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Whenever a Hollywood epic gets so drunk on its own cultural importance that it attempts to pre-legitimize itself by casting every available star in town, you can be quite certain that the finished product will be either a terminal bore or a full-blown disaster. Darryl F. Zanuck's "The Longest Day" is very much the former, a 178-minute grind that tries and largely fails to thrust moviegoers into the middle of the D-Day invasion via docudrama techniques; it's often technically impressive, but it quickly turns into a game of spot-the-star, which pulls us straight out of the movie. And then there's 1967's "Casino Royale," a celebrity-studded James Bond parody that feels like watching an exclusive, booze-fueled bash from the house across the street.

There are obvious exceptions, but they come with the caveat of knowingly satirizing Hollywood's insularity (Robert Altman's "The Player") or simply being a hot project that...

Warning: This article will discuss a film about sexual abuse and incest.

Filmmaker Ari Aster exploded into the world of cinema with the release of "Hereditary" in 2018. That film was structured around a demonic cult and the magical glyphs they used to conduct ritual sacrifices, but moreso, it was about intergenerational guilt, barely suppressed rage, and the dissolution of the family unit. Toni Collette gives a career-best performance as a woman who kind of hated her own mother, and who has no small amount of depressed resentment toward her own family.

Aster followed that with "Midsommar," another film about cult sacrifices, this time complimented by the murder/suicide of the protagonist's family. Like "Hereditary," "Midsommar" was deeply beloved by the horror community, and is often held up as an example of the A24 house style. Florence Pugh also gives an astonishing performance as a grieving young woman whose awful boyfriend hates her.

April showers bring May flowers, but May is bringing a whole bouquet of cinematic gems to transition from spring into summer. Perhaps the most timely of all the options listed below is Michael Mann’s biting takedown of American corporatization and its effect on mass media, “The Insider.” Nominated for Best Picture at the 2000 Academy Awards, the film follows “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) as he works to cultivate and protect a tobacco company whistleblower (Russell Crowe) who may be carrying the most vital public health story of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, when the legal team behind “60 Minutes” parent company CBS catch wind of the story — amidst a key merger with Westinghouse Electric no less — they do everything they can to keep the news piece from running lest it upend a possible deal. For those paying attention to current affairs, the narrative will have echoes to a...

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

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; Herzog’s Nosferatu, Mulholland Dr., Funeral Parade of Roses, The Thing, and Irreversible show late.

Roxy Cinema

Saturday brings Bruce Labruce introducing Ciao! Manhattan and Melody of Love on 16mm; Claude Chabrol’s Ten Days Wonder shows on 16mm this Sunday alongside the rare Iranian feature Dead End.

Japan Society

Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower shows on 35mm this Friday.

Film at Lincoln Center

The newly restored Compensation begins screening while a career-spanning Frederick Wiseman retrospective continues.

Film Forum

Tales from the New Yorker includes films by Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, and John Huston. Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continues in a new 4K restoration; Meet Me In St. Louis screens on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Willem Dafoe: Wild at Heart continues.

Museum of the...

When it comes to smoldering noir antiheroes, Robert Mitchum might be the best there ever was. From iconic roles like the menacing yet charismatic traveling preacher Harry Powell in the noir masterpiece The Night of the Hunterto the retired private investigator fighting his own demons in the quintessential Out of the Past, Mitchum commanded the screen with an unmatched presence. While his contribution to the genre has often been the hallmark of his career, Mitchum, who got enviable praise from critic Roger Ebert as his favorite actor, was far more versatile than that. In Nicholas Ray's 100% Rotten Tomatoes-rated 1952 contemporary Western The Lusty Men, which combines the rugged intensity of the Western with the pathos of sports dramas, Mitchum proves once more why he is listed among the greatest male stars of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute and his name is inscribed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, is one of the most coveted awards to receive in cinema. Many actors, directors, writers, and cinemaphotographers spend their entire careers seeking one of these awards. Last year, Christopher Nolan finally won his first two Oscars. Despite winning hundreds of awards worldwide throughout his career, Nolan lacked any Academy Award wins until Oppenheimer, which earned Nolan the Oscars for Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievement in Directing. While Nolan can now call himself an Academy Award winner, many of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers cannot make the same claim.

Throughout American film history, many of Hollywood's all-time great directors have gone their whole careers without winning an Academy Award. Some, like Paul Thomas Anderson and Richard Linklater, have received many Oscar nominations but never claimed victory. Others, like Fritz Lang, shockingly never managed to garner a single Academy Award nomination despite making many iconic movies.

“I was sure none of these people at the Actors Studio actually considered me an actor. I was a pretty boy, a real conventional kid who somehow had staggered into this mélange." - Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man

For Montgomery Clift, there was Howard Hawks’ Red River...

Timothée Chalamet, after netting a best actor Oscar nomination for his role in A Complete Unknown on Thursday, has become the youngest multiple best actor nominee since James Dean.

On Thursday, film historian Mark Harris on his Bluesky account noted Chalamet had become the first to nab two best actor nominations from the Academy before turning 30, but only after following Dean.

The Hollywood icon, who died in a car crash in 1955 when he was 24, that same year received an Oscar nomination as the young hero in Elia Kazan’s screen version of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. Dean got a second posthumous nom for 1956’s Giant movie. Dean had been driving in his Porsche Spyder when he got into a head-on collision on a California highway, causing his untimely death.

Dean also died a month before the release of his most memorable movie, Rebel Without a Cause, where he played disaffected,...

Since James Dean's life was tragically cut short in a car accident when he was only 24 years old, he only ended up starring in three movies. Be that as it may, all three films has left an indelible mark on popular culture. With his narrow eyes and a cigarette dangling from his pursed lips, combined with the tight jeans and white shirts bursting from his wiry frame, Dean quickly created a brooding mystique that always seemed destined for Hollywood infamy.

Dean himself was a Method actor bad boy in the vein of Marlon Brando, though less brutish and more melancholic and sensitive. Beneath his tough-guy exterior, Dean also carried an inner weight that made his performances so achingly vulnerable. He was a handsome, tragic hero with a world-weary maturity who not only captivated 1950s audiences, but generations of moviegoers that followed as well. Let's rank the three movies that made him such a star.

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

It is almost impossible, or so it seems to me, to have a conversation about the films of 2024 without first considering 2014. That year, many of us wondered where cinematic language was headed, especially given our recent experiences: Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), and the revolutionary Terrence Malick’s adventure The Tree of Life (2011). What more was there to be said, if anything at all? But then, Paweł Pawlikowski presented Ida, a quiet yet audacious black-and-white, 4:3-ratio, minimalist film, and we thought the possibilities for great cinema were infinite, and that we really could have a masterpiece every year.

Ida, in any case, was and still is, something more than a masterpiece: it’s a classic, and as such, a reminder that good cinema,...

Westerns have been a staple of the cinema world since the early days of motion pictures. For many decades, audiences have loved tuning in to see the timeless stories of the pioneers of the American West. These films may cover a wide range of topics within the genre, but they often feature heroic cowboys, daring outlaws, and plenty of beautiful scenery. However, though beloved by many, the Western genre is not without its faults.

Among the most prominent of these faults is the lack of female representation. The vast majority of Westerns are dominated by hypermasculine lead characters, with women often having to take the back seat, if they are even included at all. Of course, this is not always the case. There are some Westerns (including both classic films and modern hits) that are led by female characters. Their courageous, powerful performances prove that women deserve their rightful spot in the Western genre.

With Janus possessing the much-needed restorations, Catherine Breillat is getting her biggest-ever spotlight in November’s Criterion Channel series spanning 1976’s A Real Young Girl to 2004’s Anatomy of Hell––just one of numerous retrospectives arriving next month. They’re also spotlighting Ida Lupino, directorial efforts of John Turturro (who also gets an “Adventures In Moviegoing”), the Coen brothers, and Jacques Audiard.

In a slightly more macroscopic view, Columbia Noir and a new edition of “Queersighting” ring in Noirvember. Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy and Miller’s Crossing get Criterion Editions, while restorations of David Bowie-starrer The Linguini Incident, Med Hondo’s West Indies, and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue make streaming debuts; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park arrives just in time for another grim election day.

See the full list of titles arriving in November below:

36 fillette, Catherine Breillat, 1988

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat,...

Like most of the cinema’s recurring images and sensations, there’s no precise “first movie” about the maladjusted, dissatisfied, wounded soul, but the floodgates about this most serious of fellows seemed to open just after World War II. The late 1940s and early ’50s witnessed the infiltration of the New York theater, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Stanley Kramer, Robert Rossen, Abraham Polonsky, Nicholas Ray, and so on—directors, scribes, or actors whose meal tickets more often than not depended on their ability to write the counter-mythology to V-Day utopia. They asked, amid the fanfare and the ticker-tape parades, “Is this all there is?”

Deities such as Brando and James Dean were responsible for taking that particular ship into orbit, but John Garfield was a pioneer of sorts, as early as 1938’s Four Daughters, where his appearance in such a genteel trifle was no less jarring than a Martian invasion.

Lisandro Alonso: “The Searchers is the main example of what a Western was by John Ford, films which I really admire.” (Chiara Mastroianni and Robert Alan Packard in Eureka)

Lisandro Alonso’s Delphic Eureka, co-written with Martín Caamaño and Fabian Casas (which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and was a Main Slate selection of the New York Film Festival), begins with Murphy (Viggo Mortensen) approaching a town in the old Wild West on a buckboard, driven by a nun. She cannot be trusted, so much is clear, and as though she were the coachman transporting Dr. Van Helsing to his destination in Transylvania, she tells her passenger that this is as far as she can go. In the saloon he will encounter El Coronel (Chiara Mastroianni channeling Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar), and a messy, loud and altogether corrupt atmosphere that...

Some sitcom actors only ever get one really great role, but Jim Backus had several. The actor, who played wealthy Wall Street regular Thurston Howell III on the popular castaway series "Gilligan's Island," had already made a name for himself by the show's premiere in 1964. He'd appeared regularly on the radio before TV was the dominant media of the time, and voiced the nearly blind cartoon character Mr. Magoo beginning in 1949. Backus also played a key role in Nicholas Ray's 1955 teen movie "Rebel Without A Cause," portraying the father who falls short when James Dean's angsty antihero Jim Stark needs him.

A few years before "Gilligan's Island," Backus even got his own show, aptly named "The Jim Backus Show" in the style of the time. In the Backus-led series, which was also called "Hot Off the Wire," the actor played a man named Mike O'Toole, who was attempting...

Notebook is covering the Locarno Film Festival with a series of correspondence pieces written by the participants in the Critics Academy.Illustrations by Lucy Jones.What happens to the body at a film festival? Over the course of the Locarno Film Festival, we tried—as much as decency allows—to investigate this very broad question. These responses seek to tie together the films we’ve seen with our embodied experiences of Locarno, both inside and outside of the cinema, grappling with the limits of our attention, our exhaustion, and our desires. Bitter Victory.Pierre Jendrysiak:Far from the expected glamor, attending a film festival can sometimes feel like the trek through the desert pictured in Nicholas Ray’s Bitter Victory (1957): a dreamy haze, almost a struggle. Under the heat of the Locarno sun, one wanders the streets, looking for a nice bartender to refill their water bottle, a little bit...

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

Bam

A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg has assembled an all-35mm retrospective of films that inspired his new feature, including work by Lynch, Lubitsch, Nicholas Ray, and Tsai; the 50th-anniversary restoration of The Conversation begins a run.

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective has begun, featuring the director in-person.

Anthology Film Archives

An Ingrid Caven retrospective includes films by Fassbinder and Eustache; work by Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner plays in “Essential Cinema.”

Film at Lincoln Center

An essential retrospective of Brazil’s L.C. Barreto Productions continues.

Roxy Cinema

Faces and A Woman Under the Influence screen.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of the Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden continues; two films by Joanna Hogg screen on Saturday; Young Frankenstein and The Warriors have standalone showings, the latter on 35mm.

Film Forum

The Searchers...

Metrograph presents Shinji Sômai x 3, a program of recent restorations anchored by a week-long run of Moving, the latest of Sômai's films to be restored and re-released, beginning August 2 at Metrograph In Theater. P. P. Rider and Typhoon Club round out the series, with both of Sômai's earlier works arriving on Metrograph At Home on August 9.

“I can say with absolute conviction that no Japanese filmmaker makes a film without being conscious of Shinji Sômai's existence… [Sômai] convinced the Japanese audience at the time that ‘cinema is not dead yet.'… For anyone who wants to see a movie that has the power to change and sustain your life, I urge you to see Shinji Sômai's films.” —Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Shinji Sômai's tragic death at age 53 in 2001 robbed Japanese cinema of one of its foremost talents, a poet of alienation, frustration, and youthful revolt whose 13 films show a distinct and compassionate perspective,...

A certain type of cinephile weeb (hello) esteems maybe no post-New Wave Japanese director more highly than Shinji Sômai, but it’s the nature of such fandom that his brilliance––expertly plotted, emotionally precise films shot in some of the most incredible long takes (Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion should be the benchmark)––hadn’t quite gone westward. Except he’s suddenly a filmmaker of the moment, and after last year’s retrospective at Japan Society the age of ruddy DVD rips is gone: Cinema Guild released Typhoon Club on a 4K Uhd, one might expect the same of P.P. Rider, and next Friday brings their theatrical rerelease of Moving, arguably the ideal starting point for his work.

Metrograph will begin a retrospective of all three on Friday, August 2, and we’re pleased to debut its trailer. Here’s their official summary: “Shinji Sômai’s tragic death at age...

John Waters’s Cry-Baby is the ideal companion piece to the filmmaker’s 1988 hit Hairspray. That film takes place in the early ’60s, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, and deals in a lighthearted fashion with thorny issues of racial segregation, while Cry-Baby uses its mid-’50s setting to poke fun at class conflict in staid Eisenhower-era Baltimore. And both films are perfectly realized period pieces awash with the music of their respective eras: Hairspray focusing on soul and R&b, Cry-Baby packed with catchy rockabilly and doowop numbers.

Cry-Baby focuses on Wade Walker (Johnny Depp), the leader of a redoubtable gang of “drapes,” a Baltimorean spin on the greasers of the time. Events begin to echo Romeo and Juliet once Cry-Baby, who’s known for driving girls crazy for the way he’s able to shed a single tear, makes a play for Allison (Amy Locane), the...

As expansive and iconic as its title suggests, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West certainly seemed to be written in John Ford’s blood, from the vast wide-angle visions of Monument Valley that Leone and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli luxuriated in, to the railroad-based, future-of-America economic landscape that serves as a backdrop to a number of bandit-versus-bandit power plays. Henry Fonda, with that methodical, stately stroll of his and those killer blue eyes barely visible from under the rim of his hat, can be seen and heard throughout, sending a shiver of great nostalgia up one’s spine. Ripened and tanned by years of desert sunlight, Ford’s Wyatt Earp is back in the saddle again.

But that particular pace and posture that Fonda had become known for in such films as My Darling Clementine, matched with the devious glint in those baby blues, now took...

For as long as “teenager” has been a demographic, there have been stories about teens breaking free from the status quo. While a lot of the modern great teen rebellion media is confined to the world of TV — where shows like “Euphoria” attract constant buzz — the archetypal troubled teen story remains 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause.” Starring James Dean in unquestionably his defining role, a rebellious teen struggling with his demons in L.A., Nicholas Ray’s film spoke to young people at the time with its story of high schoolers struggling with, and going against, the social pressures that bring them down. Over the years it became a touchstone because its themes and its honesty transcends generations.

As the teen film has evolved and morphed as a genre, there’s always been room for stories of iconoclastic youth who don’t fit in with the status quo. Oftentimes, these...

When screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides was asked about the complex layers of meaning running through his adaptation of Mickey Spillane‘s classic crime novel “Kiss Me Deadly,” he denied having any conscious intention of exploring the post-wwii anxieties that gave the film its jittery core. “People ask me about the hidden meanings in the script,” he told an interviewer. “About the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only say that I didn’t think about it when I wrote it . . . I was having fun.” Bezzerides may have been just “having fun,” but in the process, he and director Robert Aldrich crafted one of the greatest noirs of all time, an apocalyptic detective story that looks into the heart of 1950s America and sees annihilation.

It’s one of several stone-cold masterpieces written by the novelist-turned-screenwriter, whose work is being properly acknowledged by the...

Barbra Rush, the prolific actress best known for roles in 1953’s It Came From Outer Space and long runs on Peyton Place and All My Children, has died. Her daughter confirmed Rush’s passing to Fox News on Sunday. She was 97.

Rush had a near 60-year career. In the ’50s and ’60s, she worked on the big screen with Paul Newman (three times), Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Dean Martin, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Richard Burton. In addition to pulpier fare like Prince of Pirates and Taza, Son of Cochise, Rush did a trio of films with Douglas Sirk — The First Legion, Magnificent Obsession and Captain Lightfoot — and Bigger Than Life with Nicholas Ray.

By the late 1960s, Rush had segued mostly to TV, appearing in mainstays of the period such as Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive, Marcus Welby, M.D., McCloud, Maude, Ironside and Mannix.

Rush appeared in...

Barbara Rush, the classy yet largely unheralded leading lady who sparkled in the 1950s melodramas Magnificent Obsession, Bigger Than Life and The Young Philadelphians, has died. She was 97.

Rush, a regular on the fifth and final season of ABC’s Peyton Place and a favorite of sci-fi fans thanks to her work in When Worlds Collide (1951) and It Came From Outer Space (1953), died Sunday in Westlake Village, her daughter, Fox News senior correspondent Claudia Cowan, announced.

“My wonderful mother passed away peacefully at 5:28 this evening. I was with her this morning and know she was waiting for me to return home safely to transition,” Cowan said. “It’s fitting she chose to leave on Easter as it was one of her favorite holidays and now, of course, Easter will have a deeper significance for me and my family.”

A starlet at Paramount, Universal and Fox whose career blossomed at...

Rebel Without a Cause offers a raw look at teenage rebellion & societal pressures, urging viewers to reflect on the struggles faced by young people. The film's tragic ending highlights the consequences of fear, misunderstanding, and the need for a compassionate understanding of youth. James Dean's portrayal of Jim Stark, marked by vulnerability & emotion, resonates with the film's themes of youthful disillusionment & fragility.

Directed by Nicholas Ray and released in 1955, Rebel Without a Cause captures the essence of teenage angst and disillusionment in post-war America. Starring the iconic James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo, it tells the story of Jim Stark (Dean), a troubled youth struggling to find his place in a society he sees as hypocritical and devoid of meaning. The film delves deep into themes of identity, familial dysfunction, and the desperate search for belonging, making it resonate with audiences then and now.

Its portrayal of teenage rebellion and angst was groundbreaking,...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

Filmax has acquired international rights to Spanish thriller “Nina,” the new feature written and directed by Andrea Jaurrieta (“Ana by Day”) that bows at this week’s Málaga Film Festival as one of its higher profile titles in main competition.

Loosely based on the play of the same name by José Ramón Fernández, which borrows elements of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” “Nina” tells the story of a woman, an actress, who returns to her home town on Spain’s rugged northern coast seeking to take revenge on a celebrated writer. As she encounters past acquaintances, including a once close childhood friend, and faces dark memories, she begins to question whether vengeance is the only way forward.

“Nina” stars Goya-winning actress Patricia López Arnaiz (“Ane is Missing”) as the titular character and San Sebastián Silver Shell winner Darío Grandinetti, famed for his performance in Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her,...

Nicholas Ray was an influential American director active between the late 1940s and early '70s. His most famous movies are the brooding dramas Bigger than Life and Rebel Without a Cause, the latter widely considered the defining performance by James Dean. Aesthetically, Ray made bold use of color and frenetic, radical editing. In terms of themes, he frequently engaged with outsider characters and the constraints of society. This is reflected in his personal and professional life. For example, he was fiercely independent and notorious for clashing with the studios.

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

Film at Lincoln Center

A retrospective of Denis Villeneuve’s work also brings the director’s programming choices, among them films by Godard, Resnais, Cassavetes, and Wong Kar-wai.

Roxy Cinema

Bob Fosse’s Star 80, The Piano Teacher, The Pillow Book, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and End of Night all play on 35mm.

Anthology Film Archives

As retrospective of Haitian cinema continues, films by Hollis Frampton and Ernie Gehr play Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” continues with films by Nicholas Ray, Jonathan Demme, Lizzie Borden, and more; a 4K restoration of Pandora’s Box has begun a run; a print of The Third Man continues, while the Harold Lloyd film Hot Water shows on 35mm this Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Scorsese, Elaine May, Jonathan Demme, and Gus Van Sant...

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

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” highlights lesbian cinema with films by Chantal Akerman, Nicholas Ray, Ulrike Ottinger, and more; a 4K restoration of The Pianist and The Third Man on 35mm continue; A Hard Day’s Night plays on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Cassavetes, Jonathan Demme, and more; The Gods of Times Square and a print of Prince’s vastly underrated Under the Cherry Moon both play on Sunday.

Metrograph

The series “Dreamlike Visions” puts modern master Alain Gomis front-and-center.

Roxy Cinema

Carpenter’s Christine, Almodóvar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, and Secretary all play on 35mm.

Museum of Modern Art

As the massive run of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films continues, a retrospective of Finnish filmmaker Ilkka Järvi-Laturi begins.

IFC Center

A Dario Argento series continues; Audition, Basket Case 3,...

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

Museum of Modern Art

A massive run of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films begins; “To Save and Project,” continues.

Film at Lincoln Center

“Never Look Away: Serge Daney’s Radical 1970s” brings films by Tati, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray (x2), Godard, Straub-Huillet, Pasolini, and more.

Film Forum

“Sapph-o-rama” highlights lesbian cinema with films by Chantal Akerman, Lizzie Borden, Ulrike Ottinger, Yvonne Rainer, Celine Sciamma, and more; a 4K restoration of The Pianist, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, and The Third Man continue; a print of Calamity Jane plays on Sunday.

IFC Center

As Francis Ford Coppola’s latest recut, One from the Heart: Reprise, continues, Bertrand Bonello’s masterpiece Coma gets a New York premiere and a Dario Argento series begins; Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar plays late.

Roxy Cinema

Cronenberg’s Crash and Keith McNally...

Joan Evans, the daughter of screenwriters and goddaughter of Joan Crawford, who starred opposite Farley Granger in her first three films and with Audie Murphy in a pair of Westerns, has died. She was 89.

Evans died Oct. 21 in Henderson, Nevada, her son, John Weatherly, told The Hollywood Reporter.

She also toplined the Charles Lederer-directed On the Loose (1951), playing a suicidal teenager in the drama written by her parents, Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert; portrayed Irene Dunne’s daughter in the fantasy It Grows on Trees (1952); and enlisted in the U.S. Navy with Esther Williams in the musical comedy Skirts Ahoy! (1952).

Evans played the love interest of Granger’s character in the title role of Roseanna McCoy (1949), a drama loosely based on the family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The two worked together again in the 1950 releases Our Very Own and Edge of Doom, a bleak film noir directed by Mark Robson.

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...

Calamity Jane, the excellent Deadwood-set Western musical, is more than just a tune-filled romp through the (in)famous American town: it's a bold dissection of gender, femininity, and sexuality with screen legend Doris Day in the title role. As Jane, Day shirks the conformity of gender roles, opting for cropped hair, buckskins, and a pistol (it's a metaphor) that's more than capable of blasting away those who challenge her. She's rough, tough, and rowdy, and glad to take on traditionally "male" habits and mannerisms. Like Nicholas Ray's monumental Johnny Guitar, another Western with queer themes, Calamity Jane packages its potent subtext in a fabulously entertaining picture.

Italian American actor won herself iconic status with the 1959 film where she played a woman ‘passing’ as white

Lelia Goldoni, the actor best known as the female lead in John Cassavetes’ groundbreaking film Shadows, has died aged 86. The news was first reported by the Wrap, who said that her manager Jd Sobol announced that she died on Saturday at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey.

Goldoni had become involved with Shadows as a result of the acting workshop Cassavetes had started in 1956 – before which, according to Cassavetes, she had no professional acting experience. The film itself arose from an improvised audition sketch Cassavetes had performed for acting guru Lee Strasberg about two black siblings who “passed” for white. Having elaborated the idea into a full-length film, Cassavetes asked Goldoni to play the sister to brothers Hugh Hurd and Ben Carruthers; her character became the central figure of the film,...

Carmen Sevilla, the Spanish-born actor who starred in the Oscar-nominated 1958 film Vengeance and played Mary Magdalene in Nicholas Ray’s 1961 Biblical epic King of Kings, died Tuesday of Alzheimer’s disease and pneumonia at a hospital in Madrid. She was 92.

Her death was reported by her son to the Europa Press new agency.

Born in Seville, Spain, Sevilla launched her show business career as a dancer in the 1940s but had pivoted to film acting by the end of the decade. During the 1950s she became one of Spanish cinema’s most popular stars.

Her starring role in writer-director Juan Antonio Bardem’s 1958 La Venganza (Vengeance) made her an international star as the film became the first Spanish film nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Sevilla became more widely known in the U.S. with King of Kings, in which she played a beautiful Mary Magdalene opposite Jeffrey Hunter’s equally attractive Jesus.

While you can't claim we're in a full-fledged renaissance, there's no denying there's been an uptick in queer frontier films in recent memory. With obvious highlights like Brokeback Mountain and The Power of the Dog, Pedro Almodóvar's upcoming film Strange Way of Life, and whatever the hell Zorro: The Gay Blade was, the concept of gay frontier explorers isn't a new concept at all; it just took forever for mainstream entertainment to fully acknowledge it. There's one movie that walked so these movies could run, though, and that's Nicholas Ray's camp masterpiece Johnny Guitar. It's one of the finest examples of how subtext, framing, and the maintaining of a heightened reality combine to make a film in execution take on completely new dimensions compared to how it would be on the page. It's a film so brazen in its aesthetic and commitment to subversion that it's shocking that...

The Golden Age of Hollywood gave us a plethora of phenomenal acting pairs that would appear together in film after film. We had Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and many more. In a time where franchises and intellectual properties were not ruling Hollywood, pairing two actors together again was its own form of franchising. They were similar kinds of movies, but each told different stories with the actors playing different characters. The chemistry was all you needed to get people to come back for more.

One of the best pairings of the era was obviously Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Not only were both of them phenomenal actors who had scintillating on-screen chemistry, but there was also the added factor that the two became a couple and were married until Bogart's death in 1957. Over the course of their partnership,...

Hot on the heels of their love-it-or-hate-it niche hit "Beau Is Afraid", Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix are evidently ready to run it back.

According to cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, who has shot all three of Aster's films, the filmmaker's next movie will be "Eddington." Aster has been dropping hints about this project for the last four years, but he's been especially chatty about it during the press tour for "Beau Is Afraid." Per World of Reel, the confirmation came from Pogorzelski as he was speaking at a seminar in Nashville.

What is "Eddington?" If you've been following Aster's career since his 2018 breakout "Hereditary," you know all about it. If not, allow me to fill you in.

Aster Is Ready To Ride Strange In The Saddle

Five years ago, Aster revealed during a Reddit Ama that "Eddington" was nearly his first movie. Per Aster:

"Although it's sort of a — I don't...

Life World

Film Stage contributor Matthew Danger Lippman hosts a screening of Tom Green’s masterpiece Freddy Got Fingered this Friday, with tickets for $5 at the door, on the occasion of its 22nd anniversary. (Read Matthew’s interview with Green for the 20th.)

Film at Lincoln Center

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s early feature Passion has begun screening (read our interview with him here) while a series of films selected by Ari Aster begins, featuring films by Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray, Tai, and more.

Roxy Cinema

The Bedroom Window, featuring the Huppert-Guttenberg romance you never knew you wanted has 35mm showings Friday and Saturday, while Barbarella plays on the latter; on Sunday, new cult sensation For the Plasma screens, while Meg “U.S. Girls” Remy hosts a (currently sold-out) screening of Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue that includes music videos.

IFC Center

Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation shows in a...

As many a therapist’s coach has witnessed, in favour of running day to day as a cohesive unit many a family opt for the (perhaps not healthiest) strategy of pushing the simmering tensions they hold against one another to the background. But what if there was a way for you to have a much need cathartic vent, free from the worry of hurting the feelings of those you hold dearest? Filmmaker Daniel Turvil may have found a possible solution with This Much, So Far, his short film about a suburban dad who gathers a stand in cast of life-like dolls so he can deliver a torrent of unflattering home truths to his kin. It’s a film that does a great job of deploying the talents of actor Adam James, whose frenzied performance of Turvil’s high concept script is just as terrifying as it is captivating. Dn is...

Misfits and Outlaws: Jim Jarmusch's Cinema of Outsiders is now showing on Mubi in many countries.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.In Permanent Vacation (1980)—Jim Jarmusch’s underseen, undercooked, wholly unpolished first feature—Aloysius “Christopher” Parker (Chris Parker), a disaffected young drifter who recalls the ’50s Jazz-Age hipster and presages the ’90s slacker, wanders around a bombed-out Manhattan without an agenda. He dances in his apartment as his indifferent girlfriend smokes out the window. He talks to various strangers: a concessions attendant at a repertory house, a streetwise saxophone player, a disturbed man who believes he’s in a war zone. Eventually, he steals a car and uses the profits to board a steamer ship to Paris, content to roam as if he’s a tourist on a… well, you know.It's almost beside...

Ari Aster’s nearly-three hour journey Beau Is Afraid, described by the filmmaker himself as a “Jewish Lord of the Rings,” will arrive a bit earlier than expected. Now set to debut on April 14 in New York and LA before expanding wide the following week, including IMAX screens, we’ve received more context for what to expect thanks to a new series the director curated for Film at Lincoln Center.

Set to run April 14-20 at the NYC venue, selections include works by Alfred Hitchcock, Jiří Menzel, Guy Maddin, Albert Brooks, Nicholas Ray, Powell and Pressburger, Tsai Ming-liang, Jacques Tati, and more. “This eclectic and unexpected collection of masterworks drawn from seven decades of film history across a range of genres and production contexts sheds light on the inspirations and influences behind one of the most compelling directorial voices in Hollywood today,” notes the press release.

Aster also recently let...

Los Angeles is such a large and sprawling city, it doesn't have a singular identity. As can be seen from the wide variety of movies set here, neighborhoods in the east, south, and west of LA, from the beaches to the vast San Fernando Valley, all have extremely different flavors. LA is a city of transplants and immigrants, and I'm no exception, as I moved here 6.5 years ago from the UK. Most of the best-known LA movies were made by outsiders trying to get to grips with a city that in one sense is dominated by the movie industry but also has a rich cultural life outside of that.

One of the best ways to discover LA is through documentaries, such as "City of Gold" (2015), "Los Angeles Plays Itself" (2003), and "Dogtown and Z-Boys" (2001). Like most people, my perception of LA was entirely built by the movies I watched growing up,...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including David Easteal’s The Plains (one of the best films we saw on the festival circuit last year), Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy, Koji Fukada’s 10-part series The Real Thing, Bruce Labruce’s Saint-Narcisse, and more.

Additional highlights include three films by Joan Micklin Silver, additions to their Lars von Trier series, Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville, Sally Potter’s Orlando, Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, and more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

April 1 – Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley

April 2 – Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman

April 3 – The All-Round Reduced Personality – Redupers, directed by Helke Sander | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

April 4 – Saint-Narcisse, directed by Bruce Labruce

April 5 – Jaime Francisco, directed by Javier Rodríguez | Brief Encounters

April 6 – Hester Street, directed by Joan Micklin...

Good news for those who wish to know what their Twitter feed’s jacking off to: the Criterion Channel are launching an erotic thriller series that includes De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Body Double, the Wachowskis’ Bound, and so many other movies to stir up that ceaseless, fruitless “why do movies have sex scenes?” discourse. (Better or worse than middle-age film critics implying they have a hard-on? I’m so indignant at being forced to choose.) Similarly lurid, if not a bit more frightening, is a David Lynch retro that includes the Criterion editions of Lost Highway and Inland Empire (about which I spoke to Lynch last year), a series of shorts, and a one-month-only engagement for Dune, a film that should be there in perpetuity.

Retrospectives of Harold Lloyd, Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, and shorts by Fanta Régina Nacro round out the big debuts,...

Exclusive: Luxury labels are “naturally evolving” toward producing and making their own indie feature films, says Charles Finch, founder and chief executive of Finch and Partners, the consulting firm that has been the prime mover in enabling “a synergy of content” between the entertainment sector and the crème de la crème of brands.

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For 25 years, Finch tells Deadline, “we have either represented studios in helping to promote their programming or we have brought enormous luxury deals to artists, and...

Tom Luddy, the understated co-founder and artistic director of the Telluride Film Festival who championed world cinema, spotlighted overlooked gems and saluted legends during his near half-century run with the event, has died. He was 79.

Luddy died peacefully Monday in Berkeley, California, after a long illness, Telluride senior vp public relations Shannon Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter.

“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger said in a statement. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a sphinx-like quality that took a little time to get around, for some.

“But once you knew him, you were welcomed into a kingdom of art, history, intelligence, humor and joie de vivre that you knew you couldn’t be without. He made life richer. Magical. He...