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The new Gerard Butler film Kandahar has marked an unfortunate milestone for the star. The project, which opened in theaters on May 26, stars Butler as a CIA operative who goes undercover in Afghanistan. It took No. 7 at the box office this weekend, behind this weekend's other new wide releases The Little Mermaid 2023, The Machine, and About My Father as well as Fast X, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

This weekend Kandahar debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a firmly Rotten score of 46 percent. This marks the 30th film in his career that has received a Rotten score. This is a particularly overwhelming number when taken in consideration with the fact that he only has 43 scored movies on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning that about 70 percent of the titles he has starred in have met with critical derision.

The Last Five Years Have Still Been Great...

Watch an average modern American horror movie and you’re bound to be inundated with a lot of noise. Loudness is not innately a bad thing, nor are pronounced jump scares. But lackluster scary films can often end up being so underwhelming because they mistake loudness for creepiness. Something like Smile or Fall will often just ratchet up the volume of the score or pile on noisy jump scares instead of coming up with actual substantive frights. If one wants a master course in how to make quiet horror cinema that chills you to the bone, look no further than the 1988 George Sluizer feature The Vanishing. Hailing from the Netherlands, The Vanishing proves utterly terrifying even without resorting to jump scares or superfluous loudness.

One of the most viscerally affecting films coming out of Sundance Film Festival this year was Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil. Following a family who accepts an invitation to the rural home of another they met on holiday, they soon find their lives altered in an unexpected, deeply horrifying way. With a streak of dark humor and insightful commentary on humanity’s eagerness to accept one another, Tafdrup has crafted quite a singularly haunting experience. Ahead of a theatrical and Shudder release next month, the first trailer has now arrived.

Christopher Schobert said in his review, “Speak No Evil is terrifying, shocking, and deeply, deeply unsettling. There’s no getting around the upset factor. Audiences who catch this Sundance entry from Denmark should be warned: this one’s gonna hurt. The latest from Christian Tafdrup has the brutal shock value of George Sluizer’s The Vanishing and gut-punching, visceral...

Welcome to the return of 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.

For the thirteenth episode, I talked to Susannah Gruder, a New York-based film critic with bylines at outlets including Reverse Shot, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Indiewire, Mubi Notebook, and Hyperallergic. On today’s episode, we talked about George Sluizer’s 1988 French/Dutch existential procedural, The Vanishing (available on the Criterion Channel). An adaptation of Tim Krabbé’s The Golden Egg, the film’s premise is familiar: A couple is on vacation (Gene Bervoets and Johanna ter Steege), they stop at a crowded rest stop, and one of them seems to disappear into thin air. But while Sluizer’s sleek but collected approach nods to mind game masters like Alfred Hitchcock and suggests the forensic obsessions of latter-day crime thrillers,...

We’re getting some real mixed messages on the possibility of a Man of Steel 2 at some point in the near future. Last month the talk was that an announcement for the next Superman movie would be coming very soon, and just a few weeks ago a photo was released that seemed to show Henry Cavill getting ripped once more for the role. On the other hand, you have Mission: Impossible – Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie saying that the project no longer interests him and a popular Twitter tipster telling us that we shouldn’t expect any news about the film for a while.

But though Cavill himself has been pretty evasive on the subject of a sequel, that hasn’t stopped the Man of Steel star from fantasizing a little on where he’d like the series to head next. Just last week, Cavill singled out the character of Brainiac...

David Fincher’s 1995 psychological horror/thriller Se7en is one of most enduring and terrifying films of its kind, standing alongside the likes of The Silence of the Lambs, Zodiac, Frailty, and The Vanishing, amongst others. The tale of two detectives, one new to the force and one on the way out, searching for a serial killer […]

The post Opinion: SE7EN’s John Doe Didn’t Succeed as He Planned appeared first on Dread Central.

A writer, director, and producer with a passion for creating atmospheric tension and relatable characters on screen, Deon Taylor has stayed busy behind the camera in recent years, with several thrillers coming out in the near future. With his latest film, Traffik, being released in theaters this Friday, Daily Dead had the pleasure of catching up with Taylor for our latest Q&A feature, in which the filmmaker discusses the real-life horrors that inspired his new movie, the film's ambitious shooting schedule that included 87 setups in one day, and the launch of his new production label Dark Circus, which will be the home of the new horror anthology series The Thrill that he's developing with Snoop Dog.

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us, Deon! Congratulations on your new movie, Traffik. How and when did you first come up with the idea for this film?

Deon Taylor:...

Chicago – The rise of innovative and inclusive television programming, along with the expansion of the broadcast spectrum that includes digital and online options, has been the most important entertainment story of the last five years. The 54th Chicago Television Festival – an offshoot of the Chicago International Film Festival, and presented by their agency Cinema/Chicago – has grown in prestige and importance along with that evolution in TV, and will take place from Tuesday, March 20th through Thursday, March 22nd, 2018, at the AMC River East 21 Theater at 322 East Illinois, Chicago.

March 20th-22th, 2018, at the AMC River East 21 Theater

Photo credit: Cinema/Chicago

The three day event will showcase a number of upcoming TV programming, starting on March 20th with a revolutionary look at “Woke TV: Chicago-Made Web Series.” The same night will premiere the latest iteration of “Roseanne,” the revival of the popular 1980s/90s sitcom. Two overseas dramas, “Your...

  Movie Trailers for Black Panther, Breaking In, Fahrenheit 451, and More Films New teaser trailers, full movie trailers, and movie TV commercial for mainstream, independent, and documentary films have been released by numerous movie studios. These movies include: Black Panther, Breaking In, Fahrenheit 451, Godzilla: Monster Planet, In the Cloud, and The Vanishing [...]

Continue reading: Movie Trailers: Black Panther, Breaking In, Michael B. Jordan Sets Fires in Fahrenheit 451, & More...

Simon Brew Jul 19, 2017

Spoorloos - the original The Vanishing - led to the Academy having to change its ways...

People sometimes come to this site in search of a film to watch, that they’ve not heard of. Sadly, the late George Sluizer’s stunning thriller Spoorloos has been infected by its tepid 1993 Hollywood remake, that Sluizer himself directed. But the original is one of the best, darkest thrillers of the 1980s. It’s an amazing piece of work.

It’s also a piece of work that led to the Academy having to rewrite the rules for one of its Oscar categories.

The film’s country of origin was the Netherlands, and when it came to Oscar time, it was put forward as the Dutch entry for the Best Foreign Language Feature Academy Award. Yet the film was deemed ineligible, in spite of the fact that not a word of English is spoken in it.

A spurned mistress takes her married lover’s child for quite a ride in Detour, the slick and effective genre debut from German filmmaker Nina Vukovic, who earlier co-wrote the screenplay for the fairytale Nevermore, which won a student Oscar in 2007. There are superficial echoes of superior nail-biters like George Sluizer’s The Vanishing in this story that’s largely set in a vehicle and at a gas station, and which fuses suspense and thriller elements with a relationship drama featuring a handful of elusive and volatile characters, as well as an innocent child. A superb calling card for Vukovic, this Munich...

The Guild announced on Thursday nominations for the 21st Annual Excellence in Production Design Awards across a multitude of categories covering features, TV, commercials and music videos.

Among the film nominees were Café Society, Manchester By The Sea, Hell Or High Water and Arrival.

TV nominees encompass Game Of Thrones, The Night of and Silicon Valley, while Beyonce’s Lemonade visual extravaganza is a heavy-hitter in the music videos section.

The awards show is set for February 11 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood and Highland.

Excellence In Production Design For A Feature FilmPERIOD Film

Café Society, Santo Loquasto

Fences, David Gropman

Hacksaw Ridge, Barry Robison

Hail, Caesar!, Jess Gonchor

Hidden Figures, Wynn Thomas

Jackie, Jean Rabasse

Fantasy Film

Arrival, Patrice Vermette

Doctor Strange, Charles Wood

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, Stuart Craig

Passengers, Guy Hendrix Dyas

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Doug Chiang, Neil Lamont

Contemporary Film

Hell Or High Water, Tom Duffield

[link...

The Art Directors Guild has announced the nominees for this year’s Adg Excellence in Production Design Awards, with “Jackie,” “La La Land” and more among the contenders. Adg’s awards are different from most others, as it has categories for Period, Fantasy and Contemporary Films; this has led to a wide array of winners in recent years, including the likes of “Her” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” This year’s ceremony, the 21st, will take place in Hollywood on Saturday, February 11. Full list of nominees below.

Read More: Writers Guild Awards Nominations: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘Arrival,’ ‘Manchester by the Sea’ and More

Period Film

“Cafe Society” (Production Designer: Santo Loquasto)

“Fences” (Production Designer: David Gropman )

“Hacksaw Ridge” (Production Designer: Barry Robinson)

“Hail, Caesar!” (Production Designer: Jess Gonchor)

“Jackie” (Production Designer: Jean Rabasse)

Fantasy Film

“Arrival” (Production Designer: Patrice Vermette)

“Doctor Strange” (Production Designer: Charles Wood)

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them...

The American Cinema Editors have announced the nominees for the 67th annual Ace Eddie Awards, with “Arrival,” “Moonlight,” “Manchester by the Sea” and “La La Land” among the contenders. On the comedy side, “Deadpool” and “The Lobster” continued their surprise awards-season runs by landing nods, while “Stranger Things” also had a strong showing in the TV category.

Final ballots will be mailed to Ace members on January 6, voting ends on January 17 and the ceremony takes place on January 27. Full list of nominees below.

Read More: 35 Directors Pick Their Favorite Movies of 2016

Best Edited Feature Film (Drama)

“Arrival” (Joe Walker)

“Hacksaw Ridge” (John Gilbert)

“Hell or High Water” (Jake Roberts)

“Manchester by the Sea” (Jennifer Lame)

“Moonlight” (Nat Sanders, Joi McMillon)

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy)

“Deadpool” (Julian Clarke)

“Hail, Caesar!” (Roderick Jaynes)

“The Jungle Book” (Mark Livolsi)

“La La Land” (Tom Cross)

“The Lobster” (Yorgos Mavropsaridis)

Best Edited Animated Feature...

Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with FilmStruck. Developed and managed by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in collaboration with the Criterion Collection, FilmStruck features the largest streaming library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films as well as extensive bonus content, filmmaker interviews and rare footage. Learn more here.

Last week, IndieWire asked our readers to name their favorite movies in the Criterion Collection, which resulted in hundreds of responses that pretty much covered every nook and cranny of Criterion’s massive library. It was great to see many readers listing dramas as diverse and polarizing as Robert Altman’s “3 Women,” George Sluizer’s “The Vanishing” and Fritz Lang’s “M,” but at the end of the day, our survey revealed which 10 titles our Criterion subscribers can’t get enough of.

An intriguing mix of reliable film landmarks and a few surprises, below is...

Mark and Aaron cover the Dutch and French horror/suspense classic, The Vanishing. Having experienced this film numerous times before, we are able to explore the foreshadowing and narrative structure that led us on a wild journey to an even wilder ending. We talk about obsession, control, that harrowing ending, and yes, we even get into the American remake.

About the film:

A young man embarks on an obsessive search for the girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared while the couple were taking a sunny vacation trip, and his three-year investigation draws the attention of her abductor, a mild-mannered professor with a clinically diabolical mind. An unorthodox love story and a truly unsettling thriller, Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer’s The Vanishing unfolds with meticulous intensity, leading to an unforgettable finale that has unnerved audiences around the world.

Buy The Films On Amazon:

Episode Links & Notes

3:10 – October Horror Schedule

5:00 – Short Takes (The Tin Drum,...

In our latest Horror Highlights, we have a new clip from the Wolf Creek series, details on Hdnet Movies' horror movie marathon, and a Q&A with Buz Hasson about The Living Corpse: Relics Kickstarter.

Hdnet Movies Horror Marathon: Los Angeles – October 10, 2016 – Trick or Treat with Hdnet Movies this October, as the network presents a three-day Halloween Weekend block, featuring 16 sci-fi, suspense, and slasher classics. The special event begins on Saturday, Oct. 29, and runs through Monday, Oct. 31.

The thrills and chills kickoff with an out-of-this-world “Sci-Fi Saturday” on Saturday, Oct. 29, starting with Nathan Fillion as the captain of a spaceship harboring a mysterious stowaway in the 2005 Joss Whedon adventure Serenity at 7pE. Next up is Henry Thomas as a young boy who befriends a stranded alien in the Stephen Spielberg opus E.T., with Dee Wallace and Drew Barrymore, at 9pE; and Bruce Willis travels back in time to save the...

My guest for this month is Herb van der Poll, and he’s joined me to discuss the film I chose for him, the 1988 Dutch–French film The Vanishing. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.

Show notes:

The director, George Sluizer, didn’t really direct much else besides this film and its remake The soundtrack definitely has a Tears for Fears vibe to it, which is 100% ok with me Herb checked with his Dutch parents to make sure we pronounced Spoorloos correctly Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu is basically perfect as the villain in this film If you enjoy this film, you’d probably also love Alfred Hitchock’s The Lady Vanishes The actress who plays the second girlfriend Lieneke, Gwen Eckhaus, was randomly in a television series in the Netherlands called Spoorloos verdwenen, which I assume is unrelated Getting a compliment on your film from Stanley Kubrick is a big...

Julia Roberts out-acts and upstages Nicole Kidman and Chiwetel Ejiofor in this muddled film, making its central relationships look implausible and extraneous

And so, yet another great film gets a pointless and slightly wrong Hollywood remake, and this one tiptoes sheepishly into cinemas while everyone is looking the other way – preparing for the Academy Awards. It does, however, have the remake’s beneficial effect of enhancing the original’s prestige: after all, no self-respecting cinephile ever talks about George Sluizer’s cult chiller The Vanishing without first establishing his or her good taste by attacking the inferior English-language remake that Sluizer himself directed. This will now be the fate of Juan José Campanella’s terrific Argentinian drama-thriller El Secreto de Sus Ojos, or The Secret in Their Eyes. The foreign-language Oscar-winner from 2009 is now given a retrospective connoisseur’s boost by this unsatisfying remake, set in modern-day Los Angeles, with...

Aaron Glenane and Aaron Pedersen in Killing Ground.

Writer-director Damien Power describes the writing process on his thriller, Killing Ground, in one word: "long".

"I was working with producer Joe Weatherstone on another script. With that project we went to the then-afc's IndiVision lab, which was a workshop for low-budget features: a million or less. It's a workshop so we kind of pulled it apart, and I don't think we ever really put those pieces back together again"..

"But while I was in that process I had an idea for something that I thought we could make quickly and cheaply. And then eight years later, I got to make it" (laughs)..

Power's debut feature stars Aaron Pedersen, Harriet Dyer, Ian Meadows, Aaron Glenane, Maya Strange, and Tiarnie Coupland, and was inspired by an image that floated into the filmmaker's head: of an orange tent in the bush, abandoned.

The production...

Each week, the fine folks at Fandor add a number of films to their Criterion Picks area, which will then be available to subscribers for the following twelve days. This week, the Criterion Picks focus on 8 mystery films.

Secrets, lies, clues and questionable motives: follow these films as they insist on (or resist) throwing light on the dark corners of human nature.

Don’t have a Fandor subscription? They offer a free trial membership.

Confidentially Yours, the French Crime film by François Truffaut

When a real estate agent is framed for the murders of his wife and her lover, it is up to his faithful secretary to solve the mystery.

The Element of Crime, the Danish Crime film by Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier’s stunning debut film is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls.

Coming to theaters, VOD, and iTunes tomorrow with the gas pedal to the floor and one eye on the rearview mirror is Wrecker, a new road trip horror film from XLrator Media. For our latest Q&A feature, we caught up with Wrecker co-writer/director Micheal Bafaro.

Thanks for taking the time to converse with us, Micheal. How did you come up with the idea for your latest film, Wrecker?

Micheal Bafaro: I’ve always been inspired by the open road. For me, it’s the ultimate embodiment of freedom, adventure, and optimism. However, it can also be unpredictable as one moves away from familiar surroundings into the unknown. I’ve got an active imagination and I’m always having story ideas pop into my head. Highways themselves are an iconic part of the North American landscape and culture, and I felt that it was time to do a road film of my own.

–

20. The Innocents

Directed by Jack Clayton

Written by William Archibald and Truman Capote

UK, 1961

Genre: Hauntings

The Innocents, which was co-written by Truman Capote, is the first of many screen adaptations of The Turn of the Screw. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel bad because most people haven’t – but The Innocents deserves its rightful spot on any list of great horror films. Here is one of the few films where the ghost story takes place mostly in daylight, and the lush photography, which earned cinematographer Freddie Francis one of his two Oscar wins, is simply stunning. Meanwhile, director Jack Clayton and Francis made great use of long, steady shots, which suggest corruption is lurking everywhere inside the grand estate. The Innocents also features three amazing performances; the first two come courtesy of child actors Pamela Franklin (The Legend of Hell House), and Martin Stephens (Village of the Damned...

It’s the moment you wait for the entire horror film. It’s not just a plot twist or a payoff but a trigger to your deepest emotions. You want to be shocked and sickened and saddened when the killer is revealed, the hero suddenly dies, or the mystery is solved. Most of all, you want your jaw to be on the floor. **Spoilers obviously ahead**

****

The Brood (1979)- Mommy knows best

David Cronenberg’s third horror film is his first truly great movie and also his first superbly acted film. The Brood’s ensemble is solid but Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar stand out as maverick doctor Hal Raglan and his disturbed patient Nola Carveth. Nola’s estranged husband Frank (played by Art Hindle) teams up with Dr. Raglan in the film’s suspenseful climax. He confronts Nola while Raglan attempts to rescue Frank’s young daughter from a group of murderous deformed children.

Our look at underappreciated films of the 80s continues, as we head back to 1988...

Either in terms of ticket sales or critical acclaim, 1988 was dominated by the likes of Rain Man, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Coming To America. It was the year Bruce Willis made the jump from TV to action star with Die Hard, and became a star in the process.

It was the year Leslie Nielsen made his own jump from the small to silver screen with Police Squad spin-off The Naked Gun, which sparked a hugely popular franchise of its own. Elsewhere, the eccentric Tim Burton scored one of the biggest hits of the year with Beetlejuice, the success of which would result in the birth of Batman a year later. And then there was Tom Cruise, who managed to make a drama about a student-turned-barman into a $170m hit, back when $170m was still an...

"The Loft" is a new thriller that comes out this week, and it is a remake of a 2008 Belgian film of the same name. The original movie's director, Erik van Looy, returns to helm the redo, and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts reprises his role from the earlier film. He is joined by Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller and Eric Stonestreet in the story of a group of five married men who decide to share a loft together for extramarital affairs, only to one day find a dead woman laying in their bed. They try to parse together the details of who the girl is and how she came to meet such a grisly fate. Each man denies any wrongdoing, but it is clear to all that one of the men in their midst had to have been involved in the crime, as they were the only keyholders to the apartment,...

In the decades of cinema that have transpired since Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film L’avventura, one cannot overlook its seminal status not only within the auteur’s own priceless filmography, but as a milestone in developing cinematic language. Greeted with a divisive response at the Cannes Film Festival, where a group of thirty-five renowned critics were able to turn the cultural tide after the film’s second screening (in that influential way that criticism can’t quite muster in contemporary arenas), it would go on to be awarded the Jury Prize, tying with Kon Ichikawa’s Odd Obsession, and beaten out by Fellini’s iconic La Dolce Vita. It’s hard to believe that such titanic masterpieces were competing against one another, all relishing unprecedented renown in the years to come. Antonioni’s is, truly, the harder film to love, its grasp residing somewhere within its own banality as an...

The slasher movie, if we'll admit it to ourselves, is about our fears of teen sexuality. Whether you're a teen made nervous by your own hormones or a parent afraid of what trouble those hormones will get your kid into, the slasher-movie villain is your fears made flesh. But with the release 30 years ago this week (November 9, 1984) of Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street," the slasher film entered a new dimension.

With the creation of Freddy Krueger (played indelibly by Robert Englund), who could kill teens in their dreams, the slasher villain proved there was no place that was safe, not even the subconscious.

In retrospect, the genre may have peaked with the release of this film; after all, how many other slasher villains since have been anywhere near as memorable? Unlike his predecessors, Jason Voorhees (of the "Friday the 13th" movies) and Michael Myers (of the "Halloween...

Top 100 horror movies of all time: Chicago Film Critics' choices (photo: Sigourney Weaver and Alien creature show us that life is less horrific if you don't hold grudges) See previous post: A look at the Chicago Film Critics Association's Scariest Movies Ever Made. Below is the list of the Chicago Film Critics's Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time, including their directors and key cast members. Note: this list was first published in October 2006. (See also: Fay Wray, Lee Patrick, and Mary Philbin among the "Top Ten Scream Queens.") 1. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock; with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam. 2. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin; with Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow (and the voice of Mercedes McCambridge). 3. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter; with Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Tony Moran. 4. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott; with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt. 5. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero; with Marilyn Eastman,...

The 1988 Dutch thriller The Vanishing hit Blu-ray this week, thanks to the good folks at Criterion. Without a drop of gore, it’s the perfect centerpiece for an All Saints’ Eve frightfest that shivers the soul but doesn’t turn the stomach. And why not round out that scare-a-thon with four more examples of great, relatively bloodless movies that go for your soul instead of your jugular? Here's a list of suggestions. (And if you're looking for more traditional horror flicks, consider perusing our carefully-curated Horror Quintessentials lists.) The Vanishing (1988) The horror genre tends to be about as subtle as...

Today's top stories: Agnès Varda will receive the European Film Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award this year. Roman Polanski went to Poland and the Us tried to get authorities there to detain him. They refused. Nick Broomfield's Tales of the Grim Sleeper, Marshall Curry's Point and Shoot, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel's Finding Vivian Maier, Laura Poitras's Citizenfour and Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's The Salt of the Earth have been nominated by the International Documentary Association for Best Feature Awards. Plus Scott Foundas on George Sluizer's Spoorloos (The Vanishing) and more. » - David Hudson...

Today's top stories: Agnès Varda will receive the European Film Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award this year. Roman Polanski went to Poland and the Us tried to get authorities there to detain him. They refused. Nick Broomfield's Tales of the Grim Sleeper, Marshall Curry's Point and Shoot, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel's Finding Vivian Maier, Laura Poitras's Citizenfour and Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's The Salt of the Earth have been nominated by the International Documentary Association for Best Feature Awards. Plus Scott Foundas on George Sluizer's Spoorloos (The Vanishing) and more. » - David Hudson...

Remastered just in time for Halloween, Criterion dusts off George Sluizer’s classic psychological thriller The Vanishing for a Blu-ray release. The Dutch-French co-production stands as the filmmaker’s most internationally renowned and enduring work, its sterling reputation still managing to overshadow Sluizer’s own ill-conceived English language remake from 1992 with a cast headlined by Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, and Sandra Bullock (plus a fresh faced Nancy Travis, a name that often gets neglected in flippant references to the production). With Sluizer’s passing in September of 2014, it’s an eerily timed re-release of his signature work.

A Dutch couple on a road trip, Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) run out of gasoline. A heated argument leads to reconciliation, and they properly refuel at a gas station rest stop packed with tourists due to the Tour de France. Saskia goes into the store to get drinks and never returns,...

The man who made Spoorloos, one of the best thrillers of the past few decades, has died at the of 82.

Here's some sad news. George Sluizer, the director of Spoorloos, has died at the age of 82. He had been ill for many years, and the Dutch filmmaker reportedly passed away on Saturday.

Sluizer leaves behind one of the most chilling thrillers we've ever seen in the shape of Spoorloos. The kind of film where the less you know the better, Sluizer himself directed the English language version, The Vanishing, although the Hollywood version was a pale imitation of the stunning original.

Sluizer also directed River Phoenix's final movie, Dark Blood, which has been seeing the light over the past year or two. He also had a rich background in documentary feature making.

Rest in peace, Mr Sluizer. And thanks for leaving behind one of the best thrillers we've ever seen.

Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer, the man behind psychological horror The Vanishing, has died. He was 82. Sluizer cut his teeth with an award-winning short called The Low Lands in 1961, before graduating to the longer form with 1972’s João And The Knife, a haunting drama set in the Amazon basin, and Twice A Woman seven years later. But it was The Vanishing, a landmark horror in 1988, that made his name.The film, which was released under the title ‘Spoorloos’ (‘Without A Trace’) in Sluizer’s native tongue, was adapted from Tim Krabbé’s novella The Golden Egg and charts the efforts of a man to uncover his fiancée’s fate after she disappears at a motorway service station. No lesser a figure than Stanley Kubrick was moved to describe it as, “the most horrifying film I’ve ever seen”. As a portrayal of obsession, it boasts shades of Hitchcock; as a record...

The Dutch filmmaker best known stateside for The Vanishing and the River Phoenix Western Dark Blood died Saturday in Amsterdam. George Sluizer was 82. He won a Silver Bear at Berlin for his 1961 debut, the documentary short Hold Back The Sea, and returned to the festival four more times in the ensuing decades. Three of Sluizer’s films were nominated for the Golden Bear: The Commissioner (1998), John, The Knife And The River (1972) — both of which he also scripted — and Utz (1992). The latter won three awards at the Berlinale, including Best Actor for star Armin Mueller-Stahl. “We mourn the loss of a great filmmaker, who has been equally active in fiction and documentary film,” Berlin fest Director Dieter Kosslick said. “With his passion for filmmaking and exceptional versatility, George Sluizer will live on in our memories forever.”

Sluizer’s best known film remains The Vanishing (1988), about a man whose girlfriend goes missing...

George Sluizer, who directed two versions of the thriller The Vanishing — one a Dutch-French production, the other American and each with a different ending — has died. He was 82. Sluizer, a native of the Netherlands who also helmed River Phoenix’s final film, Dark Blood, died Saturday in Amsterdam, his wife told the Dutch news site Nl Times. Sluizer’s first crack at The Vanishing — the story of a man who is obsessed with finding out what happened to his wife after she’s abducted at a roadside oasis — was for a mostly French-language film titled Spoorloos in

read more...

Filmmaker editor Scott Macaulay interviews kogonada, "the somewhat mysterious, Nashville-based film essayist whose works have scored hundreds of thousands of views on Vimeo and other platforms." Among his subjects: Robert Bresson and Stanley Kubrick. Tonight, he'll be presenting work on Steven Soderbergh and Yasujiro Ozu. Also in today's news roundup: James Lattimer on Eric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon and Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Jeff Reichert on Martin Scorsese's Italianamerican, Ron Rosenbaum on Al Pacino and more. Plus remembering George Sluizer (The Vanishing) and German screenwriter Wolfgang Held. » - David Hudson...

Filmmaker editor Scott Macaulay interviews kogonada, "the somewhat mysterious, Nashville-based film essayist whose works have scored hundreds of thousands of views on Vimeo and other platforms." Among his subjects: Robert Bresson and Stanley Kubrick. Tonight, he'll be presenting work on Steven Soderbergh and Yasujiro Ozu. Also in today's news roundup: James Lattimer on Eric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon and Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, Jeff Reichert on Martin Scorsese's Italianamerican, Ron Rosenbaum on Al Pacino and more. Plus remembering George Sluizer (The Vanishing) and German screenwriter Wolfgang Held. » - David Hudson...

George Sluizer, the Dutch filmmaker behind The Vanishing and River Phoenix's final film Dark Blood, has died at the age of 82.

The director passed away in Amsterdam on Saturday (September 20) after a long illness, according to local media reports. Sluizer's relatives told Dutch broadcaster Nos that his health had "remained fragile" after suffering a ruptured artery in 2007.

Sluizer shot to fame in the late '80s when his Dutch-language thriller Spoorloos (later known as The Vanishing) - about a man doggedly searching to find his kidnapped girlfriend - became a hit with critics and mainstream audiences.

In 1993, he directed the Hollywood remake of the film with Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis and Sandra Bullock.

Later that year, Sluizer began filming Dark Blood with River Phoenix, but the young actor died during production, leaving the film unfinished.

Dark Blood was never completed, but after years of legal disputes (involving...

Dutch director was best known for The Vanishing and River Phoenix’s last film, Dark Blood.

George Sluizer, the Dutch director best known for The Vanishing and Dark Blood, River Phoenix’s last film, died in Amsterdam on Saturday (Sept 20) following a long illness, according to Dutch media. He was 82.

“Sluizer had been ill for a long time. In 2007 he barely survived a ruptured artery and after that his health remained fragile,” according to Dutch public broadcaster Nos, quoting relatives.

The director, producer and screenwriter was born in Paris, where he attended the Idhec film academy.

He made his first film in 1961, Hold Back the Sea, a documentary that won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

Up until the early 1980s, Sluizer produced and directed many documentaries and TV specials. He also worked as a producer on numerous films, including Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Cancer Rising with Rutger Hauer.

As a writer...

Blu-ray Release Date: Oct. 14, 2014

Price: Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Twilight Time

Kiefer Sutherland and a not-long-for-this-movie Sandra Bullock in The Vanishing

The 1993 thriller The Vanishing directed by George Sluizier and starring Kiefer Sutherland (Stand By Me), Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), Nancy Travis (Internal Affairs) and (briefly) Sandra Bullock (Gravity) is an American of a 1988 Franco-Dutch film also called The Vanishing…and also directed by George Sluizer!

In the remake, as in the original, a seemingly nice guy (Sutherland) goes on vacation with his girlfriend (Bullock), who vanishes without a trace at a gas station. Three years later, the nice guy is still obsessed with finding out what happened. One day, a stranger (Bridges) arrives at Jeff’s door and admits that he was responsible for her disappearance. He promises to show the now-very-addled nice guy what happened to his girl, but only if he agrees to go through exactly the same thing she did…...

Not a lot to say in the pre-amble to this week’s selection of titles. Should probably apologise for the negativity in advance because a lot of the below is dreck this week across any content provider apart from the occasional bright spot and a new Netflix exclusive. Hopefully you will be able to at least find something worth a look that floats your boat.

This week’s titles of note are as follows:

Gravity (2013)

There really isn’t anymore praise that I can heap on Alfonso Cuaron’s outer space thrill ride that hasn’t been heaped upon it already. Upon repeat viewing what impresses more and more is the technical marvel that this film represents with Gravity being a massive leap forward in the use of virtual sets as well as animation that looks like real people.

There are apparently whole entire scenes here featuring Sandra Bullock and...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 28, 2014

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Johanna ter Steege and Gene Bervoets in The Vanishing.

Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer’s 1988 mystery-thriller The Vanishing is written by Tim Krabbe, who adapted his own novel.

The movie focuses on a young man (Gene Bervoets) who embarks on an obsessive search for the girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared while the couple were taking a sunny vacation trip. Now, his three-year investigation draws the attention of her abductor (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a mild-mannered professor with a diabolically clinical mind.

An unorthodox love story and a truly unsettling thriller, The Vanishing unfolds with meticulous intensity, leading to an unforgettable finale that has unnerved audiences around the world.

Presented in Dutch and French with English subtitles, the Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions contain the following features:

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

• New interview with director George Sluizer

• New...

Criterion has announced their October titles, and as always, the collection continues to manufacture must-own titles. This October, they will add one of John Ford’s most celebrated westerns to their collection, My Darling Clementine, along with Frederico Fellini’s beloved La Dolce Vita. They’ve also put together The Complete Jacques Tati, which includes all six of the director’s films. Additionally, the following titles will now be getting re-released in Blu-ray: George Sluizer’s thrilling The Vanishing and Orson Welles’ brilliant, unique documentary F for Fake. Hit the jump to check out the cover art and special features for these upcoming Criterion titles.

The post October’s Criterion Titles Include John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and Orson Welles’ F For Fake appeared first on Collider.

The first entry into my "Best Movies" section was Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (read my essay here) and after rights to the film were finally decided I speculated as to whether or not Criterion will finally get their hands on the absolute classics. The answer is a resounding Yes as the Blu-ray release of the film has just been announced for October 21 with the following features: New 4K digital restoration by the Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New visual essay by : : kogonada New interview with filmmaker Lina Wertmuller, who worked as assistant director on the film Scholar David Forgacs discusses the period in Italy's history when the film was made New interview with Italian film journalist Antonello Sarno about the outlandish fashions seen in the film Audio interview with actor Marcello Mastroianni from the early 1960s, conducted by film historian Gideon Bachmann Felliniana,...

In 2011, we first reported on the “lost” River Phoenix film that the actor was shooting right before he tragically died from drug-induced heart failure in 1993. Dark Blood has a strange, long history — and audiences will finally get to see the movie when it is released by Lionsgate, 20 years after it was made. THR reports that the company picked up rights to Phoenix’s final film at Cannes this week. After Phoenix’s death, producers shut down production on Dark Blood, the Phoenix family sued to prevent it ever seeing the light of day, and the insurance company locked it away. Dutch director George Sluizer (The Vanishing) claims he discovered the footage in a warehouse in London and recovered the reels in the middle of the night. There was some...

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• Lionsgate has purchased the North American rights for Dark Blood, the last film starring River Phoenix (My Own Private Idaho) before he passed away in 1993. Directed and written by George Sluizer (The Vanishing), the upcoming thriller follows the story of Boy (Phoenix), a young widower living as a hermit on a nuclear testing site in the desert. While traveling solo on his “second” honeymoon, Boy discovers a stranded Hollywood couple. Desiring the woman, Boy decides to hold them captive because he finds himself under the impression that he can create a better world with her. The upcoming drama, set to be released via VOD,...

Lionsgate has acquired North American rights to River Phoenix's final film “Dark Blood” from Cinemavault and is planning a VOD release this year, it was announced Friday at Cannes. George Sluizer (“The Vanishing”) co-wrote and directed the movie, which halted production following Phoenix's death in 1993. Sluizer subsequently spent years battling to complete the film. In 1993, the insurance company behind the film attacked Phoenix for drug abuse. After losing the claim in 1998, it allegedly decided to destroy the negative of “Dark Blood,” but Sluizer managed to save the film and preserve the creative talent from being lost. In 2012, he...

The 90s will go down in history as the decade that brought us Titanic. But it also introduced us to Quentin Tarantino and The Matrix. And there was at least one film that began with a Z

A is for Aladdin

Starting with Cadillac Man and ending with Bicentennial Man, Robin Williams made 27 films over the course of the 90s. That's a whole spectrum of Robin Williamses: kooky (Mrs Doubtfire), mournful (What Dreams May Come), creepy (Jack) and annoying (again, Bicentennial Man). Yet the most 90s Robin Williams performance of all is his turn as the Genie in Disney's Aladdin, in which he is allowed to blabber and gibber and yelp and riff about nothing at a mile a minute for ages. It's brilliant, but exhausting. Remember, this film had two sound editors. Pray for them.

B is for The Blair Witch Project

A definitively 90s film because it was...