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One of the primary rules of horror movie survival, "Never talk to strangers," is ingeniously ignored by two young women in A24's newest psychological thriller, "Heretic." A dark, stormy night and a house shrouded in dense foliage are two cinematic warning signs that scream, "Don't go into that house." However, for two young missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, talking to strangers is essential to spreading the good word of their church. Writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods compose a film that is slim on the usual jump scares that often define religious horror stories but instead invests in thought-provoking, tension-building conversations about faith.

The film begins in small-town America with Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) charmingly trading innocuous chatter about all things holy and otherwise. The two women, proud and motivated to share the lessons of their congregation, venture at...

Tom Cruise has always embraced risks, almost as if he’s married to the thrill of it. So, it’s no surprise that stories of his risky businesses from the set of Risky Business continue to captivate our attention. The film that launched Cruise into superstardom, was marked by more than just that, as it is also still discussed thanks to his steamy affair with co-star Rebecca De Mornay.

Rebecca De Mornay and Tom Cruise in Risky Business | Credits: Warner Bros.

However, the romance was not without drama, reportedly leading to the end of one Hollywood couple. Here is what all went on behind the scenes!

Inside the Risky Business Behind the Scenes with Rebecca De Mornay and Tom Cruise!

Even after four decades, Risky Business still has fans buzzing with behind-the-scenes gossip, particularly about the rumored romance between Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. The duo met while filming the 1983 classic.

Remember "The Strangers"? They're back — in trilogy form. Released in 2008, "The Strangers" is a wildly effective horror pic in which a couple finds themselves targeted at random by a trio of masked killers. Written and directed by Bryan Bertino, the film made great use of sound design and slowly building dread to create a memorable scary movie that went on to become a sleeper hit at the box office. In 2018, we got "The Strangers: Prey At Night," a sequel that followed a similar formula but changed up the atmosphere a bit (it felt like more of a traditional slasher movie than the first film).

Now, we're getting a whole new trilogy, helmed by none other than Renny Harlin, the filmmaker behind "Cliffhanger" and "Deep Blue Sea." The plan is to release all three films in one year, and things are kicking off with "The Strangers: Chapter 1." Don't call it a remake,...

Cinematographer Elemér Ragályi, one of the greatest talents of modern Hungarian cinema, died last Thursday.

Ragályi was born in 1939 in Hungary, where he graduated at the Academy of Theater and Film with a degree in cinematography.

As a cinematographer, he worked with directors such as István Gaál, István Szabó Gyula Gazdag, Judit Elek, Pál Sándor and Ferenc András, innovating in order to give a distinctive look to iconic films.

In 1970, Gaál’s “The Falcons” won the Jury Prize of the Cannes Film Festival, in large part thanks to the camerawork of Ragályi.

Elemér Ragályi (Courtesy of Nfi/Magda B. Muller)

In 1990, he received the television prize, the CableACE Award, of the American Society of Cinematographers for the HBO production “The Josephine Baker Story,” starring Lynn Whitfield. He was also nominated for Ace awards for his work on “Max and Helen” and “Red King, White King,” starring Tom Skerritt and Helen Mirren.

Martin Wiley, a veteran producer and executive whose credits include Acts of Violence, Never Talk to Strangers and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, died March 20, his son Cameron told Deadline. He was 65.

A USC alum who got his post-graduate degree from UCLA, Wiley served as a creative executive in charge of development on films produced at Warner Bros., Sony, Lionsgate and other studios and the supervising producer and/or unit production manager for more than a dozen theatrical features.

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Wiley began his career in the late 1980s, serving as a producer or co-producer on films including Mutator, Diving In and Little Sister. His...

Deaf Crocodile's maiden home video release of Jean-Louis Roy's The Unknown Man of Shandigor (L'inconnu de Shandigor) is the rarest of joys in the current cinema landscape, a true out-of-the-blue discovery. Made in 1967, Shandigor has evaded film buffs for decades, seeming appearing out of nowhere with its 4K restoration debut at last year’s Fantasia film festival. A film very much of its time and ahead of its time, Shandigor announces the arrival of a bold strategy from Deaf Crocodile, shine a light on some of the most obscure corners of international cult cinema and revive long forgotten cult gems. It's a gambit, for sure, but if this is any indication, one that is likely to pay off handsomely for us all. A sometimes perplexing...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

A total of 46 films and 27 series will be showcased at the online-only event.

Lukas Dhont’s second feature Close and Olga Lucovnicova’s Last Letters From My Grandma are among the 46 feature and 27 series projects to be showcased at Re>Connext, the annual showcase for films and TV series made in Flanders and Brussels, Belgium.

Close is filmmaker Dhont’s follow-up to Girl, which won the Camera d’Or following its premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2018. Last year, the project was pitched at Re>Connext under the title The Invisible.

For this edition, drama Close returns as a work in progress,...

Nitehawk Cinema is expanding its programming team.

The chain, which has branches in Williamsburg and Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, N.Y., has hired Cristina Cacioppo and Desmond Thorne to augment its programming staff. They will both report to John Woods, Nitehawk’s director of programming and acquisitions.

Cacioppo most recently programmed for the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn, where she oversaw the repertory programming, and spearheaded new film series and events. She has been a film programmer for the past two decades, having previously headed up the 92nd Street Y’s Tribeca film program. She is the co-director of the New York branch of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, has an ongoing column, “The Outskirts,” for Screen Slate, and has written on occasion for Mubi.

Thorne worked on the programming team at NewFest, New York’s LGBT film festival, for three years, as both a festival programmer and a consultant for their year-round programming.

In the grand tradition of psychological thrillers from yesteryear (especially the 1990s)—you know, the ones where we watch as some psychotic manipulator takes advantage of well-meaning folks who are afraid of confrontation—comes Deon Taylor’s The Intruder, an endlessly entertaining and enthralling cautionary tale about the dangers of home ownership.

The Intruder is centered around Scott and Annie Russell (played by Michael Ealy and Meagan Good), a young and successful couple who are tired of the hustle and bustle of living in downtown San Francisco and decide that they’re in need of a change of scenery. They find the home of their dreams out in Napa Valley, as widower Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid) has decided to sell his family estate, Foxglove, and start a new life out in Florida. The Russells eagerly make an offer on the house, and as they begin to settle in to their...

Following the accidental omission of UK theater titan Peter Hall from the In Memoriam section of Sunday’s Olivier Awards, event organizer the Society of London Theatre (Solt) has taken action. Not only have they issued a statement apologizing “unreservedly for this serious error,” they have also taken the decision to rename the Olivier Award for Best Director the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director from next year’s ceremony.

Solt, which came in for some strong criticizm following Hall’s omission, said it had taken the decision “in recognition of Sir Peter’s phenomenal contribution to British theatre over many decades, and in close consultation with the Hall family,” who include actress Rebecca Hall.

Solt also said that it was “reviewing the process by which people are included in the In Memoriam segment for future ceremonies” and the body has updated the In Memoriam video, which you can view here.

While the story may not exactly win any points in the originality department, Nurse 3D successfully embraces its exploitatively sexy and sleazy demeanor with a wink and a nod, going for broke with such gonzo-style gusto that you just can’t help but admire the end result. For those of you who have been looking for the horror-fied version of Showgirls, Nurse 3D is your movie.

Nurse 3D follows model nurse Abby Russell (de la Huerta), who’s exactly the kind of nurse you want tending your bedside- that is, unless you’re a no-good, cheating husband. That’s when Abby gets a little angry and uses her medical training to off the cheaters of the world in a marvelously bloody and creative fashion. Her obsession with cheaters isn’t the only thing driving Abby- she’s also taken an extreme fancy to a nice new nurse at her hospital...

Well, folks, 2011 is officially in the can, and surprisingly it wasn't such a horrendous year. It was definitely better than 2010, which was a huge step up from the putrid 2009. We laughed, we applauded, we were left dumbstruck, and of course we were infuriated. Read on for our cheers and jeers!

Now, with a fresh movie-watching start before us, we're taking our usual yearly look back at the good, the bad, the Wtf, and everything in between.

And don't be lazy by just reading along! Get off of your asses and give us your lists in the comments section below. We wanna hear from you if only to compare notes. Lots and lots of notes.

Speaking of notes, the most common complaint we've heard over the years is that we don't have one definitive list representing Dread Central as a whole so for 2011 we dropped everyone's choices in the blender, hit puree,...

Firms spent $5.5 billion on firewalls, virus scanners, and biometric ID checkers last year, but one vital business asset remains woefully hackable: employees. "Humans are the weakest link in the security chain," says Sharon Conheady, director of the U.K.'s First Defense Information Security, who'll teach corporate geeks at this summit how to deflect "social engineering" swindles. These low-tech, highly effective scams take advantage of people's naturally trusting (read: gullible) behavior to access sensitive data. So a trickster might call an employee pretending to be an It engineer and ask for passwords and user names, or befriend smokers outside a building and follow them to their offices. The take-home message? The paranoiacs (see November 6) are right: Never talk to strangers. -- TB

tue, november 17 Hack Deepsec In-Depth Security Conference Vienna, Austria

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