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The late Rutger Hauer’s life is to be explored in the new documentary Like Tears In Rain. More details on its UK release here as well.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly six years since the world lost Rutger Hauer. The enigmatic actor died at the age of 75, leaving behind a film career of nearly 200 films. Blade Runner grabbed a lot of the headlines, but what about Solider Of Orange and Spetters with Paul Verhoeven, genre joys Surviving The Game, The Hitcher and Split Second, or his later blockbusters, Sin City and The Dark Knight. He happily sold you Guinness, too.

But still, here’s an actor whose behind the scenes story stayed pretty much that throughout his life. The curtain is now being pulled back a little courtesy of a new documentary feature Like Tears In Rain. Wonder where they got that name from.

George Lucas vetted several options before roping in Richard Marquand to helm Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Some directors were not interested in directing Lucas’s epic space film, while the creator rejected a few others. One of the directors whom Lucas didn’t want for the film was the Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven.

Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher in a still from George Lucas’s Return of the Jedi | Lucasfilm Ltd.

While he was a director with a vision, Verhoeven was known for including graphic scenes depicting violence and s*xual content in his films. Lucas wasn’t impressed by these scenes in one of the director’s films and decided to look for another director.

George Lucas Didn’t Want Paul Verhoeven To Direct Return Of The Jedi

Paul Verhoeven on the sets of Elle | Sbs Productions

Paul Verhoeven worked in the Dutch...

RoboCop became both a blockbuster and a controversial critical darling upon its release in 1987 due to a mix of jet black humor and as subtle as a jackhammer social commentary sticking a perfect landing. Its success was a surprise to an industry that had looked at Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner’s original script with its simplistic one-word comic book title and assumed it was fated to be a high-concept stinker.

The 2023 RoboDoc documentary miniseries does a terrific job of chronicling the effort it took to turn RoboCop into both a box office win and an enduring cult masterpiece with a quick and funny format that makes it accessible to modern fans. The truly hardcore might not learn many new details from the four-hour presentation, available on Tubi, but one thing the documentary does do, especially after the Catholic satire of Benedetta, is make it clear how much of RoboCop...

Paul Verhoeven makes movies as if controversy keeps him warm at night. In 1980 he made “Spetters” (Dutch for “Babes”), which has been described as “the sexually explicit answer to ‘Grease,'” complete with depictions of sexual sadism. Verhoeven said it inspired his native Holland to create NASA — the National Anti-Spetters Association — and to cut off his funding. That led to a move to Hollywood, where he made films like “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls.” More recently he’s favored France, which allows him more freedom to pursue racy subject matter without worrying about what he calls America’s “Puritan” attitudes about sex.

Cannes debut “Benedetta” is his latest provocation, a true story about 17th-century Italian lesbian nuns who were punished for their sins by the patriarchal Catholic Church. This intense religious drama has echoes of Verhoeven’s 1985 Orion Pictures flop “Flesh and Blood,” a historical romance starring Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh...

Paul Verhoeven makes movies as if controversy keeps him warm at night. In 1980 he made “Spetters” (Dutch for “Babes”), which has been described as “the sexually explicit answer to ‘Grease,'” complete with depictions of sexual sadism. Verhoeven said it inspired his native Holland to create NASA — the National Anti-Spetters Association — and to cut off his funding. That led to a move to Hollywood, where he made films like “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls.” More recently he’s favored France, which allows him more freedom to pursue racy subject matter without worrying about what he calls America’s “Puritan” attitudes about sex.

Cannes debut “Benedetta” is his latest provocation, a true story about 17th-century Italian lesbian nuns who were punished for their sins by the patriarchal Catholic Church. This intense religious drama has echoes of Verhoeven’s 1985 Orion Pictures flop “Flesh and Blood,” a historical romance starring Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh...

He shocked the Netherlands in the ’70s and ’80s and scandalized Hollywood in the ’90s. Now Paul Verhoeven is bringing his lesbian nun saga to Cannes. What could go wrong?

From the moment he gave up academia for filmmaking, director Paul Verhoeven has been a maverick disruptor, mixing sex and violent imagery in his provocative early Dutch films, then taking the formula to the U.S. with a run of shocking and subversive ’90s Hollywood blockbusters that included RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers. Now, he’s adding the historical repression of religion to the mix with Benedetta, a French-language film he’ll premiere in Competition at Cannes. Starring Virginie Efira, it’s the true story of a Sister Benedetta Carlini, a 17th Century abbess whose claims of mystical visions and miracles were investigated by the Catholic church in a trial that...

German cinematographer Jost Vacano, who lensed Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 film Das Boot, is set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s EnergaCamerimage cinematography film festival, which is currently slated to be held Nov. 13-20 in Toruń, Poland.

Vacano was Oscar nominated for Das Boot, for which he developed a gyro-stabilized camera system to capture the claustrophobic space in a submarine. He reteamed with Petersen on 1984’s Neverending Story.

The Dp also enjoyed a two-decade collaboration with Paul Verhoeven, which included creating a futuristic colony on Mars in Total Recall, dystopian Detroit in RoboCop, as well as Soldier of Orange, Starship Troopers, Spetters, Hollow Man and Showgirls.

Camerimage notes that Vacano ...

German cinematographer Jost Vacano, who lensed Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 film Das Boot, is set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s EnergaCamerimage cinematography film festival, which is currently slated to be held Nov. 13-20 in Toruń, Poland.

Vacano was Oscar nominated for Das Boot, for which he developed a gyro-stabilized camera system to capture the claustrophobic space in a submarine. He reteamed with Petersen on 1984’s Neverending Story.

The Dp also enjoyed a two-decade collaboration with Paul Verhoeven, which included creating a futuristic colony on Mars in Total Recall, dystopian Detroit in RoboCop, as well as Soldier of Orange, Starship Troopers, Spetters, Hollow Man and Showgirls.

Camerimage notes that Vacano ...

First they conquered Hollywood film shoots, now they’re aiming to drive up local production, adding a new local edge to one of Europe’s most popular big shoot locales.

A decade ago, Spain’s Canary Islands started to become a top shoot destination for big international films, offering wide-ranging landscapes and unique tax advantages.

An influx of international film and TV shoots served to establish an industrial base, nurturing high-profile crew talent and sparking the creation of competitive production services companies.

Now in second stage growth, the Atlantic Ocean islands are raising the ante, boosting local industry’s production subsidies and their international exposure.

Early fruit of new ambitious measures, the Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster is introducing at next week’s virtual Berlin European Film Market an 80-minute promo reel dubbed Canarias Unleashed which offers a sneak preview of six upcoming features produced on the Islands by local companies tapping into local talent.

It was 30 years ago that TriStar Pictures released Total Recall, a sci-fi action movie directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronny Cox, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, and Rachel Ticotin. Based loosely on a story by Philip K. Dick called “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” the movie starred Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, a construction worker in the year 2084 who begins having strange dreams about a mysterious woman and the Earth colony that exists on Mars.

His wife Lori (Stone) dismisses the dreams, but it turns out they’re not dreams at all but memories: Quaid is actually a secret agent named Hauser who once worked for the governor of the Martian colony (Cox) but has had his memories wiped and replaced with false ones. Lori is not his wife at all, but an operative for the governor and the wife of Richter (Ironside), the governor’s ruthless fixer.

What do you say about a documentary that concedes the reputation of director Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 Showgirls as “a piece of shit” and still makes a case for the most explicit, expensive Nc-17 sexcapade this side of Caligula as “a stealth masterpiece”? There must be reasons why the film dubbed “All About Eve in a G-string” rose from the ashes to achieve a commercial afterlife as a cult sensation in revival houses, home video and digital streaming. And McHale is nothing if not determined to dig out those reasons.

You...

Chicago – Cult character actor Rutger Hauer passed away late last month, but the mark he made with his array of performances carried through two generation of admirers, even receiving the honor of Best Dutch Actor of the (20th) Century in 1999. He died on July 19th, 2019, in his native Netherlands. He was 75.

He was born in Breukelen, the Netherlands, to actor parents. After a couple stints in the military, he graduated from the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam in 1967, and made his TV debut two years later when director Paul Verhoeven cast him in the Dutch medieval action drama “Floris.” His film debut came in 1973 with “Turkish Delight,” and he performed mostly in Dutch films during the 1970s, including work with Verhoeven again on “Solider of Orange” (1977) and “Spetters” (1980).

Although Hauer made one international English language film previously, his American debut came in 1981 with “Nighthawks.” His was unforgettable one...

R.I.P. Roy Batty. Blade Runner, Hobo With A Shotgun, Sin City, Nighthawks, and so many more. Beloved actor Rutger Hauer died July 19th at his home in the Netherlands after a brief illness. He was 75. In 2016, Mr. Hauer took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about his career, and Drawing Home, the film he was promoting at the time.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 8th, 2016.

Co-starring in Drawing Home is veteran actor Rutger Hauer, who has an international reputation for playing everything from romantic leads to action heroes to sinister villains. Hauer began his career in Dutch films, often collaborating with director Paul Verhoeven on films such as Spetters, The Soldier Of Orange, and Turkish Delight. Hauer came to Hollywood in the early ’80s and has co-starred in many popular films including Nighthawks, Blade Runner, The Hitcher, Ladyhawke, and Hobo With A Shotgun. In Drawing Home,...

Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor best known for portraying the tragic villain Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic “Blade Runner,” died following a short illness. He was 75.

His website, the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, announced the news Wednesday. Hauer’s managers, as well as his agent Steve Kenis, also confirmed his passing to TheWrap and added that a funeral was held for Hauer on Wednesday morning.

Hauer starred opposite Harrison Ford as the ruthless replicant Roy Batty in “Blade Runner” in 1982 after making his American film debut in 1981 with Sylvester Stallone in “Nighthawks.” The actor subsequently appeared in several ’80s action and adventure hits like “Ladyhawke,” “Flesh+Blood,” “The Hitcher” and “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” He also won a Golden Globe for his work in the TV movie “Escape from Sobibor,” about a commandant at a death camp in World War II.

Also Read: Terry Rawlings, British Film Editor of 'Alien,...

Rutger Hauer, the versatile Dutch leading man of the ’70s who went on star in the 1982 “Blade Runner” as Roy Batty, died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illness. He was 75.

Hauer’s agent, Steve Kenis, confirmed the news and said that Hauer’s funeral was held Wednesday.

His most cherished performance came in a film that was a resounding flop on its original release. In 1982, he portrayed the murderous yet soulful Roy Batty, leader of a gang of outlaw replicants, opposite Harrison Ford in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi noir opus “Blade Runner.” The picture became a widely influential cult favorite, and Batty proved to be Hauer’s most indelible role.

More recently, he appeared in a pair of 2005 films: as Cardinal Roark in “Sin City,” and as the corporate villain who Bruce Wayne discovers is running the Wayne Corp. in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.

It’s a shame that “You Don’t Nomi,” a new documentary about the failure and reevaluation of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 pulp film “Showgirls,” doesn’t live up to its truly inspired title. A play on the movie’s enigmatic, beguiling, and totally unhinged protagonist Nomi Malone, played by Elizabeth Berkeley in a career-defining (and -ending) role, the title calls to mind Lesley Gore’s 1963 classic “You Don’t Own Me” — a connection that amuses at first glance, but becomes quite tenuous once you think about it. The same could be said for “You Don’t Nomi.”

For the uninitiated, “Showgirls” follows a young Nomi Malone as she arrives in Las Vegas with dreams of becoming a dancer. Fresh off the success of “Basic Instinct,” Verhoeven attracted top-tier talent of the era like Kyle MacLachlan and Gina Gershon, both of whom thought they were signing onto a grittier, more daring “Basic Instinct.

Sean Wilson Mar 16, 2017

From Total Recall and RoboCop through to Turkish Delight and Flesh+Blood, we look at the musical scores of Paul Verhoeven films...

The Netherlands' arch-provocateur and filmmaker extraordinaire Paul Verhoeven is back in cinemas right now with Elle. A characteristically confrontational and provocative thriller, it spins a rape-revenge storyline into a mordantly funny, blackly comic and off-kilter odyssey, and has garnered an Oscar nomination for extraordinary lead Isabelle Huppert in the process.

See related The Maze Runner 3: Dylan O’Brien seriously injured on set Maze Runner 3 release now delayed, Dylan O’Brien still not back

It's exactly what we've come to expect from a veteran director who's done it all, having made jaws drop in both Europe and Hollywood - but beneath Verhoeven's love of excess and shock tactics lurks real artistry, and nowhere is this more evident than in the remarkable run of film scores...

Director Paul Verhoeven, that eternal Dutch wild child (even though he's 78), delivers a perverse kick whether his films are terrific (Spetters, Robocop, Black Book) or just terrific trash (Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers). His new surprise package, Elle, is a dark comedy about ... rape. Like I said, the dude is a button pusher.

"No American actress would ever take on such an amoral movie," Verhoeven has stated. So the great French actress Isabelle Huppert steps into the role of Michele Leblanc, the divorced CEO of a Paris-based video-game company that...

Drawing Home screens Thursday, Nov. 10 at 6:30pm at The Tivoli Theater as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found Here. Lead actors Juan Riedinger and Julie Lynn Mortenson will be in attendance as well as producers Allan Neuwirth and Margarethe Baillou.

In 1920s Boston, East Coast debutante Catharine Robb (newcomer Julie Lynn Mortensen) is dating the most eligible bachelor in the world, John D. Rockefeller III. Her future seems set: a dream life in the upper echelons of society. But Catherine finds her careful plans upended when she meets a young painter, Peter Whyte (Juan Riedinger), from one of the most beautiful places on Earth, the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Although their worlds are polar opposites, a mutual love of art draws them together. They soon face a universal question: Can you find “home” in another person? Inspired by the true story of the central couple,...

After getting his start in his native Holland with wild, sexually explicit dramas like Spetters and Turkish Delight (a 1974 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign-Language Film), director Paul Verhoeven came to Hollywood in the Eighties and rebranded himself as a can-do-anything sci-fi filmmaker with a slightly satircal bent. If you needed to make a film about a cyborg cop (Robocop) or send Arnold Schwarzenegger to Mars (Total Recall), he was your man. But after tooling around postapocalytic Detroit and outer space, Verhoeven took a step back to his eroticsploitation, semi-perverse roots to make 1992's Basic Instinct.

The Paul Verhoeven filmography screens at the Tiff Bell Lightbox through April 4th, culminating in a screening of his new “crowdsourced” film, Tricked.

Common wisdom dictates that cynicism and sentimentality are carefully linked, if not outright synonymous. In filmic terms, the most comfortable formulation of that argument is to align, for instance, romantic comedies with socially-acceptable (and, often, utterly noxious) notions of gender politics. Through the deployment of relationships and character profiles that support popular notions of how women and men behave, these movies are able to exploit comfortable mores in order to mainline easy pathos. What’s less common is to consider how that relationship between affect and effect can be subverted, perhaps because it’s relatively rare for truly subversive artists to be handed the proverbial keys to the kingdom.

Enter Paul Verhoeven. From his early Dutch features, including Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) and Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange...

Should we run the risk of remaking this record Razzie winner?

Although he’s not directed a film since Black Book six years ago, Paul Verhoeven’s name has been bouncing around the internet as a result of two of his best-known films being remade. This year we had the remake of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell, which was by all accounts deeply disappointing, and in 2014 we will be treated to a rebooted RoboCop (if “treated” is the right word).

Assuming that it takes money, as Total Recall did, which other of Verhoeven’s films should the Hollywood remake machine be targeting next? Anything from Starship Troopers onwards is in far too recent memory, while his early and highly-regarded Dutch-language work isn’t well-known enough for American audiences to be pulled in: there are few out there who would be hyped just from hearing the words The Fourth Man, Spetters or Soldier of Orange.

From the 70s to the present, we look back through the sterling work of Rutger Hauer to bring you the actor’s 10 finest films that aren't Blade Runner...

For some, Dutch actor Rutger Hauer will forever be associated with a certain rooftop speech about tears in rain. But although his turn as doomed replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner was a classic one, Hauer’s output before and since has been stunningly prolific. This list, therefore, is designed to highlight 10 of Hauer’s finest non-Blade Runner movies, with a particular emphasis on those that are lesser known – which is why we've gone for some older pictures rather than the more recent and mainstream, such as Batman Begins. And since this is Den of Geek, expect to find lots of action movies, horror, and low-budget sci-fi in the entries below.

One thing they all have in common, though, irrespective of...

Being a Christian in the 21st century is difficult at the best of times. Even without Mel Gibson constantly putting his foot in it, or Westboro Baptist Church spitting venom at the very people they are supposed to be helping, we have to contend with a media backlash whenever a seemingly ‘Christian’ film is released.

The problem seems to be that people don’t mind Christianity per se: if people are Bible-bashing in the streets, they can ignore them or talk back. What they resent, or appear to resent, are films with Christian undertones – allegories or parables which introduce Christian beliefs or ideas in a supposedly secular context. When The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe came out in 2005, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee accused it of “invad[ing] children’s minds with Christian iconography… heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.” Ouch.

Director Paul Verhoeven.

This is the first of two conversations I've had with director Paul Verhoeven, the second being for his Ww II drama "Black Book." When I met Verhoeven in the Sony Pictures commissary for lunch in October of 1997, I had been a fan of his work since seeing the classic "Soldier of Orange" in 1979. The manic energy that Verhoeven is renowned for was evident throughout our chat, and was infectious. By the time our all-too-brief lunch was over, I found myself waving my hands while I spoke in rapid clips, and using more bounce than usual in my stride, to the point where a few friends suggested I switch to decaf.

The other memory that remains vivid is the passion and high hopes that Verhoeven had for "Starship Troopers." Like the director himself, I thought this would be a groundbreaking movie event and that the world would embrace...

Paul Verhoeven is one of those directors that reared me as I was first starting to appreciate film. At the ripe old age of 7, I saw Robocop and it blew my mind. At the age of 10, I saw Total Recall in theaters and vowed to myself that I would see every Verhoeven film in theaters from that point forward. I did, by the way, some were good (Starship Troopers), some were horrible (The Hollow Man) and some were not appreciated until later on (Showgirls). But no matter what, I saw what Verhoeven was getting at every time he got behind the camera to make one of his grand American made films.

It wasn’t until I was a bit older and in college that I heard about his Dutch films when he lived in Holland and made smaller dramas, such as Turkish Delight and Spetters. I wanted to know more about this man,...

COLOGNE, Germany -- Paul Verhoeven has signed on to direct the dark thriller One Step Behind, an adaptation of the book by Swedish writer Henning Mankel for Germany's Constantin Film Produktion, Constantin production head Martin Moszkowicz said in an interview. The story focuses on the mysterious killings of three college girls and features dyspeptic police inspector Kurt Wallander, a regular in Mankel's thrillers. One Step Behind will be Verhoeven's first film since the sci-fi actioner Hollow Man (2000) and reteams the director with screenwriter Gerard Soeteman, who scripted many of Verhoeven's earlier Dutch films, including Soldier of Orange, Spetters and Turkish Delight. Constantin CEO Bernd Eichinger will produce One Step Behind. Constantin acquired the rights to One Step Behind two years ago and approached Verhoeven, who has a development deal with the Munich-based production house.