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As his lost 70s songs emerge, the Oscar-winner and musician explains how the magic of art keeps him upbeat even after losing homes to LA fires

A rainy day in Santa Barbara, and Jeff Bridges sits in his garage, wondering where his favourite spectacles have got to. We are in the middle of a rangy conversation on a video call, meandering our way from Bob Dylan to the anthropomorphism of bees, via Crazy Heart, Cutter’s Way and The Big Lebowski. There are sidetracks and double-backs and loose threads. Intermittently, an unseen assistant hands the actor pairs of glasses seemingly identical to the ones he is already wearing. Bridges, in a soft brown cardigan, inspects each pair and dismisses them. “Where was I?” he asks.

The garage here serves as Bridges’ jam space and ceramics workshop. He has drums set up for his grandson, and a picture of Captain Beefheart on the wall.

When “Boulevard Nights” opened in early 1979, it was one of several major studio films — along with “The Warriors,” The Wanderers,” and “Over the Edge” — to take on gang violence as its primary subject. After the movies inspired a handful of violent incidents at theaters, Paramount doubled down on the marketing of Walter Hill‘s “The Warriors” and turned it into a box office hit; unfortunately for “Boulevard Nights” director Michael Pressman, Warner Bros. went in the opposite direction and pulled their film from the venues where violence had broken out, essentially abandoning the movie.

“Warner Bros. said, ‘We’re very proud of this movie, don’t get us wrong,'” Pressman told IndieWire, “‘but we’re not about to risk lawsuits.'” Over the years, however, “Boulevard Nights” has found the audience it always deserved via repertory screenings (it’s a perennial favorite at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema...

There's like, been a murder, dude. Years before Jeff Bridges graced screens with his defining role in The Big Lebowski, he starred in a darker, grittier stoner noir of sorts. Cutter's Way is a forgotten, early '80s thriller masterpiece. Directed by Ivan Passer, the film was a groundbreaking departure for how veterans were portrayed in Hollywood at the time. John Heard (Home Alone) appeared alongside Bridges, delivering one of his greatest lead role performances as an alcoholic Vietnam War vet. Their partnership notably shares a similar dynamic to the central friendship between The Dude and his unstable Vietnam War vet best friend, Walter, played by a buzzing John Goodman, in The Coen Brothers' classic. Both films have gone on to achieve cult-classic status, but couldn't contrast each other more in terms of their moods and ambiance.

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

Film Forum

Films by Scorsese, De Palma, Woody Allen, Coppola, Jarmusch, and the Coen Brothers play in “Out of the 80s,“ which includes Cutter’s Way on 35mm; Le Samouraï continues in a new 4K restoration; Raiders of the Lost Ark plays on Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

A massive overview of Bulle Ogier continues with films by Rivette, Duras, and Oliveira.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Thin Red Line, Mars Attacks, and Princess Mononoke all play on 35mm as part of “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex“; The Right Stuff shows on 35mm this Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood and Dunston Checks In both play on 35mm this Saturday; The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The Runner screen on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Med Hondo’s West Indies has encore showings.

The supposed demise of physical media has been well covered and long lamented, with each passing year bringing reports of yet another nail in the coffin of the once flourishing DVD and Blu-ray market. Fall 2023 brought a double whammy of bad news: Netflix shipped its final discs to customers before closing up its DVD department for good, and a month later, Best Buy announced that it would be phasing out the sale of physical media. Yet, while DVDs are no longer the massive revenue generator for studios that they were throughout the first decade of the 2000s, it has never been a better time to be a physical media enthusiast. Thanks to independent labels like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Shout! Factory, Arrow, Imprint, Indicator, and many others, every month sees the release of well over a dozen exceptional titles, often lovingly restored and with indispensable scholarly extras.

That we’re living...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Circus Maximus

Before their collaboration Aggro Dr1ft heads to the fall festival circuit, Travis Scott and Harmony Korine’s Utopia album companion Circus Maximus is now available to stream for free. Also featuring segments directed by Gaspar Noé, Nicolas Winding Refn, Valdimar Jóhannsson (Lamb), and music-video maestro Kahlil Joseph, the release follows a brief theatrical run a few weeks back.

Killer Joe (William Friedkin)

Somewhere between greasy leftover fried chicken and stale half-finished beer cans sits Killer Joe, filmmaker William Friedkin’s fresh adaptation of Tracy Letts’ 20-year-old play. Young Chris (Emile Hirsch) has an idea: have his mother killed and collect on her insurance in order to pay off a batch of drugs that’s gone missing. Chris’ father Ansel shrugs in agreement,...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

Ivan Passer’s first American film and his first in the English language is a core life-with-a-junkie tale in a cold Manhattan winter. George Segal is the ‘habituated, not addicted’ (he says) user whose married life has already been destroyed. Can he escape with the help of his new girlfriend? Hector Elizondo’s pimp/pusher has no intention of letting that happen. What’s weird is Passer’s frequently light tone — Segal’s criminal antics verge on the absurd. It’s a great film to see Karen Black, a young Robert De Niro and even Paula Prentiss in action, and yet another snapshot of Times Square in its most degraded decade.

Born to Win

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Scraping Bottom / Street Date May 31, 2022 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 27.99, from Amazon / 34.99

Starring: George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Jay Fletcher, Robert De Niro, Ed Madsen, Marcia Jean Kurtz,...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2021, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

By many metrics, 2021 was a terrible year. Whether it was the persistence of a global pandemic and the ineffectiveness of those in charge to properly manage it or the increasing inanity of Film Twitter discourse clogging one’s timeline every day, it often felt like there was nowhere to seek relief from this year’s woes. But there was salvation somewhere: inside the films themselves. Despite what some may lead you to believe, and despite the perhaps rather milquetoast quality of many of this year’s award candidates, 2021 was the best year for cinema we’ve seen in quite some time.

Whether you were able to head back to theaters at some point during the year or remained watching from the safety of your own home, there...

As the Hollywood blockbuster machine continues to dust itself off and release some early winter hits, Hulu is going in a bit of a different direction with its list of new releases for November 2021.

There are no big Hulu original films of note this month. Instead there’s a whole host of original series. The TV parade starts on Nov. 5 with the release of Animaniacs season 2. Also getting a second season this month is monarchal comedy The Great on Nov. 19. The most intriguing series, however, is animated Marvel comedy Marvel’s Hit Monkey. As its name so graciously implies, this is a show about a hit monkey…as in monkey assassin. Naturally the hit monkey is haunted by the ghost of Jason Sudeikis because it’s important that everything make sense.

Though Hulu doesn’t have any original movies in November, its list of library movie titles is quite vast.

(Welcome to Now Stream This, a column dedicated to the best movies streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and every other streaming service out there.) I have some news! Now Stream This is going weekly. That’s right — rather than once or twice a month, you’ll now get streaming recommendations every week, just in time for your […]

The post The Best Movies Streaming Right Now: ‘The Insider’, ‘One Hour Photo’, ‘Cutter’s Way’, ‘The Boy Behind the Door’, ‘Untold: Malice at the Palace’ appeared first on /Film.

The July lineup at The Criterion Channel has been revealed, most notably featuring the new Wong Kar Wai restorations from the recent box set release, including As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and his shorts Hua yang de nian hua and The Hand.

Also among the lineup is a series on neo-noir with Body Double, Manhunter, Thief, The Last Seduction, Cutter’s Way, Brick, Night Moves, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and more. The channel will also feature a spotlight on art-house animation with work by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more.

With Jodie Mack’s delightful The Grand Bizarre, the landmark doc Hoop Dreams, Orson Welles’ take on Othello, the recent Oscar entries Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time and You Will Die at Twenty, and much more,...

A “Jacob’s Ladder”-ish paranoid thriller arriving just in time to find conspiracy theories plunked right in the middle of post-election American politics, “Wander” only muddies the water further. This latest collaboration between director April Mullen and writer Tim Doiron offers yet another unpredictable shift, but pushes its idiosyncrasies off a cliff before establishing any narrative terra firma.

There is some pleasure to be had in watching an atypically frenetic Aaron Eckhart as a Ptsd-afflicted loner wading deep into possibly-imagined evildoings in the Southwest, with Tommy Lee Jones and Heather Graham also welcome as two allies. Still, the film’s hyperbolic style and convoluted storytelling tend to exhaust patience rather than build intrigue, making for a muddle whose too-many twists and turns ultimately seem meaningless as well as implausible. Saban Films is releasing the Canadian co-production to American audiences via digital, on demand and available theaters Dec. 4.

At the town limits of desert hamlet Wander,...

Actress Carrie Coon joins Josh and Joe to discuss the Best of what she’s been watching during the pandemic.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Nest (2020)

Gone Girl (2014)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Sabrina (1954)

The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Opening Night (1977)

Husbands (1971)

Too Late Blues (1961)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Faces (1968)

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Gloria (1980)

Mephisto (1981)

The Cremator (1969)

Zama (2017)

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017)

Wanda (1970)

Blue Collar (1978)

The Lunchbox (2013)

63 Up (2019)

To Sleep With Anger (1990)

Killer of Sheep (1978)

The Glass Shield (1994)

My Brother’s Wedding (1983)

Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)

Cutter’s Way (1981)

Scenes From A Marriage (1973)

The Magician (1958)

The Silence (1963)

The Magic Flute (1975)

The Last House on the Left (1972)

The Virgin Spring (1963)

Summer with Monika (1953)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Wings of Desire (1987)

Black Girl (1966)

Fat Girl (2001)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Parasite (2019)

Jesus of Montreal (1989)

Other Notable Items...

Caesar Cordova, a character actor whose long association with Al Pacino included appearances in Scarface and Carlito’s Way, died Aug. 26 of natural causes in Atlantic City. He was 84.

His death was announced by son Panchito Gomez, an actor whose credits include Selena, American Me and Hill Street Blues, with Deadline’s sister publication Variety first reporting the news.

Cordova first appeared with Pacino in 1969 in Broadway’s Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? The play marked the Broadway debut of the little-known Pacino. In Brian de Palma’s 1983 Scarface, Cordova played a lunch stand cook, and 10 years later played a barber in Carlito’s Way.

Other film credits include Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), Cutter’s Way (1981) and Nighthawks (1981). TV credits from the 1970s and ’80s include Toma, Kojak, Baretta, Police Woman, Cagney and Lacey and The A-Team.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City, Cordova is survived by...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSIvan Passer by Irfan Khan for the Los Angeles TimesFilmmaker Ivan Passer, a key figure in the Czech New Wave alongside peers like Miloš Forman, has died. For The Guardian, Andrew Pulver writes of Passer's departure from Prague and entry into Hollywood. The latest lineup announcement for this year's Berlinale includes the very exciting world premieres of Charlatan by Agnieszka Holland and Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue by Jia Zhangke. The Cannes Film Festival has announced that Spike Lee will preside over its jury, making him the first Black jury head in the festival's history. In a statement, Lee writes: "You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became in world cinema.”Amid increasing festival buzz, awards season also continues with the release of the Academy Awards nominations, which can be found here.

Ivan Passer, a part of the Czech New Wave and director of Cutter’s Way, has died at the age of 86.

Passer died on Thursday in Reno, Nv, following a 40-year career in film and television, and later a spell teaching at USC’s School of Cinema-Television.

The Associated Press said Amina Johns, a friend of the family, confirmed the news as the Czech Culture Ministry and the country’s National Film Archive. Passer’s attorney Rodney Sumpter told the AP that Passer had been dealing with pulmonary issues.

Passer was part of a Czech New Wave of filmmakers in the 1960s along with names including Milos Forman, writing the screenplays for Forman’s films including Audition, Love of a Blonde and The Fireman’s Ball. His debut feature was 1965’s Intimate Lighting.

After 1968 he emigrated to the U.S. from communist Czechoslovakia.

He is known for 1981’s Cutter’s Way,...

Ivan Passer, a pioneering filmmaker in the Czech New Wave, a frequent collaborator with the late Milos Forman and the director of the 1981 film “Cutter’s Way,” has died. He was 86.

A friend of the family, Amina Johns, told the Associated Press (via The Washington Post) that Passer died Thursday in Reno, Nevada. Rodney Sumpter, an attorney for Passer, said the director had been dealing with pulmonary issues.

Passer got his start in filmmaking as a co-writer on some of Forman’s films in the ’60s, and he directed his first feature “Intimate Lighting” in 1965. He and Forman were students along with Václav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski at a boarding school in Prague after WWII. They would later escape Prague to Hollywood just as Russian tanks began invading the region in 1969.

Also Read: Edd Byrnes, 'Grease' and '77 Sunset Strip' Star, Dies at 87

Ivan Passer (left) and...

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Czech-born director Ivan Passer, known for the U.S. cult thriller Cutter’s Way, died Thursday in Reno, Nev. He was 86.

The Czech online newspaper iDnes reported the filmmaker's death without revealing the cause.

Passer, a native of Prague, attended a secondary school alongside future prominent director Milos Forman and the Czech Republic's president Václav Havel before studying at the country's best known Famu film school.

He first came to the limelight in the 1960s as a screenwriter of Forman's features Horí, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) and Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a ...

Has it been 35 years since film director Ivan Passer, who died Jan. 9, explained to me why horror movies will never stop getting financed and distributed? “They don’t give their producers any sleepless nights,” the sage Czech maestro quietly, sagely noted, summing up a multitude of film business realities in a simple haiku.

And how many decades ago was it when I was first gripped by Passer’s greatest film, “Cutter’s Way,” a completely uncompromising and richly drawn portrait of young Americans facing down the Masters of War that Bob Dylan sang about?

When did I first marvel at the wit and compassion Passer brought to the screenplays of his great fellow countryman Milos Forman? I saw their unforgettable social satire “The Firemen’s Ball” when it first graced our American shores and scored a best foreign language film nomination in the late ’60s.

Forman’s Czech New Wave classic “Loves of a Blonde,...

Passer was a key figure in the Czech new wave before moving to the Us, where his best known film was the cult thriller Cutter’s Way

Ivan Passer, the film-maker who was a key figure in the Czech new wave and who went on to direct the thriller Cutter’s Way after emigrating to the Us, has died aged 86. Variety reported that an associate of his family confirmed the news.

Passer, who was born in Prague in 1933, spent his career inextricably associated with, and to some extent overshadowed by, his friend and fellow Czech director Miloš Forman. The pair met as schoolboys and studied together at the Prague Film Academy; they both became part of a group of film-makers who took advantage of a slight weakening of the communist government’s iron grip in the late 50s and early 60s. “We were all united, one way or another, with desire to...

Ivan Passer, a leading figure of the Czech new wave who directed films including “Cutter’s Way,” died Thursday of pulmonary complications in Reno, Nevada, an associate of the family confirmed. He was 86.

Passer was a close friend and collaborator of the late Czech filmmaker Milos Forman. Passer met Forman at a boarding school for delinquents or children who had lost their parents during the war (other students included Vaclav Havel and Jerzy Skolimowski). They reunited at film school in Prague, where he began collaborating on Forman’s films including “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball.” Passer’s first feature was the 1965 film “Intimate Lighting.”

Passer and Forman escaped Prague in 1969 as Russian tanks were advancing, when they pretended to be visiting Austria for the weekend. Though they lacked exit visas, a border guard who was a fan of Forman’s let them cross to safety, Passer told Variety...

Veteran actor Billy Drago, perhaps best known for his role in the gangster movie The Untouchables, has sadly passed away at the age of 73. The circumstances surrounding his passing haven't yet been made clear, though his rep confirmed the actor died on Monday in Los Angeles. Drago is survived by his sister Patty, brother Steve, sons Darren and Derrick Burrows, and several grandchildren. He is preceded in death by his wife, actress Silvana Gallardo, who passed away in 2012 after 32 years of marriage.

Born Nov. 30, 1945 in Hugoton, Kansas, Drago's given name was William Eugen Burrows Jr. When he pursued show business as he got older, the aspiring actor adopted his grandmother's maiden name, going professionally by Billy Drago. He first found work as a stuntman before later landing a gig as a radio host for a while, eventually joining an acting company which relocated him to Canada and then New York City.

Actor dies during recovery from back surgery, Variety reportsJeff Bridges leads tributes to ‘wonderful actor’ in TV and film hits

John Heard, the actor who was best known for his role as the father in the Home Alone movies, has died. He was 71.

Related: Cutter's Way is a cinematic masterpiece

Continue reading...

Hollywood is remembering John Heard. Friends and fans of the actor, best known for his work in Home Alone took to social media to pay their respects to the star, who passed away at the age of 71 on Friday.

Related: John Heard, 'Home Alone' and 'Sopranos' Actor, Dies at 71

Jeff Bridges, who starred with Heard in the film Cutter's Way, tweeted, "I got to experience his artistry and dedication firsthand."

"My heart goes out to his family and loved ones. We miss & love you, John," he added.

"Sad to hear of John's passing," Elijah Wood tweeted of Heard, who was his co-star in 1992's Radio Flyer.

Marlon Wayans shared a still of Heard from their film White Chicks on Instagram, and captioned it with heartfelt words for the actor. "Sad to see such a good spirit and actor taken. Thank you for all your contributions to our beloved industry. May you live forever through your vast body...

John Heard is not a name you may instantly recognize, but he is an actor whose face you have seen in dozens of films and television series over the last forty years including C.H.U.D., Cutter's Way, Beaches, Cat People and, most memorably, Home Alone. We are sad to report that Heard passed away yesterday at the age of 72 after undergoing back surgery. Heard had a prolific career that spanned theatre,... Read More...

John Heard of Home Alone and Big fame has passed away. The actor was found dead Friday in a Palo Alto, California hotel room, where he was recovering from recent back surgery, Variety reported Saturday. The Santa Clara Medical Examiner's office confirmed to E! News that Heard, 71, passed away in Palo Alto Friday. The cause of his death remains unknown. Heard is best known for playing Macaulay Culkin's character's father in the first two Home Alone movies. He also played Tom Hanks' character's adversary on the 1988 film Big and starred in the 1981 movie Cutter's Way and the 1988 film Beaches. In the late '90s and...

John Heard in Home Alone

Home Alone star John Heard has died, aged 72.

The actor, whose film roles also included Big and The Trip To Bountiful, was reported by TMZ, who broke the story, to have been found dead on Friday in a California hotel, where he had been recovering from back surgery. The cause of death is not yet known.

Heard was much loved for his turn as Macaulay Culkin's hapless dad, and also appeared in films including After Hours, The Pelican Brief, Cutter's Way, Awakenings, Rambling Rose, and the original Sharknado. He had roles in a number of popular Us TV series, including The Sopranos, Prison Break and CSI Miami.

He is survived by children Jack, Max and Annika....

John Heard, the actor who portrayed Kevin McCallister's father in a pair of Home Alone films, has died at the age of 72.

The Santa Clara Medical Examiner’s office confirmed Heard's death, Variety reports. TMZ adds that the actor was found dead in his Palo Alto, California hotel room, just days after Heard underwent minor back surgery, his rep said.

An Obie Award-winning actor before he came to Hollywood, Heard broke out in the late Seventies thanks to his role in ChillyScenes of Winter, which was followed by starring roles in 1980's Heart Beat,...

The conflicted Paul Schrader works out some hellacious personal issues, in a feverish tale of a Michigan Calvinist searching for his daughter in the porn jungle of L.A.. A disturbingly dark modern-day cross between The Searchers and Masque of the Red Death, it was meant to be even darker. Hardcore Blu-ray Twilight Time 1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 108 min. / Street Date August, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley, Dick Sargent, Leonard Gaines, David Nichols. Cinematography Michael Chapman Production Designer Paul Sylbert Art Direction Edwin O'Donovan Film Editor Tom Rolf Original Music Jack Nitzsche Produced by Buzz Feitshans, John Milius Written and Directed by Paul Schrader

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I'm not sure that the word 'controversial' has the same meaning it once had. There has to be a consensus on what is 'normal' in society for some topics to become edgy. These...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSDirector Guy Hamilton, Sean Connery, and Honor Blackman on the set of Goldfinger.We're still stunned from the sudden death of music legend Prince, at a time when Bowie is still on our minds and in our hearts.Last week we also lost director Guy Hamilton, an action director who began as an Ad for Carol Reed (on The Fallen Idol and The Third Man, among others), and best known for leading several James Bond entries, starting with Goldfinger in 1964.The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped in New York over the weekend, and the winners have been announced, including best international feature to Junction 48 and best documentary feature to Do Not Resist.There is no other cinematic project we're more looking forward to than 2017's continuation of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks.

"Sorry, I just slashed my wrists." "Well, tape 'em!"  This is the aftermath of the '60s protest movement. Ivan Passer's riveting murder mystery of flakes and losers in sun-drenched, guilty Santa Barbara expresses the rage of radicals faced with the growing class divide, and the arrogance of the wealthy. Cutter's Way Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1981 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Ship Date , 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry, Stephen Elliott, Arthur Rosenberg, Nina Van Pallandt. Cinematography Jordan Cronenweth Production Designer Josan F. Russo Film Editor Caroline Biggerstaff Original Music Jack Nitzsche Writing credits Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, from the novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg. Produced by Paul R. Gurian Directed by Ivan Passer

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Sort of the bad-news post-graduate version of American Graffiti, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way is a movie with a mindset and background that I partly lived through,...

Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There's more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you'll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette's world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of 1958. It's just as revolutionary as an early Godard or Truffaut, but in a style all Rivette's own. Paris Belongs to Us Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 802 1961 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Paris nous appartient / Street Date March 8, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Marie Robain, Jean Martin. Cinematography Charles L. Bitsch Film Editor Denise de Casablanca Original Music Philippe Arthuys Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Grualt Produced by Claude Chabrol, Roland Nonin Directed by Jacques Rivette

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The French New...

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’s 1965 film The Shop on Main Street, which was the first film from Eastern Europe to win an Academy Award, celebrates it’s 50th anniversary this year. The Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA will be holding a special one-night-only showing of the 128-minute drama on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 at 7:30 pm. Scheduled to appear in person are film director Ivan Passer and Michal Sedlacek, Consul General of Czech Republic in Los Angeles.

From the press release:

The Shop On Main Street (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award. Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner...

 

The Austin Film Society has a very special event tonight at the Marchesa to kick off another week of marvelous screenings. The Sound Of Silent Film Festival will feature short films accompanied by musical performances from Chicago's Access Contemporary Music organization. Several Austin musicians will join Acm for this collaborative and unique evening.  

The Afs spotlight on New Romanian Cinema continues this week at the Marchesa with Cristian Mungiu's critically acclaimed Beyond The Hills on Sunday (presented digitally) and his emotionally devastating 2007 feature Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days (presented in 35mm) on Tuesday. On Wednesday night, Richard Linklater will present Cutter's Way starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard. As is the case for his entire Jewels In The Wasteland series, there will be an introduction and post-film group discussion led by Linklater himself. David Pulbrook's 2012 effort Last Dance will be featured on Thursday night as part...

Newcomer Rooney Mara makes a superb Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's faithful remake of the gritty Swedish crime thriller

In 1936 the Hollywood mogul David O Selznick bought the Swedish movie Intermezzo, signed up its star Ingrid Bergman and remade it in 1939 under the same title with Bergman repeating her original role in an otherwise British and American cast. During pre-production he sent a three-page memo to his chief producer about such adaptations. "I want to impress on you strongly," he wrote, "that the most important saving to be effected in remaking foreign pictures – a saving that more than offsets the doubtful foreign markets that have been used up by the original version, and that makes these remakes uniquely desirable – is in the shooting, by actually duplicating, as far as possible, the [earlier] film." And he added: "Granted a good cast, direction as good as Molander's on the original, a somewhat faster tempo than his,...

William Friedkin's 1971 thriller set in New York is nihilistic, unapologetic and even racist. But it still feels contemporary

This year, as every year, there have been some big anniversary rereleases. The 1981 Ivan Passer movie Cutter's Way has just been dusted off, Kubrick's 1971 classic A Clockwork Orange was treated to a big retrospective showcase at Cannes this year, soon Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) is to be revived at BFI Southbank in London as part of a Dirk Bogarde season, and Alain Resnais's Last Year in Marienbad (1961) has resurfaced.

I staged my own "anniversary" rewatching this week of a movie I hadn't seen in many years: the last time was on TV decades ago. It is William Friedkin's The French Connection, now 40 years old, based on a true story, and starring Gene Hackman as detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a driven New York cop who wears a hat that makes...

William Friedkin's 1971 thriller set in New York is nihilistic, unapologetic and even racist. But it still feels contemporary

This year, as every year, there have been some big anniversary rereleases. The 1981 Ivan Passer movie Cutter's Way has just been dusted off, Kubrick's 1971 classic A Clockwork Orange was treated to a big retrospective showcase at Cannes this year, soon Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) is to be revived at BFI Southbank in London as part of a Dirk Bogarde season, and Alain Resnais's Last Year in Marienbad (1961) has resurfaced.

I staged my own "anniversary" rewatching this week of a movie I hadn't seen in many years: the last time was on TV decades ago. It is William Friedkin's The French Connection, now 40 years old, based on a true story, and starring Gene Hackman as detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a driven New York cop who wears a hat that makes...

It's champagne corks for Kristen Wiig for hooking the date movie crowd, while Brit romcom Love's Kitchen sank like a soufflé

The winner

Predicting an opening number for Bridesmaids at UK cinemas was always going to be tricky. On the plus side, the film enjoyed good buzz, thanks to critical praise, awareness of Us success and positive word circulating from an aggressive programme of advance free screenings. On the minus, lead actresses Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph are both significantly less famous here than Stateside, where they served long stints on Saturday Night Live.

Considering fast-improving weather over the weekend, with grosses dropping heavily for all films on scorching-hot Sunday, Universal will be pretty delighted with Bridesmaids' debut figure of £3.44m, including paid previews of £1.03m. That's not quite Wiig's personal best, since Paul opened in February with £5.52m, including £2.31m in previews, but she was hardly a significant selling point on that occasion.

A 30th-anniversary reissue for 80s curio Cutter's Way finds Jeff Bridges in sports jacket, open-necked shirt and jeans, a look he carries off with nonchalant ease, luxuriant hair and the tidiest of moustaches. Set in Santa Barbara, this is Californian noir, as Bridges's yacht salesman Bone is caught in a plot to blackmail a local industrialist, egged on by crippled Vietnam vet Cutter, raucously played by John Heard. There is much to like (Lisa Eichhorn's alcoholic Mo is rather wonderful), although the film's climax, with a runaway horse and people knocking over buffet tables in a big mansion, is straight out of Hart to Hart.

Celebrating 20 years with a reissued digital clean-up, Japanese manga masterpiece Akira returns to big screens. Although this particular cyberpunk, post-apocalypse style has never appealed to me, it undoubtedly retains a fiendishly inventive sci-fi plot and boasts remarkable cinematic scope for hand-painted animation.

CrimeJeff BridgesAnimationJapanJason Solomons

guardian.

Bridesmaids (15)

(Paul Feig, 2011, Us) Kristen Wiig, Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm, 125 mins.

Having recovered from the shocking revelation that women can be funny, rude, and entertaining in the absence of men, we can at last put the debates and Hangover comparisons this movie has prompted behind us now and just enjoy a satisfying prenuptial comedy. Led by Wiig's anxious maid of honour, it certainly matches male equivalents in the grossness stakes at times, but it also finds deeper, smarter ways to make us laugh.

Incendies (15)

(Denis Villeneuve, 2010, Can/Fra) Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette. 131 mins.

A mother's death sets her two children on an investigation into their personal and political history in this powerful mystery, set in an unnamed Middle Eastern country.

Countdown To Zero (Nc)

(Lucy Walker, 2010, Us) 89 mins.

Not got enough things to worry about? That's because you forgot about the threat of nuclear annihilation that still hangs over us.

It's a good weekend for moviegoing in the UK, starting with the pleasantly surprising revival of Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way (1981). "Much as womanizing slacker Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) finds himself late one evening in a rainy Santa Barbara alleyway at the same time as a silhouetted figure dumps a young woman's body there, Cutter's Way suffered the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," begins Anton Bitel in Little White Lies:

Adapted from Newton Thorburg's 1976 novel Cutter and Bone, Ivan Passer's film was released under the same title, only to receive a critical drubbing, be withdrawn from screens a week later, and then renamed and repackaged for United Artists' arthouse division, and ultimately for VHS (where its reputation really grew). This was the early Eighties, when American cinema, ruled over by Spielberg and Lucas, had become all about action, spectacle and escapism,...

An eyepatch indicates the wearer has been in the wars or had his eye pecked out by a hawk like axe-hurling Kirk Douglas in The Vikings

Now that everyone has woken up to the genius that is Jeff Bridges, perhaps it's time to give John Heard his due. By the mid-1980s, after starring in a brace of films by Joan Micklin Silver, Paul Schrader's Cat People remake and pulp horror C.H.U.D, he looked all set for leading man status. But it never happened; instead he turned into one of those character actors whose presence never fails to cheer you up. It didn't help that the release of Cutter's Way, which gave him the role of his career, was bungled by United Artists, which saw it as a failed thriller instead of the noirish character study it was. It faded into obscurity, trailing a few rave...

This week, Jason Solomons meets the man behind Us comedy Bridesmaids, which hits these shores tomorrow. Paul Feig's name is a hallmark of comic quality in TV following his cult Judd Apatow collaboration Freaks and Geeks, but can he continue his success on the big screen?

Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw joins Jason to review some of this weeks other releases, including Incendies, which tells the story of a brother and sister's quest to discover the truth about their mother's life, a rerelease of 1981's Cutter's Way (featuring a very young Jeff Bridges) and a doomsday scenario in the documentary Countdown to Zero.

Finally, we speak to director Matt Porterfield about Putty Hill, his visually striking and inventive portrayal of his home town. Matt discusses the hybridisation of documentary and fiction techniques in his film and the cinematic pull of Baltimore.

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Life In A Day (12A)

(Kevin Macdonald, 2011, Us)

Compiled from amateur submissions of what people all over the world did on 24 July 2010, this documentary sets itself an almighty challenge. It's fashioned into some sort of narrative order, with recurring themes and music, and moments of emotion and illumination, which saves it from becoming a random global channel-surf. But you could say the subjective "direction" and homogenising technical treatment are at odds with the democratic intentions.

The Beaver (12A)

(Jodie Foster, 2011, Us) Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin. 91 mins

Having crucified Jesus, Gibson now nails himself to the cross in a bizarre talk-to-the-hand family drama that feels more like the actor's own public therapy session.

Green Lantern (12A)

(Martin Campbell, 2011, Us) Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard. 114 mins

Like banks, summer superhero movies are now too big to fail. But will Reynolds's charm, a virtual costume and some interplanetary effects be...

Three decades later, John Patterson still can't get enough of watching Jeff Bridges and John Heard try to avenge a murder in Cutter's Way

Thirty years on from its botched original release, Ivan Passer's note-perfect, sun-splashed neo-noir thriller Cutter's Way has slowly fought its way up from cult obscurity. As one of the lucky few who saw it then, and having loved it madly ever since, I couldn't be happier to see it available once more.

Released in 1981, it's like the last Hollywood movie of the 1960s, in which the aspirations and ideals of that long-gone decade finally soured irrevocably on its dazed, burnt-out survivors. It belongs alongside Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop The Rain (its perfect double-bill doppelganger), and Arthur Penn and Alan Sharpe's Night Moves – both visions of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American malaise.

Continue reading...

Three decades later, John Patterson still can't get enough of watching Jeff Bridges and John Heard try to avenge a murder in Cutter's Way

Thirty years on from its botched original release, Ivan Passer's note-perfect, sun-splashed neo-noir thriller Cutter's Way has slowly fought its way up from cult obscurity. As one of the lucky few who saw it then, and having loved it madly ever since, I couldn't be happier to see it available once more.

Released in 1981, it's like the last Hollywood movie of the 1960s, in which the aspirations and ideals of that long-gone decade finally soured irrevocably on its dazed, burnt-out survivors. It belongs alongside Karel Reisz's Who'll Stop The Rain (its perfect double-bill doppelganger), and Arthur Penn and Alan Sharpe's Night Moves – both visions of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American malaise.

Cutter's Way opens with a girl's corpse dumped in a trashcan in a rainswept Santa Barbara back alley,...

Does China have the chops to take on the panda?

The big story

The Us and China are going to war. And Kung Fu Panda struck the first blow. Not content with whispers about cyber attacks, squabbles over currency values and set-tos at environmental summits, the two global powers are widening their conflict to the more violent field of animated film.

China, after decades of using panda gifts as tools of diplomacy, appears to have been caught out by the approach of one of the sex-shy shoot-munchers travelling in the opposite direction. Hollywood's Kung Fu Panda hit the box office hard in China three years ago and now its sequel has arrived with another onslaught on its mind.

Beijing is about to strike back in the form of Legend of a Rabbit, featuring a belligerent bunny with, coincidentally, a ruthless panda for a foe. But that is unlikely to be...

Mosaïques, London

This festival of world culture offers a different perspective to British equivalents, leaning as it does towards France's ties with Africa, the Middle East and south-east Asia. A case in point is French-Tunisian guest of honour Abdellatif "Couscous" Kechiche, whose Black Venus finds rich material in the life of 19th century "Hottentot Venus" Saartjie Baartman. There's also Berlin film festival winner A Separation, and from south China, The Rice Paddy, set among the tribal Dong people. Among documentaries are Ethiopian sounds in Abyssinie Swing and Mexican circus thrills in Circo.

Various venues, Thu to 9 Jun, institut-francais.org.uk/mosaiques

On Dangerous Ground: The Cinema Of Bernard Herrmann, Bristol

There's music for film, there are films that use music, and then there's the work of Bernard Herrmann, which seems to come from another place entirely. His work with Hitchcock is best known – the stabbing strings of Psycho, the...