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With Janus possessing the much-needed restorations, Catherine Breillat is getting her biggest-ever spotlight in November’s Criterion Channel series spanning 1976’s A Real Young Girl to 2004’s Anatomy of Hell––just one of numerous retrospectives arriving next month. They’re also spotlighting Ida Lupino, directorial efforts of John Turturro (who also gets an “Adventures In Moviegoing”), the Coen brothers, and Jacques Audiard.

In a slightly more macroscopic view, Columbia Noir and a new edition of “Queersighting” ring in Noirvember. Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy and Miller’s Crossing get Criterion Editions, while restorations of David Bowie-starrer The Linguini Incident, Med Hondo’s West Indies, and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue make streaming debuts; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park arrives just in time for another grim election day.

See the full list of titles arriving in November below:

36 fillette, Catherine Breillat, 1988

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat,...

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

The Locarno Film Festival is justly renowned for its retrospectives, and this year is no exception. But rather than an individual director or star, this edition is dedicated to a studio: Columbia Pictures with “The Lady with the Torch” celebrating the studio’s centenary.

With 44 films from well-known titles such as Orson Welles’s “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) to more obscure gems like Frank Borzage’s “Man’s Castle” (1933) and Earl McEvoy’s “The Killer that Stalked New York” (1950), curator Ehsan Khoshbakht has created what he calls an “unofficial history” of the studio in its heyday, as controversial president Harry Cohn dragged Columbia from poverty row to Academy success.

Variety sat down to speak with Khoshbakht (who is also the co-director of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival) about the retrospective.

Variety: What role does the retrospective play in Locarno?

Khoshbakht: Very recently, I was...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

February––particularly its third week––is all about romance. Accordingly the Criterion Channel got creative with their monthly programming and, in a few weeks, will debut Interdimensional Romance, a series of films wherein “passion conquers time and space, age and memory, and even death and the afterlife.” For every title you might’ve guessed there’s a wilder companion: Alan Rudolph’s Made In Heaven, Soderbergh’s remake, and Resnais’ Love Unto Death. Mostly I’m excited to revisit Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, a likely essential viewing before Megalopolis.

February also marks Black History Month, and Criterion’s series will include work by Shirley Clarke (also subject of a standalone series), Garrett Bradley, Cheryl Dunye, and Julie Dash, while movies by Sirk, Minnelli, King Vidor, and Lang play in “Gothic Noir.” Greta Gerwig gets an “Adventures in Moviegoing” and can be seen in Mary Bronstein’s Yeast,...

Jahm Najafi, the Iranian-American billionaire who owns STX Entertainment, is reportedly preparing a 3.75B bid to acquire Premiere League club Tottenham Hotspur.

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Najafi, chair Msp Sports Capital, is working with a consortium of investors with a view to approaching Spurs with a formal bid in the coming weeks.

The Ft said the acquisition effort would value Tottenham at 3B, with 750M of debt being added to the club’s books. Msp will be responsible for 70 of the bid, while the remaining 30 will be put forward by backers in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Deadline has approached Msp for comment.

Tottenham is currently owned by British billionaire Joe Lewis, with Daniel Levy serving as the team’s chairman. Spurs’ lack of trophies means there is unrest among supporters about the club’s ownership, with supporters actively chanting for Levy’s resignation during matches.

Quentin Tarantino crowned Sergio Corbucci as the second-best director of Italian westerns, but our vote goes to Sergio Sollima — this is the most satisfying Spaghetti oater outside of the Leone corral. In his first starring role, Lee Van Cleef is lawman Jonathan Corbett, who pursues Tomas Milian’s killer into Mexico for an American millionaire. Political screenwriter Franco Solinas helped cook up the story, which pitches frontier ethics against ‘establishment’ corruption. The two-disc special edition presents the show in 4 versions, if we count a clever English-Italian language hybrid.

The Big Gundown

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110, 90, 95 min. / La resa dei conti / Street Date February 13, 2023 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £22.99

Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Tomas Milian, Walter Barnes, Nieves Navarro, Gérard Herter, Manolita Barroso, Robert Camardiel, Ángel del Pozo, Luisa Rivelli, Luis Barboo, Benito Stefanelli.

Cinematography: Carlo Carlini

Set decorators: Carlo Leva, Carlo Simi, Nicola Tamburo

Costumes: Carlo...

Filmmaker Teddy Collatos ventures into episodic territory with Palookaville, a comedy series that follows a young New Yorker named JoJo (Howard Lester), who suddenly believes that he’s the famous (and long-deceased) boxer Joe Lewis. The 17-minute pilot episode, set to have its world premiere at Slamdance, explains how this case of mistaken self-identity came to be. Comedian Franqi French plays JoJo’s sister Squirrel, who unceremoniously kicks him out of her apartment after he trash talks Night of the Living Dead. In desperate need of cash, he cons an Alex Jones-listening Brooklynite and heads over to his friend Monica’s (Edy Modica, […]

The post Teaser Clip and Interview: Teddy Collatos on His Slamdance-Premiering Palookaville first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Filmmaker Teddy Collatos ventures into episodic territory with Palookaville, a comedy series that follows a young New Yorker named JoJo (Howard Lester), who suddenly believes that he’s the famous (and long-deceased) boxer Joe Lewis. The 17-minute pilot episode, set to have its world premiere at Slamdance, explains how this case of mistaken self-identity came to be. Comedian Franqi French plays JoJo’s sister Squirrel, who unceremoniously kicks him out of her apartment after he trash talks Night of the Living Dead. In desperate need of cash, he cons an Alex Jones-listening Brooklynite and heads over to his friend Monica’s (Edy Modica, […]

The post Teaser Clip and Interview: Teddy Collatos on His Slamdance-Premiering Palookaville first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A 4K Steelbook! Haven’t seen this show lately, and discovered that it holds up remarkably well. Mr. Qt’s sophomore outing made an indelible mark on American movies — the darling of hipster crime filmmaking dazzled viewers with showcase set-piece scenes, entertainingly profane dialogue and ultra-hip inside-out time-shuffling narrative tricks. Add to that genuine star turns, especially Uma Thurman and John Travolta’s iconic dance scene. It’s old-fashioned movie-going in an avant-garde pattern, with raw violence and even rougher language. The stars include Samuel L. Jackson, Harvy Keitel, Ving Rhames, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer and Bruce Willis.

Pulp Fiction 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code

Paramount Home Video

1994 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 154 min. / Street Date December 6, 2022 / Available from Amazon / 30.99

Starring: Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Whaley, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Rosanna Arquette, Eric Stoltz, Uma Thurman, Steve Buscemi, Emil Sitka, Christopher Walken, Maria de Medeiros,...

The documentaries and nonfiction programs that are nominated at this year’s Emmy Awards chronicle a diverse range of stories that continue to show why these genres are an essential part of the new Golden Age of Television we are currently living in. The creatives behind five of this year’s Emmy contenders for documentary/nonfiction programming joined our recent Meet the Experts panel. The subjects tackled include how a financial arrangement controlled a worldwide pop star, the career of one of America’s greatest stand-up comedians, the relationship of television’s first power couple, big-wave surfers looking to catch the ultimate experience in Portugal and a world famous chef seeking to rethink how we supply food to people in need of relief.

In our panel discussion, we hear what these directors and producers have to say about finding out about their Emmy nomination this year, what it was like...

In getting some of the water shots for “100 Foot Wave,” producer Joe Lewis understands that it was risky for the camera people to attempt. “The people who are shooting from the water are in every bit the same amount of danger as the surfers. They’re truly taking the same risks,” he tells Gold Derby during our Meet the Experts: TV Documentary panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). He give assurance that it was really only the jet ski cameras that went out into the waves and that most other footage was captured through either land cameras or drones. “The number one concern is just making sure that we stay out of the surfer’s way don’t cause any problems. The second is just how do we get the best images, but we take a lot of care and do it all really safely.”

See More than...

With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fox Maxy's Maat Means Land (2020) MoMA has announced the lineup and schedule for “To The Lighthouse,” a thrilling carte blanche program by curator Mark McElhatten featuring new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Jodie Mack, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and more, along with older films by Rivette, Joseph H. Lewis, Claire Denis, and Marguerite Duras.An essential annual list, Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of film for 2021 includes Kate Gondwe (the founder of Dezda Films), filmmaker Fox Maxy, Omnes Films (the collective behind Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye), and others. A24 and Emma Stone’s production company, Fruit Tree Banner, have come together to back Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow. The film, a follow-up to Schoenbrun's debut from this year, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, follows...

Steven Soderbergh is a fantastically eclectic filmmaker (you never know where he’s going to go next), but if you look back over his roughly 30 dramatic features it’s telling to consider how many of them are some variety of tricky old-school thriller or film noir powered by suspenseful screw-tightening. I’m talking about the “Ocean’s” trilogy, the ebullient Elmore Leonard adaptation “Out of Sight,” the redneck heist thriller “Logan Lucky,” the deconstructed gangster mystery “The Limey,” the brooding noir “The Underneath,” the small-town grunge noir “Bubble,” the sex-industry noir “The Girlfriend Experience,” and the true-life-bumbler noir “The Informant!” Soderbergh has a prankish side, but the truth is he would have been right at home in the ’40s or ’50 churning out moody black-and-white thrillers like Robert Siodmak or Joseph H. Lewis.

His latest, “No Sudden Move,” makes that connection all the more explicit. Opening on a gorgeous vintage version of the Warner Bros. logo,...

Perhaps the most clever idea in this prestigious throwback to potboilers of yore, The Woman in the Window, is how it upends the bourgeois escapism of most thrillers. While following child psychologist Anna Fox (Amy Adams), who suffers from agoraphobia and keeps herself locked inside her home, we get to luxuriate in a spacious New York brownstone, only to have all the fun taken out via Anna’s lonely nights falling asleep in front of the television and wandering around dead, empty rooms.

Things change when she finds herself quickly entangled in the lives of her across-the-street neighbors. Working their way into her home is Ethan (Fred Hechinger), a sensitive 16-year-old boy towards whom, due to her profession, she feels a natural empathy. Ethan draws into Anna’s orbit his abusive father Alistair and even a solo encounter with the family’s doting wife and mother Jane (Julianne Moore), who...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their March 2021 lineup, which includes no shortage of remarkable programming. Highlights from the slate include eight gems from Preston Sturges, Elaine May’s brilliant A New Leaf, a series featuring Black Westerns, Ann Hui’s Boat People, the new restoration of Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi.

They will also add films from their Essential Fellini boxset, series on Dirk Bogarde and Nelly Kaplan, and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned and Death in Venice, and more. In terms of recent releases, there’s also Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century and Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In.

Check out the lineup below, along with the teaser for the Black Westerns series. For weekly streaming updates across all services, bookmark this page.

The Adventurer, Charles Chaplin, 1917

Bandini, Bimal Roy, 1963

Behind the Screen, Charles Chaplin, 1916

Black Jack, Ken Loach, 1979

Black Rodeo, Jeff Kanew, 1972

Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen,...

What we know as Chino is a Charles Bronson star vehicle all the way, and less interesting as a western than for explaining the state of the film business in the early 1970s. A good coming of age story is reshaped to appeal to Bronson fans, while the formerly front rank director John Sturges is frustrated by star demands and producer re-shoots. The extras on Pi’s disc show what a free-for all the set must have been — even the writer sees fit to boast about how he told Sturges where to head in.

The Valdez Horses

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Chino, Valdez il mezzosangue / Street Date January 25, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Marcel Bozzuffi, Vincent Van Patten, Fausto Tozzi, Ettore Manni, Melissa Chimenti, Corrado Gaipa, José Nieto, Diana Lorys, Conchita Muñoz, Annamaria Clementi.

Cinematography: Armando Nanuzzi

Film Editors: Vanio Amici,...

Region B Blu-ray-capable noir fans have a formidable six-pack of noir crime pictures on tap: a WW2 espionage thriller, two caper pix and the show that launched the notion of a hit man who’s both charismatic and psychopathic. The list of leading actors is stellar as well: Glenn Ford, Kim Novak, Eli Wallach, Brian Keith, James Whitmore and Nina Foch. Do you like extras? Like to read about the movies you see? No video extra has been left behind, and Pi’s big yellow box contains a 120-page book. Plus — several newly remastered Three Stooges shorts. Don’t forget, Noir and Stooges go together like sanity and American politics!

Columbia Noir #1

Region B Blu-ray

Escape in the Fog, The Undercover Man, Drive a Crooked Road, 5 Against the House, The Garment Jungle, The Lineup

Powerhouse Indicator

1945-1958 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 8 hours, 11 min. / Street Date November 30, 2020 / available...

As much as we adore and revere the theatrical experience, as theater chains prep to reopen amidst a virus that is spreading rapidly in certain areas of the country, one is far better off staying at home and enjoying films from around the world. There’s no better place to do that than The Criterion Channel, and now they’ve unveiled their July lineup.

Coming to the channel next month are retrospectives dedicated to the stellar early films of Atom Egoyan, works by Miranda July, films featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto scores, Olympic films (including their recent release Tokyo Olympiad), plus Kelly Reichardt’s masterful Certain Women, Med Hondo’s Soleil Ô (coming soon to disc with Scorsese’s next World Cinema Project release), Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, and much more.

See the lineup below and explore more on their platform. One can also see our weekly streaming picks here.

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.

Braguino (Clément Cogitore)

Le Cinéma Club excels in presentation—opening their clean website every Friday reveals a free, new, conveniently sized film playing alongside original written content—but more important is their reach: time and again they’re screening unavailable, underseen, sometimes thought-missing work by auteurs established and upcoming alike. Their current program concerns recent documentaries—starting today is French filmmaker Clément Cogitore’s Braguino, which surveys two rival families in images merging you-are-there immediacy with stunning high-definition clarity. At 49 minutes the experience is ideal for your dense quarantine lineup. – Nick N.

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

Columbia Noir

To celebrate their one-year anniversary, The...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Stage a Satoshi Kon double bill, with Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue both screening.

“Shaw Sisters,” a series on female-directed Hong Kong cinema, has its final weekend.

A print of The Green Ray continues, while Assault on Precinct 13 and The Angel Levine both screen.

Fantastic Planet and Spirited Away play on opposite sides of the day.

S. Craig Zahler is a filmmaker with a flare for violence but more interestingly is going beyond this with his intriguing characters and stories.

With only three films to date he is an eclectic director with a western (Bone Tomahawk), prison thriller (Brawl in Cell Block 99) as well as cop drama under his belt already.

In his third film, Dragged Across Concrete sees the director delve into the cop genre that showed at the Glasgow Film Festival this year. Read our glowing review of the film here.

We once again see Vince Vaughn, currently enjoying a ‘Vaugn-aissance’ (?) of sorts, team up with Zahler as well as Mel Gibson who knows a thing a two about playing a law enforcer.

We catch up with Zahler to talk all things Dragged Across Concrete and more.

Congrats on Dragged Across Concrete. Where did the idea or inspiration come from for this film?...

The Criterion Channel launches Monday, replacing that void left in cinephile hearts everywhere after the shuttering of FilmStruck just four months ago.

Subscribers can expect very little difference on the new service that wasn’t previously available on the Criterion Collection’s home at FilmStruck.

The service’s core, permanent library available on launch day is the over 1,000 movies, 350 shorts and 3500 supplemental materials that make up the Janus Film library. These are the classic arthouse films that for decades have been a mainstay in DVD restorations as part of the Criterion Collection.

Also Read: Why the New Criterion Channel Streaming Service Won't Be a 'Netflix Killer'

Criterion President Peter Becker referred to The Criterion Channel as “an art house at your house,” adding that the library is made up of the “last name” filmmakers that any movie buff should know well: (Michelangelo) Antonioni, (Jean-Luc) Godard, (François) Truffaut, (Akira) Kurosawa,...

In just two weeks, a cinematic haven will launch. After the demise of FilmStruck left cinephiles in a dark depression, The Criterion Channel has stepped up to the plate to launch their own separate service coming to the U.S. and Canada on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, iOS, and Android and Android TV devices. Now, after giving us a taste of what is to come with their Movies of the Week, they’ve unveiled the staggeringly great lineup for their first month.

Along with the Criterion Collection and Janus Films’ library of 1,000 feature films, 350 shorts, and 3,500 supplementary features–including trailers, introductions, behind-the-scenes documentaries, interviews, video essays, commentary tracks, and rare archival footage–the service will also house films from Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate, IFC Films, Kino Lorber, Cohen Media, Milestone Film and Video, Oscilloscope, Cinema Guild, Strand Releasing, Shout Factory, Film Movement,...

The Criterion Channel, the streaming service that is bringing classic films back online after the widely lamented shutdown last fall of WarnerMedia’s FilmStruck, has set the lineup for its launch on April 8. (See it below.)

The channel features the same Criterion Collection and Janus Films titles that were on FilmStruck, which went dark last fall, prompting a backlash among a long list of A-list directors, not to mention thousands of fans of the service. FilmStruck had been an effort to take the DNA of Turner Classic Movies into the streaming realm, with hundreds of Criterion titles at its core. Original programming from FilmStruck will also be back on the new channel, including Adventures in Moviegoing, Meet the Filmmakers, Observations on Film Art and 10 seasons of John Pierson’s Split Screen.

Subscriptions are $10.99 per month or $99.99 a year. A promotional offer lowers the lifetime price for those who sign up...

For his follow-up to the box-office success My Name is Julia Ross, Joseph H. Lewis turned to the French countryside for So Dark the Night, a title which has lapsed into obscurity (like many of Lewis’ title from the 1940s). More in the vein of a psychological thriller than a noir, the script from Martin Berkeley (of the Vincent Price thriller Shock) and Dwight Babcock plays with genre convention before toppling precariously into pulp. Although its narrative twist is unexpected and the film is beautifully photographed, both its breakneck speed (the running time is only seventy minutes) and faulty psychologizing makes this a rather antiquated if entertaining exercise.…...

Without a doubt, American director Joseph H. Lewis is best remembered for his contributions to film noir, particularly his 1950 classic Gun Crazy and 1955’s The Big Combo. Arrow Academy has been restoring some of the director’s forgotten titles, having recently released Lewis’ final narrative feature, 1958’s Terror in a Texas Town (the director worked on various television shows until his retirement in the mid-1960s) and now revisiting some of his forgotten 1940s items. His UK set 1945 film My Name is Julia Ross is an excellent and extremely efficient take on the gaslight subgenre, which was later remade by Arthur Penn in 1987 as Dead of Winter.…...

The 30th entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin. As is well known, Donald Trump is a big fan of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). But, as Errol Morris pointed out (having interviewed him for an unfinished TV documentary segment in the early 2000s), Trump tends to read Kane askew: when prompted by Morris to offer Charles Foster Kane some life advice, Trump confidently replied: “Get yourself a different woman.”Our agitprop audiovisual essay, started on the day of Trump’s recent “declaration of emergency” and concerning the border between Mexico and America, begins from this wild speculation: if Trump, in his announced Welles fandom, has ever seen Touch of Evil (1958), what mangled trace of it could remain embedded in his imagination? We are not equating the mindsets of Trump and Welles here. Touch of Evil is a complex film. As many intelligent B-movies do,...

Is this any way to treat a lady? Lovely Nina Foch just wanted a job, but she instead becomes the fall-gal in a psychologically perverse plan to deny her very identity. Cult director Joseph H. Lewis makes deft use of cinematic suspense techniques to compel our involvement in a bizarre conspiracy: not just convincing a woman that she’s insane, but that she’s literally not herself.

My Name is Julia Ross

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 65 min. / Street Date February 19, 2019 / Available from Arrow Films (UK) / 39.95

Starring: Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Leonard Mudie, Anita Bolster, Doris Lloyd, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Henry Batista

Visual Effects: Lawrence Butler, Donald Glouner

Musical director: Mischa Bakaleinikoff

Written by Muriel Roy Bolton, from the novel by Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson)

Produced by Wallace MacDonald

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

2019 is shaping up just fine for Blu-ray releases of small-scale,...

Director Joseph H. Lewis’ So Dark The Night (1946) will be available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy February 19th

Like his contemporaries Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder, Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy) dabbled in many genres, but excelled in the film noir tradition. A Hitchcockian tale of mystery and intrigue, So Dark the Night was one of his finest pictures.

Inspector Cassin, a renowned Paris detective, departs to the country for a much-needed break. There he falls in love with the innkeeper s daughter, Nanette, who is already betrothed to a local farmer. On the evening of their engagement party, Nanette and the farmer both disappear. Cassin takes up the case immediately to discover what happened to them and who is responsible.

As with his celebrated noir masterpieces My Name Is Julia Ross and The Big Combo, Lewis elevates the twisty, pulpy material with some of the finest noir touches the genre has to offer,...

My Name Is Julia Ross will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow Academy February 19th

After a promising start on Poverty Row quickies, Joseph H. Lewis (The Big Combo) made his first film at Columbia and established himself as a director to watch with this Gothic-tinged Hitchcockian breakout hit, which later proved so popular that Columbia promoted it to A-feature status.

The morning after Julia Ross takes a job in London as secretary to wealthy widow Mrs Williamson Hughes, she wakes up in a windswept Cornish mansion, having been drugged. Mrs Hughes and her volatile son, Ralph, attempt to gaslight Julia into believing she is Ralph s wife, Marion. Her belongings have been destroyed, the windows barred and the locals believe that she is mad. Will Julia be able to escape before she falls prey to the Hughes sinister charade? And what happened to the real Marion Hughes?

A briskly...

The Devil BatOver the past few years the Vienna International Film Festival's retrospective, organized in close partnership with the venerable Austrian Filmmuseum, has shifted its focus from the standard—though no less rewarding—practice of showcasing the work of Great Directors to carving out new lateral paths through cinema history, opening oblique thematic and geographical doorways that fruitfully undermine the notion of cinema as the product of a single monolithic creator. From tracing the circuitous second life of certain stories and their variations as they crop up, like musical refrains, in the form of remakes, sequels or re-imaginings across time to exploring the idea of utopia and its ideological correction in Soviet cinema, the Viennale's retrospective has become a dynamic platform through which to re-think cinema in all of its wonderful and varied complexity. This year was no different with the retrospective detouring from the sanitized, big budget, star-driven...

It’s a good week for cinematic iconoclasts, with extras-laden Blu-ray editions of Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive trilogy, Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy, and Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars all newly available. Cohen’s reputation has received a major and well deserved boost in the last couple years with the release of Steve Mitchell’s King Cohen documentary and reissues of many of his best films on Blu-ray. Shout Factory’s new boxed set containing It’s Alive (1974), It Lives Again (1978) and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) is likely to further fuel the […]...

It’s a good week for cinematic iconoclasts, with extras-laden Blu-ray editions of Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive trilogy, Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy, and Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars all newly available. Cohen’s reputation has received a major and well deserved boost in the last couple years with the release of Steve Mitchell’s King Cohen documentary and reissues of many of his best films on Blu-ray. Shout Factory’s new boxed set containing It’s Alive (1974), It Lives Again (1978) and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) is likely to further fuel the […]...

The Warner Archive comes through with a film noir gem that still has the power to make one’s skin crawl, as a pair of circus sharpshooters go on the lam, using their skills to pull off cheap robberies. The clammy feeling of being cut off from society, having no place to go, is expressed in near-existential terms. Peggy Cummins’ cheap tease Annie Laurie Starr promises John Dall’s Bart Tare eternal love, but what good are promises from a psycho?

Gun Crazy

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1949 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 87 min. / Street Date , 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Anabel Shaw, Harry Lewis, Nedrick Young, Rusty Tamblyn, Morris Carnovsky.

Cinematography: Russell Harlan

Film Editor: Harry Gerstad

Production Designer: Gordon Wiles

Original Music: Victor Young

Written by Dalton Trumbo and MacKinlay Kantor from his short story

Produced by Frank King, Maurice King

Directed by...

The PGA has added more speakers for its fourth annual Produced By: New York conference. New sessions will feature Jessica Chastain, Timothee Chalamet, Dee Rees, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Amazon’s Ted Hope and Joe Lewis, Melissa James Gibson, Charles D. King, Peter Spears, and Frank Pugliese. The conference is set for October 28 at the Time Warner Center in New York. Chastain, Founder of Freckle Films and star of the upcoming Molly’s Game, is set to join "The Power to Shake It…...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

A recent article (based on a very unscientific poll) argued that millennials don’t really care about old movies. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t, but the fact remains that many people disregard classic cinema on principle. These people are missing out, but it only takes one film — the right film — to change their minds and forever alter their viewing habits.

This week’s question: What is one classic film you would recommend to someone who doesn’t watch them?

Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker), Hello Beautiful, /Film, Thrillist, etc

“Rebel Without a Cause.” I’ll out myself by saying that I’ve only recently seen this film...

Las Vegas – For Jerry Lewis, the “King of Comedy” wasn’t just a mere nickname, but an apt description for his long career and influence. He went from being the most popular entertainer of an era, to notable and studied filmmaker, to charity spokesperson and finally to comic legend. Jerry Lewis died in Las Vegas on August 20th, 2017. He was 91.

When the gawky 19 year-old Lewis met the suave singer Dean Martin in 1946, little did they know that they would become the most popular act in America for several years. Their box office draw was white-hot, so much so that neither of them could keep up with the blur of what happened to them. They eventually broke up at the height of their fame in 1956, during which Martin famously said, “Jer, when I look at you, all I see is a dollar sign.” The second phase of Lewis’s career would be about his prolific filmmaking,...

Jerry Lewis has died at age 91. The legendary actor, comedian, singer, producer, screenwriter, and director had a decades-long career that included a comic partnership alongside Dean Martin and a gut-busting presence in such films as “The Nutty Professor” and “The Bellboy.” The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s John Katsilometes reports that he passed away at 9:15 Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas.

Read More:‘Max Rose’ Exclusive Clip: Jerry Lewis Cuts Loose With His Retirement Home Friends

Lewis suffered from many health issues in recent decades; he underwent open-heart surgery in 1983, surgery for prostate cancer nine years later, had a heart attack in 2006, and dealt with pulmonary fibrosis for many years. He and Martin ruled the nightclub scene throughout the 1950s, though their eventual split wasn’t exactly amicable.

Read More:‘The Day the Clown Cried’: Watch Footage Revealed From Jerry Lewis’ Lost Holocaust Film

Born March 16, 1926 in Newark,...

Fritz Lang continues his take-no-prisoners indictment of America’s curious relationship with crime; this time he presents the thesis that an innocent man can be a pawn in cosmic game of injustice. Three-time loser Henry Fonda, the glummest actor in ’30s films, doesn’t mean to rob or kill, but gosh darn it, They Made Him a Criminal. Those considerations aside, it’s a wonderful cinematic achievement, made all the better by a decent digital restoration.

You Only Live Once

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1937 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 86 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / 29.98

Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon,

William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Margaret Hamilton, Warren Hymer,

Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Ward Bond, Jack Carson, Jonathan Hale

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Art Direction: Alexander Toluboff

Film Editor: Daniel Mandell

Original Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Written by Graham Baker and Gene Towne

Produced by Walter Wanger

Directed by Fritz Lang...

On paper it’s a western with everything — a major star, decent supporting players, a cult director and sideways references to the blacklisting years. But even with its ya-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it high noon showdown scene, Joseph H. Lewis’s last feature film is still a lower-tier United Artists effort. Sterling Hayden goes up against Sebastian Cabot and Nedrick Young, armed with a, with a . . . aw, you probably know already.

Terror in a Texas Town

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 80 min. / Street Date July 11, 2017 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugene Martin, Nedrick Young, Victor Millan, Frank Ferguson, Marilee Earle, Byron Foulger, Glenn Strange.

Cinematography: Ray Rennahan

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Dalton Trumbo, fronted by Ben Perry

Produced by Frank N. Seltzer

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Auteurists in the early 1970s championed directors like Phil Karlson, Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann. These stylists...

Revered as one of the premiere B film directors from the late 1930s to 1950s, Joseph H. Lewis is known to Western and noir aficionados for a handful of iconic titles.

Continue reading...

Terror In A Texas Town will be Available on Blu-ray and DVD on July 11th From Arrow Video

For his 41st and final feature film, Joseph H. Lewis was able to combine the two genres in which he had excelled. The man in the director’s chair for My Name is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy and The Big Combo, Lewis was one of the all-time greats in film noir. But he was also a fine director of Westerns, having made A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry and The Halliday Brand, all of which – especially the last – remain underrated. Terror in a Texas Town would bring his noir sensibilities to the American West, resulting in one of his finest works.

McNeil (Sebastian Cabot, The Time Machine) is a greedy hotel owner who wants to take control of Prairie City, the Texas town of the title. Keen to drive the local farmers of their land,...

Don’t look to this noir for hardboiled cynicism – for his first feature Nicholas Ray instead gives us a dose of fatalist romance. Transposed from the previous decade, a pair of fugitives takes what happiness they can find, always aware that a grim fate waits ahead. The show is a career-making triumph and a real classic from Rko — which shelved it for more than a year.

They Live by Night

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 880

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 13, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig, Will Wright, William Phipps, Ian Wolfe, Harry Harvey, Marie Bryant, Byron Foulger, Erskine Sanford .

Cinematography: George E. Diskant

Film Editor: Sherman Todd

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Charles Schnee, Nicholas Ray from the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson

Produced by John Houseman

Directed by Nicholas Ray...

This French disc release of the Jacques Tourneur classic gets everything right — including both versions in picture perfect transfers. Devil debunker Dana Andrews locks horns with Niall MacGinnis, a necromancer “who has decoded the Old Book” and can summon a fire & brimstone monster from Hell, no election fraud necessary. Even fans that hate ghost stories love this one — it’s a truly creepy, intelligent highlight of the horror genre.

Night of the Demon

Region A + B Blu-ray + Pal DVD

Wild Side (Fr)

1957 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 95 & 82 min. / Street Date November 27, 2013 / Curse of the Demon, Rendez-vous avec la peur / Available from Amazon UK or Foreign Exchange Blu-ray

Starring: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham,

Athene Seyler

Cinematography: Ted Scaife

Production Designer: Ken Adam

Special Effects: George Blackwell, S.D. Onions, Wally Veevers

Film Editor Michael Gordon

Original Music: Clifton Parker

Written by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester

from the...

How did Kiss Me Deadly come to be restored? The real question should be, how did filmdom lose track of its original ending in the first place? Savant uncovers evidence that may explain when, and why, United Artists mutilated the finish of Robert Aldrich’s apocalyptic film noir.

(Note: The images below with text can be enlarged for reading, just click on them.)

Before home video the final home for Hollywood films was Television. Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Kiss Me Deadly never saw a theatrical reissue, and it dropped out of major TV visibility in 1962. I saw the documentation in United Artists’ legal folder on the film. To secure capital to launch more movies, Robert Aldrich sold all of his ‘Associates and Aldrich’ pictures back to UA after their original releases were concluded. More papers showed Kiss Me Deadly being included in at least two TV syndication packages, and then each time pointedly removed.

This charming Roy Rogers oater could reboot interest in vintage ‘series’ westerns. Basically a film for little kids, it’s earnestly played by all concerned and director William Witney’s direction sparkles. The added filip that makes the difference is the beautifully restored Trucolor image — Roy’s wonder horse Trigger is indeed magnificent. I listened carefully, but I don’t think Roy actually says, “Yippie-ki-yay, M_____f____r.”

Sunset in the West

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1950 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 67 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 19.95

Starring: Roy Rogers, Trigger, Estelita Rodriguez, Penny Edwards, Gordon Jones, Will Wright, Pierre Watkin, Charles La Torre, William Tannen, Gaylord Pendleton, Paul E. Burns, Dorothy Ann White, Riders of the Purple Sage.

Cinematography: Jack Marta

Color by Trucolor

Film Editor: Tony Martinelli

Original Music: R. Dale Butts

Special Effects: Howard & Theodore Lydecker

Written by Gerald Geraghty

Produced by Edward J. White

Directed...

Bela Lugosi fan alert! This Monogram horror opus is yet another narrative-challenged fumble of unmotivated, incomprehensible characters… but Bela’s great in it, in a central role. He’s a sympathetic, non- maniac this time, if you don’t count his tendency to go into trances and smother random houseguests. Savant’s review has the lowdown on the interesting cast; Tom Weaver’s commentary has the authoritative lowdown on whole show.

Invisible Ghost

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1941 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 64 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Polly Ann Young, Clarence Muse, John McGuire, Betty Compson, Ernie Adams, Terry Walker, George Pembroke .

Cinematography: Harvey Gould, Marcel Le Picard

Film Editor: Robert Golden

Original Music: hahahahah, good one.

Written by Helen Martin & Al Martin

Produced by Sam Katzman

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Horror movie fans come in two varieties, obsessive and dangerously obsessive. Back...