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Directed by Arthur Ripley, "Thunder Road" is a classic crime film from 1958 that focuses on Lucas Doolin, a Korean War veteran who delivers moonshine in rural mountain states such as North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. He tries to keep the family business afloat while evading law enforcement. The film features thrilling hot rod chases and action sequences that inspired Bruce Springsteen's song "Thunder Road."

It was a very personal project for the high-demand actor Robert Mitchum, who also served as the producer, conceived the story, and wrote some songs. "Thunder Road" was also a family affair. The role of Robin Doolin, Lucas' naive younger brother and mechanic who wants to be a part of the dangerous, fast-paced moonshining business, eventually went to Robert Mitchum's son James Mitchum.

Robert's other son, Chris Mitchum, explained in a 2018 interview that his dad originally wanted musician Elvis Presley to play Robin, and they...

The November 2020 lineup for The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, toplined by a Claire Denis retrospective, including the brand-new restoration of Beau travail, along with Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Nenette and Boni, Towards Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum, and White Material.

There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.

There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.

See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Arthur Riplye's The Chase (1946) is playing from September 30 - October 30, 2017 in the United States.“It’s happened again.” This almost throwaway admission by the protagonist of The Chase, Arthur Ripley’s way-out 1946 noir, comes just after the film’s jolting third act twist. It sets the viewer up for the unexpected, but is delivered with such exasperation that, at least for the beleaguered hero of the picture, the situation may perhaps be all too familiar, a possibility that in itself makes the occurrence that much more significant. Prior to this point, The Chase had been a solid, atmospheric thriller, with sufficient quirkiness to keep it in thoroughly fresh territory. But with this derailing revelation, there is really no preparing for how The Chase plays out, and what that, in turn, means for the preceding story. On its surface set-up,...

By John M. Whalen

Cornell Woolrich is a writer whose work was much loved and cherished by fans of film noir. The Internet Movie Database lists 102 credits for him for both film and TV shows—titles including “Rear Window,” “The Bride Wore Black,” “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” “Black Angel,” “Fear in the Night,” and “Phantom Lady,” He didn’t write any screenplays that I know of. The films and TV shows were all adapted from a prolific output of stories written under his Woolrich and William Irish pseudonyms, and under his real name, George Hopley.

While Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain make up the Big Three in noir fiction, Woolrich carved out a special niche for himself. Chandler, and Hammett wrote about tough guy heroes who usually overcame the web of evil they encountered. Cain’s heroes weren’t always so lucky, but at least...

An exercise in dizzy disorientation, this Cornell Woolrich crazy-house noir pulls the rug out from under us at least three times. You want delirium, you got it -- the secret words for today are "Obsessive" and "Perverse." Innocent Robert Cummings is no match for sicko psychos Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran. The Chase Blu-ray Kino Classics 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Cummings, Michèle Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt, Don Wilson, Alexis Minotis, Nina Koschetz, Yolanda Lacca, James Westerfield, Shirley O'Hara. Cinematography Frank F. Planer Film Editor Edward Mann Original Music Michel Michelet Written by Philip Yordan from the book The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich Produced by Seymour Nebenzal Directed by Arthur D. Ripley

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

As Guy Maddin says on his (recommended) commentary, the public domain copies of this show were...

Robert Mitchum ca. late 1940s. Robert Mitchum movies 'The Yakuza,' 'Ryan's Daughter' on TCM Today, Aug. 12, '15, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series is highlighting the career of Robert Mitchum. Two of the films being shown this evening are The Yakuza and Ryan's Daughter. The former is one of the disappointingly few TCM premieres this month. (See TCM's Robert Mitchum movie schedule further below.) Despite his film noir background, Robert Mitchum was a somewhat unusual choice to star in The Yakuza (1975), a crime thriller set in the Japanese underworld. Ryan's Daughter or no, Mitchum hadn't been a box office draw in quite some time; in the mid-'70s, one would have expected a Warner Bros. release directed by Sydney Pollack – who had recently handled the likes of Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Robert Redford – to star someone like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.

A "Touch Of Evil" with Arnaud Desplechin and Anne-Katrin Titze through the lens of Kent Jones.

I met up with Arnaud Desplechin to discuss his latest film screened at the New York Film Festival and discovered masculinity in Hitchcock's Vertigo by letting Kim Novak die and the soul of a Russian doll while sounding like Danny Kaye in The Court Jester. We were photographed with just a touch of evil by co-screenwriter Kent Jones and tried to find out what it actually means to "become an American."

In Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian, based on the case study 'Reality and Dream' by ethnologist and psychoanalyst Georges Devereux, nationalities and accents blur to bring light, while Devereux (Mathieu Amalric in fire and fervor) and his patient Jimmy Picard, a Native American war veteran played with internal radiance by Benicio Del Toro embark on mapping out disclosures of the mind.

Revivals, Views From The Avant-Garde, Convergence, Applied Science, Motion Portraits took place at the New York Film Festival. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze Breaking off from the New York Film Festival Main Slate, here are some of the highlights. In the Applied Science programme at the press conference for Teller's Tim's Vermeer, David Hockney, Johannes Vermeer, and Jimi Hendrix were intertwined by Teller's partner Penn Jillette. This year's Convergence focused on the "intersection of technology and storytelling" and opened with a Keystone Presentation of Investigate North's The Cloud Chamber Mystery, co-produced by Lars von Trier's Breaking The Waves producer Vibeke Windeløv, whom I met at the New York Film Festival in 2003 where she presented Dogville with Nicole Kidman. In the Revivals, Arthur Ripley's restored The Chase starring Robert Cummings, Michèle Morgan and Peter Lorre would be a high-water mark for any festival, at any time. In New York,...

Director Arnaud Desplechin sends Mathieu Amalric packing. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard give us characters who decide on survival in James Gray's The Immigrant. Mathieu Amalric as a therapist of veiled past confronts the title's Native American war veteran played by Benicio Del Toro in Arnaud Desplechin's resonant Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian, and Gloria (Paulina García) in Sebastián Lelio's film knows that you don't need to be in a costume drama to dress up. Free association may lead from a skateboard ride in (Gloria producer) Pablo Larraín's No to dancing skeletons, Arthur Ripley's gripping The Chase to John Huston's Let There Be Light, and Maria Falconetti's performance in Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc to rickets.

Who are you? How does reinvention work? Do we have to change country, nationality, language, or profession to become ourselves?

The Immigrant

Joaquin Phoenix...

In close-up with Kent Jones on the 51st New York Film Festival. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The week before the 51st edition kicks off on September 27, New York Film Festival Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones and I spoke about extraordinary filmmakers - Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis and Agnieszka Holland, who are screening their latest work, and a very personal debut from designer agnès b, who has been a champion of cinema for decades. Arthur Ripley's The Chase follows It's the Cat and Some Other Cat. The Coen Brothers, Jia Zhangke and Lav Diaz explore the vastness of violence, Teller looks into Vermeer, and James Franco goes out into the wilderness.

In Part 1 of our conversation, Kent Jones called agnès b's film My Name Is Hmmm… "extremely, challengingly personal for her."

Catherine Breillat has "one of her greatest endings" in Abuse of Weakness

Anne-Katrin Titze: Speaking of personal,...

Browse all the sections of the 57th London Film Festival (Oct 9-20) including the galas, competition titles and individual sections.

Alphabetical list of titles by section including feature premiere status

Wp = Wp

Ep = European Premiere

IP = International Premiere

UK = UK Premiere

Gala’s

Opening Night

Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass (Us) Ep

Closing Night

Saving Mr Banks, John Lee Hancock (Us/UK) Ep

Philomena, Stephen Frears (UK) UK12 Years A Slave, Steve Mcqueen (UK) EPGravity, Alfonso Cuaron (Us) UKInside Llewyn Davis, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (Us) UKLabor Day, Jason Reitman (Us) EPThe Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes (UK), EPThe Epic Of Everest, John Noel (UK) WPBlue Is The Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche (France) UKNight Moves, Kelly Reichardt (Us) UKStranger By The Lake, Alain Guiraudie (France) UKDon Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Us) UKMystery Road, Ivan Sen (Australia) UKOnly Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch (Us) UKNebraska, Alexander Payne (Us) UKWe Are The Best!, Lukas Moodysson (Sweden) EPFoosball 3D, Juan Jose Campanella (Argentina...

The Film Society Of Lincoln Center has added programming to the New York Film Festival (Nyff) that includes documentaries and restored works.

The programmes feature a spotlight on three documentary sections – Applied Sciences, Motion Portraits and How Democracy Works Now.

Motion Portraits will focus on cinematic portraiture and includes Nancy Buirski‘s Afternoon Of A Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq and Nadav Schirman’s In The Dark Room.

Applied Science features three films, each built around obsessive projects: Ben Lewis’s Google And The World Brain (pictured), Mark Levinson’s Particle Fever and Teller’s Tim’s Vermeer.

How Democracy Works Now is a series of films by the filmmaking team of Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson who have trained their cameras on immigration reform.

The Revivals section will feature among others Martin Scorsese’s The Age Of Innocence and Arthur Ripley’s The Chase.

The Nyff runs from Sept 27-Oct 13.

The Chase

Written by Philip Yordan

Directed by Arthur Ripley

U.S.A., 1946

*A fair warning to readers: those sensitive to spoilers had best watch the film under review before reading the article. To properly dive into its themes and story, major plot points will be revealed.

Surprises in movies are a great gift the storytellers can offer viewers to wake them from the state of comfort, or boredom depending whom one asks, which sets in when plot points are too familiar and the dramatic beats too predictable. For some it can be a chore to get through just as it may offer the right type of simple escapism for others. Sometimes, however, the ingredients need be shaken and stirred. In an amusing case of coincidence, this week’s column entry, the 1946 film The Chase, arrives only weeks after Steven Soderbergh’s supposed final theatrical feature, Side Effects, opened in theatres.

I can't remember a time I went to the Seattle International Film Festival (Siff) press launch and looked over the list of films and saw so many I was interested in seeing. The claim to fame for over the years is to call it the largest and most-highly attended festival in the United States. This is a fact I've often taken issue with as I don't equate quantity with quality. Granted, there has been a large number of quality features to play the fest over the years, including Golden Space Needle (Best Film) winners such as Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), My Life as a Dog (1987), Trainspotting (1996), Run Lola Run (1999), Whale Rider (2003) and even recent Best Director winner, Michel Hazanavicius's Oss 117: Nest of Spies in 2006. That said, looking over this year's crop of films I see a lot of films I will be doing my absolute best to see.

I don't know how much real world demand there is for wheelmen, but it's a burgeoning field in the movies. It seems like there's someone always in the movies who needs a dangerous package transported or a steady-nerved getaway driver for a heist. That's certainly true this week, thanks to a movie featuring a new, and excellent movie wheelman: Ryan Gosling's Driver from Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive."

In honor of Gosling's hammer-wielding, tire-squealing performance, we decided this was the perfect time to pick our five favorite wheelmen in movie history. Our qualifications for potential candidates were simple. They had to make their living as a driver -- so car thieves were out. They had to be willing to take dirty or illegal jobs -- so professional truckers were gone too. And they couldn't actually participate in the heists themselves. As Gosling's Driver says, "I don't sit in while...