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In 2014, Creep creators Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice unleashed a bizarre new villain on the horror world: Josef, an overstepping extrovert who makes well-meaning strangers afraid of hurting his feelings, when they should be afraid for their lives. This strategy may sound familiar to fans of films like Straw Dogs, Speak No Evil, and Funny Games, in which the protagonists are too civilized to stand up for themselves, but The Creep Tapes levels up with a clever critique of modern masculinity.

In Speak No Evil, a predatory rural couple uses shameless displays of sexuality and machismo to intimidate and manipulate uptight tourists — a story derived from Sam Peckinpah's controversial thriller Straw Dogs. In Funny Games, an upper-class family is disarmed by the killers' antisocial antics. The Creep franchise's antihero also uses his prey's social training against them. Uniquely, though, he leverages the cultural stigma around emotional openness between men in order to get way,...

With a tall stature and a brooding intensity, Alexander Skarsgård has made a name for himself in the entertainment industry by repeatedly taking on roles that explore the darker side of human minds. Whether he’s embodying the violent cop in War on Everyone, or brutally abusing Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies, Skarsgård seems to have an uncanny ability to turn evil into art.

Alexander Skarsgård as Lucas Mattson in Succession | image: HBO

Therefore, during a candid conversation with The Guardian, the Swedish actor revealed why he often gravitates toward such complex and dark roles. Claiming that beneath the polished surface of civilization, everyone is hiding an animal, Alexander Skarsgård justified finding a way to let out that animal through his work.

Alexander Skarsgård Explained His Penchant for Dark and Abusive Roles

Playing the bad guy isn’t as easy as it seems, but Alexander Skarsgård somehow makes it...

Editor's Note: The following contains the topic of rape and sexual assaultFew directors were as closely associated with violence as Sam Peckinpah. Films like The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia were defined by their pessimistic worldview and obsession with carnage. But no other Peckinpah movie caused as much of a stir as Straw Dogs, a revenge flick with depictions of rape and vigilante violence that bordered on endorsement. Whether you think it's fascist propaganda or a liberal cautionary tale, it's a fascinating study of masculinity and male insecurity, and how that often manifests itself into misogyny.

Prime Video’s November programming will dip its toe into Christmas and other holiday offerings such as The Holiday (2006) starring Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz and Jack Black. The streamer will also add some films with sequels arriving in theaters this month, like Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) and Ridley Scott’s 1992 film Gladiator.

For the full list of Prime Video programming in November 2024, see below.

Related: New On Netflix For November 2024: Movies, TV Shows and More

Nov. 1

Movies:

12 Days of Christmas Eve (2004) 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995) 50 To 1 (2014) A Knight’s Tale (2001) Absolute Deception (2013) Across The Universe (2007) Agent Cody Banks (2003) Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004) Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) Airplane! (1980) All Saints (2017) Almost Christmas (2016) Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (2004) Anger Management (2003) Apache (1954) Bad Company (2002) Battlefield Earth (2000) Battleship (2012) Big Night (1996) Blizzard (2003) Blown Away (1993) Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004) Boomerang (1992) Bucky Larson Born To Be A Star (2011) Carrie...

The Exchange has launched international sales at AFM on Wayfarer Studios’ complete sports dramaThe Senior from Rod Lurie, starring Michael Chiklis and Mary Stuart Masterson.

Brandon Flynn, James Badge Dale, and Rob Corddry round out the key cast on the story of 59-year-old Mike Flynt (Chiklis), who returns to the gridiron in his senior year of eligibility to prove to himself and his loved ones that he still has what it takes, years after he was kicked off his college American Football team.

Mark Ciardi and Campbell McInnes (A Million Miles Away) of Select Films produced with Justin Baldoni and...

The blood-thirsty hitchhiker, the escaped psycho with a hook for a hand, the babysitter and the call that is somehow unequivocally coming from inside the house; we all known them. The modern day fables that have shaped our fears and behaviours arguably more than any others. Urban legends that all seem to have sprung out of the American post-war hangover of the 1950s and ’60s, as inequality took seed and the dark side of the new white-picket-fence suburbia slowly set in off-screen. Ed Gein and Ted Bundy and the Moors Murders filled the news. Doubts about our fellow man, and about what they’re capable of. About how we very much aren’t “all in this together”; that the days of blindly trusting one another are all but over. That people, strangers in particular, are more likely to be dangerous than helpful.

And naturally, those cautionary tales bled into culture and filmmaking.

Stars: Susan George, Leo Genn, Judy Huxtable, Barry Evans, Christopher Sandford, Alan Curtis | Written by Murray Smith | Directed by Pete Walker

Directed by Pete Walker, Die Screaming Marianne is a British exploitation thriller that blends psychological tension with elements of a family drama and a hint of sleazy horror. The film revolves around Marianne (Susan George), a go-go dancer on the run from her corrupt father, a retired judge (Leo Genn), and her manipulative half-sister Hildegarde (Judy Huxtable), both of whom are desperate to get their hands on a hidden fortune that Marianne unknowingly controls.

The film’s storyline is thin but serviceable, with much of its appeal relying on the suspense and cat-and-mouse chase between Marianne and her family. Marianne’s dance sequences, while not particularly central to the plot, set a suggestive tone that emphasizes her vulnerability. The Mediterranean setting adds a layer of exotic danger, but the...

The popular crime drama "Prison Break" ran for four seasons on Fox, returning for a successful revival season in 2017 and finding renewed success on Netflix. The series followed two brothers locked up in a maximum security prison looking to escape together and prove their innocence. As the story progresses, a large government conspiracy is uncovered while the brothers are on the run from the authorities. Led by series stars Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller, "Prison Break" boasts an impressive and extensive ensemble cast.

With so much time having passed since "Prison Break" began in 2005, its cast have since gone off in different directions in their lives and careers. Several major cast members have found even greater professional success elsewhere, while others have stepped away from acting or moved smaller projects. If you've been wondering what the main cast of "Prison Break" has been up to since the hit Fox series came to an end,...

Here in the US, James Watkins’ directorial debut Eden Lake went straight to DVD and was distributed by Dimension Films. Of all the titles to fly under the Dimension Extreme banner though, this one was the most deserving. The movie turned out to be more of an endurance test than I could have ever anticipated. Eden Lake also manages to be both acclaimed and despised. Anyone who knows what became of Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly’s characters very well understands the mixed sentiments surrounding this movie.

British horror was struggling to hold on after the original closure of Hammer and the Video Nasties period, yet by the early 2000s, a revival had begun. It was as if the reluctance to do genre movies had been replaced with a kind of fever. Dog Soldiers, My Little Eye, Deathwatch, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Creep, The Descent. There was...

Although Speak No Evil is a direct remake of a 2022 Danish movie, the psychological horror also borrows its new ending from a classic thriller. 2022s Speak No Evil was a hit psychological horror movie about a mild-mannered Danish couple who make friends with an eccentric Dutch couple while on holiday. When the Danes visited their holiday friends in their isolated country home, uncomfortable boundary transgressions and extreme impoliteness gradually gave way to something more sinister. The ending of 2022s Speak No Evil was incredibly bleak, which seemed to pose a problem for its 2024 remake.

Related Does Speak No Evil Have A Post-Credits Scene?

2024's Speak No Evil remakes the 2022 Danish movie with Blumhouse and James McAvoy, and here's whether there is a post-credits scene teasing more.

Fortunately, director James Watkins opted to change the ending and many details of the movies story to keep things fresh and unpredictable. In 2024s Speak No Evil,...

When two criminals—Kawanishi (Nishimura Kô) and Sabu (Murota Hideo)—first force their way into Misawa’s (Mikuni Rentarô) home, the middle-class salaryman bolts up from his bathtub, standing before his assailants nude and covered in bubbles. This darkly humorous moment lends a bit of levity to the first of many chaotic sequences in Fukasaku Kinji’s The Threat, but more importantly, it speaks to the near-comical, childlike vulnerability of the film’s kowtowing protagonist, who goes from finding an equally spineless underling at work who’s willing to marry his boss’s mistress to complying with every order given by his captors without resistance.

What follows is a remarkably tense and claustrophobic home invasion thriller, in which Misawa becomes the middleman between Kawanishi and a wealthy man, Sakata (Mitsuda Ken), whose infant he and the younger, more impulsive Sabu kidnapped before breaking into Misawa’s house. But coursing just...

What made Christian Tafdrup’s Danish nihilistic horror film “Speak No Evil” — an even more hopeless take on “Funny Games” and its vivisection of bourgeois manners and cruel whetting of audience appetite for carnage — so shocking was what wasn’t spoken. Namely, the Nordic social code that says you should never enter a stranger’s home especially when anxiously invited, and that the invitation alone should be a flashing red light to avoid mingling your family vacation with another’s. As American studios are almost perversely compelled to do, here “Speak No Evil” gets a safe, devoid-of-scares remake directed by James Watkins, hailing from the Blumhouse factory of mainstream scares. Watkins is an appropriate match for a remake, if it had to happen at all, given his pedigree as the director of the chilling “Eden Lake,” about a romantic weekend terrorized by delinquents without a clear motive.

But this version of “Speak No Evil,...

Early on in “A Clockwork Orange,” Alex and his fellow droogs break into a rich writer’s home and rape his wife, which would be wrong enough if he weren’t crooning “Singin’ in the Rain” in the process. Half a century later, the scene seems no less appalling, given the way Stanley Kubrick made such ultraviolence look like fun for the demented kids who were doing it. Could there be anything more nihilistic than that?

Middle-aged bad boy Harmony Korine certainly thinks so. The latest stunt from his taboo-razing Edglrd studio, “Baby Invasion” blurs the lines between real life and a gnarly video game, so much so that it’s hard to tell what we’re watching for most of the trippy project’s 79-minute running time.

First-person footage of Florida McMansions ransacked by screen-addicted sociopaths? Creepy face-replacement technology that turns armed vandals into demon-horned Gerber babies? AI-generated cameos from an elusive CG rabbit?...

It may be quite some time until we learn what Quentin Tarantino’s 10th and final film will be now that The Movie Critic has been removed from the slate, but we do at least have another Qt project to look forward to: season two of The Video Archives Podcast which, he co-hosts with Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary.

While we don’t know the release date, a post on The Video Archives Podcast X page teased that the sophomore season is in fact coming: “You may have heard rumor that we’re gearing up for Season Two. On instagram, Gala outlined the perfect way to get your question answered: a postcard! Want to send one?” Then, the post provided the address to get your questions to Tarantino and Avary. This is actually one of the cooler elements to the Video Archives Podcast; sticking with the analog theme to the series,...

The majority of Stephen King's novels (and many of his short stories) have been adapted into films or TV projects over the years, but there a few outliers that have yet to make the leap from page to screen. While it seems inevitable that sooner or later, every King work (with one notable exception) will be adapted, you have to wonder why some books have yet to materialize as movies. In 2016, King was asked by Deadline if there were any books he was surprised hadn't been adapted yet, and he had an answer: "The Regulators." If you came of age in the 1990s, as I did, and were a Stephen King nerd, as I was (and still am), you know all about "The Regulators," because it wasn't a normal Stephen King release. In fact, it technically wasn't even a Stephen King book — it was attributed to King's pseudonym, Richard Bachman.

Decades before Quentin Tarantino was crowned the coolest director on the planet, Sam Peckinpah was one of Hollywood's most controversial, violent, and flamboyant filmmakers. The creator behind such visceral, violent thrillers like The Getaway, war epics like Cross of Iron, and psychological horror stories like Straw Dogs, Peckinpah was a master of his form, but he was exceptionally talented at helming Westerns.

Most of the stories Sam Peckinpah told were either set in the West or influenced by the genre in some way, shape, or form. That's likely because Peckinpah was a Westerner, with his great-grandfather settling in central California in the mid-1800s. Born in 1925, Peckinpah spent much of his early life on his grandfather's ranch, and after a stint in the Marines, where he witnessed torture and violence while stationed in China, he embarked on a film career that would rank amongst the best the Western genre would ever see.

Personally and professionally, Sam Peckinpah was running on fumes by the time he made 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Years of substance abuse left the director in such fragile health that he spent some days on the production’s Mexico locations filming from a hospital bed, and his dilapidated condition only exacerbated his notoriously combative personality and contributed to the film’s budget and schedule overruns. Infuriated by the escalating expense of the production and set on an arbitrary runtime ceiling, MGM took over editing before Peckinpah could finish the job and released a hastily assembled 106-minute version that hit theaters to indifferent reviews and middling returns. Only in 1988, four years after the director’s death, did the film gain stature as one of his finest works thanks to the release of a rough, never-finalized preview cut prepared by Peckinpah.

An account of the final days of the...

We have exciting news for fans of Prison Break!

The actors who played the incarcerated brothers at the center of that beloved Fox drama are reuniting for what sounds like an equally tension-fueled series.

Variety is reporting today that the two stars -- who also appeared together in Arrow and DC's Legends of Tomorrow -- are set to costar in Snatchback, a hostage recovery drama currently in development at Universal Television.

It'll be a family affair for Purcell, who's producing the series alongside his wife, Tish Cyrus-Purcell.

The series is based on the real-life experiences of an intelligence officer and his work in international hostage recovery.

It'll be helmed by showrunner Scott Rosenbaum, who is best known for his executive producer work on shows like The Shield and Chuck.

Related: Hero or Smooth Criminal? These TV Characters Make It Hard to Tell

“Inspired by the life of a real covert...

The “Prison Break” brothers are getting back together.

Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are set as the stars of “Snatchback,” a series in development at Universal Television. Scott Rosenberg serves as writer and executive producer, while Purcell also executive produces via HopeTown Entertainment.

The official logline for “Snatchback” reads, “Inspired by the life of a real covert intelligence officer who is still active in the field today, the series follows a highly skilled privately contracted team of operatives as they recover hostages across the globe from some of the most exotic, and equally dangerous locations on the planet.”

Purcell and Miller led Fox’s “Prison Break” as brothers Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield for four seasons from 2006 to 2009 followed by “The Final Break,” a TV movie that concluded the series before a revival was ordered; Season 5 aired on Fox in 2017. The pair also both appeared in the CW Arrowverse series...

Bob Odenkirk is back for more “Nobody” — this time with a different director.

The sequel to the 2021 action thriller will be helmed by Timo Tjahjanto, the Indonesian director known for “The Night Comes for Us” and “May the Devil Take You,” as well as the horror thrillers “V/H/S/2” and “V/H/S/94.” Tjahjanto is also one half of the filmmaking duo the Mo Brothers, alongside Kimo Stamboel. Together, they have written and directed the films “Macabre,” “Killers” and “Headshot.”

From Universal Pictures, “Nobody 2” will begin production in August. It’s set to premiere Aug. 15, 2025. Sources say Connie Nielsen will return as Becca Mansell, the wife to Odenkirk’s lead. No other casting has been announced.

“Nobody” screenwriter Derek Kolstad is on board to pen the sequel alongside Aaron Rabin, Odenkirk and Umair Aleem. Producers include Marc Provissiero of Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, Braden Aftergood via Eighty Two Films and David Leitch and...

Donald Sutherland, the tall, lean and long-faced Canadian actor who became a countercultural icon with such films as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Mash,” “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now,” and who subsequently enjoyed a prolific and wide-ranging career in films including “Ordinary People,” “Without Limits” and the “Hunger Games” films, died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, CAA confirmed. He was 88.

For over a half century, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor, who received an honorary Oscar in 2017, memorably played villains, antiheroes, romantic leads and mentor figures. His profile increased in the past decade with his supporting role as the evil President Snow in “The Hunger Games” franchise.

Most recently, he appeared as Judge Parker on the series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” and in the “Swimming With Sharks” series in 2022. His other recent recurring roles include the series “Undoing” and “Trust,” in which he played J. Paul Getty, and features “Ad Astra” and “The Burnt-Orange Heresy.

Disturbia was not a remake of Rear Window but drew inspiration from it, creating an original story. The idea for Disturbia came to Christopher Landon while listening to Martha Stewart's house arrest story. D. J. Caruso and Shia Labeouf watched Straw Dogs, The Conversation, and Say Anything to prepare for the film.

The 2007 neo-noir psychological thriller Disturbia, starring Shia Labeouf, has strong similarities to an Alfred Hitchcock classic, raising questions about it being a remake or a modern version of it. Directed by D. J. Caruso and with a script by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth, Disturbia starred Shia Labeouf, Sarah Roemer, David Morse, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Disturbia was well-received by critics and was a box-office success, and it found more success upon its arrival on Netflix, quickly climbing to the streaming giants global top 10.

Disturbia follows Kale Brecht (Labeouf), who is sentenced to three months of house arrest.

Nicolas Cage plays the title character of “The Surfer,” but it’s not until the film’s final minute that he climbs onto a surfboard. The movie, while set on a muscle beach in Australia, isn’t about surfing. It’s about male anxiety, male power, male midlife crisis, male rituals of pain and dominance, and how much theater Nicolas Cage can wring out of all of that. “The Surfer” premiered last night at a Cannes midnight show, and that’s smart programming, because it really is a midnight movie — the kind of trippy slapdash comic nightmare where the only way to watch it is to sit back and “go with it.”

Cage makes that easy to do. The film has been designed as a bad-trip psychodrama that’s also a high-camp Nicolas Cage freak-out. I only wish that “The Surfer,” as directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Thomas Martin,...

Ahead of the release of The Strangers: Chapter 1, we chat to director Renny Harlin about reimagining one of the most beloved modern horror films.

When The Strangers, Bryan Bertino’s low-budget horror film, was released in 2008, it immediately burrowed itself under my skin. In the film, a couple, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, are stalked by masked assailants, who seemingly have no motive for tormenting the couple. The film was a massive hit and has earned itself a firm, deserved cult status.

16 years after the release of Bertino’s film, Finnish director Renny Harlin is attempting the impossible. He has taken the basic premise of The Strangers, kept the name and turned it into an ambitious trilogy of his own.

The film follows Maya (played by Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (played by Froy Gutierrez) on a road trip across the country. They pull over to a remote town for some food,...

Controversial yet successful, Straw Dogs by Sam Peckinpah was a hit plagued by graphic violence and censorship but still a critical darling. Jerry Fielding's score and Dustin Hoffman's performance elevated the film, making it one of Peckinpah's finest works that endures today. While the original Straw Dogs is unavailable for streaming, physical copies exist with extra content, and a 2011 remake provides a modern take.

A psychological thriller, Straw Dogs (1971) was directed by Sam Peckinpah from a script he co-wrote alongside David Zelag Goodman. They adapted the story from a 1969 novel titled The Siege of Trencher's Farm, which was, in turn, written by Gordon M. Williams. Both cover the same plot, albeit with some exceptions here and there. For instance, there are different names for their respective lead characters.

In the film, Dustin Hoffman stars as David Sumner, a scholar of applied mathematics another difference from the book, as his original counterpart teaches English.

Though his filmmaking career only lasted a couple of decades, Sam Peckinpah has cemented himself as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He's a director who bridged the Golden Age of Hollywood with the American New Wave (or New Hollywood) movement of the late '60s and '70s, paving the way for more violent, realistic, and dark films. Famous for The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs, Peckinpah was transforming what a studio film could be. When Scorsese was making his debut film Mean Streets in 1973, it cost $650,000. The same year, Peckinpah made Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for $4.6 million. Mean Streets was a success that launched Scorsese's career. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was a failure that nearly killed Peckinpah's.

But time has shown that this wasn't the director's fault. In fact, Peckinpah pushed to get his name off of the film before it was released,...

The Runner released in the Criterion Collection on March 19th, 2024.

The Criterion Collection is my favorite place to explore and discover amazing cinematic releases that may have slipped under my radar. Straw Dogs, Mona Lisa and White Dog are some of my favorite films, all of which I first watched after they received a physical release through Criterion. The Runner has now joined that list.

The Runner Plot

Madjid Niroumand as Amiro in The Runner (1984)

Also Read: Criterion Collection Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons Review

A young Iranian orphan fends for himself, surviving by working odd jobs collecting glass bottles, shining shoes and selling ice water. Despite the harsh conditions he faces, his natural curiosity and imagination never waiver. He harbors a fascination for the airplanes and cargo ships that move in and out of the port city he calls home. While he dreams of escape, he...

All titles below begin streaming for free on January 1 unless otherwise noted:

Originals

Action

Prepare To Die

– 1/13-

A young man trains in the ways of martial arts to seek vengeance on the corrupt landowner who murdered his family.

Documentary

Vice News Presents: Epstein Didn’T Kill Himself

-1/17-

How the mysteries surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s life and death gave rise to a conspiracy theory that will never die.

Gone Before His Time: Kobe Bryant

-1/26-

Recount the achievements – some personal, some professional, and many halted – of an NBA legend before his untimely death.

TMZ No Bs: Hollywood’S Dumbest Moments

-1/31-

Join TMZ as they examine baffling & cringe worthy celebrity moments – Hollywood stars aren’t always the sharpest tools in the shed.

Horror

Where The Devil Roams

-1/5-

A family of murderous sideshow performers traverse the harsh conditions of Depression-era America in a bloody deal with the Devil.

I could ask whether or not the world needs another movie podcast but it might be a bad start posing questions to which we both know the answer. Still, Movie Mindset has elevated above the glut of background noise for host Will Menaker and Hesse Deni’s approach: amusing but not frivolous, personal appreciation that doesn’t risk lapsing into narcissism.

A year after our last chat about the current cinema, Menaker and I sat down for a discussion that took slightly different turns: having not seen a number of the year’s most-acclaimed title, he preferred running the gamut on 2023 at large. Which engendered something funnier and more caustic––you can’t love movies if you don’t also hate them.

As I turned on my recorder we were already underway.

Will Menaker: You asked me how doing the Movie Mindset podcast has changed my movie-watching habits, and I...

Helena (Daisy Ridley), the title character of “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” is a woman living what she thinks is a safe, comfortable middle-class existence — just like the heroes of “Cape Fear” or “Straw Dogs.” And like those characters, she’s ripped out of her cocoon by a man with a vengeful agenda. In this case, the self-righteous stalker-invader is her father, Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn), who raised her in a cabin in the marshland wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, teaching her how to hunt and survive. In the film’s early scenes, we might almost be watching some off-the-grid version of the Laura Ingalls Wilder story, as Helena drinks in the woodland skills taught by Jacob, with each lesson marked by a homemade tattoo (he inks a deer on her neck when she gets her first kill).

As we discover, though, this Pa is no benevolent patriarch. He’s a...

Of all the actors to get caught up in the #MeToo movement, perhaps one of the most surprising was Dustin Hoffman. Back in 2017, when the actor was fresh off of delivering one of his finest latter-day performances in The Meyerowitz Stories, the actor was confronted (some say ambushed) at a 20th-anniversary screening of Wag the Dog by comedian John Oliver, who questioned him about accusations of inappropriate behaviour from thirty years prior on the set of Death of a Salesman. The story went viral, and soon a story about Hoffman’s treatment of Meryl Streep on the set of Kramer vs Kramer also got renewed play, much to Streep’s dismay, who said Hoffman had apologized years earlier, and she accepted that.

In the years since, Hoffman’s career has been low-key, with him only showing up in a few indie and international films, which is a significant comedown for...

Plot: Two backpacking Canadians (Julia Garner & Jessica Henwick) find themselves low on cash and work as bartenders in a small pup in a remote mining town in Australia.

Review: Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel is exceptional for about ninety percent of its running time. Beautifully shot at an abandoned bar in Yatina, South Australia, a town that consists of only twenty-nine people, the movie is a thoroughly compelling look at the culture of booze, brawling, and misogyny in remote Australia and what happens when two regular, North American girls are dropped right in the middle of it. But, the finale gets a little too close to straight-ahead thriller territory, ending what had up to then been a compelling drama about menace and the constant threat of violence on a somewhat false note. It starts like Wake in Fright but ends like Straw Dogs, and the switch-up doesn’t work.

Garth Craven, the British-born sound and film editor and second-unit director whose credits included six Sam Peckinpah features, as well as Turner and Hooch, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Legally Blonde, has died. He was 84.

A resident of Malibu, Craven died May 20 after he suffered a medical emergency while flying back to Los Angeles from a safari in Namibia, his daughter, Willow Kalatchi, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Craven collaborated with the maverick director Peckinpah on Straw Dogs (1971), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975) and Convoy (1978).

He worked with fellow editor Roger Spottiswoode on the first three of those films, and when Spottiswoode graduated to director, they partnered on the features Shoot to Kill (1988), Turner and Hooch (1989) and Air America (1990) and on two HBO telefilms: 1989’s Third Degree Burn and 1993’s And the Band Played On.

Craven also cut Gaby: A True Story...

Film and sound editor Garth Craven, who edited films including “Legally Blonde” and got his start in film editing with Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” died May 20 in Barcelona. He was 84.

His death was only recently announced by his daughter Willow.

Craven not only worked in the cutting room but also in sound departments and served as second unit director on several films. At the beginning of his career, Craven worked on Federico Fellini’s fantasy drama “Satyricon” (1969) in the sound editing department, which served as his introduction to filmmaking.

Back in England, he continued working on films in London. Resuming his work in the sound department, Craven received a BAFTA for the critically acclaimed romantic drama “The Go-Between” (1971) directed by Joseph Losey.

He eventually became a frequent collaborator and friend of Peckinpah. Craven worked as a sound consultant on “The Getaway,” a sound editor on “Straw Dogs,...

Exclusive: Prison Break and Legends Of Tomorrow star Dominic Purcell is replacing the late Ray Stevenson in Paramount and Republic Pictures’ movie Cassino In Ischia, which is now back underway in Italy.

Production came to an abrupt halt in late May after lead actor Stevenson suffered sudden illness and was rushed to hospital where he passed away aged 58.

Purcell takes on the role of Nic Cassino, a former action star who is knocked off his perch by the next generation of action heroes. In an attempt to revive his career, he travels to Italy to make the first ever “Neo-Realist” action film with a down on his luck Italian director. When unresolved family struggles resurface, he is forced to reconcile all he left behind on his road to fame.

Pic is being produced by Martin Scorsese collaborator Barbara DeFina, whose credits with the filmmaker include Silence, Casino, Cape Fear, The Color Of Money,...

In 1999, director David Fincher had just finished production on Fight Club. The film was a massive undertaking: the shoot lasted 138 days, and included 300 scenes filmed across 200 locations. The proposed budget of $23 million had skyrocketed to $65 million by the time production started, and the scale of the operation quickly wore Fincher down: “I felt like I was spending all my time watching trucks being loaded and unloaded so I could shoot three lines of dialogue. There was far too much transportation going on.”

It makes sense, then, that Fincher wanted his next feature to be much smaller; one where he could relegate the entire production to a single location. When the script for Panic Room slid across his desk - a film that’s primarily set within the confines of a Brooklyn brownstone - Fincher jumped at the opportunity to direct. But what was meant to be a smaller (if not...

With John Wick: Chapter 4 having the best opening of the entire franchise, with many hailing it as one of the best action films ever made, we wanted to know what film in the “Revenge” genre has been your favorite? Not all are pure action films, such as Gone Girl and Memento but all share the common theme of taking revenge on people who wronged them! If you don’t see your favorite listed, click “Other” and let us know what it is in the comments section.

What is your favorite Revenge Movie?Desperado (1995)Hard Candy (2005)True Grit (2010)Unforgiven (1992)The Equalizer (2014)Carrie (1976)Upgrade (2018)Mandy (2018)John Wick (2014)Taken (2008)Cape Fear (1991)John Wick: Chapter 4The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)Memento (2000)V For Vendetta (2005)Gladiator (2000)The Crow (1994)Kill Bill vol 1&2 (2003-2004)Oldboy (2003)The Revenant (2015)Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)Gone Girl (2014)Mad Max (1979)Inglorious Basterds (2009)Django Unchained (2012)Man on Fire (2004)Payback...

Stars: Denis Ménochet, Marina Foïs, Luis Zahera, Diego Anido, Marie Colomb, Luisa Merelas, José Manuel Fernández y Blanco, Federico Pérez Rey, Javier Varela, David Menéndez, Xavier Estévez, Gonzalo García, Pepo Suevos, Machi Salgado, Emile Duthu | Written by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Isabel Pena | Directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen

Denis Menochet stars in this terrific Spanish thriller from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen that plays like an arthouse version of Straw Dogs. Shot through with tension in every frame, it exerts an intense, powerful grip and the result is one of the very best films of the year.

Co-written by Sorogoyen and Isabel Pena and loosely based on a true story from 2014, The Beasts stars Denis Menochet and Marina Fois as Antoine and Olga, an educated French couple who moved to a small Spanish village in Galicia in order to grow and sell organic vegetables. When the story begins, Antoine and Olga have already been in...

Meta-narratives may have only recently become popular in mainstream media, but stories within stories have been a part of human culture since ancient times. From One Thousand and One Nights to Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, our fascination with the repercussions of storytelling has itself been transformed into fuel for compelling stories, and this also applies to the horror genre.

Cosmic horror yarns are chock-full of characters who go mad after reading cursed tomes, and we’ve already covered the meta-terror of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, but few movies have managed to capture the magic of being deeply disturbed by an unnaturally gripping story. One exception to this is Tom Ford’s controversial thriller Nocturnal Animals, with the fashion-designer-turned-filmmaker using the film’s Russian doll setup to explore how horror narratives can be used to communicate.

Based on a novel by Austin Wright, the 2016 film follows art...

Middle-class incomers to a remote village in Spain’s ‘wild west’ expose fear, resentment and nationalism in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s disturbing true-crime drama

Here is a fierce, bitter tale with a flinty sharpness: partly a social-realist drama of class and xenophobia, and partly a rural noir horror, a Euro-arthouse twist on Straw Dogs or Deliverance. It’s inspired by the true story from 2010 of a middle-class hippy idealist Dutch couple who attempted to settle in the Spanish village of Santoalla in Galicia’s remote “wild west” and fell out badly with their neighbours over their gentrification plans: a row that escalated into a nightmare. It has in fact already been the subject of a documentary, Andrew Becker and Daniel Mehrer’s Santoalla, and has now been fictionalised by film-maker Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

Denis Ménochet and Marina Foïs play Antoine and Olga, an educated French couple who have moved into the area...

The actor talks about his new film, the explicit sci-fi horror Infinity Pool, why he gave up acting for eight years – and why he likes playing darker, more twisted characters

Alexander Skarsgård is an embarrassing creep who tries to coerce women into partying naked with him in hotel suites. Or so it would seem from the version of himself that he played last year in Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. “I’m not saying that I dance around in a leopard-print thong in front of girls I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m also not saying that I don’t. That kind of thing works really well when there’s a kernel of truth in it.”

This twinkling, teasing playfulness represents the default setting of the 46-year-old actor. His natural self-deprecation is what makes it so startling when he turns up on screen as another of the brutes...

Screen Rant is pleased to present an exclusive clip from the new Irish horror film Unwelcome, which arrives on digital March 14 — just in time for St. Patrick's Day. Directed by Jon Wright (Grabbers), as well as co-written by him and Mark Stay, Unwelcome follows a pair of Londoners who leave behind their home for rural Ireland, but soon hear about mysterious beings living in the ancient food outside their garden. Known as Redcaps in folklore, these malevolent gnomes send aid when called, but only for a very steep price.

Unwelcome stars Hannah John-Kamen (who soon returns to the MCU in Thunderbolts) as Maya and Douglas Booth (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) as Jaime. Their escape to Ireland is meant as a way to provide a safer life for their unborn child, but they are quickly faced with those who seem to want to do them harm. Unfortunately, Maya's supernatural attempts...

Grabbers director Jon Wright’s latest, Unwelcome, blends modernism with Irish mythology. Described in a pitch as “Gremlins meets Straw Dogs,” Unwelcome introduces the far darrig, tiny bloodthirsty fae also dubbed redcaps for their signature red hats. Yet Wright, who co-wrote with screenwriter Mark Stay, struggles to find a consistent tone. The emphasis on gritty home invasion thriller clashes with the lighter horror-comedy creature feature.

Elation turns to trauma when a pregnancy celebration between Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and her husband, Jamie (Douglas Booth), morphs into a harrowing home invasion nightmare. Jamie then conveniently inherits a house in rural Ireland, giving the couple the perfect opportunity to flee their dangerous London neighborhood. The locals are welcoming, though superstitious; Maya placates her neighbor (Niamh Cusack) with promises to continue the tradition of leaving proper blood sacrifices at the edge of their garden to appease the far darrig. Remembering to uphold her commitment...

Grabbers director Jon Wright is back with the creature feature Unwelcome (formerly The Little People), and Bloody Disgusting has another exclusive clip for you this week in which we learn that a nightly blood offering should keep “the little people” happy.

Well Go USA Entertainment will unleash Jon Wright’s new horror movie in select theaters across North America (US and Canada) on March 8th as an AMC “Thrills and Chills” exclusive, followed by a PVOD release on March 14, 2023.

The film, described as Gremlins meets Straw Dogs, spins a tale of what happens to people who come in contact with the violent, bloodthirsty goblins known originally in Irish folklore as the fear dearg or “far darrig,” now often referred to worldwide as the “Redcaps.”

Unwelcome, which is directed by Irish-born Jon Wright and based on an original screenplay by Mark Stay, stars Hannah John-Kamen (Red Sonja, Black Mirror, Ant-Man and The Wasp,...

From The Video Archives Podcast, writer/director Roger Avary and writer/producer Gala Avary discuss a few of their favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Taxi Driver (1976)

Star Wars (1977)

Matinee (1993)

Dune (1984)

Terror On A Train a.k.a. Time Bomb (1953)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Batman (1989)

Yentl (1983)

Nuts (1987)

Spaceballs (1987)

Die Hard (1988)

Top Gun (1986)

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

Mijn nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet & Sandra (1975)

Straw Dogs (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Day Of The Dolphin (1973)

Babylon (2022)

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)

Carrie (1976)

Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995)

Blow Out (1981)

The Matrix (1999)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Killing Zoe (1993)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Tenant (1976)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Bugsy Malone (1976)

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)

The Muppet Movie (1979)

The Rules Of Attraction (2002)

The Sound Of Music (1965)

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)

Giant (1956)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Babe (1995)

Time Bandits...

ReviewWhile the trailer did suggest, more than subtly, that action and violence were major contributors to the ethos of Gowli, one hopes it had all come together under better circumstances. Gowli / IMDBWhen a film contains not one, but multiple scenes of violence against women, one hopes that it's all in place for a bigger cause. These sequences are rarely warranted on screen, one might say, but filmmakers use them to showcase their penchant for a certain kind of ‘rawness’. We saw some of this rawness in the recent Shiva Rajkumar-starrer Vedha, wherein multiple crimes were inflicted on the film's female characters. There was at least a semblance of justification in that case, thanks to Vedha’s vigilante-justice narrative. But in debutant director Soora's Gowli, the same formula is used to evoke pitiful, knee-jerk reactions from the audience. Bereft of nuance or necessity, the film makes use of the crime-against-woman trope...

Writer Alex Tse discusses a few of his favorite films with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Rrr (2022)

Watchmen (2009)

Superfly (2018)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

Independence Day (1996)

Clueless (1995)

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)

The Goonies (1985)

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984)

Infested (2002)

Straw Dogs (1971) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary, Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review, Joe Dante’s review

Altered States (1980) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary

Return Of The Ape Man (1944)

Major League (1989)

The Sting (1973)

Angels In The Outfield (1951)

Rocky (1976)

Slap Shot (1977) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Eight Men Out (1988)

Heavy Metal (1981)

Fritz The Cat (1972) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

The Killer Snakes (1974)

Zodiac (2007)

Se7en (1995)

Dirty Harry (1971) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary,...

The twist in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film comes at the beginning, not the end. The trouble with that arrangement is that a career of surprise-ending films, such as “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs,” has conditioned audiences to expect something juicy to be revealed at the eleventh hour, by which point, this apocalyptic head-scratcher has already played its hand.

“Knock at the Cabin” starts like a home-invasion thriller, with four armed strangers descending upon a remote cabin to perturb its occupants, except that none of the characters fits the stereotypes associated with the genre. First of all, the family renting the cabin isn’t what you might expect: a gay couple (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) with an adopted Chinese American daughter (Kristen Cui), perhaps 6 or 7 years old, with a cleft palate. The intruders are even more unusual: a second-grade teacher (Dave Bautista), a nurse (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a short-order...

Stars: Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney, Chris Walley, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Kristian Nairn, Niamh Cusack | Written by Jon Wright, Mark Stay | Directed by Jon Wright

Director Jon Wright has a good track record when it comes to comedy horror, having previously made high school slasher Tormented (2009) and boozy creature feature Grabbers (2012). His latest film, Unwelcome, adds more monsters to his menagerie, in an effective genre offering that plays like Straw Dogs meets Gremlins, by way of Leprechaun.

Unwelcome opens in a dodgy area of London, where newly pregnant couple Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) are brutally beaten after local thugs invade their flat. Nine months later, with Maya’s baby imminent, the pair relocate to rural Ireland, after Jamie inherits his aunt’s house.

Almost immediately, Maya is warned that there are certain rituals that have to be obeyed, specifically that she has to leave a piece of...

Emin Alper was born in 1974 in Ermenek, Karaman. Trained in economics and history at Bogazici University-Istanbul, Alper holds a PhD in Turkish Modern History. His first feature, Beyond the Hill (2012), received numerous awards including the Caligari Film Prize at Berlinale Forum and Best Film at Asia Pacific Awards. His second feature Frenzy (2015) premiered at 72nd Venice Film Festival’s in Official Selection’s competition and received Jury Special Prize. His third feature A Tale of Three Sisters 2019) premiered at Berlin Film Festival’s main competition, and received many awards in several festivals. Aside from his filmmaking career, Emin Alper works as the artistic programmer of the newly found Istanbul Cinemateque since February 2021.

On the occasion of his latest film, “Burning Days” screening at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, we speak with him about the homosexuality element in the movie, corruption in the world, neo-noir, neo-western aesthetics and many other topics.

“Burning...