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With Christmas just over a week away, it’s time to kick the holiday horror viewing into overdrive. But what if you’re not feeling the merriment or holiday spirit? You wouldn’t be alone.

That’s why this week’s streaming picks are dedicated to feel-bad, bleak holiday horror movies that don’t care at all about warm fuzzy feels or happily ever afters!

These five horror movies capture Scrooge’s “Bah Humbug” sentiments for the holidays, delivering bleak downers and grim explorations of humanity’s dark side instead.

As always, here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

A Christmas Tale – Tubi

Before Paco Plaza helmed international horror hits, including the [Rec] franchise and Netflix’s Veronica, he directed an Amblin-like kids story that turns grim with the made-for-tv movie A Christmas Tale, as part of Six Films to Keep You Awake.

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Christmas is just around the corner, and it’s time to see brilliant classic movies, but if you are not in the mood to see Home Alone or Jingle All the Way for a millionth and want to see some adult movies. We at CinemaBlind have prepared a list of 11 best R-rated Christmas movies you can check out.

Violent Night (Starz & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Universal Pictures

Violent Night is a Christmas action comedy film directed by Tommy Wirkola from a screenplay co-written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. The 2022 film follows Santa Claus as he comes across a wealthy family’s compound, where an elite team of mercenaries has kidnapped the family on Christmas Eve. Violent Night stars David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, and Beverly D’Angelo.

Die Hard Credit – 20th Century Fox

Die Hard...

New month, new horror recommendations from Deep Cuts Rising. This final installment of 2024 features five selections reflecting the month of December in some way, shape or form.

Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.

This month’s offerings include a Christmas slasher, a holiday-set creature feature, and more.

Madhouse (1974)

Pictured: Madhouse (1974).

Directed by Jim Clark.

It’s hard to resist a horror movie starring both Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. Even harder when it’s as on the nose as Madhouse (or The Revenge of Dr. Death). Two seasoned genre veterans like Price and Cushing were not as in demand as they used to be when this flick first came out; horror cravings had already started to change by then. And while it doesn’t lean as hard into the meta commentary as it could have,...

Beta Film’s Serbian thriller “Operation Sabre” – crowned at both Canneseries (best ensemble cast) and Brno’s Serial Killer (best TV show) – and the Latvia-Ukraine co-production “Mutiny” – about a true-life rebellion against the Soviet regime – are among the five high-end series selected for the TV Beats Forum’s inaugural Screening Day at Tallinn Black Nights, kicking off on Nov. 20.

The rest of the curated slate takes in Keshet International’s Finnish mystery thriller “Valhalla Project”; Lithuania’s most expensive series to date, “A Wolf’s Palate,” starring Edward Holcroft; and the Estonian period light crime “Von Fock.”

The showcase will include a screening of one episode of each show, followed by case studies with the key creatives and producers.

The TV Beats Screening Day is the latest effort from the organizers of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s and Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event series strand to spotlight, in the most dynamic way,...

Catherine Deneuve will preside over the 50th edition of the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars.

As part of her honorary role as president of this milestone edition, Deneuve will be delivering the opening speech at the ceremony. The gala event will take place on Feb. 28 at the Olympia concert hall and will be broadcast on French pay TV group Canal+, a media partner of the Cesar Awards.

“Who better than an extraordinary actress to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Césars? Thanks to exceptional talent, a unique career and timeless grace, Catherine Deneuve embodies the very essence of the seventh art,” said the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma.

The French star, whose career spans nearly seven decades, has starred in a raft of iconic films directed by some of the world’s most revered filmmakers, from Luis Buñuel (“Belle de jour”) to François Truffaut (“Le Dernier Metro...

No major film festival is complete without at least one Love Letter To Cinema™ from a filmmaker of some renown, to advocate the joys of the medium to an audience that doesn’t have to be told twice. French writer-director and Cannes regular Arnaud Desplechin brings that to the Croisette this year with “Filmlovers!,” a duly warm and nostalgia-washed cine-valentine, but one with a little more to say than just, “Movies, amirite?” Indeed, the film’s somewhat inelegant English-language title risks concealing the more specific focus of this unassuming but winning hybrid documentary: The French title, “Spectateurs!,” makes clear this is first and foremost a celebration of spectatorship rather than filmmaking, probing the dynamics of cinema audiences and their relationship to the screen. In either language, it’s impassioned enough to earn its exclamation point.

Not a major work but a bright, pleasurable one, with its director on more limber...

Movies are hot, according to Marshall McLuhan, who wasn’t paying them a compliment but placing them within his theory of hot and cool media. He was referring to the sensory richness that makes movies such a captivating and complete experience that they require little active participation from the audience. Just sit in the dark and let the magic wash over you. Arnaud Desplechin doesn’t disagree about the magic, but he puts a different slant on things in the docufiction Filmlovers! (Spectateurs!), whose focus is the moviegoer as an essential part of the equation.

Abounding in movie love, the director’s first feature since Brother and Sister cites more than 50 films in its eloquent onrush of clips and philosophizing and memory. But, in a departure from most such cinema essays, there’s no auteur namechecking (or onscreen titles ID’ing clips); it’s not those 50 films’ making-of or even their makers that matter here,...

Arnaud Desplechin’s hybrid documentary “Spectateurs!” (“Filmlovers”) debuted a first trailer ahead of the film’s world premiere at Cannes on May 22.

The 88-minute docu is a love letter to cinema, inspired by Desplechin’s own discovery and passion for cinema.

Per the official Cannes description of the film, Desplechin wrote: “What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic. So, I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction and discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures.”

“Spectateurs!” weaves documentary and fiction with a cast including Milo Machado Graner, the young breakthrough actor of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” and well-known French actors Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Françoise Lebrun...

Last week, The Hollywood Reporter reported that cinephiles were sharing “samizdat” links to Woody Allen’s latest film Coup de Chance from a French-to-Dutch-to-English translation, and New Yorkers were attending clandestine screenings at an East Village bar/event space. Today, THR can exclusively report that those who wish to see the 88-year-old’s latest project, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival in early September to (mostly) positive reviews, can do so without slinking around or needing secret codes.

MPI Media Group will release the picture, Allen’s 50th theatrically released feature film as a director, for North American markets on April 5, 2024. A digital/VOD release will follow on April 12.

The movie, shot in France in French, stars Lou de Laâge (Respire, The Mad Woman’s Ball) as a self-aware trophy wife who reconnects with an old chum from the Lycée Français in New York, played by Niels Schneider (Heartbeats,...

Les Films du Losange has unveiled the trailer for “Un Silence,” Joachim Lafosse’s thought-provoking film starring Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Devos that will world premiere in competition at San Sebastian Film Festival.

Tackling themes of abuse, the timely film revolves around Astrid (Devos), the wife of an acclaimed lawyer (Auteuil). Silenced for 25 years, her family balance suddenly collapses when her children initiate their own search for justice.

One of Belgium’s leading filmmakers, Lafosse is best known internationally for 2012’s “Our Children,” a heart-wrenching drama based on a true story starring Emilie Dequenne and Tahar Rahim. “Our Children” represented Belgium in the Oscars race. “Un Silence” will mark Joachim’s follow up to “The Restless,” which competed at Cannes in 2021 and also explored imploding family dynamics.

Auteuil, who previously won Cesar and BAFTA awards, notably starred in “La belle époque” by Nicolas Bedos, and “Hidden” by Michael Haneke; while Devos,...

Melvil Poupaud and Marion Cotillard in Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother And Sister (Frère Et Sœur) screening in Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Photo: Shanna Besson/Why Not Productions

In the first instalment with Melvil Poupaud (who is being honoured at the French Institute in New York next month) we discuss the dark side of Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother And Sister (Frère Et Sœur), Mathieu Amalric in A Christmas Tale and Kings And Queens, Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning, a touch of François Ozon’s By The Grace Of God, James Joyce’s The Dead, Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale, and Woody Allen’s Coup De Chance with Lou de Laâge, Niels Schneider and Valérie Lemercier.

Melvil Poupaud with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I always understood that the most gratifying thing when you’re an actor is when a great director such as Eric Rohmer...

by Cláudio Alves

French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin seems to be on a downward trajectory. His new film, Brother and Sister, has been slaughtered by critics at Cannes, the worst-reviewed Main Competition title so far. For those legions who hoped this would be the year when Marion Cotillard finally won the festival's Best Actress prize, better luck next time! Tarik Saleh's Boy from Heaven was more warmly received despite some cries of conventionality. Through procedural tropes and thriller stylings, the Swedish director explores themes of corruption in Islam, a recurring motif throughout his filmography. These Cannes contenders are both directors' second 2022 pictures – Desplechin's Deception is a new Mubi release, while Saleh's The Contractor has been available for a while. Unfortunately, neither title got much in the way of critical praise.

To keep the Cannes at Home series a celebratory exercise, today's selection looks back at lauded works from these auteurs – A Christmas Tale...

After seeing his last film (Deception) premiere in the Cannes Premiere section last year, Arnaud Desplechin returns to the competition section once again with Brother and Sister. This is his seventh comp offering after La sentinelle (1992), My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1996), Esther Kahn (2000), A Christmas Tale (2008), Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013), and the yummy 2019 procedural Oh Mercy!. This sees him reteam with Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud.

Their parents might be on death’s bed but you would not know it as estranged adult children are willing to use eye daggers, kitchen knifes and publishing houses to bring each other down.…...

The brother and sister in Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brother and Sister” can’t stand each other. The sister, played by Marion Cotillard, is Alice, a theatre superstar playing to packed houses in an adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” The brother, played by Melvil Poupaud, is Louis, an award-winning author and poet.

Alice resented it when his fame briefly overtook hers, but there is more to their mutual loathing than that. For mysterious, complicated reasons, they haven’t spoken in 20 years, and when they talk about each other to other people, Alice smiles a smile of pure venom, and Louis explodes in vicious rage. What are they to do, then, when Louis has to return to his hometown of Lille to visit his dying parents? Will he and Alice be forced to confront each other at long last?

It’s a juicy premise, but Desplechin and his co-writer, Julie Peyr,...

All is not well with the Vuillard clan and something’s gone rotten in Roubaix. While their matriarch lies ill, treading the line between the here and the hereafter, the paterfamilias is left to contend with his three headstrong children. Though the youngest, who lives a stable married life, more often than not serves as ballast between more electric older siblings, sparks fly when the other two meet — or at least they would, had the eldest daughter not banished her hard-drinking middle brother from the family.

Sound familiar? Sounds, perhaps, like another Arnaud Desplechin film that premiered once upon a time in Cannes (as nearly all his films do)? Sounds about right.

Though the French auteur has always freely recycled themes and plot points (with more than half the characters in his 14 features carrying the surnames Dedalus and Vuillard), “Brother and Sister” seems more like a retread (and a retreat...

Whatever other flaws “Brother and Sister” may have, you absolutely cannot accuse it of being slow to build. Within its first 10 minutes, two estranged siblings bawl each other out at a dead child’s wake, one declaring the other “an indecent monster”; a screechingly staged single-vehicle car crash imperils an elderly couple and paralyzes a teenage driver; then, a barrelling truck at the scene brings further tragedy. Even before we’ve had time to gather the principals’ names, French director Arnaud Desplechin’s latest dysfunctional family tableau makes no bones about its dialed-to-11 melodramatic agenda; that attention-grabbing intensity soon dissipates, however, in the gauzy, maudlin study of toxic sibling relations that ensues. Marion Cotillard’s headlining presence may pique international interest in a talky piece likely to play better on home turf.

The outward signs were promising for Desplechin’s swift follow-up to his stuffy Philip Roth adaptation “Deception,” which...

A version of this preview of this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup appeared in the Cannes edition of TheWrap magazine.

As the film industry — from the mightiest moguls to the scrappiest indie-theater owners — struggles to bring movies and moviegoing back to pre-covid standards, look to this year’s Cannes Film Festival to trumpet the cause, starting with a splashy premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick” that’s clearly meant to send out an international message: “Remember summer movies? You love those. And they’re back!”

Beyond that Paramount blockbuster, Cannes 2022 seems to be delivering more of what the annual event is known for, in the best ways (providing an international platform for some of the world’s greatest films and filmmakers) and in the worst.

Even with its recurring shortcomings, the Cannes lineup provides an impressive menu of titles that cineastes everywhere have been eagerly awaiting, from David Cronenberg’s...

After being cancelled in 2020 and then delayed in 2021, the Cannes Film Festival is finally back on track for May 2022 on the French Riviera. The 75th installment of the international cinema showcase will take place from May 17 to May 28, and there will be 18 films competing for the coveted Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. Last year that honor went to the French thriller “Titane,” directed by Julia Ducournau. As of this writing several details are still to be announced including who will be on this year’s jury and who will be serving as jury president after Spike Lee presided over last year’s program.

A filmmaker’s previous track record at Cannes can sometimes give us an idea of who’s in a good position to claim the Palme. For instance, seven of this year’s entries in the official competition come from directors who have previously won...

“When I met you, you were ripe,” says Denis Podalydès’s Philip to his younger mistress (Léa Seydoux) in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie). She responds: “No, I was rotting on the floor under a tree.”

Arnaud Desplechin’s Frère Et Sœur (Brother And Sister), starring Marion Cotillard, Golshifteh Farahani, Melvil Poupaud, and Cosmina Stratan has been selected to screen in the 75th anniversary edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Arnaud’s Ismael's Ghosts was the 2017 Cannes Opening Night Gala selection and his Philip Roth adaptation Deception was a 2021 highlight.

Arnaud Desplechin with Anne-Katrin Titze on Philip Roth: “He’s as is, he’s absolutely imperfect, selfish as I was saying.”

Desplechin will have had ten world premieres at Cannes: Oh Mercy!; My Golden Days; Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian; A Christmas Tale; Esther Kahn...

Denis Podalydès as Philip with Léa Seydoux in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie).

In the second of my series of conversations with Arnaud Desplechin we discuss filming Frère Et Sœur, starring Marion Cotillard with Golshifteh Farahani and Melvil Poupaud, and working on Deception (Tromperie) with longtime collaborator composer Grégoire Hetzel (Oh Mercy!; Ismael's Ghosts; My Golden Days; La Forêt; A Christmas Tale; Kings & Queen) and for the first time with cinematographer Yorick Le Saux.

Marion Cotillard stars in Arnaud Desplechin’s upcoming Frère Et Sœur Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg was a highlight of the 74th Cannes Film Festival and New York’s Rendez-Vous with French...

In normal times it should be fairly easy to separate the content of a certain piece from the circumstances of its creation, but we haven’t exactly been living in normal times of late, have we?

And so it wouldn’t feel right to describe Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception,” his Philip Roth adaptation that screened on Tuesday as part of Cannes’ new Cannes Premiere sidebar, as “airless” without mentioning that the film was made during France’s long national lockdown last year.

The French director had long dreamed of adapting Roth’s slim 1990 novel, but never thought realizing those dreams was entirely likely – the text, after all, was nothing but snippets of dialogue with little more by way of organizing structures than periods and commas.

Covid restrictions thus proved rather fortuitous for a film shot entirely in a studio. Save for one scene, it never featured more than two actors in the frame,...

Along with celebrating his 60th birthday during quarantine, Arnaud Desplechin has kept quite busy. Following up his crime procedural Oh Mercy!, he embarked on an adaptation of Philip Roth’s Deception with Léa Seydoux, which hopefully will premiere whenever Cannes decides to take place. Now, he’s already set up his next film.

Arte France Cinéma has announced today they are backing Frère et soeur aka Brother and Sister, the next film from Desplechin. Marking a reteam with Marion Cotillard (Ismael’s Ghosts) and Melvil Poupaud (A Christmas Tale), the film follows them as siblings in their late 50s. Alice is an actress, Louis was a teacher and a poet. They no longer speak and have avoided each other for more than twenty years, but they will be brought together when their parents die. As usual, Why Not Productions will be producing.

Spare our rough translation from French, but Desplechin added,...

Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud star in the filmmaker's last movie, while upcoming works from Pietro Marcello and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi will also be co-produced by the French-German TV channel. The second Arte France Cinéma selection committee for 2021 (steered by Olivier Père) has opted to co-produce and pre-purchase three projects. Stealing focus among them is Arnaud Desplechin’s Frère et soeur, starring Marion Cotillard (who previously toplined Ismaël’s Ghosts) and Melvil Poupaud (who also featured in A Christmas Tale). The story revolves around a brother and sister who are nearing their fifties... Alice is an actress, Louis was a teacher and a poet. They no longer speak to one another and have been avoiding each other for over twenty years, but the death of their parents will force them to cross paths… This feature film is set to be steered by the filmmaker’s usual partner in crime Why Not Productions.

REinvent International Sales has closed a raft of deals across its slate of family movies, including “A Christmas Tale,” “Twigson and the Sea Monster” and “Nelly Rapp – Monster Agent.”

“Nelly Rapp – Monster Agent,” directed by Amanda Adolfsson, has been sold to the U.S. and Canada (Janson Media), Russia and Cis (Volga Films), Poland (Vivarto), Japan (New Select) and Estonia (Estin Film).

The movie was selected at this year’s Berlinale in the Generation Kplus competition and previously won two Swedish Guldbagge awards. The film stars promising newcomer Matilda Gross as Nelly, an 11-year old girl who is about to spend the fall vacation with her uncle Hannibal and her beloved dog London. It turns out that Hannibal does not live the quiet life she thought and is in fact a monster agent. The cast includes Johan Rheborg, Björn Gustafsson, Lily Wahlsteen and Marianne Mörck. “Nelly Rapp – Monster Agent” was...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Bad Boys For Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)

Much has been made in retrospect how quaint the original ‘95 Bad Boys plays in comparison to its ‘03 follow-up. It rode on the rapport of its leads through only a handful of gunfights and fisticuffs, culminating in an airport climax Bay had to front his own money to finish. The second installment contains not one but two extended car chases with trucks emptying obstacles onto our heroes, and an entire slum being obliterated by a Hummer with little regard for human life–all across a gratuitous two and a half hours. In short, eight years apart, the...

The revered film director vowed never to touch theatre. So why is he staging the great Aids epic Angels in America? Apparently, it’s all a misunderstanding

Arnaud Desplechin looks surprisingly calm as he excuses himself to listen to a voicemail from the Comédie-Française’s technical team. France is one week into a general strike over pension reform and the country’s premier theatre company has followed suit, resulting in cancelled performances and rehearsals. “We take it day by day,” says Desplechin, whose new production of Angels in America is due to open in mid-January. “It will start to get difficult if it continues.” We spoke in December and the strike is still going strong, but there is no plan to delay.

It doesn’t help that Tony Kushner’s sprawling 1990s play about the Aids crisis is only Desplechin’s second theatre project, his first being a 2015 version of August Strindberg’s Father.

“Marriage Story” opens with spouses Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) each reciting a list of everything they love and admire about each other. It’s almost unbearably adorable, so much so that writer-director Noah Baumbach immediately pulls out the rug: These lists are an exercise assigned by a counselor who’s seeing the couple through their divorce.

Over the course of this poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking saga, Baumbach performs an incisive autopsy on this couple. As their breakup brings out the best and worst of them, we will learn why they worked so well together and why they needed to separate from each other; if there’s a plot or traditional dramatic tension here, it’s over whether or not these two can remain amicable enough to stay close to each other and to be effective parents to their son, Henry.

Baumbach performs a brilliant balancing act throughout; I...

Arnaud Desplechin (with Anne-Katrin Titze) on an Ingmar Bergman film: "I remember this scene that I saw so young … in Cries & Whispers, where Erland Josephson is visiting Liv Ullmann.” Photo: Ed Bahlman

Arnaud Desplechin’s Oh Mercy!, co-written with Léa Mysius, shot by Irina Lubtchansky, music composed by Grégoire Hetzel stars Léa Seydoux, Roschdy Zem, Sara Forestier, and Antoine Reinartz.

Arnaud Desplechin on his Oh Mercy! composer: “It was not a Bernard Herrmann inspiration or George Delerue inspiration. It was just pure Grégoire Hetzel. It was a perfect fit with the plot. ” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the first instalment of my in-depth conversation with the director the morning before the North American premiere at the New York Film Festival we discussed his work with editor Laurence Briaud, listening to Ryuchi Sakamoto and Toru Takemitsu, not having a Bernard Herrmann or George Delerue inspiration for Grégoire Hetzel’s score, what...

Arnaud Desplechin’s returned to his hometown onscreen many times: “I still have to go back in my tracks, as a malediction—not as a dream, but as a curse,” he’s said of Roubaix, where My Sex Life and My Golden Years‘ protagonist stand-in Paul Dédalus hails from and where A Christmas Tale unfolds. Desplechin’s also shot digitally before, but this is the first time he’s ever aggressively leaned into it: like Tale, Oh Mercy! also starts during the holiday season, but—opening strings of Christmas lights over city streets aside—the dominant colors aren’t red and green but the familiar digital color-correction staples of orange and blue. […]...

Arnaud Desplechin’s returned to his hometown onscreen many times: “I still have to go back in my tracks, as a malediction—not as a dream, but as a curse,” he’s said of Roubaix, where My Sex Life and My Golden Years‘ protagonist stand-in Paul Dédalus hails from and where A Christmas Tale unfolds. Desplechin’s also shot digitally before, but this is the first time he’s ever aggressively leaned into it: like Tale, Oh Mercy! also starts during the holiday season, but—opening strings of Christmas lights over city streets aside—the dominant colors aren’t red and green but the familiar digital color-correction staples of orange and blue. […]...

Filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu once predicted that his Palme d’Or-winning “Shoplifters” would come to represent a major turning point in his career — the end of one phase, and the beginning of another. As it turns out, “The Truth” is inevitably a bit more complicated.

The first movie the Japanese writer-director has made since winning the film world’s most prestigious award is also the first that he’s ever shot in another tongue or country, and that fact alone is enough to make Kore-eda’s latest feel like an outlier in any number of obvious ways; a foreign organ transplanted into an otherwise cohesive body of work. On the other hand, this wise and diaphanous little drama finds Kore-eda once again exploring his usual obsessions, as the man behind the likes of “Still Walking” and “After the Storm” offers yet another insightful look at the underlying fabric of a modern family.

The Notebook is covering Cannes with an on-going correspondence between critic Leonardo Goi and editor Daniel Kasman.Oh MercyDear Danny, I only left Cannes yesterday, and yet the Croisette seemed unrealistically far this morning, almost as if it had already begun to drift into a cloud in time—as though it had never happened. This is my last dispatch of the year; like yours, it finds me writing you from the comforts of home. I began my day re-reading our correspondences—partly to give in to the nostalgia, but also to remind myself of all we’ve seen the past couple of weeks. And with the benefits of a good night’s sleep, things looked a lot clearer, and double bills I hadn’t yet thought of began to surface: films we had seen and written on in separate dispatches, which suddenly made for eye-opening pairings. What to make of...

After La sentinelle (1992), My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1996), Esther Kahn (2000), A Christmas Tale (2008), Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013), and almost coming with a double title of Oh Mercy!, this is Arnaud Desplechin‘s sixth trip to the competition and in all his eleventh feature film. Starring Roschdy Zem, Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier, this is a departure for the filmmaker in terms of genre and tells the Xmas tale of Roubaix the city — and Daoud, the local police chief, and Louis, a fresh recruit, are confronted with the violent murder of an elderly woman.…...

Xavier Dolan is “enfant terrible” no more. The director has now turned 30, and he got emotional and teary-eyed while introducing his latest film, “Matthias and Maxime,” on Wednesday at Cannes.

And critics could sense that his latest film suggests the director is slowing down and looking back on his youth with more sensitivity and even maturity.

“‘Matthias & Maxime’ deals with friendship and self discovery in a way that will be familiar to fans of Dolan’s previous work, but it is a, dare we say, more mature work,” TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote in his review, calling the film a return to form despite the young director’s blistering pace and constant presence at Cannes. “There’s a reflection to go with the gleeful, transgressive energy, a sense of looking back fondly at the jarring but seminal moments that form identity.”

Also Read: 'Matthias & Maxime' Film...

A ponderous true-crime procedural about a murder in France’s poorest commune, Arnaud Desplechin’s mostly lifeless but peripherally compelling “Oh Mercy!” finds the “My Golden Years” auteur returning to his birthplace to tell a story about a place that few people got to choose, and even fewer get to leave. If the film is a literal homecoming, however, it’s also a striking figurative departure for a filmmaker best known (and most beloved) for intricate, frazzled, and hyper-loquacious comedic dramas like “Kings and Queen” and “A Christmas Tale.” In that sense, this frigid misfire is most readily comparable to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “The Third Murder,” another flat genre flirtation from an otherwise reliable master.

Based on a killing that occurred in May of 2002, “Oh Mercy!” unfolds like an especially dull episode of “Law & Order: Roubaix.” The film begins on Christmas — not that the script Desplechin co-wrote with Léa Mysius...

Nineteen films are in contention for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 14 to May 25. The history of a filmmaker at this festival can offer wisdom as to who could be out front to win the coveted Palme d’Or. Seven of the entries are by filmmakers that have been honored during past closing ceremonies. Newcomers to Cannes could end up being big winners with three filmmakers making their first appearance on the Croisette and another four having their films shown for the first time in competition. The jury will be headed by four-time Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, who claimed the Best Director prize at Cannes in 2006 for “Babel.”

Below is a breakdown of the 19 films competing this year and the history of their helmers at the festival.

Pedro Almodóvar (“Pain and Glory”)

The acclaimed Spanish director is back at Cannes...

In two weeks, Jia Zhangke’s new epic of crime and romance, Ash Is Purest White, will arrive in the U.S. courtesy of Cohen Media Group. The director with the most insightful eye on contemporary China, his latest film follows Zhao Tao’s character of Qiao on a decades-spanning journey. We’re pleased to premiere an exclusive clip, featuring Qiao under siege leading up to the film’s major turning point and a tour de force setpiece of filmmaking from the director.

In a rare A-grade review, Rory O’Connor said at Cannes, “There are few filmmakers with Jia’s ability to convey scales both physical (simply filming his actors walk past some soulless mega-structure or vast landscape) and existential (focusing on small shifts in his characters’ relationships as tectonic shifts seem to be taking place simultaneously in those same characters’ society).”

See our exclusive clip below along with...

IFC Films has acquired North American rights to “The Truth,” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated and Palme d’Or-winning “Shoplifters,” Variety has learned.

The deal was announced at the Berlin Film Festival and comes after an active Sundance for IFC — one in which the indie label picked up rights to the Keira Knightley thriller “Official Secrets” and Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale.”

“The Truth” brings together two icons of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, for the the first time on the big screen. It co-stars Ethan Hawke. In a bit of art imitating life, the film centers on Fabienne (Deneuve), a legendary movie star renowned for her talent and beauty. Despite her professional success, Fabienne has a strained relationship with her daughter Lumir (Binoche), a screenwriter. Things reach a boiling point after Lumir and her husband (Hawke) return to Paris and Fabienne publishes a memoir. Instead of a warm reunion,...

The director with the most insightful eye on contemporary China, Jia Zhangke is returning this spring with a new epic Ash Is Purest White. Following Zhao Tao’s character on a decades-spanning journey of crime, romance, and reflection, it’s one of the best films of 2019, and now Cohen Media Group has unveiled the new trailer.

In a rare A-grade review, Rory O’Connor said at Cannes, “There are few filmmakers with Jia’s ability to convey scales both physical (simply filming his actors walk past some soulless mega-structure or vast landscape) and existential (focusing on small shifts in his characters’ relationships as tectonic shifts seem to be taking place simultaneously in those same characters’ society).”

See the trailer and poster below and watch the director’s recent iPhone-shot short film here.

A tragicomedy initially set in the jianghu Ash Is Purest White begins by following the quick-witted Qiao (Tao Zhao...

Oh Mercy

French auteur Arnaud Desplechin switches things up a bit for his tenth feature film Oh Mercy (previously known as Roubaix: a Light/Roubaix: Une Lumiere), a crime drama/character study based on a 2002 true story from the filmmaker’s hometown. Financed by Cnc and produced by Pascal Caucheteux of Why Not Productions, the title has already been presold overseas by Wild Bunch. Desplechin is one of France’s most beloved contemporary directors, having competed five times in the Cannes competition (La Sentinelle, 1992; My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument, 1996; Esther Kahn, 2000; A Christmas Tale, 2008; Jimmy P.…...

10 Christmas Movies That Definitely Aren’t for Kids (Photos)

Sure, Christmas is a time of joy for children of all ages, but that doesn’t mean that grown-ups can’t have the cinematic equivalent of a spiked egg nog. After you’ve packed the little ones off to bed, enjoy these movies, from the hilarious to the horrifying, that are aimed at adult audiences.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2018): It’s Christmastime! But thanks to a zombie outbreak, it’s also the endtimes, and our high school heroes dispatch the undead with bloody fervor. And did we mention this is also a musical?

A Bad Moms Christmas (2017): The bad moms just want to have fun, even when their own bad moms come rolling into town to celebrate the season. Santas will strip, and the egg nog will be spiked.

Better Watch Out (2017): This clever holiday horror-comedy takes the...

The French movie star of French movie stars turns 75 today. She's won two prizes at Cannes, two at Berlinale, and two at the Césars (with 12 additional nominations) in her career that's been as lustrous as the famous golden hair. Catherine Deneuve hasn't been as celebrated in recent years as Isabelle Huppert (who is 10 years younger) but her list of classics, hits, and indelible experiments is long: Belle de Jour (BAFTA nomination), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Repulsion, Mississippi Mermaid, Tristana, Donkey Skin, The Hunger, The Metro (César win), Indochine, East/West, Pola X, Dancer in the Dark, 8 Women, and Kings and Queen among them.

The last eight years have been quiet but it wasn't so long ago that the one-two-three punch of voice work in the Oscar-nominated Persepolis (2007 -- she voiced both the French & English versions), an amazing performance in Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale...

Arnaud Desplechin loves stories – the ones you show on a screen, the ones people regale others with that reveal delusions and dreams, the ones we tell ourselves in order to survive. A French filmmaker who's given us some of the warmest and most eccentric movies to come out of that country (My Sex Life ... or How I Got Into an Argument, Kings and Queen, A Christmas Tale), he's a director who loves to pile incident upon incident, propelling his characters from one dramatic pivot point to the next in the name of wreaking emotional havoc.

Last spring, “Ismael’s Ghosts,” the latest from acclaimed auteur Arnaud Desplechin (“A Christmas Tale,” “Kings & Queens,” “My Golden Days“), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival with very little buzz. We called it a “watchable amalgam of all his best and worst tendencies.” However, it’s now landing stateside with a new version that might turn the tide of critical opinion.

Ho ho ho, haomies! Christmas is finally upon us, and what do you know; we’re doing another Christmas horror film! Back in the winter of 2013 we recorded an episode on 2010’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. In true Who Goes There fashion we got way too drunk and the episode was scrapped. Fast forward to the […]

The post Who Goes There Podcast: Ep 145 – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale appeared first on Dread Central.

While many people may think of endless egg nog and cheerful carolers when the holiday season arrives, horror fans have fond thoughts of an axe-wielding Santa Claus and little furry creatures they don't dare feed after midnight. ’Tis once again the season for holiday horror movies, and the Corpse Club team have plenty to discuss on a holly jolly episode of Daily Dead's official podcast.

In episode 31 of Daily Dead's podcast, co-hosts Patrick Bromley, Heather Wixson, Scott Drebit, Derek Anderson, and Jonathan James unwrap the gift of on-screen seasonal scares with discussions on essential holiday horror films such as Black Christmas (1974), Gremlins, and Krampus. They also deck the halls with more obscure holiday horror movies by talking about some of their under-seen favorites, including Christmas Evil, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, and A Christmas Horror Story. So make sure the milk and cookies are ready, finish putting the presents under the tree,...

If you have the horror streaming service Shudder, and lord knows you should, then you already have your hot ticket for the most obscure bit of holiday fun you could possibly have all weekend! Our pick for the upcoming holiday weekend is none other than Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale… a film so wonderfully weird […]

The post DC’s Holiday Shudder Pick of the Weekend – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale appeared first on Dread Central.

If December is a relatively quiet month for Netflix, perhaps that’s because they want you to spend the holidays scaling the seemingly infinite mountain of content they’ve released this year. Good luck with that. But the streaming giant’s latest batch of new releases, however scarce, offer a wild variety of things to see. From an under-the-radar family drama that some critics believe is the best movie the year, to a demented Michael Shannon Christmas movie that some critics don’t even believe is a real thing, these are the seven best films coming to Netflix this December.

Read More:7 New Netflix Shows to Binge in December, and The Best Episodes of Each 7. “Pottersville” (2017)

Okay, so “Pottersville” is a very, very bad movie. It still wouldn’t really be one of the seven best movies coming to Netflix this month if there were only six movies coming to Netflix this month.

Better than ever, now in its seventh year, the spectacular program with its filmmaking guests and a committed community of dedicated and intellectually alive filmgoers invigorates the mind and activist tendencies already in play.

Take for instance, University of Arizona Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, speaking with Regents’ Professor Toni Massaro about social justice and the environment. Here he is, in person, being honored as every word he speaks is treated as a jewel. Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his most recent being Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. An ardent free speech advocate, Chomsky has published and lectured widely on U.S. foreign policy, Mideast politics, terrorism, democratic society and war. Chomsky, who joined the UA faculty this fall, is a laureate professor in the Department of...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended Viewinga stunning trailer for the 4k restoration and re-release of Legend of the Mountain (1979), an under-seen, contemplative action masterpiece by Come Drink with Me and A Touch of Zen director King Hu.Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone gets a wry and incisive new trailer for its imminent U.S. release. We wrote on the film in February, and later interviewed the director about it.For De Filmkrant, Notebook contributors Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin investigate in a new video essay the virtuous modulation to be found in Howard Hawks' and Barbara Stanwyck's talents in Ball of Fire.Commissioned by Renzo, Le CiNéMa Club has premiered three inspired short films from Mati Diop, Eduardo Williams, and Baptist Penetticobra all loosely interpreting the theme "Inhabit the earth".Recommended READINGIn...