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What makes a movie hard to watch? A mixture of unpleasant imagery and taboo storytelling? No matter the answer, the fact that a movie is disturbing or difficult to endure doesn’t mean it isn’t without its qualities. Some of the most disturbing movies of all time are great works of art from auteur visionaries.

I hope you’ve got a strong stomach, because these are the 10 most disturbing movies that are hard to watch, but are actually great.

1. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Described by some as “irredeemably depraved,” Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is the last film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, released three weeks after his tragic murder. Set in the World War II era, the film follows four libertines who kidnap eighteen teenagers and subject them to four months of unimaginable torture. It’s not a fun time at the movies,...

Film critic Roger Ebert once said that no good movie is truly depressing, a belief that the programmers at the American Cinematheque have taken to heart with “Bleak Week,” an annual celebration of downbeat movies. Since its inception in 2022, the series has become one of Los Angeles’ most eagerly anticipated repertory events with screenings spread across the Cinematheque’s three venues, and last year the Paris Theater in New York joined the fun with its own Bleak Week programming that featured in person appearances by Ari Aster, Isabella Rossellini and Paul Schrader.

Now in its fourth year, Bleak Week is expanding across the country — and, via the Prince Charles Cinema, across the pond to London — to hold screenings at 11 venues in eight cities. The festival kicks off in Los Angeles and Chicago (at the Music Box Theatre) June 1 to 7, continues in Portland (Hollywood Theatre) and Minneapolis (Trylon Cinema) June 6 to 12, then heads to New York,...

Just about every movie buff knows that Clint Eastwood shot to international fame after starring in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," but what came next? It's a good pub quiz question because many people might leap straight to the year 1968 when a trio of hits cemented his status as one of Hollywood's top tough guys: "Hang 'Em High," "Coogan's Bluff," and "Where Eagles Dare." But tucked away in his filmography is a forgotten 1967 Italian movie called "The Witches," not to be confused with the Hammer production of the same name from the year before. Originally titled "Le streghe" in Italian, it's an offbeat anthology movie that isn't a horror film at all and has very little to do with witches, unless you squint really hard at its themes.

"The Witches" was the brainchild of legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, who would later make an impact in Hollywood with the 1976 "King Kong" remake,...

Horrified by the country of his birth and heavy with the weight of its sins, Nadav Lapid has created modern cinema’s most splenetic filmography by fighting his Israeliness as if it were an incurable virus infecting his body of work. 2019’s eruptive “Synonyms” was a semi-autobiographical identity crisis about a man who flees to Paris because he’s convinced that he was born in the Middle East by mistake, while 2021’s “Ahed’s Knee” was a similarly personal scream into the wind — this one rooted in the blue-balled impotence of artistic resistance amid an exultantly genocidal ethnostate.

Spasming with anger where Lapid’s previous features (“Policeman” and “The Kindergarten Teacher”) searched for hope, both of these movies were fringed with a sense of resignation that they fought tooth-and-nail to shake off. As a result, I naturally assumed that his follow-up feature — written in Europe before the events of October...

Nihilism has always had a place in horror.

As Stephen King himself once said, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” For every triumphant final girl waving the chainsaw of her attacker in the bright morning light, another beloved protagonist falls to the monsters that lurk in the night. Sometimes the story is just too dark and the cinematic world just a little too hopeless. But for those who’ve felt the sting of life’s bitter disappointments, that’s precisely what we want in a film. For it’s only in confronting our pain that we can find our way through to the other side. We dive headfirst into an open wound hoping to find the infection and clean it out.

Joshua Erkman’s A Desert takes this nihilistic path in a gritty story centering human monsters. On a road trip through the American Southwest,...

The busy Jacob Elordi is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand actors of his generation. His latest project is a return to TV with Justin Kurzel’s limited series “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” where he’s a prisoner of both war and love. Following its Berlin premiere in February, the Australian limited series secured U.S. distribution on Prime Video just days before it debuts on April 18.

Adapted from Richard Flanagan’s novel of the same name, the Aussie story follows Elordi as war doctor Dorrigo Evans in the 1940s, who is drafted to the Philippines to aid in the construction of the Burma Railway. Prior to going to war, Dorrigo is engaged to Ella (Olivia DeJonge) but falls into an all-consuming affair with his uncle’s wife Amy, played by Odessa Young. Throughout the five episodes, we see Dorrigo go to battle in both senses,...

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

Anthology Film Archives

A series on sex workers includes Spike Lee’s Girl 6, Working Girls, and House of Tolerance.

Bam

Queering the Canon runs between in-theater showings and virtual screenings, including Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour.

Spectacle

Tomu Uchida’s A Fugitive from the Past screens on Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

The French Connection plays on 35mm, as curated by Martin Scorsese; Beethoven screens for free on Sunday.

Film Forum

Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman begins playing in a new restoration; Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman plays on 35mm this Sunday.

IFC Center

Salò, The Holy Mountain, Stop Making Sense, The Elephant Man, Sorcerer, and Funny Games (the good one) show late.

Nitehawk Cinema

Twelve Monkeys screens early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph

Donnie Darko and Diabolique play on 35mm; In Good Faith and In the Pinku start while Tonino Guerra,...

The vapid bourgeois class will always be prime fodder for a ribbing in a world that continues to be systematically dismantled by capitalist oligarchies. Case in point: The Visitor, Bruce Labruce’s hilariously deranged art-porn reimagining of Teorema, proves that the Canadian provocateur is the ideal person to bring Pier Paolo Pasolini’s subversive spirit into the present. While there’s been no shortage of arch “eat the rich” satires in recent years, none have hit their target with the kind of renegade perversity that Labruce has spent his career gleefully discharging, something that arguably reaches its apex in this sicko family affair.

The Visitor hews close to Teorema’s sparse narrative template, with its title character arriving at the home of an upper-class family and seducing each member one by one before abruptly leaving them in a state of existential despair. This time, though, the Milan setting is swapped...

In an interview conducted just a few hours before his murder, director Pier Paolo Pasolini remarked, "Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll keep saying we're all in danger." The words seemed more than fitting, as he had recently completed work on what was to be his final film, Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom. It's been 50 years since Salò was released, and it still carries with it a fair amount of controversy and misinterpretation. Decried by some as being nothing but pornographic and vile to the senses, others look at Pasolini's vision as an allegory for power and consumerism.

Adapted from The 120 Days of Sodom, written by the Marquis de Sade and described by its author as the "most impure tale ever written," Salò transports de Sade's text to fascist-occupied Italy in the closing days of the Second World War. While the time period is different in Pasolini's adaptation, the themes...

In the wake of the legendary David Lynch's passing, social media timelines flooded with tributes to the influential filmmaker, often utilizing screenshots and gifs from his immaculate body of work. However, another image made the rounds with just as much fervor -- namely, that of Pamela Anderson in the hallowed grounds of the Criterion Closet with the subtitle "We love David Lynch." Anderson had made her visit to the famed closet as part of the awards campaign for "The Last Showgirl," a way for movie lovers to admire (or judge) her taste in cinema. Indeed, countless creatives have made their way to the Criterion Closet since Guillermo del Toro was first filmed making his selections back in 2010, with many calling it a "dream come true."

When Criterion announced that it would celebrate its 40th anniversary by replicating the Closet with a portable Closet van, cinephiles across the country started...

Illustration by Stephanie Lane Gage.It's that time of the year again! Here at Notebook, we celebrate the season of light in the traditional way: with a gift guide, of course, stuffed with all manner of goodies to delight the lucky cinephile in your life—and why not get yourself a little something while you’re at it?You might start with a Mubi subscription and a Notebook print subscription if your recipient is still without either: these are the gifts that keep on giving. Plus: get a jump on next year’s holiday rush by preordering Read Frame Type Film, the just-announced first book by Mubi Editions. Naughty? Nice? Who are we to judge? Whatever your pleasure, we hope you’ll enjoy this twice-checked list.Jump to a category:BooksHome videoMusic and soundtracksPosters, prints, and memorabiliaApparel and home goodsMiscellanyBOOKSIf this first category is somewhat overrepresented in the scope of the overall guide,...

Though the Criterion Collection may be taking their beloved closet on the road to celebrate their 40th anniversary, only the lucky few have been able to step foot in the actual hallowed space. Now, renaissance man Bill Hader can say he’s done so twice. The actor, writer, and director behind the hit HBO series “Barry” first entered the Criterion Closet in 2011. Dressed for the occasion with an orange shirt sporting the Kaibyō from the poster for the 1977 Japanese horror film “House,” Hader drew selections such as Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s grotesque “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” which he referred to at the time as “a great date movie.”

Referencing this pick in his latest video, Hader displayed “Salò” once again and said, “It is not a good date movie. Just want to clear that up.”

After making a few jokes at the expense...

Quick Links The Truth Behind They Shoot Horses, Don't They? They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Is a Race to the Bottom The Value of Life Comes Into Question in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? How The Term "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" Enter The Public Lexicon and What It Means Why the Film Is Still Shocking Today Cinema's strength lies in exploring deep themes that resonate with audiences and spark discussion beyond time. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? shocks with its portrayal of exploitation and deep themes like euthanasia and class struggle. The film's disturbing climax challenges viewers to reconsider the value of life and the ethics of compassion in extreme circumstances.

One of the profound strengths of cinema, and any art form in general, is its ability to touch on greater issues and explore them with meaning that resonates with a wider audience and brings about discussion. A masterful...

For the past three years, the American Cinematheque has presented “Bleak Week,” an annual festival devoted to the greatest films ever made about the darkest side of humanity. This year, the festival will not only be unspooling in Los Angeles June 1 – 7 — with special guests including Al Pacino, Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman, and Karyn Kusama — but will travel to New York for the first time with a week of screenings at the historic Paris Theater starting June 9.

“We are honored to co-present ‘Bleak Week: New York’ in partnership with one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the world,” Cinematheque artistic director Grant Moninger told IndieWire. “This year, over 10,000 people will attend ‘Bleak Week: Year 3’ in Los Angeles, proving that audiences are hungry for such powerful and confrontational cinema. Many people thought they were alone in their desire to explore films with uncomfortable truths, but the truth is that they are part of a large community,...

John Waters is taking issue with Canada’s moniker of being full of the friendliest citizens — at least not when it comes to cinema ratings.

Waters told the Toronto Star that in 1970, the Ontario censor board allegedly burned a print of his film “Multiple Maniacs,” which had been sent for a rating. Waters didn’t hold back his half-century-long disdain for the offense: “Tell them I spit on their grave,” the “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray” filmmaker said.

“I am pro-Canada, even though I sent ‘Multiple Maniacs’ to the distributor [in 1970], which had to go through the Ontario censor board, and they sent me a receipt that just said ‘destroyed.’ They burned the print!” Water said. “Tell them I spit on their grave.”

He added that since that experience, he’s worked in Canada multiple times.

“I’ve been to Toronto many times with my films and my books. It’s a...

Mentions of murder, sexual abuse, and torture

Horror movies are often banned in countries due to their disturbing content, such as extreme torture, sexual abuse, and graphic violence. The Bunny Game, Grotesque, Salò, and The Human Centipede 2 are examples of banned horror movies because of their deeply disturbing and graphic scenes. Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film are some of the most controversial horror movies ever made, known for their explicit and disturbing depictions of violence and sexual content.

It's rare but banned horror movies happen for being too disturbing and for portraying scenes that offend the majority of viewers. Horror movies are meant to be a safe way for the audience to explore a variety of fears, but some were too disturbing and ended up being banned in different countries. While the horror genre has branched out to different subgenres and styles, there have been various horror projects...

From Serge Daney's Footlights: Critical Notebooks 1970–1982, translated by Nicholas Elliott and published by Semiotext(e). The series Never Look Away: Serge Daney's Radical 1970s screens January 26 through February 4 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York.Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.The fact that Salò is Pasolini’s last film doesn’t mean that it must at all costs be seen as his “will”.1 It’s simpler to see it as the reconstruction of what masters on the road to perdition would do in a final attempt to enjoy [jouir de] their power, in a comparable context (Italian fascism) and a similar setting (Salò).It has too often been forgotten that, in the history of Italian fascism, the republic of Salò (September 1943–January 1944) is only the grotesque final act, the repetition as grand guignol of what had already failed as farce, the setting for “some last cowardly turpitudes.”2 Salò is not fascism triumphant,...

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s fascist parable retools the Marquis de Sade’s extreme avant-garde text and relocates the horror to Nazi-occupied Italy in 1944. Few films have generated the kind of controversy Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom has over the years. The premise involves The Libertines, a cabal of despots who round up a group of teenagers, forcing them to participate in stomach-churning acts of degradation and depravity. Salò skews so often into bad-taste territory it is easy to overlook the fact Pasolini had a politically motivated reason for making the film in the first place. He wanted to express his disgust at the modern world and how corporate takeovers and mass marketing are responsible for the erasure of culture. The story is a tough one to sit through but does work as both a meditation on cruelty and power and is a horror film that would even offend the...

As December begins, you might be looking forward to spending time with friends and family over the holidays—and in need of some gift-giving inspiration. Look no further than Notebook's Cinephile Gift Guide, the proverbial online Shop Around the Corner (1940).Below is our third annual, lovingly curated guide to the holiday season. It's sure to spread film-themed cheer, and we hope it's thorough enough to surprise all of the film fans in your life.Jump to a category:Books about cinemaBooks by filmmakers and artistsHome videoMusicHome goods, posters, and gamesApparel Books About CINEMAFirst up is UK culture and music critic Ian Penman’s kaleidoscopic, genre-bending offering to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors. The book has drawn comparisons to Charles Baudelaire and Roland Barthes, but is undoubtedly a sui generis response to a singular legacy.On offer this year from Another Gaze Editions is My Cinema by Marguerite Duras, a...

This article contains mentions of graphic violence, suicide, and sexual abuse.

For the average cinephile, the perfect first date can end with a movie night, but there are a number of films that should never be picked for such an occasion. Handpicking a first date movie can be a Herculean task for anyone if they wish to establish a good impression. Even if a movie is a cult classic for one, it can result in a disappointing viewing experience for the other person. Such was the fate of Kumail Nanjiani's autobiographical protatonist in The Big Sick when he tried to convince Zoe Kazan's character to watch the British horror comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (spoiler alert: she wasn’t impressed).

With the first date movie night being such a make-or-break deal for some, it is advisable to play it safe rather than resort to niche slow-burn dramas, explicitly grotesque horrors,...

Clockwise from top left: Oldboy (Cj Entertainment), Antichrist (IFC Films), Frontier(s) (EuropaCorp), Audition (Vitagraph Films) Graphic: AVClub In 1983, horror movie maestro David Cronenberg was asked why movie audiences like scary films. His answer was that “most people would prefer to [confront their fears] in a metaphorical way, in a controlled way. They...

Clockwise from top left: Oldboy (Cj Entertainment), Antichrist (IFC Films), Frontier(s) (EuropaCorp), Audition (Vitagraph Films)Graphic: AVClub

In 1983, horror movie maestro David Cronenberg was asked why movie audiences like scary films. His answer was that “most people would prefer to [confront their fears] in a metaphorical way, in a controlled way. They...

Some horror movies are so disturbing that viewers only want to watch them once, like "The Human Centipede" and "A Serbian Film." "Audition" starts as a melodrama but quickly turns into a horrifying tale that leaves viewers too shaken to rewatch it. "Hereditary" is an excruciating watch due to its unbearable sense of dread and gruesome moments, making it difficult to watch more than once.

Content Warning: This article contains references to torture, sexual violence, cannibalism, decapitation, animal cruelty, and child mortality.

A handful of horror films are so deeply disturbing that no one who watches them ever wants to rewatch them. Some horror movies have great rewatch value. Scream and The Sixth Sense both require a couple of watches to pick up on all the clues and foreshadowing before their twist reveals. The unbridled genre-bending fun of horror comedies like Evil Dead II and Shaun of the Dead never gets old.

In 1516, English philosopher Thomas More published Utopia, a piece of speculative fiction filled with musings about the ideal society. Of course, it was all nonsense. So even though it took a few more centuries for the word to come into use, “dystopia” has always captured the human imagination better than utopia. Literally stories about “bad places,” dystopias show humanity at its worst.

As you might expect, dystopias tend to be cynical works of imagination. But that’s not all they are. By looking at how dark things could be, dystopias shine a light on the world as it currently is. Works of literature like Watchmen and television series such as Black Mirror have told their stories about bleak alternate realities to issue warnings about the arms race and social media, making grotesques out of the real world.

While this list of darkest cinematic dystopias may not contain the absolute worst images of humanity,...

Every self-respecting or self-hating cinephile has a relationship — whether twisted, confounding, adoring, appalled, or all of the above — to Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible.” His 2002 would-have-been midnight movie turned international sensation told a rape-revenge story from back to front, starting with the resolution working backward to the events preceding a horrifying crime in a red-lit tunnel in Paris. It starred Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, who were then still married and very much in love and looking for a project to do together. Noé was then a Cannes Critics’ Week wunderkind, high off the modest fumes of the success of 1998’s “I Stand Alone,” and not yet the shock-making director of subsequent films like “Enter the Void” and “Climax” we know now.

“Irréversible” is now being re-released theatrically with a “Straight Cut” — in other words, the sequence of the movie now recut into chronological order — that originated first as a bootleg...

This post contains major spoilers for "Infinity Pool."

In Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises," war veteran Jake Barnes, who has suffered an injury leaving him unable to have sex, tells a friend who's sleeping with his beloved, "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." In Thomas Wolfe's 1940 novel "You Can't Go Home Again," protagonist George Webber, a novelist, returns to his hometown after writing about it in a successful book. The novel's contents have outraged his old neighbors and family, appalled by what had secretly laid within George's psyche.

In Brandon Cronenberg's latest film, "Infinity Pool," writer James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) learns about being caught between these two literary extremes in the most disturbing, humiliating, and embarrassing way possible. Now three films into his directing career, "Infinity Pool" further cements Cronenberg's auteurist signature style, his tropes, themes, and aesthetic.

A pedestrian hurries by the Twitter offices, tweeting an opinion about the trailer for Ari Aster’s new movie. Photo: Angela Weiss Rather than waste time and effort scrolling through social media to find the best opinions about cinema, Twitter user @garaboldin has saved us all a lot of hassle...

This post contains spoilers for "Speak No Evil."

2022 gave us some of the most original horror movies of recent years. Surprise hits like "Barbarian" and "Smile" received considerable recognition and made Disney and Paramount, respectively, a decent profit. But there were a host of innovative and novel horror delights which, though not as popular, pushed the boundaries of the genre in unique and often downright harrowing ways. If it wasn't "Skinamarink" with its liminal trauma nightmare, it was films such as "Speak No Evil" — a movie so upsetting its test screening responses ranged from, "The director has to be mentally examined," to, "This film should not be recommended to human beings."

The idea of a "disturbing movie" has almost become a sub-genre of horror itself. YouTube is littered with videos of TikTok types claiming to have watched "the most disturbing films so you don't have to" or running down a...

Director Luca Guadagnino discusses a few of his favorite films with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Bones And All (2022)

A Bigger Splash (2015)

Suspiria (2018)

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Apocalypse Now (1979) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Amarcord (1973) – Bernard Rose’s trailer commentary

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Jason And The Argonauts (1963) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

After Hours (1985) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Journey To Italy (1954)

Empire Of The Sun (1987)

The Flower Of My Secret (1995)

The Last Emperor (1987) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

1900 (1976)

Last Tango In Paris (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Psycho (1960) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Suspiria (1977) – Edgar Wright’s U.S. and international trailer commentaries,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNighthawks.Buenos Aires—1970s Los Angeles—outer space—all of these destinations are contained in Issue 2 of the Notebook print magazine, which will ship out at the end of January. Click here to learn more and subscribe.If you read this New York Times profile of Jennifer Lawrence carefully, you’ll find that she is planning a project with Lynne Ramsay—an adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love. In a follow-up tweet, Kyle Buchanan added that Martin Scorsese will produce.X Crucior is the heavy-metal name of the next film project written by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks—a musical, of course, continuing their momentum with Annette (2021). No director is attached yet, but if it's not too much to ask, a reunion with Guy Maddin would be fun.According to The Times,...

The idea of a grown man having sex with a teenage girl is disturbing. This is — sort of — the point of "Roost." I think? It's never really clear what the thriller is trying to say. To be honest, I may have just missed the memo: partway through this film, my urge to crawl out of my skin was so strong that I think my soul left my body. When it was all over, I stumbled out of the theater in a haze, mumbling apologies to those I bumped into, desperately searching for a dark quiet corner to silently scream in private.

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, "Roost" is a drama about a young 16-year-old girl who falls in love with a much older man via FaceTime. Why she didn't clue in that he was older by the glaringly obvious signs is a mystery. Maybe she was blinded by his flattery of her poetry.

Some films are so disgusting, repellent, violent, prurient, or tasteless that audiences find themselves unable to easily define them.

Films like Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," Gaspar Noë's "Irreversible," Ruggerio Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust," Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer," Tom Six's "The Human Centipede" trilogy, or even John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" are all brazenly confrontational films, each seemingly intended not to draw the audience in, but send the audience out. To keep viewers repelled and disgusted. One might argue that such "extreme" cinema seeks not merely to elicit a visceral response from an audience -- as, say, a mid-2000s torture porn film may do -- but to move them to a level of disgust so intense that they cannot help but push their mind into the realm of politics and philosophy.

To state a broad point: "Extreme" horror,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDore O.'s Alaska (1968)The German avant-garde artist Dore O., whose poetic films were at once vast and intimate explorations of dreams, has died at 75. O. was a founder of the Hamburg Filmmakers Co-op (1968-1974), a participant in the famous German exhibit documenta 5 in 1972, and a prolific painter. The DVD label Re:voir Video had recently released a collection of six restored films by O. In 1988, the critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote: "Dore O. has become classic, and suddenly it turns out that her work has passed the various currents of time unharmed: the time of the cooperative union, the women's film, the structuralists and grammarians, the teachers of new ways of seeing."Subscriptions are now open for Notebook magazine, our print-only publication devoted to the art and culture of cinema. Subscribe now and you’ll...

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, whose latest feature “Rimini” plays in the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, is winding down production on his next film, Variety can reveal.

“Sparta” is a companion piece to Seidl’s competition entry and revolves around the brother of that film’s protagonist, the washed-up singer Richie Bravo. “[‘Rimini’] actually originated as a much larger story,” the director told Variety. “This original story that I started writing was about the two brothers and their father.” Though Seidl wouldn’t share further details about the plot of “Sparta,” he noted that “both protagonists are caught up by their past.”

Marking the director’s return to the Berlinale’s main competition since 2013’s “Paradise: Hope,” “Rimini” is the story of a faded middle-aged crooner trying to make ends meet in the titular Italian resort town during a bleak, blustery off-season. His precarious world is...

The director of Spencer, Pablo Larraín, discusses a few of his favorite movies with host Josh Olson.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Spencer (2021)

Jackie (2016)

Tony Manero (2008)

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) – David DeCoteau’s trailer commentary

Back To The Future (1985) – Tfh’s time-traveling quiz

Fitzcarraldo (1982) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Herzog guide

Burden of Dreams (1982)

Aguirre: The Wrath Of God (1972)

Paris, Texas (1984) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary

Dr. Strangelove (1964) – Michael Lehman’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

Salò, Or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Theorem (1968)

Medea (1969)

Naked (1993)

Secrets And Lies (1996) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Vera Drake (2004)

Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

A History Of Violence (2005)

There Will Be Blood (2007)

The Master (2012)

Phantom Thread (2017) – Dennis...

Filmmaking provocateur Gaspar Noé is back with a surprise new film, “Vortex.” A mysterious, Instagram-style first-look image from the drama has been released, showing someone ghostlike under a bedsheet. Not much about “Vortex” is known yet, though it will have its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the newly created Cannes Premiere section. The cast includes the iconic Italian director Dario Argento, plus Françoise Lebrun and Alex Lutz.

A report in Variety on the film’s Cannes premiere describes “Vortex” as “a documentary-style film revolving around the last days of an elderly couple.” ScreenDaily reports that Noé “had been racing to finish the film” for Cannes, as production only started this year. Some intel dug up by The Film Stage pegs “Vortex” as fusing the styles of French filmmaker Jean Eustache and the Italian giallo horror genre, of which Argento is a figurehead. No official details from...

John Waters has released Prayer to Pasolini in conjunction with his 75th birthday on April 22nd. A tribute to controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Waters’ audio set is currently available in digital format. A 7-inch vinyl version of the two-part title track is available as part of Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 6 and is limited to 1000 copies.

The directors were both maligned in the Seventies for Waters’ Pink Flamingos and Pasolini’s final work, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, over explicit scenes that led to the films being banned.

Italy is bringing to an end a century-long policy of film censorship. The country has abolished state censorship of films by scrapping legislation that has been in place since 1913, which allowed the government to censor and ban movies such as Pasolini’s Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. […]

The post Italy Officially Abolishes Government Film Censorship appeared first on /Film.

Italy has officially abolished film censorship by scrapping legislation that since 1913 has allowed the government to censor scenes and ban movies such as, most famously, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris.”

The move — which is symbolically important, though censorship is de-facto no longer practiced — definitively does away with “the system of controls and interventions that still allowed the Italian state to intervene on the freedom of artists,” said Culture Minister Dario Franceschini who late Monday announced a new decree ending the government’s powers to censor cinema.

Hundreds of films from all over the world have been banned locally during the past decades for religious, “moral” and political reasons.

Under the new decree, film distributors will self-classify their own movies based on existing audience age brackets such as “over-14″ (or aged 12+ if accompanied by a parent) and “over 18” (or 16+ accompanied by adults).

Subsequently,...

Welcome back to Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel, I invite a guest to discuss an arthouse, foreign, or experimental film of their choice.

Warning: The episode features discussions about suicide. If you feel you are in crisis or know someone who is struggling, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It is a free, 24-hour hotline at 1.800.273.Talk (8255).

For the eleventh episode, I switched up the format of the show a little bit and talked to both Charlie Nash, a contributor at Edge Media and various other publications, and his close friend, William Willoughby, a veteran who was kind enough to speak about the film’s relationship with his own Ptsd, about Elem Klimov’s controversial and influential 1985 Russian anti-war film, Come and See––which is available on The Criterion Collection and to stream on The Criterion Channel. Klimov’s...

Italian film producer whose credits included Last Tango in Paris and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The producer Alberto Grimaldi, who has died aged 95, worked with most of the giants of Italian cinema, including Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. Fittingly for someone who began his career as a lawyer, he seemed to spend almost as much time in court, defending the films he had developed and financed, as he did on set. Hardly surprising when his credits included Bertolucci’s erotic chamber piece Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Pasolini’s remorseless study of fascism, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). These were among eight of his films that Italian censors and prosecutors accused of offending public decency.

After a three-year legal battle over Last Tango in Paris, Grimaldi received a suspended prison sentence in 1976, along with the director and the film’s stars,...

Kaludjercic has worked at leading festivals and at top sales and distribution outfits.

Growing up in her native Croatia against the backdrop of the violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia, Vanja Kaludjercic had limited access to cinema, let alone auteur filmmaking.

“I’d always been interested in cinema and culture but there wasn’t much going on at all for many years after the war,” says Kaludjercic, who kicks-off her maiden edition as artistic director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) this week.

Rotterdam is the latest chapter in a remarkable 20-year career that has encompassed roles in the...

Let the best-of-the-year lists commence. While guilds and critics groups will soon be delivering their opinions, one of the few of genuine interest each year comes from a single person: the wonderfully eccentric director John Waters, whose eclectic tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen.

Topping his list this year is Tyler Cornack’s spring release Butt Boy, which features a strange tale of missing persons potentially disappearing up someone’s rectum, followed by the recommended psychological body horror film Swallow. Also among the list are the latest films from Pedro Almodóvar, Craig Zobel, Quentin Dupieux and, as a 10th place tie leading to 11 selections, new courtroom dramas by Steve McQueen and Aaron Sorkin.

Check out the list below via Baltimore Fishbowl, which will appear in the next issue of Artforum. We’ve also included links to our reviews.

1. Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)

2. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)

3. The Hunt...

If you put a big red button in front of someone and tell them not to push the button, all that person is going to want to do is push the damn thing.

So then to the strange case of Megan is Missing, a low budget exploitation movie shot in 2006, given a limited release in 2011 which is now suddenly trending due to some high profile TikTok users talking about how utterly horrible it is and apparently warning others off with hyperbolic statements such as:

@bella.clare

please watch this film at your own risk. It is something i will never watch again . i am forever traumatized.

@lilnutmegg

If you are thinking of watching Megan is Missing, please don’t. I love horror/thriller/murder mysteries and I can watch them very easily, but this one I will never ever forget. I couldn’t even finish it.

Not to miss a trick,...

Tinto Brass's Deadly Attractions and Sinful Desires is showing September - October, 2020 on Mubi.Above: Salon KittyKnown today as a maestro of erotic cinema, Italian director Tinto Brass’s legendary status is hard-won and attributable to his dogged dedication to filming sex. There’s a whiff of aimless opportunism in his genre-hopping early career, which included flirtations with neorealism, psychedelic experimentalism, and even a spaghetti western. But in Salon Kitty (1976), his first English-language film, Brass began to consolidate and wield influences. Salon Kitty brandishes its references in plain acknowledgement of the director’s derivative tendencies, meanwhile offering glimpses of Brass-original motifs that he would later (rather ingeniously) repurpose in erotic contexts. In Salon Kitty, we can perceive the director’s artistic resolve stiffening, amounting to a film that’s greater than the sum of its cherry-picked parts. Based on the stranger-than-fiction, true story of a Berlin brothel of co-opted...

Just judging by the slate, last year’s New York Film Festival offered a testament to the nearly six-decade-old fest’s place in the fall awards circuit firmament, and in New York filmgoing culture. Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” world premiered on opening night last year, and a strong slate of future Oscar nominees all had their Gotham bows at the fest.

This year is a different story, for reasons that should be all too obvious, and the festival is making no bones about its off-year status, right down to a cheeky John Waters-designed poster that brags: “No awards! No world premieres! Fewer films than Toronto!” Not that many New Yorkers are likely to care about such old-normal measuring sticks, especially when the festival is offering a cornucopia of well-curated cinema that will unspool over a leisurely pace, starting Sept. 25 and extending through Oct. 11. Below are some highlights.

At...

John Waters is the designer of the 58th New York Film Festival poster and is presenting Art Movie Hell at the Drive-In Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center revealed today the 58th New York Film Festival poster, featuring Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, Barry Jenkins, Agnès Varda, and Jean-Luc Godard. The poster was designed pre-pandemic by John Waters. He also selected two films for his John Waters Presents: Art Movie Hell at the Drive-In, Gaspar Noé’s Climax and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days Of Sodom.

58th New York Film Festival poster designed by John Waters

“Waters’s NYFF58 poster is both a fond tribute and witty parody of the historic festival, poking fun at the long-held stereotypes, valid critiques, and presumed pomp and circumstance of the annual Lincoln Center event. The concept was developed before the current health crisis, in collaboration with and inspired by Globe Poster,...

Each year, the New York Film Festival invites an artist to take a crack at visually representing the event with an exclusive poster, and this year, it’s cult filmmaker John Waters’ turn to do the honors. His movies having been perennially shut out of the New York Film Festival, Waters makes his NYFF debut here, with a poster featuring the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Martin Scorsese, Barry Jenkins, Agnès Varda, and Jean-Luc Godard. The poster serves as a parody of critiques hurled at the festival over the years. See below.

“Since none of my films were ever chosen to be in the New York Film Festival, I was thrilled to be asked to design this year’s poster. I always knew I’d get my ass in there somehow!” Waters said. “What better way to show my respect and irreverence for this prestigious event than to bring along Globe Poster,...

When Dau. Natasha premiered at the Berlinale less than a moon cycle ago it was unprecedented and an entirely unique film. We now have precedent for the Dau movies and they are the Dau movies themselves. Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s constructed totalitarian nightmare is justifiably taking fire at the moment (over allegations regarding consent and the mistreatment of actors) but if Degeneration is to be the last Dau feature to see the light of day it will be a fitting coda. Yes, Natasha was a startling introduction–as provocative as it was fascinating–but Degeneration is something else: the first Dau epic novel and, perhaps, the first masterpiece of the series.

All in all, the two are scarcely comparable. Natasha had a running time of 146 minutes and took place over the course of a few days in the early ‘50s, with only a spattering of events and characters seen on screen.

Hot off the breakthrough success of 2018’s “I Can Only Imagine,” Alabaman brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin are back to convert an even wider secular audience with another harmless and tin-eared Christian rock biopic that combines the melodrama of Douglas Sirk with the edginess of Bible camp. But while “I Still Believe” name-checks Jesus so often that he should probably get residuals for it, this heartrending true story about love, loss, and

Or at least it might have been if the Erwin brothers weren’t so unwaveringly earnest with their sermonizing — so hellbent on finding God that they forgot to make any of their characters feel human. Sanitized to the point that it makes “A Walk to Remember” seem like “Salò” by comparison. Led by a “Riverdale” actor whose outspoken piety can’t offset the suspicion that he was body-snatched away from his sinful day job at the CW (the...