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As the format continues to gain traction, here’s our regularly-updated list of upcoming 4K Ultra HD disc releases in the UK.

Sitting alongside our list of upcoming DVD and Blu-ray releases (that you can find here), we’re also keeping a calendar for those who support the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc format. As we learn of new UK releases, we’ll add them to this list.

We have started adding shopping links too. We’d be obliged if you clicked on them, as it really helps us in our quest to make the Film Stories project of magazines, website and podcast profitable. We’re a 100% independent publisher, and we quite like drinking coffee. It’d be lovely to afford some more.

Without further ado, here are the titles we know about…

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30th June: Flow

30th June: The Death & Return Of Superman

30th June: Superman: Man...

Most people know how the sausage is made. Feature films rarely shoot scene in the order in which they appear on-screen. Filmmakers typically have to arrange shooting schedules based on what sets or locations may be available, shooting scenes at hard-to-reach places all at once. Just as often, certain actors may only be available on particular weeks, so their schedules have to be accommodated. Then, of course, it's just efficient to film five, six, or even seven scenes on one set, allowing for minor changes in camera setups and/or lighting. An actor may film their death scene on one day and then their introductory scenes later. A movie is then assembled through the magic of editing. Most cineastes learn how filmmaking works early in their journey through the medium.

Some filmmakers, however, like to shoot their movies chronologically. That is, they like going through the script page by page...

The animated anthropomorphic shoe movie “Sneaks” reminds me a lot of Werner Herzog, and not just because one time he ate a freakin’ shoe.

The director of “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” also claimed that humanity was “starving for new images,” a challenge many filmmakers have taken to heart. I cannot say with absolute certainty that Herzog will think highly of a film in which a phalanx of living footwear marches through Central Park in the middle of the night as giant murder rats dart at them from the shadows, slaughtering each shoe one by one. But I’m pretty sure he’d have to concede that yes, this really is a new image. Well played, “Sneaks.”

“Sneaks” is the latest in a long line of films that wonder whether the little things we take for granted in life have feelings. “The Brave Little Toaster” argued that we...

The Venice Film Festival will honor iconoclastic German director Werner Herzog — whose body of work comprises “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo” and Nosferatu the Vampyre” — with its 2025 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

“I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale,” Herzog said in a statement. “I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work: Thank you.”

“However,” Herzog went on to note, “I have not gone into retirement.”

“I work as always. A few weeks ago, I just finished a documentary in Africa, ‘Ghost Elephants,’ and at this moment, I am shooting my next feature film, ‘Bucking Fastard,’ in Ireland. I am developing an animated film, based on my novel, ‘The Twilight World,’ and I am acting the voice of a creature in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming animated film.

Werner Herzog, the celebrated German writer, producer and filmmaker behind “Grizzly Man” and “The Wrath of God,” is making his animation debut with “The Twilight World,” based on his best selling novel of the same name.

Narrated by the filmmaker, “The Twilight World” tells the true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer who refused to believe that World War II was over, and continued to fight a personal, fictitious war in the jungles of the Philippines for thirty years.

The screenplay adaptation of the book, which weaves history, war drama and dream log, was written by Herzog with Michael Arias and Luca Vitale.

Sun Creature Studio, the producers of “Flee,” the BAFTA and Oscar-nominated film, has been tapped to create for “The Twilight World” out of their France-based studio and will be working with French animation talent, while Psyop, another renowned animation studio that is based in Germany and the U.

Werner Herzog confirms the extreme lengths he went to in order to afford operations on the set of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Herzog's 1972 jungle adventure film tells the story of a ruthless and ambitious explorer named Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) who leads Spain on a search for El Dorado. In addition to Kinski, the movie featured a leading cast including Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling, and Cecilia Rivera.Though Aguirre, the Wrath of God is regarded as one of Herzog's most important films, the on-set experience was not without its problems.

Speaking with 60 Minutes, Herzog elaborates on his fraught experience on the Aguirre, the Wrath of God set. Interviewer Anderson Cooper discusses that he had heard the director "sold [his] shoes in order to get some fish to feed the crew." Herzog confirms this to be true, and notes that he would trade things...

It would seem to be of vital importance that directors and actors at the very least respect each other while they're making a movie, but Hollywood history is riddled with instances where this simply didn't occur. One of the most famous disagreements nearly turned fatal when Werner Herzog threatened to shoot (with a gun) notoriously erratic star Klaus Kinski while filming "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." No guns were brandished on the set of "Hook," but Steven Spielberg famously did not enjoy his time collaborating with Julia Roberts (they haven't worked together since). And then there's David O. Russell, who's fought with and/or terrorized stars like Amy Adams, Lily Tomlin, and George Clooney; if there's any justice, O. Russell, a once-formidable talent who hasn't made a watchable movie since 2010's "The Fighter," won't be allowed back behind the camera until he learns how to behave like a decent human being.

In 1828, a young man wandered the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. He was shoddily dressed, spoke very little, and only carried with him a handwritten note and prayer book. The person, later identified as Kaspar Hauser, attested to having spent his formative years locked in a dungeon and only being fed bread and water. One of many foundlings, or abandoned children, Hausers life has been one shrouded in mystery ever since and was brought to light in 1974 by director Werner Herzog in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

One of the main figures in the New German Cinema Movement alongside R.W. Fassbinder and Wim Wenders, Herzogs approach to directing has been one that challenges the medium and seeks out images that are beyond convention. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser embodies many of the traits that have been synonymous with Herzog throughout his career.

The documentary-like approach to narrative film, which he had...

The bar for the bear has been raised awfully high. A decade ago, the polite, Peruvian furball with a hankering for fruit preserves stormed the box office — and our hearts — with his first cinematic outing. Then Paddington 2 proved to be The Godfather Part II of adorable comedies, enhancing pretty much every aspect of the original and even proving a bonding experience for Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent. Keeping that triumphant roll going was always going to be a tough order. And so it proves — while this threequel provides laughs and charm and two new A-list bad’uns, there’s something intangible missing. The marmalade has lost a bit of its zest.

One issue is that Paddington is no longer out of his element. The marma-lad has left London before, in creator Michael Bond’s books — in 1961’s Paddington Abroad, he headed across the Channel,...

Werner Herzog: Champion of the Outsider When I tell you that Werner Herzog once held an actor at gunpoint upon that actor’s refusal to act, you may wonder how he hasn’t been canceled (Herzog denies pulling the gun but not threatening his star’s life). When I tell you that the actor, Klaus Kinski, was considered a madman by his co-stars due to his erratic behavior, which included blindly firing a rifle through the side of a hut where the crew of the film ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ (1972) were playing cards, you may wonder how Klaus Kinski was not canceled. It’s a good thing that the average movie set isn’t inhabited by a collaboration as frightening as those between Herzog and Kinski, but the relationship between the two serves as a microcosm for the darkly compelling heart of many of Herzog’s films. Where others designated Kinski a madman,...

In the 1970s, American films underwent a massive shift, thanks to a new generation of talent infiltrating the business. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Brian De Palma introduced a new, more energetic language into films, largely thanks to their studious backgrounds studying movies and reading the essays of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut; this generation of filmmakers is traditionally called the Film School Generation. These artists tended to look after each other, seemingly understanding their mutual unspoken goal of revolutionizing movies and exploring the limits of what the medium was capable of. 

Two Film School Generation directors once entered an alliance one might not expect. Francis Ford Coppola had already won many, many Oscars for his "Godfather" movies and for "The Conversation," making him a legitimate Hollywood darling. George Lucas, meanwhile, rewrote the language of the Hollywood blockbuster with "Star Wars" in 1977. Aesthetically, the two filmmakers could not have been more different,...

In an exclusive interview with Variety, German maestro filmmaker Werner Herzog discussed his plans to lead the 3rd Film Accelerator program organized by Barcelona-based La Selva. Herzog and his long-time cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger will be on hand to guide the 25 directing and 25 cinematography aspirants who will pair up to create short films no longer than 10 mins in length.

On day one, he will give them a framework on which to base their project. “They’re not to come with a pre-formulated plan for their projects,” said Herzog, who revealed that he was lending his voice to “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming hand-drawn animated feature about deep-sea creatures.

This would not be the first time for Herzog, who has lent his distinguished gravelly voice to many other parts in the past, most notably in episodes of “The Simpsons,” “The Boondocks” as well as Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” and “Metalocalypse.

Legendary director Werner Herzog was asked by Piers Morgan on the latter’s “Uncensored” talk show to weigh in on the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, but Herzog was no expert on the matter. The “Grizzly Man” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” filmmaker never got around to seeing Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb epic, and he seemed to be chilled to the bone after watching only 30 minutes of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Mattel comedy.

“I have not seen ‘Oppenheimer’ yet, but I will do it. ‘Barbie,’ I managed to see the first half-hour,” Herzog said. “I was curious and I wanted to watch it because I was curious. And I still don’t have an answer, but I have a suspicion – could it be that the world of Barbie is sheer hell? For a movie ticket, as an audience, you can witness sheer hell, as close as it gets.”

Herzog did not elaborate,...

What happens to film, art and ultimately to our lives when AI, algorithm takes control? This burning question and main theme of the upcoming Göteborg Film Festival, is also at the core of Danish pic “About a Hero,” by versatile artist and helmer Piotr Winiewicz (“Reflector”).

Variety has secured in exclusivity the first still from the movie, due to serve as a case study during Göteborg’s industry confab Nordic Film Market (Jan. 31-Feb. 2). The pic is being produced by Denmark’s Tambo Film and Kaspar, with German co-producers Cineteam, in association with leading U.S. indie prodco Pressman Film.

“Corsage” star Vicky Krieps has just boarded the project, to be sold internationally by Dr Sales.

Broadcasters attached so far include pubcasters Dr in Denmark, Ndr in Germany and European network Arte. Producer Rikke Tambo Andersen said she will negotiate U.S. rights separately, in close coordination with U.S.

Werner Herzog - Radical Dreamer

Thomas von Steinaecker discovered the work of Werner Herzog very early in life, he tells me, when he was in his teens, and he has never looked back. As a filmmaker he has a strong record of his own, in documentary and, particularly, in a sort of cinematic portraiture, which is the approach he uses in his latest work, Werner Herzog – Radical Dreamer. It’s a style well suited to exploring the work of a creative artist who is anything but conventional and whose work cannot easily be slotted into a standard documentary frame. Thomas’ film is more interested in character, inspiration and theme than in providing a potted history of the great director’s work, and as such it’s a perfect complement to that work, which fans won’t want to miss.

“I watched Aguirre: The Wrath Of God very late at...

Filmmaker Werner Herzog believes that Star Wars offers a new perspective on humans' role in the universe and that its mythology is significant. Despite criticism, Herzog thinks Star Wars is important not only in the film industry but also in culture as it creates new mythologies and a fresh way of seeing our place in the universe. The world-building and mythology of Star Wars is a major factor that makes the franchise appealing and why Disney has the potential to create countless projects based on its characters and plots.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog, who played The Client in the first season of The Mandalorian, thinks Star Wars presents a new way to understand humans' role in the universe and that the mythology of the franchise is really important. The universe created by George Lucas has proven to be one of the most vast and complex in the world of cinema. More...

Werner Herzog has had a remarkably varied and prolific career. Ever since working on his first short film, Herakles, back in 1961, he’s gone on to produce, write and direct more than 60 feature films and documentaries, including adventure-drama :a[Fitzcarraldo]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/fitzcarraldo-review/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'}, historical epic :a[Aguirre, The Wrath Of God]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/aguirre-wrath-god-review/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'}, the 1979 version of the classic blood-sucking tale, :a[Nosferatu The Vampyre]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/nosferatu-vampyre-review/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'}, and many, many more.

Also included in that huge filmography is a trip to a galaxy far, far away. Yes, Herzog is part of the :a[Star Wars]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/star-wars-timeline-chronological-order/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'} family too, having played The...

Steven Caple, Jr.'s 2023 movie, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," took place partly in Peru and was filmed in notable locations around the country. According to Andina, the Peruvian news agency, "Rise of the Beasts" was filmed partly in the lush jungles of San Martin where Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) met to discuss tactics in taking down the wicked robot Scourge (Peter Dinklage). Other parts of "Beasts" were shot in Saqsayhuaman on the outskirts of the ancient city of Cusco, which is an enormous stone network of structures in the shape of a puma. It is one of Peru's most-visited locations. The filmmakers also filmed near the thousands of salt ponds of Maras, as well as near Macchu Picchu, the 15th-century Incan citadel you read all about in your fifth-grade geography class. 

Naturally, the Peruvian tourism boards have begun offering "Transformers"-themed tours of Machu Picchu.

Werner Herzog has traveled to the ends of the earth for his art, rolling cameras in places rarely seen by human eyes — from rapids along the Amazon River for 1972’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” to the rim of an active volcano in Antarctica. But what’s inside Herzog’s head is what fascinates fans of the German director.

As revealed in a new memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All” (the phrase served as the original title of his 1974 film “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser”), Herzog’s far-ranging filmography represents only a fraction of the encounters and adventures that have shaped his worldview.

The book came easily, or so he insists as we huddle in a quiet corner of the Montrose airport in Colorado, following the Telluride Film Festival, where he’s been a fixture for nearly all of the last 50 years.

“It could have been five times as long,...

The ’80s was a decade of movies that you can hear at a roar even on mute. A screenshot of Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay aboard the train in “Risky Business” has a sound to it. The same goes for a still image of Kaneda riding towards Neo-Tokyo in “Akira,” or Jack Nicholson’s car snaking its way up the mountains towards the Overlook Hotel during the opening titles of “The Shining.”

It was a decade of synths and sad jazz; a decade of legends reaching the height of their powers (e.g. John Williams and Ennio Morricone), and of newcomers from other disciplines becoming cinematic virtuosos in their own right (e.g. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Philip Glass). The movies had never sounded that way before, but the best film scores of the ’80s — our picks are listed below — continue to echo in our minds as if they’ve always been there.

Making movies is hard, unglamorous work. It requires a functional collaboration between hundreds of people who specialize in wildly different disciplines, and it's all overseen by one person who must maintain a clear channel of communication with dozens of assistants and department heads to make sure everyone is on the same page and, god willing, on schedule.

Some people handle the stress better than others. Clint Eastwood apparently doesn't break a sweat bringing movies in ahead of schedule and under budget (albeit occasionally underlit and conceptually half-assed). On the flip side, Werner Herzog allegedly pulled a gun on his recalcitrant star Klaus Kinski during the making of "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

As for Martin Brest, the critically acclaimed director of "Midnight Run" and "Scent of a Woman," the pressure of completing a film can prove physically draining. This is evidently one reason why he's only made seven movies over his 46-year career.

Behrooz Karamizade’s Iranian drama “Empty Nets,” which has its international premiere in the Crystal Globe Competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, offers a sobering look at the increasingly difficult, sometimes hopeless lives of young working-class people in Iran as they strive for better lives.

Set on Iran’s northern Caspian Sea coast, the film follows Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi), a young man who, desperate to marry his girlfriend Narges (Sadif Asgari), seeks work at a local fishery with the hope of earning enough money for an appropriate dowry and winning over her upper-class parents. Once there, illicit opportunities present themselves and he is soon drawn into the dangerous but lucrative business of sturgeon poaching and the black market caviar trade.

The Iranian-German director, who grew up in Germany, says he always wanted to shoot his first feature film in Iran. “I’m very impressed by Iranian cinema and...

Bill Hader is laughing.

It’s the final week of principal photography on the final season of “Barry,” the Emmy-winning HBO series he launched in 2018 with co-creator Alec Berg, and even though Hader is coming to the end of a season-long shoot that saw him directing every episode himself, when TheWrap visits the set in November 2022, Hader is calm, cool and downright joyful.

It’s a refreshing contrast to the stories of filmmakers who come to the end of directing an entire season of TV and subsequently swear off ever trying that again. But it’s not an altogether surprising one, considering Hader has wanted to be a director his whole life — a dream that was somewhat put on hold when he landed “Saturday Night Live” at age 27.

“He’s so fluid and chill,” Anthony Carrigan, who plays Noho Hank on the HBO series, told TheWrap of Hader’s directing style.

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

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

Werner Herzog is renowned worldwide for his films featuring ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams locked in unwinnable battles against nature. "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" is the acclaimed 1972 entry in his directorial catalog. The period piece centers around a Spanish soldier, played by the notoriously tempestuous German actor Klaus Kinski, who leads a group of conquistadors on an ill-fated journey through South America in search of the fabled city of El Dorado.

Herzog has since revealed in an interview with Offscreen that his epic historical drama originally had another ending planned. Both the current ending and his initial idea offer a mystical...

The post Aguirre, the Wrath of God's Enigmatic Ending Wasn't Werner Herzog's Original Plan appeared first on /Film.

2021 poster for The Golem: How He Came into the World. Art by Johan Brosow.This gorgeous new poster for the 101 year old German expressionist silent film The Golem is the product of a lovely new endeavor by the Swedish distribution company NonStop Entertainment. In 2015 NonStop, perhaps the premier arthouse distributor in the Nordic region, launched a sister label, NonStop Timeless, to release their hundreds of repertory classics ranging from Dreyer to Lanthimos. Last year, in the early days of the pandemic, they decided to commission some of Sweden’s foremost artists, photographers, and designers to do their own take on a classic of their choice from the NonStop Timeless collection. The six artists selected chose seven films between them. The posters were printed in limited quantities on non-glossy paper in the Swedish cinema poster format of 70 x 100cm (very close to the US 27" x 40" standard) and were unveiled last week...

Now that Disney has remade all of its most beloved movies, the studio is inevitably taking the next logical step and remaking Werner Herzog’s instead. In a change of pace that’s sure to delight the legion of parents who’ve been dying to show their kids “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (but have been worried that small children might be insufficiently traumatized by the sight of Klaus Kinski monologuing to a raft full of terrified monkeys about his delusional plan to take over the world), Jaume Collet-Serra’s “Jungle Cruise” begins with the Spanish conquistador venturing into the heart of the Amazon and being consumed by enchanted tree vines that replace his organs with snakes. Played here by Édgar Ramírez, this Aguirre is just a chill 16th century Disney Dad who became so obsessed with finding the Tree of Life that he forgot what made his life worth...

New York City’s Metrograph has today announced the launch of the Metrograph TV App, designed to allow its members nationwide access to all Metrograph live streams and on-demand programming directly via their TV remote. The Metrograph TV App is available starting today at no cost on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku, with an Android TV launch coming soon.

Like most other NYC theaters, the Metrograph closed its doors in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but is now readying for a September re-opening. The two-screen theater, located on Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, has yet to announce its full release plans as other NYC-area theaters continue to reopen, but today’s launch of the app makes it clear that a digital component will be part of its plans moving forward.

“Metrograph’s digital expansion this past year has brought our programming to a nationwide audience, and...

Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated writer/director of The White Tiger, discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The White Tiger (2021)

Man Push Cart (2005)

Chop Shop (2007)

99 Homes (2015)

The Boys From Fengkuei (1983)

The Time To Live And The Time To Die (1985)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

La Terra Trema (1948)

Umberto D (1952)

Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987)

Nomadland (2020)

The Runner (1984)

Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)

A Moment Of Innocence a.k.a. Bread And Flower Pot (1996)

The House Is Black (1963)

The Conversation (1974)

Mean Streets (1973)

Nashville (1975)

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Vagabond (1985)

Luzzu (2021)

Bait (2019)

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Meantime (1983)

Fish Tank (2009)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Malcolm X (1992)

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Goodbye Solo (2008)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)

Dekalog (1989)

The Double Life Of Veronique...

Writer, producer, director Lee Daniels discusses some of his favorite films with Josh & Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Infested (2002)

Shadowboxer (2005)

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

A Star Is Born (1937)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

Island In The Sun (1957)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Claudine (1974)

Mandingo (1975)

Drum (1976)

Caligula (1979)

Gloria (1980)

The Exorcist (1973)

Abby (1974)

Blacula (1972)

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Cabaret (1972)

Lenny (1974)

Sounder (1972)

All That Jazz (1979)

I Am A Camera (1955)

Travels With My Aunt (1972)

The Emigrants (1971)

Star 80 (1983)

Harold And Maude (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Pickup On South Street (1953)

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

Laura (1944)

Dragonwyck (1946)

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

Explorers (1985)

Innerspace (1987)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Them (1954)

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Tarantula! (1955)

Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

Going In Style (1979)

Going In Style (2017)

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Stroszek (1977)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams...

We all know how charming Werner Herzog can be. Since he first narrated his 1974 documentary “The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner,” he has learned to put himself as a character in his films behind the camera, as probing questioner and witty commentator. More recently this led to acting jobs, including The Client in Season One of Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”

Now, the prodigious director of some 20 fiction films, 31 documentary features (“Grizzly Man”) and 18 operas (“The Magic Flute”), has fallen in sync with a collaborator on his explorations into the awe and mystery of science, Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer (“Eruptions That Shook the World”).

The two men first met on an Antarctica volcano during filming on Herzog’s only Oscar-nominated film, “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), the filmmaker said during a recent video interview (below). Oppenheimer stood out among the high-tech down jackets by wearing “a tweed jacket like...

We all know how charming Werner Herzog can be. Since he first narrated his 1974 documentary “The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner,” he has learned to put himself as a character in his films behind the camera, as probing questioner and witty commentator. More recently this led to acting jobs, including The Client in Season One of Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”

Now, the prodigious director of some 20 fiction films, 31 documentary features (“Grizzly Man”) and 18 operas (“The Magic Flute”), has fallen in sync with a collaborator on his explorations into the awe and mystery of science, Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer (“Eruptions That Shook the World”).

The two men first met on an Antarctica volcano during filming on Herzog’s only Oscar-nominated film, “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), the filmmaker said during a recent video interview (below). Oppenheimer stood out among the high-tech down jackets by wearing “a tweed jacket like...

Werner Herzog has always thirsted for the uncanny. It’s there in the primal awe he imparted to a grizzly bear in “Grizzly Man,” the cracked rapture of Klaus Kinski’s glowering megalomaniacal conquistador in “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” and the mysteriously intoxicating natural ice-sculpture formations of “Encounters at the End of the World.”

In his new documentary, “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds,” Herzog hits us with an image in the first two minutes that’s as jaw-droppingly whoa! as any footage you’ve ever seen of a UFO that convinced you, for just a moment, that it was a genuine alien visitation. We see dash cam footage, shot on a highway in Chelyabinsk, Siberia, in 2013, of a fire-light meteor streaking across the sky and plunging toward earth, like an airliner crashing right before our eyes. We witness the fireball photographed from assorted locations and angles — roadways, a public square — as Herzog,...

John Williams is great and all, but there aren’t a ton of his iconic film scores that I might actually want to listen to while working out. For that, you need to turn to the rock stars, the guys who perform to 20,000 screaming people one night and then collaborate with David Fincher the next. They make the kind of scores that raise the eyebrows of writers at Pitchfork and inspire bedroom hipsters to go out and see an indie film that might otherwise never get an audience.

Trent Reznor

The Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor burst out onto the film score scene when he composed the icy, digitized beats for David Fincher’s “The Social Network” in 2010. He and his collaborator Atticus Ross won the Oscar that year, and he’s since had a wave of creativity on other Fincher films like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl.

Desire doesn’t ask for an explanation, and “Tragic Jungle” (or “Selva Trágica”) doesn’t offer any. On the contrary, seduces you away from the legibility of its premise so gradually that you don’t realize you’ve lost your bearings until it’s already too late and the whole movie has gone mad with at least one kind of lust. Still, it helps to know in advance that this febrile corkscrew into the heart of darkness is loosely based on the Yucatán Mayan myth of Xtabay, a female demon said to lure men to their deaths if they entered her forest; her name is invoked on occasion via the movie’s disembodied voiceover, but proper context is as elusive as a path out of the jungle.

According to a sacred text the Mayans referred to as “Wikipedia,” the legend of Xtabay tells of two beautiful women — often said to...

Apple has acquired rights to Werner Herzog’s astronomy documentary “Fireball” for its Apple Original film slate and will premiere the film on Apple TV Plus in more than 100 territories.

Herzog collaborated with British professor Clive Oppenheimer on the project. The duo teamed on the Academy Award-nominated Antarctic documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” and the Emmy-nominated “Into the Inferno.“

“Fireball” explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. It’s a Werner Herzog Film production from Spring Films. The film is produced by André Singer & Lucki Stipetić, executive produced by Richard Melman and made with the help and support of Sandbox Films.

Apple Original’s documentaries include “Boys State”; “The Elephant Queen”; “Beastie Boys Story” and docuseries “Visible: Out On Television.” “Boys State” won the U.S. documentary competition at...

Don’t label Werner Herzog’s new film “Family Romance, LLC” as minor or slight. Though Herzog shot the under 90-minute film himself and utilized non-professional actors, the German auteur calls “Family Romance, LLC” one of his “essential films,” saying it is as important to understanding the human experience as is his masterpiece “Aguirre, The Wrath of God.”

“I think we should be very cautious with trying to find categories and squeeze it into it,” Herzog said. “One thing is clear. It is one of my essential films out of a handful of very essential things that look deep into our human condition.”

Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC,” which premiered at Cannes last year and will land on Mubi on Saturday, examines a business in Japan in which patrons can rent stand-in actors to pose as family members for any occasion. If you’re embarrassed about your father’s drunkenness,...

Werner Herzog's Family Romance, LLC is having a free virtual preview on Mubi in many countries on July 3, 2020. Following this preview, it will be showing exclusively on Mubi in the many countries in the series Luminaries.My name is Werner Herzog. You are just about to watch my new film Family Romance, LLC. I put “LLC” in the title because romance has become a business in Japan. The young entrepreneur in Tokyo, Yuichi Ishii, founded an agency that sends out rented missing friends who are family members for a big wedding, or in my case, he rents out an impostor who poses for a young girl as her father that she never met.I think it was important. There was something big that I immediately sensed: where everything was fake, everything was done by impostors, everything was alive, everything was a performance, and yet the authenticity of emotions is always there.

London-based production, finance and sales company Film Constellation and the global curated streaming service Mubi have partnered to host an exclusive premiere of Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC” on July 3 in the U.S., featuring an exclusive introduction and interview with Herzog.

In other international territories, the company is collaborating with the local theatrical distributor, including U.K. distributor Modern Films, Artplex in Brazil, PVR in India, I Wonder in Italy, who will participate in the preview event for their local release.

Herzog, who not only directed but also served as writer and cinematographer, will introduce the virtual premiere and conclude with an exclusive 15 minute Q&a.

The special preview will be hosted on Mubi and will be available to stream for free for 24-hours in more than 150 countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

“Family Romance, LLC” is the latest feature from Herzog. Receiving its premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival,...

One of the most damaging aspects of neo-liberalism has been its commodification of human relationships. This is demonstrated and analyzed in a New Yorker article entitled "Japan's Rent-a-Family industry," and that same article is the basis of Werner Herzog's newest film, Family Romance, LLC, named after the profiled company. Herzog, however, is not much interested in politics. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) is a colonialist scenario depicted as a search for the sublime; in Lo & Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016), Herzog is more interested in capitalists and their victims than capitalism as such. Such is the case in Family Romance, in which the casting of non-professional actors, including Yuichi Ishii, the founder of Family Romance, as himself, is the tell. For Herzog, psychic effects matter more than political conditions. The mockumentary film begins with Ishii waiting to meet with Mahiro, a twelve-year old daughter of a long-divorced mother.

The American Society of Cinematographers said Thursday that it will give this year’s Board of Governors Award to Werner Herzog. The prolific writer-director and occasional actor (Disney+’s The Mandalorian) will be honored January 25 at the 34th annual Asc Awards for Outstanding Achievement at Hollywood & Highland’s Ray Dolby Ballroom.

The Asc Board of Governors Award is given to industry stalwarts whose body of work has made significant and indelible contributions to cinema. It is reserved for filmmakers who have been champions for directors of photography and the visual art form.

The German-born Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films, with Oscar nominations for his documentary Encounters at the End of the World (2009) and an Emmy nom for Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997).

His credits at the vanguard of German cinema along with fellow filmmakers Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff include Aguirre, the Wrath of God...

Legendary director Werner Herzog, one of the founders of the German New Wave, whose films embrace obsessive quests and maddening conflicts with nature, will receive the American Society of Cinematographers’ Board of Governors Award at the 34th annual Asc Awards on January 25 (at Hollywood & Highland’s Ray Dolby Ballroom).

“Werner Herzog is truly a unique storyteller, and we are honored to recognize him for his prolific contributions to cinema,” said Asc President Kees van Oostrum.

Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films. His volatile, love-hate relationship with actor Klaus Kinski resulted in such powerful films as “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo,” “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” and “Woyzeck.” Other masterpieces include “Stroszek” and “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser,” both starring street musician-turned actor Bruno S.

Herzog received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature for “Encounters at the End of the World,” while “Little Dieter Needs to Fly...

Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles who are looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms — and there are more of them all the time — caters to its own niche of film obsessives.

From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on Film Movement Plus and Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide will highlight the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.

Here’s the best of the best for August 2019.

Amazon Prime

There are some big new movies coming to Amazon Prime this month, but most of these recent Hollywood titles will also be available to stream on Hulu and/or Netflix.

Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC” is almost a meta-movie, about a world of artifice within the world of artifice of a film. Playing in the special screenings section in Cannes, the picture follows a man who is hired to impersonate the missing father of a 12-year-old girl. The film was shot in Japan with non-professional actors and is in Japanese. The famed director tells Variety about the genesis of the project, his rogue approach to filmmaking, and how not speaking Japanese wasn’t a hindrance.

How is it to be at Cannes with a movie?

I haven’t been here for 25 years. I had quite a few films in the ’70s and early ’80s here. I always like it because it had a serious side to it, and that’s a market.

Did “Family Romance” come together quickly?

It came very quickly; it was instantly there. I knew it...

“Monos” takes place in the dense jungles and foggy mountaintops of northern Colombia, but it may as well be another planet. Director Alejandro Landes’ thrilling survivalist saga tracks a dysfunctional group of young militants as they traipse through perilous terrain, engaging in savage behavior while toying with their mortified American hostage (Julianne Nicholson), but they never reveal their motivations. Equal parts “Lord of the Flies” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” Landes’ third feature distills guerrilla warfare into sheer anarchy.

By stripping away the sociopolitical context, “Monos” provides a window into power-hungry mayhem on the fringes of society that could happen anytime, anywhere — but depicts its hectic showdowns with a you-are-there intensity that could only take place in the present. Aided by “Under the Skin” composer Micah Levi’s thunderous score, Landes delivers a suspenseful encapsulation of alienated youth enmeshed in pointless battles that can only lead to further destruction.

It’s a meeting for the ages. In one corner, the architect of Perestroika. In the other, the director who nearly tamed Klaus Kinski.

“Meeting Gorbachev,” a nonfiction film documenting a series of interviews between filmmaker Werner Herzog and Mikhail Gorbachev, has been acquired by the Orchard. The indie distributor plans to release the film theatrically in 2019. “Meeting Gorbachev” premiered at the 2018 Telluride Film Festival and played at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is directed by Herzog and his longtime collaborator André Singer.

Herzog, famous for “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” interviewed Gorbachev on three separate occasions over six months. He captured the last leader of the Soviet Union’s thoughts on peace and history.

“’Meeting Gorbachev’ is an enthralling look back at a fascinating leader and diplomat, all the more impactful based on what the world looks like today,” said Paul Davidson, the Orchard’s Evp of film and television.

Stories of people stranded in the wilderness have always been natural fodder for movies, as ideas of being lost in the jungle or shipwrecked at sea tap into a natural anxiety about the smallness of our place in the world, and the uneasy need for co-dependence that it inspires. And yet, without diminishing some formative examples, or paving over the past’s most hideous aberrations (George C. Scott’s “The Savage Is Loose” springs to mind), it seems as though the whole “lost adventurers” genre is just starting to find itself. “Adrift” may be the first of these movies that actually explains this recent phenomenon.

And it’s been a long time coming: In just the last eight years or so, we’ve seen mainstream American movies about a dude getting wedged beneath a rock (“127 Hours”), an older dude getting stuck in wolf country (“The Grey”), and an even...

Daniel Talbot, a distributor and exhibitor of enormous influence over specialized exhibition and distribution as well as the international film world, died Friday in Manhattan. He was 91. A memorial was held Sunday, December 31 at the Riverside Memorial Chapel with a capacity audience including many leading New York specialized players. Talbot’s wife and business partner, Toby Talbot, as well as daughters Nina, Emily and Sara attended the memorial, where the family spoke fondly about Talbot’s love for the comedian W.C. Fields.

Another more public post-holiday event marking the closing of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas is scheduled on January 28 in New York. The last few weeks have seen Talbot’s legacy celebrated with reaction to the unexpected announcement that the six-screen Upper West Side theater would close at the end of January, at the expiration of its lease. Milstein Properties, who have been the Talbots’ co-partners in the theater since...

Werner Herzog’s internet documentary "Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World" doesn’t yet have a release date. In the meantime, we’ll have to occupy ourselves with WernerBot, a new Facebook page that allows us to chat with the singular filmmaker behind everything from "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" to "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans"…kind of.

Read More: Sundance Review: Werner Herzog’s ‘Lo and Behold’ Will Make You Experience the Internet in New Ways

Describing itself as "the best and only way to chat with Werner Herzog over the Internet," WernerBot comes across as an artificial-intelligence version of a PSA about the importance of reading. Seemingly every question or statement you direct toward it will be responded to with variations on "The only thing you should be doing is reading," "Read" or "Why aren’t you reading?" The only downside to this approach:...

The heroes over at Shout! Factory have recently announced that they'll be remastering and releasing 16—count 'em, 16—films by Werner Herzog in several formats both physical and digital. Shout! will be releasing titles chiefly from Herzog's 70s and '80s back catalog, when the Bavaria-born director was still largely working in German (if not necessarily in Germany, jungles feature pretty heavily in some of these pictures), and their list includes both documentaries, shorts and feature films.Per the official announcement, these “include Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, Nosferatu The Vampyre, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, Woyzeck, Heart Of Glass, Cobra Verde, Stroszek, Fata Morgana, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, Lessons Of Darkness, Ballad Of The Little Soldier, Land Of Silence And Darkness as well as several other acclaimed titles." Anyone with a grasp of counting will conclude that “several” here equals three, and they are: “Where...