema,...

Alain Delon, one of the biggest international movie stars of all time, has passed away at 88. The actor, who’d been in poor health in recent years, is widely considered one of the most iconic French stars ever. First rising to fame as part of a new crop of actors during the French New Wave, Delon was the first person to play Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley in Purple Noon, while also starring in classics such as The Leopard, Rocco and His Sisters and many more.

Yet, it was his role as the cold, calculating hitman in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai which remains the part he’s arguably best known for. Playing an impeccably dressed killer named Jeff, who is double-crossed by his employers, pretty much every hitman movie in the last fifty years owes a debt of gratitude to his performance. Chow Yun-Fat’s style in A Better Tomorrow...

Alain Delon, the influential French actor who starred in European cinematic classics like Le Samourai and The Leopard, has died at the age of 88.

The actor’s children confirmed his death Sunday in a statement to Afp (via BBC), “Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family.”

A box office star and heartthrob actor in his native France and across Europe throughout the Sixties and Seventies,...

Alain Delon, the legendary actor and sex symbol who dominated French cinemas in the 1960s in films like “Le Samouraï” and “Purple Noon,” has died at the age of 88. The news was shared via a statement to Afp. Delon passed away in his longtime home in Douchy, France.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” the statement said. Per Deadline, French president Emmanuel Macron said in a translated statement, “Mr. Klein or Rocco, the Leopard or the Samurai, Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream. Lending his unforgettable face to shake up our lives. Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”

Delon first rose to prominence in the 1959 comedy “Women Are Weak,” which was a major hit in France and frequently screened in America. But his status as a serious actor...

Alain Delon, the French actor who became a screen icon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, has died aged 88.

Delon died “peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family”, according to a statement released to the Afp news agency by his family.

As well as his famous role as professional hitman Jef Costello in Le Samourai, Delon collaborated with Melville in 1970 heist The Red Circle and 1975 crime thriller Flic Story.

Delon’s career began after he was spotted at Cannes Film Festival in 1957 by US talent agent Henry Willson, recruiting on behalf of David O. Selznick.

Alain Delon, the French actor most famous for his roles in the films of New Wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, especially “Le Samourai,” has died. He was 88.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” according to a statement released to the Afp news agency by his family.

In addition to “Le Samourai,” Delon also appeared in Melville’s brilliant heist film “Le Cercle rouge” and “Un Flic.”

Some of his other significant films were Rene Clement’s “Purple Noon”; Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard”; Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse”; Jose Giovanni’s “Two Men in Town”; and Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein.”

Although he triggered some controversies during the later part of his life due to his public comments on adoption of children by same-sex parents and affinity with far-right politicians, many prominent figures in France and abroad paid...

French acting star Alain Delon, whose many iconic roles included Le Samouraï, Plein Soleil and The Leopard, has died in France at the age of 88.

The actor’s children said in a statement that their father had passed away in the early hours of Sunday, surrounded by his family and beloved Belgian Shepherd Loubo, in his long-time chateau home in the village of Douchy, in the Le Loiret region some 100 miles south of Paris.

Delon’s death marks the passing of one of the last surviving icons of the French cinema scene of the 1960s and 70s, when the country was on an economic roll as it reconstructed in the wake of World War II.

Related: French Pres. Emmanuel Macron Leads Tributes To Alain Delon: “More Than A Star, A Monument”

The star, who was at the peak of this career from the 1960s to the 1980s, fell into acting by chance.

Alain Delon, the dark and dashing leading man from France who starred in some of the greatest European films of the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 88.

“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a statement from the family released to Afp news agency said.

Delon had been suffering from poor health in recent years and had a stroke in 2019.

With a filmography boasting such titles as Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse (1962), Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and The Red Circle (1970), Delon graced several art house movies now considered classics.

His tense and stoical performances, often as...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

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Museum of the Moving Image

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Film Forum

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Anthology Film Archives

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Museum of Modern Art

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IFC Center

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