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

Bam

A retrospective of Wuhan on film begins.

IFC Center

A major Jia Zhangke retrospective has begun; The Beaver Trilogy, Interview with the Vampire, Dr. Caligari, and The Big Lebowski show late.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Fast and the Furious, Thunderball, and Safety Last! play in See It Big: Stunts!

Nitehawk Cinema

Fame screens Saturday and Sunday morning; print of Postcards from the Edge plays on the former day, while Sunday is a secret Hong Kong feature on 35mm.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Charles Burnett, Jamaa Fanaka, and more screen in L.A. Rebellion.

Museum of Modern Art

A Sarah Maldoror retrospective has begun; films by Orson Welles, Jacques Tourneur, and Anthony Mann play in The Lady at 100.

Film Forum

A new 35mm print of 8½ and Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman continue; Tim Burton...

This April, Nyx UK is giving horror fans a reason to stay in after dark. The genre-dedicated channel is marking the birthdays of two titans of terror – Lon Chaney and Lamberto Bava – with curated tributes, while also serving up a fresh wave of cult classics, lost gems, and international oddities that promise to satisfy even the most seasoned horror viewer.

On Tuesday 1st April, Nyx pays homage to the incomparable Lon Chaney, the master of silent horror and transformative performances. Known as the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Chaney’s legacy is explored through a special double bill. At 9pm, Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1927) sees Chaney as an armless circus performer in love with a woman terrified of touch, one of his most twisted and physically demanding roles. That’s followed at 10:15pm by The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), with Chaney delivering a deeply affecting take on the tragic figure of Quasimodo.

Horror has many tropes, but one of the biggest is the jump scare. They've become commonplace in the genre over the decades as an easy way to get an audience to react, but while some, such as in Sinister and Insidious, are very effective, in lesser films, they've become an overused cheap tactic that's more about creating a physical response rather than building up true tension. There was a time though when jump scares were a rarity, which made them work more when they were used. The first ever jump in a feature film is also one of the best. In 1942's Cat People, director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton created a jump scare that will make you jump out of your seat, not out of laziness, but in brilliant and purposeful misdirection.

In 1961, Richard Matheson published a short story called "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" that became a cornerstone of TheTwilight Zone franchise. Rod Serling's original series included an instant-classic adaptation that has been endlessly referenced, and remade twice. 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, and Jordan Peele's 2019 reboot series both tackled the tale in contrasting ways, and watching the three versions together reveals much about why the Matheson story is so special.

The 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" featured a performance from William Shatner that makes up for the low-budget creature he sees on the wing of his plane. 20 years later, George "Mad Max" Miller remade the story with advanced FX for Twilight Zone: The Movie, and in 2019 the reboot series included "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet," a modern take that may be the most paranoid of them all.

Richard Matheson's Story Was Monstrously Influential Image via CBS.

Author Richard Matheson's...

Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie wasn't an immediate success upon its release in 1943, despite both the director's and producer Val Lewton's solid reputations as horror masters thanks to Cat People. The major reason behind the mixed reviews might be that the film did, and still does, feel different from the body of classic Hollywood horror at the time. Using Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre as inspiration, Tourneur's film departs from classic monster figures and even from the psychological complexity that was explored in Cat People.

Horror cinema has a strange habit of resurrecting itself from time to time. The Universal monsters of the 1930s enjoyed a technicolor reincarnation in the Hammer films of the late 1950s; slasher films bled out by the mid-'80s, but Scream brought them back with a vengeance; and the walking dead just keep coming back for more. Today's zombie fans can easily see why this trope never dies with this list of terrifying 20th-century cult classics and hidden gems.

Everyone knows that George Romero is the reigning champion of zombie cinema, but the tradition he established has begotten a horde of powerful and innovative followers whose films still stand up today. This horror history lesson will show fans of modern hits like The Walking Dead and the 28 Days Later franchise that their faves come from a grand tradition that refuses to stay dead.

This Early Zombie Film Is Still...

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.Djiby Kebe’s L’avance is now showing exclusively on Mubi.L'argent.Money has always been really important to me. I grew up listening to rap music, and I learned English by studying the lyrics. I noticed that the rappers I was a fan of talked about money as if it were an end in itself. This philosophy had a huge impact on me throughout my life. Thanks to movies, I also realized that money can be dangerous and destroy you. I’ve always been a huge fan of American cinema, and at some point, I noticed that all the characters I loved shared one particular trait: they all wanted to be financially free no matter what, because that’s how the country is built. One of the things...

Today, the classic movie monsters of the 1930s and '40s are widely identified as social outcasts. Characters like Dracula and Frankenstein were ostracized for their otherness and unable to fulfill their romantic longings, which made them sympathetic antiheroes for many viewers. However, the Universal monsters are overwhelmingly male, and female horror fans will have to look elsewhere for relatable outsiders. One excellent option lies with the often-overlooked Cat People films.

1942's Cat People takes the typically masculine wolf man trope and twists it into a tale of female alienation, while 1944's The Curse of the Cat People weaves a dark fable about a strange little girl. Paul Schrader's 1982 Cat People remake adds layers of delirious sensuality, and an outrageous 1992 Stephen King film carries on the werecat tradition. The Universal monsters may get all the attention, but the Cat People films offer a distinctly feminine approach to their traditionally masculine territory.

Some great horror movies predate the burst of color filmmaking as the predominant form of cinema and are still scary watches even for modern audiences. The horror genre is one of the oldest kinds in film, an early source of chills and thrills on the big screen. In modern discussions though, people often only go back to the '70s and '80s when talking about classic horror movies. Despite this, there are some black and white horror films from the old golden era of the genre are still quite compelling.

It is a misconception that horror movies from that time aren't as technically strong as today's movies because of the technological advancements in modern filmmaking. If anything, the unique and imaginative techniques employed by the pioneers of the genre to create terrifying atmospheres and visuals add to the charm of black-and-white vintage horror cinema. Modern remakes of such classic...

Everything is an allusion, a pose, in the films of Quentin Tarantino, right down to the font and colors that he uses for his title sequences—even the name of his production company, A Band Apart, which arrogantly asks us to think of him as our generation’s Godard. And how willingly we indulge him says plenty. Tarantino is as much creator as curator, and his overbearing cinephilia appeals to audiences who not only lost it at the movies but can’t seem to live without them: From Reservoir Dogs to his Kill Bill diptych, his films are solipsistic totems to his favorite things, and their effect is often suffocating.

Inglourious Basterds, a WWII-set revenge fantasy about the secret and sometimes not-so-secret maneuverings of a group of gung-ho Jewish-American Nazi hunters known as the Basterds, is no less meticulously engineered than Tarantino’s other pulp fictions. Except this one is...

No filmmaker ever caught more flack for unabashedly being the kind of filmmaker he wanted to be than Tony Scott. The critical brickbats hit hard in 1983 with his first film, "The Hunger," and there was rarely ever letup. He was the style-over-substance Antichrist born of commercials and music videos. According to Metacritic, only four of his 16 films were positively reviewed during their initial theatrical release, all begrudgingly so. The TV Guide review of "Crimson Tide" backhand-praises Scott as "Hollywood's slickest hack." The man was anything but beloved.

Where are we on Tony Scott today? 12 years after his terribly sudden and wholly unexpected death, he's become a cause amongst trash cinema devotees, who hold him up as a master of aesthetically pleasing mayhem. There are those who adore him, and even prefer him to his more prestige-friendly brother Ridley Scott, but aside from the vastly improved critical standing of "True Romance...

Burt Lancaster could be just about anything you needed him to be — except small. He was not towering at 6'1", but he sure made it look that way on screen. Whether smiling or glowering, good natured or pure evil, there was a formidable bearing to Lancaster. But he did not lumber. God no, he was as graceful as a circus acrobat because, well, he was one. How dare a man so sturdy be so damn limber. And golden. And beautiful.

Lancaster's acting career was as remarkable as his absurdly perfect physicality. He made his motion picture debut in a stone-cold classic, and was one of the most popular movie stars on the planet for well over a decade. Lancaster worked too frequently to not slip up on occasion, but he generally exhibited great taste, particularly as a producer. His partnership with Harold Hecht (and later James Hill) yielded three Best...

Film noirs have always leaned into the darkest impulses of human existence, and the desire for revenge has long been a cornerstone of the genre. From widowed cops tirelessly pursuing those who harmed their loved ones to old enemies emerging from the protagonist's past in search of vengeance, sinister tales of revenge included some of the greatest film noirs ever made. As corrupt crooks, fatalistic femme fatales, and vilified victims become embroiled in conspiracies of murder and deceit, its inevitable that those who have been wronged wish to seek revenge.

Plenty of must-watch film noirs explore themes of revenge, as classic noir actors like Robert Mitchum excelled at playing morally corrupted characters who would stop at nothing for a chance at vengeance. These stories echo the fears and anxieties of their era, as the aftermath of the Second World War and fears around impending nuclear conflict led to many depictions of darkly sinister characters.

Terrifying tales of undead creatures rising from their graves or zombie infections spreading through an unsuspecting society have enthralled horror movie lovers for decades. As supernatural stories get to the heart of human anxieties, the best zombie movies tap into the fear of death and address social and political issues, as zombies serve as powerful metaphors for social woes. From deeply layered examinations of racial issues to pointed satires deconstructing consumerism, below the surface, zombie movies have a lot to say about social structures.

The greatest zombie films include some of the best horror movies of all time, as undead ghouls and infected once-human creatures served as the basis for incredible horror movie franchises. Some amazing found-footage horrors dealt with contained outbreaks as small groups of survivors struggled to survive, while others looked at the grand picture as entire populations were ravaged by an apocalyptic outbreak taking place over years and decades.

Happy Halloween from The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we talk about one of the greats––Vincent Price! Our guest this episode––as with every Halloween episode––is Gavin Mevius, co-host of The Mixed Reviews Podcast of The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective. Make sure you listen to their own comprehensive episode on Vincent Price as well!

Our B-Sides today are: The Baron of Arizona, Champagne for Caesar, War-Gods of the Deep, and finally Cry of the Banshee.

We talk about Price, his interesting life and family history, and the diversity of roles he took on, some reflected in the above B-Sides. Price’s Nic Cage-like professional prolific-ness and “respect for the dollar” comes up, as does the real-life Charles Van Doren quiz show scandal from the ‘50s (the...

Sure, there are plenty of new and classic horror movies on streaming this year. But there’s nothing that beats the sensation of sliding a disc into a Blu-ray player. It harkens back to the thrill of going to your local video store, picking out a scary movie and taking it home.

We thought we’d celebrate that sensation by picking out our very favorite new home video releases for this Halloween, a mixture of obscure favorites, outright classics, near-hits from some of our favorite modern filmmakers and a new movies that gets a terrific home video treatment. Grab some candy, your comfiest pajamas and settle in for the night with these gems.

Janus “Demon Pond”

One of the season’s must-have titles is “Demon Pond,” a bizarro, late-‘70s nightmare from Masahiro Shinoda, whose “Pale Flower” and “Double Suicide” are already a part of the Criterion Collection. Shinoda updates...

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,...

Directed by horror master George A. Romero, the box office smash, Night of the Living Dead, arrives on 4K Uhd on 7th October. Shot on a shoestring budget the movie is a great story of independent cinema and became one of the most influential films of all time.

Following on 14th October comes I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim on 4K Uhd and Blu-ray™ . Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

To celebrate this release we have a chance for 2 lucky winers to win a copy of all 3 movies.

Criterion Collection Halloween Giveaway

Night of the Living Dead

New 4K Restoration

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark,...

Shirley Jackson once wrote in her journal: “who wants to write about anxiety from a place of safety? although, i suppose i would never be entirely safe since i cannot completely reconstruct my mind.” That verb “reconstruct” is an apt one for Jackson, whose most famous novel The Haunting Of Hill House...

You used to hear the refrain from horror film fanatics with a lot more frequency – the original was so much scarier.

And while this is still true to some degree (the films of John Carpenter have been remade with an oddly uniform lousiness), there are still plenty of horror films that have been remade well. Sometimes the remakes are just as good as the original. In rare cases, it even surpasses the original.

Here is our definitive list of the very best horror remakes ever.

(United Artists) “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978)

Don Siegel’s 1956 classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is based on Jack Finney’s story “The Body Snatchers,” which was serialized in Collier’s in 1954 and published as a novel shortly after, has been remade several times over the years. But the very best iteration is still the 1978 version, the first since Siegel’s, from director Philip Kaufman and writer W.D. Richter.

What would happen if Raymond Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft wrote a novel together? Comic series "Fatale" by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips offers an answer. Published from 2012 to 2014 across 24 issues at Image Comics, "Fatale" is named for the archetype every film noir needs: the femme fatale, the sultry knockout who wraps men around her fingers without a care for what happens to their twisted forms (phallic cigarette optional).

The center of "Fatale" is one such woman, named Josephine or simply Jo. Colorists David Stewart and Elizabeth Breitweiser give her blood red lips and hair as black as Ava Gardner. Is her raven hair the same shade as her heart? Not quite. You see, Jo simply can't help making men desire and chase after her — especially men who want her for an occult sacrifice. Brubaker and Phillips mostly cook their comics hardboiled, such as "Criminal" (soon to be a Prime Video...

This October, Spirit Entertainment, in collaboration with The Criterion Collection, is set to delight horror fans with the release of two seminal films, Night of the Living Dead and a double feature of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. These releases promise to offer a fresh perspective on classic horror with pristine 4K restorations and an array of special features that delve into the making and legacy of these groundbreaking films.

Night of the Living Dead: A Landmark in Independent Cinema

Directed by the legendary George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead will be available in a new 4K Uhd restoration on 7th October. Shot on a modest budget just outside Pittsburgh, this 1968 masterpiece became a midnight hit and a box-office sensation, fundamentally altering the horror genre. The film’s simple yet gripping plot follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they fend...

A pair of moody horror milestones from producer Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim are being paired up for a new release from The Criterion Collection.

The double feature is getting a 4K Uhd + Blu-ray combo edition as well as a Blu-ray edition and a DVD edition, with the release date for all three versions set for October 8, 2024.

Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of Rko’s B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease.

Suffused with ritual, mysticism,...

New Rose Hotel.A figure is lodged in the depth of our speech, operating like the matrix of these effects, attacking our words to make forms and images out of them. —Jean-François Lyotard, Discourse, FigureThe body is never in the present, it contains the before and the after, tiredness and waiting. Tiredness and waiting, even despair are the attitudes of the body. —Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image“There are three essential propositions underlying Ferrara’s work,” writes Nicole Brenez in her book on Abel Ferrara’s films, first published in English in 2007. The first proposition, Brenez theorizes, is as follows: “Modern cinema exists to come to grips with contemporary evil.” In many ways, this statement—one of many piercing axioms and assertions that populate her writing—crystallizes not only Ferrara’s cinema but also Brenez’s film-critical and curatorial project since the late 1980s. She approaches cinema as a...

Michael Mann has followed in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese and joined Letterboxd, the social media site that allows cinephiles to log and rate the movies they’ve seen. The “Miami Vice” director quietly made an account and posted his first list, which is titled “14 Favorite Films in no particular order (except Potemkin).” After singling out Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent epic “Battleship Potemkin” as his favorite film of all time, he highlighted 13 other films ranging from classic film noir and New Hollywood masterpieces to recent hits like “The Hurt Locker” and “Poor Things.” Mann’s 14 favorite films can be found below.

“Battleship Potemkin” (dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

“Dr. Strangelove” (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Biutiful” (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)

“Raging Bull” (dir. Martin Scorsese)

“Incendies” (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“Pale Flower” (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)

“L’Atalante” (dir. Jean Vigo)

“The Asphalt Jungle” (dir. John Huston)

“Poor Things” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

“Apocalypse Now” (dir. Francis Ford Coppola...

Some of the most memorable ventures into "The Twilight Zone" are bottle episodes in spirit if not exact definition. "The Invaders" follows a woman in a remote cabin menaced by tiny aliens. "Nothing in the Dark" features not only a young Robert Redford but also an elderly woman (Gladys Cooper) scared that death will be arriving at her door.

Cooper returned for a similar "Twilight Zone" in the show's fifth and last season: "The Night Call" Cooper plays Elva Keene, an aged widow living in a Maine cabin who is dealing with repeated phone calls that always go silent whenever she picks up. Is it just a technical error, like her nurse assures her? Or is something sinister and supernatural lurking in the phone lines?

On "The Night Call," the guest talent wasn't only in front of the camera. The episode was directed by Jacques Tourneur, one of the first...

Nineteen forty-seven was a crucial year for Robert Mitchum’s rising star. The enduring popular classic, of course, is Jacques Tourneur’s seminal Out of the Past, and he headlined Edward Dmytryk’s Oscar-nominated prestige thriller Crossfire. It’s in Raoul Walsh’s noirish, Freudian western Pursued, though, that we see Mitchum crossing the divide between what Hollywood expected of the young man and the godlike figure they got in return.

The performance is a total menu of Mitchum’s various modes: an uneven mix of the young, beefy neurotic with a few too many shirt buttons undone; the high-riding titan who would star in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter; and the varnished-oak elder statesman who still has a few moves left in him, in Dick Richards’s Farewell, My Lovely and Peter Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle. But it’s an unevenness that’s...

For as much as Rod Serling's landmark anthology series "The Twilight Zone" reinvented the genre of science fiction storytelling, many of its best episodes also deal in the world of the fantastical, whether through witches, time-traveling radios, or just plain inexplicable phenomena. What kept "The Twilight Zone" consistent through it all is its focus on human nature and irony, the idea of following desire ultimately leading to one's downfall. You can see that in many of the classic episodes of the show, no matter what the genre is.

That focus on human drama is what keeps "Jess-Belle," a most unusual episode of "The Twilight Zone," in the running for the show's top tier. For one, "Jess-Belle" came out of the show's difficult fourth season, during which CBS had contracted hour-long episodes, twice as long as the episodes' usual length, per Marc Scott Zicree's indispensable "Twilight Zone Companion." While...

First released in 1951, this endlessly entertaining film is an absorbing tale of an American arriving in postwar Britain looking for answers about his slain younger brother

This 1951 drama-thriller from director Jacques Tourneur and veteran genre writer Philip MacDonald, which sees Ray Milland coming to grimy postwar Britain demanding answers about his brother’s death, is a gem: focused, fast-moving and a little eccentric. It is a British-set movie that takes us on a travelogue tour from the coast of Tampa, Florida, to London – and from there to Wales, the Scottish Highlands and Birmingham. There is a lovely scene shot on location in London’s Covent Garden, in the days of the fruit and veg market, with crowds of real people looking on.

There are no explicit action sequences: no shootouts, not even a punch-up. But it’s entirely absorbing with an undertow of mystery and tension, a mix of humour...

Tim Burton's "Batman Returns" is one of the more unusual blockbusters of its era. Following the massive, massive success of his 1989 "Batman," Burton was seemingly given a lot more creative leeway with his sequel, transforming the world of Batman into a noir carnival nightmare of hopelessness and kink. "Returns" saw the Dark Knight (Michael Keaton) facing off against the sewer-dwelling creep the Penguin (Danny DeVito) and beginning an unhealthy flirtation with the mentally unwell Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Burton's rendition of Catwoman may be the best Batman villain to have been depicted in live-action. She was unbalanced and terrifying, using her newfound mindset as a tool for liberation. It's no coincidence that her costume is a skintight leather vinyl costume with a corset and a whip. This was Catwoman as a horror movie dominatrix. She had more in common with the Cenobites from "Hellraiser" than anything from a Batman comic book.

Daniel Waters, the screenwriter behind 1992’s Batman Returns, said the proposed “Catwoman” spinoff from that film had two very different takes.

Waters spoke during a December 22 Los Angeles screening of Batman Returns at the Egyptian Theater.

Director Tim Burton wanted “Catwoman” to be an intimate drama shot in black and white to pay tribute to Jacques Tourneur’s iconic 1942 horror film, Cat People.

On the other hand, Waters wanted a satirical take wherein Catwoman moves to Los Angeles and takes on three corrupt superheroes.

“He wanted to do an $18 million black and white movie, like the original ‘Cat People,’ of Selina just lowkey living in a small town,” Waters said. “And I wanted to make a ‘Batman’ movie where the metaphor was about ‘Batman.’ So I had her move to a Los Angeles version of Gotham City, and it’s run by three asshole superheroes. It was ‘The Boys’ before ‘The Boys.

Every “Batman Returns” fan worth their salt knows that following the success of Tim Burton’s twisted Christmas classic, Warner Bros. started developing a spinoff featuring Michelle Pfeiffer’s breakout villainess Catwoman. What they probably don’t know is that Burton had some unique ideas for a superhero blockbuster, including going black and white to pay tribute to Jacques Tourneur’s iconic 1942 horror film, “Cat People.”

Daniel Waters, the screenwriter behind 1992’s “Batman Returns,” spoke about the proposed Catwoman spinoff and revealed some behind-the-scenes tidbits about both films during a recent Los Angeles screening of “Returns” on December 22 at the Egyptian. Speaking about the Catwoman film, Waters referred to it as a strange process where he and Burton were both interested in making completely different films. While Burton wanted to make an intimate drama, Waters described his take — which would have seen Selina Kyle move to a Gothamized version of...

Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

Back By Popular Demand

The Graduate,...

Along with being one of the finest shows in the history of television, the original run of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" could function as a laboratory for advancements in visual effects. The often fantastical nature of the series, and Serling's desire to push the envelope of the still-developing medium's potential, was something of a creative sandbox for directors. As such, the show attracted not just aspiring young filmmakers like Richard Donner, Jack Smight, and Richard C. Sarafian, but established masters on the level of Jacques Tourneur, Don Siegel, and Norman Z. McLeod.

Douglas Heyes was more of a journeyman director when entered "The Twilight Zone." His experience and skill were highly valuable to Serling, who assigned him a total of nine episodes – the second most over the show's five seasons next to John Brahm's 12. Heyes' most celebrated episode is probably "Eye of the Beholder," the creepy tale...

Cinema is a storytelling medium that’s constantly evolving and it’s truly remarkable how much movies have changed since the 1940s, especially when it comes to particular genres like horror. Horror remains one of cinema’s most versatile genres that examines the universal feeling of fear and suspense. Modern horror movies can be dense in gore or psychologically troubling. However, the ability to get away with more and push boundaries doesn’t always result in a stronger horror movie.

Horror movies from the 1940s are close to a century old and can come across as quite tame by contemporary standards. That being said, 1940s horror can still be incredibly creepy and some of the decade’s contributions can confidently hold their own with most modern movies.

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein Release Date: June 15, 1948

10 Best Movies From The 1950s

For a horror film that celebrates one of cinema's most famous comedic duos,...

Killers of the Flower Moon was partially inspired by Ari Aster, says Martin Scorsese.

In an interview with The Irish Times, director Martin Scorsese says the work of Ari Aster helped him pace his upcoming film, Killers of the Flower Moon. The total run time for the movie is 3 and 1/2 hours -- a choice that Scorsese vehemently defends. That being said, he understands the crucial aspect of pacing in a movie that long, stating, “I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid. The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. Just going a little slower. A little quieter." Midsommar in particular has been praised for its eerie and suspenseful slow burn, making audiences wait for the terrifying payoff.

Related: Midsommar Movie Ending,...

Every year, horror fans attempt the daunting task of watching a horror movie for each day in the month of October. Aptly named 31 Days of Horror, the challenge usually consists of having viewers watch a mixture of their favorite classic horror films, as well as popular genre staples and recent releases that may be new to them. In celebration of the spooky season, we at MovieWeb have assembled our own suggestions for the month, providing a plethora of favorites from our contributing editors and writers. Today, we kick off Day 19 with the 1982 remake of Cat People.

Horror and sexuality have almost always gone hand in hand as taboo topics in older times, with the former frequently being used to allegorically explore the latter. The vampire myth is the prime example of this, along with the gothic works of the Brontë sisters, the 'final girl' trope and male gaze in slasher cinema,...

We’re now just a few days away from the widest release of Martin Scorsese’s career as Killers of the Flower Moon is set to open in around 3,500 theaters in the United States from Paramount and Apple. With the SAG strike underway, the legendary director himself has led the promotional campaign, which means the publishing of several stellar interviews digging deeper into the process.

One of the most interesting bits to arrive about the production of his David Grann adaptation is that Scorsese drew inspiration from Ari Aster when it comes to the project. “I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” he told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie.” While Scorsese’s admiration for Aster is well-documented,...

Based on David Grann’s best-selling crime thriller, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon tells the real-life mystery of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, who became wealthy after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off, and the ensuing spiral of conspiracy, greed and murder got so bad that the FBI had to step in. It’s a sprawling story with a nearly three-and-a-half-hour runtime, and Martin Scorsese looked to the films of Ari Aster for influence on its pacing.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” Martin Scorsese told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. Just going a little slower.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have been quite open in interviews when discussing the massive “Killers of the Flower Moon” script overhaul that took place during the film’s development. In a new interview with The Irish Times, the director revealed that he and co-writer Eric Roth had been working on the “Flower Moon” script for two whole years when DiCaprio took issue with the approach.

“Myself and [my co-screenwriter] Eric Roth talked about telling the story from the point of view of the bureau agents coming in to investigate,” Scorsese said. “After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’ I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the story.’ The real story, we felt, was not necessarily coming from the outside, with the bureau, but rather from the inside, from Oklahoma.

Martin Scorsese is crediting Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” for inspiring the pacing and running time of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Scorsese told The Irish Times that the 206-minute length of “Killers of the Flower Moon” is in line with horror films ranging from auteurs like Aster or Val Lewton. “Killers of the Flower Moon” borrows from a blend of genres like Westerns and horror.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ or ‘Beau Is Afraid,'” Scorsese said. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s ‘Cat People’ or ‘I Walked With a Zombie.’ Just going a little slower, a little quieter.”

Scorsese continued, “I was very concerned about allowing scenes that were not narrative into the story, scenes to do with the Osage culture — leaving in those scenes of custom,...

Guillermo del Toro doesn’t hold back about his love for his favorite movies. If you’ve spent any time on his Twitter feed over the years, you’ve likely seen him praise Stanley Donen’s use of the color red throughout the late director’s body of work, and hail everything from William Wellman’s 1931 film “Other Men’s Women” to David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” from 2022. The man has wide-ranging taste, and a deep awareness of cinematic history that’s informed his own films.

Now he follows Turner Classic Movies advisors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson in giving his own picks from TCM’s lineup, all titles that will be airing in October. Watch the video, exclusive to IndieWire, above.

First up, he picks one of the most sorely underrated titles from Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, 1941’s “Suspicion,” airing on TCM at 2:00am...

Streaming services shake up their catalogs every month, but few rounds of TV and film musical chairs tend to be as rewarding as the ones that take place each fall. That's because we're entering spooky season, a time in which horror fans attempt to tackle ambitious watchlists and scaredy-cats dip their toes into the horror waters in the spirit of all things autumnal.

In keeping with this tradition, a large chunk of the movies making their way to Max (formerly HBO Max) this September are, if not outright scary, at least vaguely within the boundaries of the horror genre. Sure, there are some comedy classics ("Friday"), historical epics ("Gangs of New York"), and brand new docuseries ("Megan Thee Stallion vs. Tory Lanez: Five Shots") worth tuning into, but for my money, nearly all the best Max picks next month fall under the Halloween watchlist-adjacent umbrella.

You shouldn't have to wade...

Few American filmmakers of the last 40 years await a major rediscovery like Hal Hartley, whose traces in modern movies are either too-minor or entirely unknown. Thus it’s cause for celebration that the Criterion Channel are soon launching a major retrospective: 13 features (which constitutes all but My America) and 17 shorts, a sui generis style and persistent vision running across 30 years. Expect your Halloween party to be aswim in Henry Fool costumes.

Speaking of: there’s a one-month headstart on seasonal programming with the 13-film “High School Horror”––most notable perhaps being a streaming premiere for the uncut version of Suspiria, plus the rare opportunity to see a Robert Rodriguez movie on the Criterion Channel––and a retrospective of Hong Kong vampire movies. A retrospective of ’70s car movies offer chills and thrills of a different sort

Six films by Allan Dwan and 12 “gaslight noirs” round out the main September series; The Eight Mountains,...

One of the unique aspects of the horror films produced by Val Lewton at Rko in the 1940s is the seriousness with which they discuss matters of mental illness. Even today, mental health issues are often tiptoed around, but in the forties, they were practically taboo. As discussed in previous entries in this column, Cat People (1942) is largely about repression and The Body Snatcher (1945) deals with guilt, paranoia, and psychopathy. The Seventh Victim (1943), one of the lesser-seen entries in the Lewton cycle, is about loneliness, the depression that stems from it, and suicidal ideation. It externalizes the inner struggles between the light and darkness that use the mind as a battlefield and demand a choice between life and death. Because of the unflinching way The Seventh Victim approaches the subject of suicide, this should be a considered a content warning for the discussion to come later. But first, some background on the film itself.

William Shatner wasn't always Captain James T. Kirk. Before his breakout part, he starred in two episodes of "The Twilight Zone." The first, and more famous, was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Shatner plays Bob Wilson, an airplane passenger with a fear of flying. Wilson has recently recovered from a mental breakdown and his sanity is seemingly in doubt again when he sees a gremlin messing with the plane's engines. Is the Gremlin just his illness and fear acting up? After failing to convince everyone else aboard of the monster's existence, he takes matters into his own hands.

Shatner wasn't the only future star on board this flight. The episode was directed by the late Richard Donner, future director of "The Omen," "Lethal Weapon," and "Superman." The irony is twofold. In a few short years, Shatner would star as the captain of a ship that flies a lot higher than 20,000 feet.

In the fifth season episode of "The Twilight Zone," called "The Masks", an elderly millionaire named Jason Foster (Robert Keith) has gathered his daughter, her husband, and their two adult children for a Mardi Gras gathering. Jason, attended by his doctor (Willis Bouchey), is dying. He expects he'll be dead by morning. Jason also hates his daughter and her family. He sees Emily (Virginia Gregg) as spineless, her husband Wilfred (Milton Seltzer) as greedy, her son Wilfred, Jr. (Alan Sues) as dumb and oafish, and her daughter Paula (Brooke Hayward) as vain and shallow.

At dinner, the family members all feign politeness, but the audience trusts Jason when he says they are all terrible people who are only interested in inheriting his fortune. After dinner, Jason calls the quartet into the drawing room for a Mardi Gras game. The patriarch has commissioned five expressive, full-face masks that he and his family are to wear.

Upon taking the reins of the Neuchatel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff) last year, incoming artistic director Pierre-Yves Walder marked his first edition with Scream Queer, a thematic retrospective that explored the thorny and thrillingly diverse forms of queer representation in genre fare. Now building on the success of that well-received program, the Nifff director wanted to deliver a sequel of sorts.

“We want to continue last year’s investigations and to take our thematic journeys a step further,” Walder explains. “You could say that this focus will continue to ask and answer the same questions with a slightly different emphasis.”

And so here comes Female Trouble, a 20-film, century-spanning spotlight built on a French play-on-words that blurs gender and genre. Starting with Mario Roncoroni’s silent serial “Filibus,” which mixed sci-fi motifs with gender-fluidity and lesbian desire all the way back in 1915, and on through Jacques Tourneur’s “Cat People...

The Daughters of Fire.Three square images, placed side by side on the screen. The full frame is as wide as CinemaScope, which Fritz Lang famously said was only suitable for snakes and funerals. On the left, a woman stares forward as she stalks, like a Jacques Tourneur character, toward no certain destination; as she does so—singing, half her face shrouded in shadow—she passes through a seemingly endless corridor of ash, an ever-rotating carousel of clay streaked with wisps of fire. In the center frame, another woman lies prone, bent over on the shores of a volcanic beach. The sea laps in apocalyptic, dusky light behind her, the horizon stretches out to the limits of vision; uncertainly, she heaves her body upright to sit as she sings. In the far-right frame, another woman peers out from around a doorframe, staring into the camera, also singing in direct counterpoint with the other two women,...

Ever since the inception of horror filmmaking, zombies have wandered the Earth. We all know George A. Romero as the Godfather of the Dead, but historians track the first zombies on screen back to 1932’s “White Zombie” starring Bela Lugosi. Before “The Walking Dead” made flesh-munching a source of mainstream cable entertainment, voodoo curses turned the living into dead-eyed shufflers like in Jacques Tourneur’s “I Walked With a Zombie.” Then came the brain feasts, the often debated runners, the contemporary remakes, and Negan’s trusty Lucille.

Film historians can connect the dots between zombie benchmarks that travel at different speeds over decades of releases. Lucky for you, we’re here to rank the 25 best zombie movies to set the record straight. Our list, our rules for inclusion. Let’s slash through the endless horde of zombie titles and see which are left standing as the undefeatables.