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Few actors today can toggle between massive blockbusters, like “Dune,” and small-scale auteurist works, such as Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” with the ease of Stellan Skarsgård. And few are quite as candid when they open up.

As reported by Variety from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where the actor was promoting “Sentimental Value” and on hand for a tribute, Skarsgård made some startling comments about Ingmar Bergman, whom the Swedish actor worked for on a 1986 stage production of August Strindberg’s “A Dream Play.”

The actor talked about his personal dislike of Bergman, whom he found to be tyrannical and manipulative. Skarsgård links Bergman’s attitude as a director to the fact that Bergman was a Nazi supporter during World War II. This may be new information to more casual cinephiles now, but Bergman’s Nazi sympathies are widely known. Bergman never hid this, and admitted his affinity for...

No matter what Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, aka the Dardenne brothers, ever do, they will always be known as members of a very elite super club: two-time Palme d’Or winners at Cannes.

While their latest film, “Tori and Lokita” did not win the Palme d’Or prize last year, it competed at Cannes, which is pretty much the case any time the Dardennes ever deign us with a new film—it’s an instant Cannes competition title which is nothing to sneeze at.

Continue reading ‘Tori And Lokita’ Clip: Martin Scorsese Calls The Dardenne’s Latest Drama The “Most Devastating Cinematic Experiences” at The Playlist.

Of the 94 filmmakers who have clinched the coveted Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, only 10 have achieved the honor twice. The latest one to follow the dual win precedent established by Alf Sjoberg (1944’s “Torment” and 1951’s “Miss Julie”) is another Swedish director, Ruben Ostlund, whose first and second victories came for 2017’s “The Square” and 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness.” The latter film has, by all accounts, become his most successful yet and is now in the running for three Oscars, including Best Director.

In this year’s directing Oscar race, Ostlund faces Todd Field (“Tar”), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) and Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”). The Daniels are also first-time Oscar nominees, while Spielberg stands as the only past directing contender in the group, with a pair of wins for “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Saving Private Ryan...

The love affair between Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund and the Cannes Film Festival continues.

The 48-year-old director will return to the scene of his recent triumph, as it was just last year that his “Triangle of Sadness” came away with the coveted Palme d’Or, the top prize at the most prestigious festival in world cinema. (Don’t tell Venice I said that.)

“I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honor of jury president for this year’s competition at the Festival de Cannes,” he wrote in an announcement released by the festival early Tuesday morning. “I am sincere when I say that cinema culture is in its most important period ever,” he continued.

Östlund’s “Triangle” is, of course, currently a long-shot Oscar candidate in three categories: Best Director (a nomination for Östlund), Best Original Screenplay (another nomination for Östlund), and Best Picture (a nomination...

Neon earned bragging rights tonight with the third consecutive Palme d’Or Cannes winner in a row, that being Ruben Östlund’s satirical comedy Triangle of Sadness, which was a huge crowd pleaser during the fest.

The pic follows Neon’s previous Palme d’Or winner, last year’s Titane and, of course, 2019’s Parasite which went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture.

Triangle of Sadness is a knock on the 1 and follows a fashion model and her model casting agent partner, played by Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson. The duo wind up on luxury yacht where they’re the poorest of the poor. Woody Harrelson plays a Marxist captain who gets drunk with a Russian oligarch, reads from the Communist manifesto and sends his yacht into rough waters until the passengers crap and vomit. Hijinks ensue with a portion marooned to a deserted island.

The pic clocks in at 2 1/2 hours.

The 2022 Cannes Film Festival is nearing its conclusion, and soon the jury will be selecting awards for this year’s impressive, albeit quieter, slate of films. After last year’s “Titane” from Julia Ducournau made history as the first female-directed film to fully win the Palme d’Or (Jane Campion’s “The Piano” tied with “Farewell My Concubine” in 1993), at this point in the festival, it doesn’t seem likely that a woman-directed project will walk away with it this year.

“Forever Young” by French-Italian director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi seems to be the only film directed by a woman that has so far invoked any passion for bringing it to the finish line. Claire Denis’ “Stars at Noon,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” Leonor Serraille’s “Mother and Son” and Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen’s “Eight Mountains” are the other titles directed by women among the 21 contending features.

The 75th Cannes Film Festival returns with international auteurs, Palme d’Or winning filmmakers, potential summer blockbusters, and many films that will, if everything breaks their way, be campaigning for Oscar come the fall.

In short, the competition lineup is loaded with promise.

The track record for Palme d’Or winners going onto Oscar success has varied over the years. Over the past two decades, Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” (2002), Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2011), Michael Haneke’s “Amour” (2012) and Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (2019) have received best picture nominations. However, “Parasite” is one of only two Cannes winners that have matched with Oscar, with the other being “Marty” (1955).

And yet, other Cannes winners have gone on to receive other nominations, such as Hirokazu Kore-media’s “Shoplifters” (2018) and Ruben Östlund’s “The Square” (2017), both of which have films playing in the this year’s fest with “Broker” and “Triangle of Sadness” respectively.

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

To fill the void left by the absence of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, for the next two weeks, this column will be dedicated to films that premiered at the festival over the course of seven decades.

There’s not much subtlety to the opening of Alf Sjöberg’s 1951 film “Miss Julie,” which begins with a tight shot of a caged bird, then turns its focus on the eponymous star (played by a vibrant Anita Björk), as she gazes out at a raucous Midsummers’ Eve celebration populated by her father’s servants. The film draws from the classic August Strindberg play of the same name, which Sjöberg himself had mounted before adapting the story into his film, and it went on...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Alice (Josephine Mackerras)

It makes no sense. The night before saw Alice Ferrand’s (Emilie Piponnier) husband François (Martin Swabey) going out of his way to passionately make-out with her in front of their friends at a dinner party and now he won’t answer her calls. Despite his running out of the house earlier than usual without any explanation, however, there’s nothing to make her think something is wrong until a trip to the drugstore exposes a freeze on their finances. One credit card won’t work. Then another. The Atm won’t accept her sign-in and François still isn’t picking up his phone.

Stage and screen acting legend Max Von Sydow, who starred in The Seventh Seal and appeared in The Exorcist, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Flash Gordon, and Game of Thrones, died on March 8 at the age of 90, according to Variety.

“It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow,” his wife, the producer Catherine Brelet, said in a statement.

Von Sydow made his Hollywood debut as Jesus in the 1965 Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. This gave him the authority to observe “if Jesus were alive today and saw what they are saying in his name, he would never stop throwing up” in Woody Allen’s 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Von Sydow had the power to compel Satan as Father Merrin in William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic The Exorcist and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), directed by John Boorman.

Max von Sydow, the Oscar-nominated actor best known for playing chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and battling a demon in The Exorcist, died Sunday. He was 90.

His wife, Catherine Brelet, announced the news without citing a cause of death in Paris Match. “It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow on 8 March 2020,” she said, according to The Guardian.

The Swedish actor became a breakout star in the late Fifties...

Swedish actor featured in more than 100 films and TV series.

Swedish actor Max von Sydow, who featured in more than 100 films and TV series, has died aged 90.

His wife, Catherine von Sydow, announced “with a broken heart and infinite sadness” that the actor had died in France on Sunday (March 8).

Born Carl Adolf von Sydow in Sweden in 1929, he studied at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) and made his screen debuts in Alf Sjöberg’s Only A Mother (1949) and Miss Julie (1951).

It was in 1955 that he met director Ingmar Bergman, with whom he made 11 films including The Seventh Seal...

He faced down Death itself in “The Seventh Seal,” then the demon Pazuzu in “The Exorcist,” and finally Kylo Ren in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Max von Sydow, whose death Sunday at age 90 was confirmed by Variety, did all of these things in a singular career that spanned the European arthouse to Hollywood blockbusters. Lanky and chisel-faced, he was the kind of actor who grabbed your attention immediately and held it. And his deep, resonant voice — so memorable as he’s mansplaining culture and history to Barbara Hershey in “Hannah and Her Sisters” — seemed like it really could have been capable of sending demons back to hell.

He was born April 10, 1929 in Lund, Sweden, and began his career as an actor in several films by Alf Sjöberg, an early collaborator of Ingmar Bergman, before moving to Malmö and working with Bergman himself — first on stage at the Municipal Theatre,...

On July 14, 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Ingmar Bergman was born, and a quarter-century later, he began to bring his cinematic voice to the world. A century after his brith, with an astounding body of work like few other directors and an influence that reverberates through the past many decades of filmmaking, his filmography is being celebrated like never before.

Starting this February at NYC’s Film Forum and then expanding throughout the nation “the largest jubilee of a single filmmaker” will be underway in a massive, 47-film retrospective. Featuring 35 new restorations, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many, many more, Janus Films has now debuted a beautiful trailer alongside the full line-up of films.

The Ingmar Bergman retrospective begins on February 7 at NYC’s Film Forum and then will expand to the following cities this spring:

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Wa

Detroit Film Theatre,...

Palme d'Or winner 'The Square' with Claes Bang: 'Gobsmackingly weird' Cannes Film Festival favorite may have a tough time landing a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nomination. Ruben Östlund's comedy-drama is totally unrelated to Jehane Noujaim's 2013 Oscar-nominated political documentary of the same title, which refers to downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square. Cannes' Palme d'Or winner 'The Square' & other Official Competition favorites' Oscar chances Screenwriter-director Ruben Östlund's The Square was the Palme d'Or winner at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, which wrapped up on May 28. (See list of Palme d'Or and other 2017 Cannes winners further below.) Clocking in at about 2 hours and 20 minutes, Östlund's unusual comedy-drama revolving around the chaotic p.r. campaign to promote the opening of the titular installation – a symbolic square of light – at a contemporary art museum in Stockholm has been generally well-received by critics. In the opinion of The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw,...

With just about two weeks to go before its seaside premiere at the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival, the first image for Michael Haneke’s Happy End – his latest cold dose of cruel reality – has landed as hard as the realization that one day we will all die, and most likely alone. Of course, Haneke returns to Cannes this year a reigning champ, double-fisting Palmes d’Or after his last films to grace the Competition – The White Ribbon and Amour – emerged victorious. The question on many minds going into this year’s festival is whether he’ll win the top prize for a third time and break the all-time record he holds alongside fellow international auteurs Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura, the Dardennes brothers, and last year’s surprise winner Ken Loach.

Happy End reunites Haneke with two performers who have arguably given career-best...

Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Dorothy Davenport becomes a judge and later State Governor in socially conscious thriller about U.S. women's voting rights. Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Will women's right to vote lead to the destruction of The American Family? Directed by and featuring the now all but forgotten Willis Robards, Mothers of Men – about women suffrage and political power – was a fast-paced, 64-minute buried treasure screened at the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, held June 2–5. I thoroughly enjoyed being taken back in time by this 1917 socially conscious drama that dares to ask the question: “What will happen to the nation if all women have the right to vote?” One newspaper editor insists that women suffrage would mean the destruction of The Family. Women, after all, just did not have the capacity for making objective decisions due to their emotional composition. It...

Touch of Class: Ullmann’s Update of Classic Text Ultimately Lifeless

There are a scant few equals to the texts of playwright August Strindberg’s, his 1888 play Miss Julie still ranking as one of theater’s most celebrated and intelligent titles. A forerunner of a movement toward naturalism, director Liv Ullmann pares down the visual flourish which hearkens back to Strindberg’s initial contrivance. Her first film since the critically celebrated Faithless (2000), which was written by Ullmann’s longtime collaborator Ingmar Bergman, the passion that burned through that relationship drama is replaced by reserved bouts of class driven animosity. While true to the initial spirit of Strindberg’s text, the focus here is devoted nearly entirely to class issues, leaving some of the play’s more subtle motifs rather neglected. Considering the extravagant and mesmerizing 1951 version from Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjoberg, Ullmann’s adaptation is a chewy piece of meat,...

Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at next month's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's "Two Days, One Night."  The directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgian, 63 and 60 years old). World cinema's favorite fraternal directing duo, and the pre-eminent figures in Belgium's spotty filmmaking history, the pair grew up in the French-speaking Wallonia district, studied drama and philosophy respectively, and co-founded the Derives documentary production company in 1977 -- it stands to this day. After a decade of non-fiction work, they made their first narrative feature, "Falsch," in 1987; their third feature, 1996's "La Promesse," proved the breakthrough, premiering at Toronto, winning a couple of major Us critics' awards,...

Miss Julie

Director: Liv Ullmann

Writer: Liv Ullmann

Producers: Tristan Orpen Lynch, Aoife O’Sullivan, Teun Hilte, Oliver Dungey, Synnøve Hørsdal

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Jessica Chastian, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton

While IFC Films/Sundance Selects will hopefully release Two Lives sometime this year, an excellent German film in which Liv Ullmann stars, we’re even more excited to see her return to the director’s seat for the first time in fourteen years with this adaptation of Strindberg’s theater staple. There are several other film versions out there, perhaps most famously is Alf Sjoberg’s 1951 treatment. But with leading ladies like Chastain and the sublime Samantha Morton, this is destined to be one of the year’s most welcome re-interpretations.

Gist: Over the course of a midsummer night in Fermanagh in 1890, an unsettled daughter of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy encourages her father’s valet to seduce her.

After Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjoberg’s visually innovative, Cannes Grand Prix-winning adaptation released in 1951, Ingmar Bergman’s muse Liv Ullmann will next direct an adaptation of August Strindberg‘s battle-of-the-sexes play Miss Julie that will star Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell.

Samantha Morton (Minority Report) is on board to co-star.

Strindberg’s renowned 1888 play Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes and classes that ensues when a wealthy businessman’s daughter falls for her father’s bitter servant.

Chastain, who is up for an Academy Award for the role in Zero Dark Thirty can be currently seen in the successful horror film Mama.

The Irish Film Board has announced Farrell’s nomination for a Best Actor award for his role in Seven Psychopaths. Irish superstar is currently filming A Winter’s Tale for Warner Bros. and his other upcoming projects include Saving Mr. Banks and Dead Man Down with Noomi Rapace.

• Warner Bros. has acquired The Man From Primrose Lane with the intent of developing it into a feature for Bradley Cooper. Chad Feehan (Paranormal Activity 4) will write the screenplay based on James Renner’s novel about a true crime writer who decides to investigate the mysterious murder of a mitten-wearing, West Akron, Ohio recluse. [Deadline]

• Bradley Cooper is also currently in discussions to re-team with Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) for his next project, tentatively called Chef and described as a “culinary comedy” about a disgraced Paris-based chef attempting to stage a comeback in London. Cooper can be seen alongside Eva Mendes...

It's been over a decade since Ingmar Bergman muse Liv Ullmann has been behind the camera with the actress-director staying relatively quiet throughout featuring only in a handful of film roles as well. Color us surprised as hell then when Ullmann revealed plans of a comeback in a recent interview in the Boston Globe noting that she'll be "doing a movie next year in Ireland as a director."

That interview failed to detail the project any further but, with a little digging, we were surprised to uncover very exciting news. Firstly, an article dating back to December 2011 revealed that Ullmann was scouting Ireland as a potential location for an adaptation of August Strindberg's classic Swedish play "Froken Julie" (or "Miss Julie") -- a fascinating, controversial work exploring power, sexuality, class, identity, love and gender set in 1874 which will see Ullmann "use Irish actors as servants and British as the masters of the house.

As we all know, “Palme d’Or” is French for Feather Button Hand of Gold Achievement. Or something. Google Translate wasn’t loading this morning. Regardless, it’s as prestigious as awards get, although it hilariously almost never lines up with the Oscars (for good reason). Past winners include Barton Fink, Taxi Driver, Mash, The Third Man, Black Orpheus, La Dolce Vita, The Wind That Shakes the Barley and nearly one hundred other films that should be on a rental queue somewhere. That list also includes Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon which took the price in 2009 and, as of yesterday, his latest film Love (Amour). That’s 2 wins for the director in 4 competition years. It ties him for Most Palmes d’Or Ever (no director has won more than two), where he joins Alf Sjoberg (Iris and the Lieutenant, Miss Julie); Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now); Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror, The Best Intentions...

Austrian director Michael Haneke won the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or for "Amour" ("Love"), a critically hailed drama about an old couple confronting the approach of death. Having previously claiming the golden palm in 2009 for "The White Ribbon," Haneke became the seventh champ to claim the golden palm twice – after Alf Sjöberg (Sweden, 1946, 1951), Francis Ford Coppola (U.S., 1974, 1979), Bille August (Denmark, 1988, 1992), Emir Kusturica (Serbia, 1985, 1995), Shohei Imamura (Japan, 1983, 1997) and Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Belgium, 1999, 2005). Other awardees: Grand Prize (second place): Matteo Garrone's "Reality" Jury Prize (third place): Ken Loach's "The Angels' Share" Best Director: Carlos Reygadas, "Post Tenebras Lux" Best Actor: Mads Mikkelsen, "The Hunt" Best Actress: Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan, "Beyond the Hills" Best Screen...

On a rainy evening in the south of France, Nanni Moretti and rest of the Cannes Film Festival jury gathered at the Lumiere theater for a star-studded ceremony to hand out the awards for this year's fest. And there were some big surprises in store.

But before we get to those, the no-brainer winner for the Palme d'Or was Michael Haneke's "Amour." Already a festival regular, who won the prize for his last film "The White Ribbon," unlike his previous much more divisive pictures, this one was almost universally, well, loved. Anchored by two powerful performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, this punishing tale about an elderly couple facing death straight in the face had a heart and humanity that Haneke has never quite shown before. It's a well-deserved win, and one that most can agree on (read our review here). Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film earlier...

Brothers and directors Jean-Paul and Luc Dardenne discuss The Kid With a Bike, opening in New York and Los Angeles March 16

Brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne may not be household names here in the States, but they certainly are in rarefied air, since they have done something only five directors have done before. They have won the prestigious Palme D'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival twice (Rosetta 1999, L'Enfant (The Child) 2005), joining Alf Sjoberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, and Shohei Imamura as the only directors with two Palme D'Or wins. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne return to cinemas with their latest drama entitled The Kid with a Bike, which opens in New York and Los Angeles March 16, before expanding nationally in the coming weeks. I had the chance to speak with Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne about The Kid with a Bike. Here's what they had to say below.

This year's president of the Festival de Cannes Robert De Niro will preside over jury members including fellow actors Jude Law, Uma Thurman and Martina Gusman, directors Olivier Assayas, Johnnie To and Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Chinese producer Nansun Shi and Norwegian critic and writer Linn Ullmann. The nine jury members will hand out the main prizes including the Palme d'Or amongst others for writing, directing and performances. They will follow the path of some of the greatest names in the history of cinema. Many accused Isabelle Huppert of playing favourites when Haneke finally won for his long overdue Palme. De Niro has worked with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn --- will the brotherhood remain intact with a vote going towards Malick?  Unlike any other awards, the Palme d'Or is the most elusive and coveted of them all. The first prize handed out was the Grand Prix in 1949 at the third...

Swedish star of the notorious 1967 film I Am Curious (Yellow)

The Swedish actor Lena Nyman has died of cancer aged 66, a day after the death of Maria Schneider. Both actors were instantly associated with a sexually explicit film: Schneider with Last Tango in Paris and Nyman with I Am Curious (Yellow). But while Schneider's career and life suffered consequently, Nyman went on to establish herself as a well-loved performer in her native country.

Cut by 11 minutes in Britain, I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), directed by Vilgot Sjöman, was seized by the Us customs, pronounced obscene and banned. But a federal appeals court then ruled that it was protected under the first amendment, which allowed it to be released in March 1969 – though only in New York and New Jersey. From today's perspective, it seems much ado about nothing, but the brouhaha helped it remain the most financially successful foreign film in the...

Cologne, Germany -- The Berlin International Film Festival will honor the late, great, Ingmar Bergman with a retrospective of the Swedish director's works at the 2011 festival.

Bergman, who died in 2007, is universally acknowledged as one of greatest directors of all time. His films, including "Fanny & Alexander" (which won four Oscars), Golden Globe-winner "Scenes from a Marriage," "Wild Strawberries" (winner of Berlin's Golden Bear) and "The Seventh Seal" with its iconic scene of Death playing chess are cinematic classics.

Berlin will screen all of Bergman's films for its retrospective as well as several seldom-seen productions where he acted as a screenwriter, including Alf Sjoberg's "Torment" from 1944.

Parallel to the retrospective, the Berlin film museum the Deutsche Kinemathek will present, together with the Ingmar Bergman foundation, an exhibition on Bergman's live and work.

The 61st Berlin International Film Festival runs Feb. 10-20.

Rarely has half a year's wait been so richly rewarded. Early in August 2009 Jack Stevenson had promised a review copy of his forthcoming book "Scandinavian Blue," to be published by McFarland & Company, and dealing with a highly Ferronian subject: "The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s." Still, I had nearly forgotten about it, when it finally arrived this March: But whatever the reasons for the delay, I'm sure they were good. Because as it turns out, Stevenson's book is not just an exhaustive and long-overdue study of a chapter in film history that by now mostly lives as a cliché of semi-trashy sixties liberation memorabilia, but doubles as one of the most timely political essays around.

Which is not to say it doesn't deliver as a connoisseur's chronicle of erotic esoterica, delving deeply into the more demented side of sexually charged filmmaking. Entire chapters are...

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg in Breathless As per The Hollywood Reporter, the Berlin International Film Festival will mark its 60th anniversary with the retrospective "Play it Again …!," featuring 40 films compiled by British film critic David Thomson from previous Berlin festivals. Among them are Curzio Malaparte’s The Forbidden Christ, Alf Sjoberg’s Miss Julie, Akira Kurosawa’s To Live, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, Niels Arden Oplev’s We Shall Overcome, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Also, Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, which caused a furor in 1976. German authorities — who probably had better things to do (weren’t the Baader Meinhof running [...]...

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films from Criterion

Photo: Criterion Last week in my On DVD Today column I mentioned how the folks at Criterion were clearing off their shelves and offering every item in stock at a 40% discount while supplies lasted. I would assume a majority of the folks that read the article ignored that link since it didn't have any new information on Batman, Iron Man or any other kind of man from a comic book. However, I am hoping this headline brought in the folks that may be interested in such a deal. Of course, the hour is late and the majority of the titles are now gone as the deal ends Monday, November 24, at midnight Est. When I first got the email from Criterion I shuffled over to check out a few titles I had been longing to get and had never wanted to spend the money.