News

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights on the restored films of French filmmaker Luc Moullet.

Cinema Guild will mount a touring theatrical retrospective of Moullet’s work starting at Film at Lincoln Center in New York in August. Moullet, one of the last remaining members of the French New Wave, will attend the opening.

The films included in the acquisition are Brigitte and Brigitte, The Smugglers, A Girl is a Gun, Anatomy of a Relationship, Origins of a Meal, The Comedy of Work, and Parpaillon.

Often dubbed the “prince of shoestring cinema,” Moullet was one of the later filmmakers associated with the pioneering generation of French New Wave artists.

At the age of 18, Moullet joined the ranks of Cahiers du Cinéma, where he was the first to champion Hollywood B-directors like Samuel Fuller and Edgar G. Ulmer. Following the footsteps of other Cahiers alums like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut,...

The older I get the more I appreciate and connect with Werewolf of London. It is a movie that does not follow the established rules of werewolf movies because it was created in a time before those rules were written. Many, if not most, of the most notable and enduring films of the subgenre deal in externalizing the internal struggles of the young using the metaphor of the beast within. Most of these characters are breaking away from their parents and childhoods, seeking to make their own way in the world.

Though Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941) appears in the mature body of Lon Chaney, Jr., he is in many ways an angsty teenager tormented by the conflicting feelings of simultaneously falling in love for the first time while part of himself that he cannot control wishes to ravage her and tear her to shreds in the process. It...

International Film Festival Rotterdam has revealed its Cinema Regained program, which showcases restored classics, documentaries on cinema and works by filmmaking masters.

This year’s Cinema Regained selection shines a light on filmmakers whose contributions have shaped cinema history, both celebrated and overlooked.

After a 30-year hiatus, Burkinabé director Drissa Touré makes his return with the world premiere of “Mousso Fariman,” co-directed with Stéphane Mbanga, which explores the contradictions in Burkina Faso’s society, focusing on the resilience of women in daily life.

The legacy of Sergei Parajanov is honored with the world premiere of “The Lilac Wind of Paradjanov,” 37 years after his first visit to the festival. Filmmaker Ali Khamraev, accompanied by cinematographer Yuri Klimenko, delved into the archives and traveled to Armenia and Georgia to honor Parajanov.

“The Jester” by José Álvaro Morais, which screened at IFFR in 1988, returns in a restored version, blending theater and cinema in...

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled its “Cinema Regained” program for 2025, featuring 43 restored classics, documentaries, and film heritage explorations. The strand includes both contemporary works and pre-1970 restorations.

Key premieres include Mousso Fariman — the first film from Burkinabé director Drissa Touré (Haramuya) in 30 years, co-directed with Stéphane Mbanga — and The Lilac Wind of Paradjanov, a tribute to the late, legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, from director Ali Khamraev. The film will screen in Rotterdam 38 years after Parajanov and co-director Dodo Abashidze’s The Legend of Suram Fortress premiered at IFFR in 1987, winning the prize for best innovative film.

The Cinema Regained program will also show a restored version of José Álvaro Morais’s The Jester, which was first screened at IFFR in 1988.

Other highlights include Lee Taewoong’s Korean Dream: The Nama-jinheung Mixtape, examining Korean Cold War history through archival footage; Khavn’s AI-driven Bomba Bernal, which pays homage...

Purists will argue that film noir was born in 1941 with the release of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and died in 1958 with Marlene Dietrich traipsing down a long, dark, lonely road at the end of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. And while this period contains the quintessence of what Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank originally characterized as film noir, the genre has always been in a constant state of flux, adapting to the different times and cultures out of which these films emerged.

Noir came into its own alongside the ravages of World War II, with the gangster and detective films of the era drastically transforming into something altogether new as the aesthetics of German Expressionism took hold in America, and in large part due to the influx of German expatriates like Fritz Lang. These already dark, hardboiled films suddenly gained a newfound viciousness and sense of ambiguity,...

By any reasonable measure, Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour should have faded from existence the minute it left theaters in 1945. A product of Hollywood's Poverty Row, a.k.a studios that produced cheaply-made quickies that barely qualified as feature-length, its budgetary limitations are so obvious they become almost laughable. Yet the film has stood the test of time in spite of and, in many ways, because of its technical imperfections, and has even been lovingly restored for a Criterion release. For all of its flaws, there's a black beating heart at its core that makes it an ideal film noir.

Update: David Lynch has shared an update below.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking. I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco – the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them – but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema. I have now quit smoking for over two years. Recently I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema. I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire.

I want you all to know that I really appreciate your concern.

Love,

David

Paramount on a list of news we wouldn’t wish to receive is David Lynch’s directing opportunities being winnowed to a very small set of possibilities. Though limitations have often served a big bang for his art,...

Billy Wilder was the six-time Oscar winner who left behind a series of classically quotable features from Hollywood’s Golden Age, crafting sharp witted and darkly cynical stories that blended comedy and pathos in equal measure. Let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wilder was born to a family of Austrian Jews in 1906. After working as a journalist, he developed an interest in filmmaking and collaborated on the silent feature “People on Sunday” (1929) with fellow rookies Fred Zinnemann, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer. With the rise of Adolph Hitler, Wilder fled to Paris, where he co-directed the feature “Mauvaise Graine” (1934). Tragically, his mother, stepfather and grandmother all died in the Holocaust.

After moving to Hollywood, Wilder enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter, earning Oscar nominations for penning 1939’s “Ninotchka” and 1941’s “Hold Back the Dawn” and “Ball of Fire.” He...

In the 1930s, Universal laid claim to the two biggest horror stars of the era, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and it was only a matter of time before the pair would meet on screen. In 1932, only months after each rocketed to stardom in Dracula and Frankenstein respectively, the two were dressed in tuxedoes and brought together for a genial photoshoot that simultaneously announced their partnership and implied a rivalry. Through a series of circumstances, it was another two years before the pair would star in a film together. As one might expect, it was in the most transgressive horror film of the era, 1934’s The Black Cat, a film that remains shocking not only for the early 1930s but even more surprising as a product overseen by the newly enforced Hays Code.

The Code had been established in 1927 as a self-censoring wing of the motion picture industry and an attempt to avoid government censorship.

The Universal Monsters are one of the fundamental building blocks of the horror genre in Hollywood as we know it, where just about every horror film ever made can be related back to one of their many creep shows. Sometimes this connective tissue is thematic, but often it's an overt homage to the monstrous titular character.

We've spoken before at /Film about the best Invisible Man films you haven't seen, but now is the time to rank the best of the best from the entire multiverse of invisibility films. And I mean the entire multiverse. True-to-form horror, slapstick farce, raunchy sex comedy, and family-friendly romps are all fair game on this list, so allow me to be your guide into the land of invisible people as I rank the top 20 from worst to best.

Read more: The 15 Best Horror Franchises Of All Time, Ranked

20. The Erotic Misadventures Of The Invisible...

Fairy tales have inspired movies for both family-friendly and mature audiences, offering different perspectives on classic stories. Some movies are subtle adaptations of fairy tales, while others draw inspiration from them without being direct adaptations. Different genres, such as film noir, black comedy crime, and horror, have used fairy tales as a basis for their stories, providing unique interpretations while maintaining a sense of familiarity.

Fairy tales have been a source of inspiration for the film industry for decades, but there are movies that are less obvious adaptations of fairy tales, offering a different perspective on these classic stories. Fairy tales are mostly seen as the basis for family-friendly movies, mostly animated ones, such as those by Disney, as the studio has become best known for its fairy tale movies. However, fairy tales have also been the inspiration for movies aimed at a more mature audience, though not all of...

Although the silent era produced many notable horror films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Phantom Carriage, and Nosferatu, the 1930s was a true Golden Age for the horror genre. Most associate 1930s horror cinema with the Universal Monster movies that produced iconic pop culture villains such as Frankenstein's Monster, Count Dracula, and the Invisible Man.

While other Hollywood studios did not necessarily specialize in horror films, they still managed to create their own influential horror movies. Internationally, filmmakers like Carl Theodor Dreyer made their own imprints on 1930s horror cinema. To this day, the horror films of the 1930s remain some of the genre's most famous works.

Related: 15 Best Christmas Horror Movies

The Black Cat (1934)

Universal Pictures' top box office hit of 1934, The Black Cat, is a pre-Code horror film about a newlywed couple and a Hungarian psychiatrist trapped in the house of Austrian architect Hjalmar Poelzig.

Although the silent era produced many notable horror films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Phantom Carriage, and Nosferatu, the 1930s was a true Golden Age for the horror genre. Most associate 1930s horror cinema with the Universal Monster movies that produced iconic pop culture villains such as Frankenstein's Monster, Count Dracula, and the Invisible Man.

While other Hollywood studios did not necessarily specialize in horror films, they still managed to create their own influential horror movies. Internationally, filmmakers like Carl Theodor Dreyer made their own imprints on 1930s horror cinema. To this day, the horror films of the 1930s remain some of the genre's most famous works.

Related: 15 Best Christmas Horror Movies

The Black Cat (1934)

Universal Pictures' top box office hit of 1934, The Black Cat is a pre-Code horror film about a newlywed couple and a Hungarian psychiatrist who become trapped in the house of Austrian architect Hjalmar Poelzig.

The 1950s are considered the “Golden Age” of science fiction cinema, and that’s not just hyperbole. By many accounts, more than 200 sci-fi movies were released during that decade. And while the film industry had sporadically produced quality sci-fi in the years before—ranging from Aelita (1924) to Metropolis (1927), to The Invisible Man (1933)—it wasn’t until the 1950s that classic after classic began to arrive like riches from a long-lost hidden treasure.

And when we say classic, we mean films that essentially created the template for all science fiction movies that followed. Just look at this list. The first half of the decade brought us The Thing from Another World, When Worlds Collide, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and Them!, while the second half ushered in This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Blob, The Fly,...

These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.

James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...

Betta St. John, who portrayed the lovely island girl Liat in the original Broadway production of South Pacific and starred as a princess alongside Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the MGM romantic comedy Dream Wife, has died. She was 93.

St. John died June 23 of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Brighton, England, her son, TV producer Roger Grant, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The California native played one of the survivors of an airline crash, who is chased by a crocodile in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) — the first Tarzan film in 15 years and the first one in color — and then returned for Tarzan the Magnificent (1960). Both films starred Gordon Scott as the King of the Jungle.

St. John also starred with Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth and Robert Taylor in All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953); with Victor Mature, Piper Laurie and Vincent Price in the 3-D adventure Dangerous...

Christian Petzold, the director of the well-timed summer movie Afire with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I’m really sure that we don’t have summer movies. The Americans have summer movies, the French have summer movies.”

Christian Petzold’s slow-burning Afire, shot by Hans Fromm, stars Paula Beer, Thomas Schubert, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, and Matthias Brandt.

Nadja (Paula Beer) with Devid (Enno Trebs), Felix (Langston Uibel), and Leon (Thomas Schubert) in Afire

A scene in Leo McCarey’s An Affair To Remember (with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr); Sophie Calle’s Voir La Mer and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs; Astrid Lindgren; a Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre touch; Uwe Johnson’s Mutmassungen über Jakob and Margarethe von Trotta’s Jahrestage series; Johan Wolfgang von Goethe; a Nanni Moretti quote; meeting Paul Dano’s Wildlife cinematographer Diego García (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery Of Splendor) in Tel Aviv; Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak,...

Kate Andersen Brower’s Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour of An Icon is billed as the first-ever authorized biography of the legendary actress, as her family and estate gave her access to Taylor’s private letters, photos and diaries.

What Brower found was new insight into Taylor’s later-in-life emergence as an influential activist, using her star power to help push forward legislation to address HIV and AIDS and, well ahead of much of the industry, her fame to raise money to combat the epidemic and assist patients.

The book is a bit of a departure for Brower, the author of The Residence, First Women, Team of Five and First in Line, all focused on the White House and the presidency. The Taylor biography grew out of conversations she had with John Warner, the former senator who was married to Taylor from 1976 to 1982, before he died last year. She...

Though their “’80s Horror” lineup would constitute enough of a Halloween push, the Criterion Channel enter October all guns blazing. The month’s lineup also includes a 19-movie vampire series running from 1931’s Dracula (English and Spanish both) to 2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the collection in-between including Herzog’s Nosferatu, Near Dark, and Let the Right One In. Last year’s “Universal Horror” collection returns, a 17-title Ishirō Honda retrospective has been set, and a few genre titles stand alone: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The House of the Devil, and Island of Lost Souls.

Streaming premieres include restorations of Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour and Ed Lachman’s Lou Reed / John Cale concert film Songs for Drella; October’s Criterion editions are Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, Haxan, and My Own Private Idaho. Meanwhile, Ari Aster has curated an “Adventures...

White NoiseCOMPETITIONWhite Noise (Noah Baumbach)Il Signore Delle Formiche (Gianni Amelio)The Whale (Darren Aronofsky)L’Immensita (Emanuele Crialese)Saint Omer (Alice Diop)Blonde (Andrew Dominik)Tár (Todd Field)Love Life (Koji Fukada)Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (Alejandro G. Inarritu)Athena (Romain Gavras)Bones & All (Luca Guadagnino)The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)Beyond The Wall (Vahid Jalilvand)The Banshees Of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre)Chiara (Susanna Nicchiarelli)Monica (Andrea Pallaoro)No Bears (Jafar Panahi)All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)A Couple (Frederick Wiseman)The Son (Florian Zeller)Our Ties (Roschdy Zem)Other People’s Children (Rebecca Zlotowski)Out Of COMPETITIONFictionThe Hanging Sun (Francesco Carrozzini)When The Waves Are Gone (Lav Diaz)Living (Oliver Hermanus)Dead For A Dollar (Walter Hill)Call Of God (Kim Ki-duk)Dreamin’ Wild (Bill Pohlad)Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)Siccità (Paolo Virzi)Pearl (Ti West)Don’t Worry Darling...

The section returns to the lido after two years.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem and Yasujiro Ozu’s A Hen In The Wind are among the 18 films selected for the Venice Classics strand of the 79th Venice Film Festival (August 31-September 10).

Pasolini’s Italian drama screened in competition at Venice in 1968 and received a special award from the International Catholic Film Office which was later revoked after the Vatican complained. It is restored by Cineteca di Bologna.

A Hen In The Wind is one of three Japanese films in selection. The other two are Profound Desires of the Gods by...

The section returns to the lido after two years.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem and Yasujiro Ozu’s A Hen In The Wind are among the 18 films selected for the Venice Classics strand of the 79th Venice Film Festival (August 31 - September 10).

Pasolini’s Italian drama screened in competition at Venice in 1968 and received a special award from the International Catholic Film Office which was later revoked after the Vatican complained. It is restored by Cineteca di Bologna.

A Hen In The Wind is one of three Japanese films in selection. The other two are Profound Desires of the Gods...

Collector’s box on the horizon: Severin assembles hours of video extras and text illumination for another group of films featuring favorite actor Christopher Lee. The roundup of titles bookends his career as a screen vampire, with one of Lee’s earliest vampire roles and also his last turn as Count Dracula. Looming large on the academic side of Severin’s research are experts and biographers Kat Ellinger, Barry Forshaw, Troy Howarth, Kim Newman, Nathaniel Thompson and Jonathan Rigby, who also contributes a hundred-page book.

The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee Collection 2

Blu-ray

Uncle Was a Vampire, The Secret of the Red Orchid, Dark Places, Dracula and Son, Murder Story

Severin Films

1959-1989 / Color / 2:39 widescreen, 1:66 widescreen, 1:85 widescreen

Street Date July 26, 2022

Available from Severin Films / 134.95

Starring alphabetically: Marie Hélène Breillat, Catherine Breillat, Joan Collins, Robert Hardy, Adrian Hoven, Klaus Kinski, Sylva Koscina, Herbert Lom, Susanne Loret, Jean Marsh, Marisa Mell,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Titane (2021).Actor Vincent Lindon has been announced as the president of this year's Cannes competition jury, leading a group that includes Rebecca Hall, Deepika Padukone, Jeff Nichols, and Joachim Trier. The festival has also added several pleasant surprises to the lineup: films by Serge Bozon, Albert Serra, Louis Garrel, Patricio Guzmán, and more.Subscribe to our limited-edition, print-only Notebook magazine by April 30 to secure your copy of Issue 1, featuring a conversation between Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Yoshitomo Nara, a carte blanche contribution by Christopher Doyle, and much more.Recommended VIEWINGAbove: I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) .Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation has launched a virtual screening room for restored films, called the Restoration Screening Room. The fun begins with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1945 film I Know Where I'm Going!, which will be available for...

Surprise: these are quality movies on an important subject. Entry 13 in the ‘Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture’ gives us not sleaze but two well-produced vintage public education epics on the subject of (gasp) venereal disease. Although reissued by sensation hucksters as racy ‘forbidden’ fare, they had serious social aims — the screenplay for one was adapted by the famed author Upton Sinclair. The other was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Added extras are four short subjects directed by Edgar G., and two sex-ed lecture reels that alternate between funny and revolting.

Damaged Lives & Damaged Goods

Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture, Volume 13

Blu-ray

Kino Classics / Something Weird

1933 & 1937 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / Street Date February 8, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Phil Goldstone

Kino’s ongoing series ‘The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture’ has creeped through every vintage sensation that could be 4-walled, carnival style,...

While his personal filmmaking career alone is more than enough to enrich the history of film culture, Martin Scorsese also dedicates his knowledge and resources to restoring and preserving cinema from around the world with his nonprofit The Film Foundation. They’ve now launched a new initiative to bring new restorations to a wider audience.

Deadline reports they will be launching a new free virtual screening room beginning May 9, featuring a new restoration in a 24-hour window, with subsequent films to launch on the second Monday of each month. First up is Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1945 classic I Know Where I’m Going!, while additional selections, co-curated by Scorsese and Kent Jones, include Federico Fellini’s La Strada; G. Aravindan’s Kummatty; Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour paired with Arthur D. Ripley’s The Chase; Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga; Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks, John Huston’s Moulin Rouge...

Martin Scorsese’s nonprofit The Film Foundation is launching a free virtual screening room to showcase restored films starting May 9 with I Know Where I’m Going!.

The 1945 film directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and restored by The Film Foundation and BFI National Archive, in association with ITV and Park Circus, will be available for a 24 -hour window. Subsequent features will debut on the second Monday of each month. Events will start at a set time with introductions and conversations with filmmakers and archivists providing an inside look at the restoration process.

The lineup from co-curators Scorsese and Kent Jones includes Federico Fellini’s 1954 La Strada; G. Aravindan’s 1979 Indian film Kummatty; a film noir double feature of Detour and The Chase; Sambizanga; One-Eyed Jacks; Moulin Rouge; Lost Lost Lost and others Tba.

Kino’s triple-threat Edgar Ulmer show has great commentaries plus HD debuts of his two ‘Texas’ movies, that likely have not been seen in their original widescreen aspect ratios since the 1960s. Ulmer’s first tale of a solo space invader has the pleasing look of a silent-era expressionist film. His take on a time travel paradox uses Air Force cooperation to project pilot Robert Clarke from 1959 to the far far future date of 2024 (ulp!). And Ulmer’s cut-rate invisible man is a master thief sprung from the pokey to help with a mad scheme to conquer the world — but the crook instead rushes to rob a bank! The excellent presentations will have special appeal for connoisseurs of exotic sci-fi thrillers.

Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-Fi Collection

The Man from Planet X, Beyond the Time Barrier, The Amazing Transparent Man

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951-1960 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 204 min.

The American movie business started in New Jersey.

Between 1893 and 1896 in West Orange, N.J., Thomas Edison was developing the early motion picture tech, inventing new ways to capture images in motion, and the result is that “you have the only fully operational motion picture studio facility in the world,” says Richard Koszarski, professor emeritus of English and cinema studies at Rutgers University, and expert in the early motion picture industry in New York and New Jersey.

His latest book on film history is “Keep ’Em in the East: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance.”

While companies were setting up production operations and offices in New York City, including Edison, “it’s very difficult to film in New York City. In those days, they didn’t have very good artificial lights,” says Koszarski. Making films required enormous skylights and other sources of natural light.

But over in Fort Lee,...

October’s here and it’s time to get spooked. After last year’s superb “’70s Horror” lineup, the Criterion Channel commemorates October with a couple series: “Universal Horror,” which does what it says on the tin (with special notice to the Spanish-language Dracula), and “Home Invasion,” which runs the gamut from Romero to Oshima with Polanski and Haneke in the mix. Lest we disregard the programming of Cindy Sherman’s one feature, Office Killer, and Jennifer’s Body, whose lifespan has gone from gimmick to forgotten to Criterion Channel. And if you want to stretch ideas of genre just a hair, their “True Crime” selection gets at darker shades of human nature.

It’s not all chills and thrills, mind. October also boasts a Kirk Douglas repertoire, movies by Doris Wishman and Wayne Wang, plus Manoel de Oliveira’s rarely screened Porto of My Childhood. And Edgar Wright gets the “Adventures in Moviegoing” treatment,...

“Without Franco, I wouldn’t be here, nor this book. Thank you, Francisco. It’s the only good thing you did in your life.” The author behind this characteristic note of thanks is none other than French filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet, whose endearing and very funny autobiography, Mémoires d’une savonnette indocile (“memoirs of an unruly piece of soap”) has just been published by Capricci. In 42 chapters, the “prince of shoestring cinema” walks us through his young years as a critic at Cahiers du cinéma, his filmmaking life, and his stints in various professional and educational bodies. The book was announced in 2012, with the intention for it to be published posthumously. Reading it nine years later, with the author still in the pink of health, one senses that the cause for Moullet’s original reticence may have had to do less with his comments on his peers and collaborators...

The name talent attached makes this late- Weimar thriller a must-see proposition: Billy Wilder, Robert & Curt Siodmak, Franz Waxman. Their dark murder farce resembles what would later become the self-aware Black Comedy. The trouble begins when a suicidal nice guy can’t pull the trigger, and hires a crook to do the job for him. The satire is clever but the execution is awkward — the filmmakers set up big laughs that the heavy German filming style doesn’t deliver. Just the same, the situations seem extremely progressive, ahead of their time.

The Man in Search of his Murderer

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber Kino Classics Kino Repertory

1931 / B&w / 1:33 flat / 97 min. / Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht; Jim, der Mann mit der Narbe, Looking for his Murderer / Street Date April 6, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Heinz Rühmann, Lien Deyers, Raimund Janitschek, Hans Leibelt, Hermann Speelmans, Friedrich Hollaender, Gerhard Bienert, Roland Varno.

The last time I saw Bertrand Tavernier, who died yesterday in Paris at 79, was at the Cannes Film Festival nearly two years ago after the world premiere of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was after 1 a.m. and my son Nick and I, who had been elated by the film, were walking down a largely empty Rue d’Antibes when I saw Bertrand’s unmistakable bulky frame approaching us. He was with his wife Sarah and I had seen them just a few evenings before in Paris at a gathering of friends of the late Pierre Rissient, cinema champion extraordinaire, who had worked with Bertrand championing films in the 1960s.

With just about anyone else, this would have remained just a brief nocturnal encounter. But talks with Bertrand were seldom short. To the contrary, because Bertrand was almost always a lava flow of opinion, information, insight and, for the most part,...

Guest reviewer Matt Rovner delves into the cultural riches of ethnic films specially made for speakers of the Yiddish language. Some were filmed in Poland and others in New Jersey (according to Edgar Ulmer!)… and if they seem obscure they’re nevertheless culturally significant as a record of a language that’s fast disappearing. Among the gems is a significant folk-horror tale and an original non-musical drama about Tevye the Milkman’s problems with his daughter and the oppressive laws of the Czar.

The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber Repertory

The Dybbuk, American Matchmaker, Her Second Mother, Mir Kumen On, Tevya, Overture to Glory, Eli Eli, Jewish King Lear, Motel the Operator, Three Daughters

1935-1940 / all B&w / 1:37 Academy

750 min. / Street Date November 24, 2020

available through Kino Lorber

Starring: Avrom Morewski, Leo Fuchs, Moishe Oysher, Maurice Schwartz, Maurice Krohner, Chaim Tauber, Max Badin, Charlotte Goldstein,...

Join Joe Friday and Frank Smith as they make a case against the rotten gangland crooks that moiderized Dub Taylor with a shotgun, point blank! See detectives loiter about while smart remarks and Big music stings provide the excitement! The big-screen version of the hit TV show has a surfeit of guest crooks, unhappy women, and a script that wants to grant cops the right to harass and wiretap whoever they wish without restraint. Jack Webb’s ‘interesting’ ideas of script, performance and direction are really… interesting. The Joe Friday-fest comes with an informative commentary by Toby Roan, laying down plenty of Dragnet and Jack Webb history I didn’t know, not ‘just the facts.’

Dragnet

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 1:75 widescreen + 1:37 unmatted / 88 min. / Street Date November 17, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jack Webb, Ben Alexander, Richard Boone, Ann Robinson, Stacy Harris, Virginia Gregg, Victor Perrin, Dub Taylor,...

The November 2020 lineup for The Criterion Channel has been unveiled, toplined by a Claire Denis retrospective, including the brand-new restoration of Beau travail, along with Chocolat, No Fear, No Die, Nenette and Boni, Towards Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum, and White Material.

There will also be a series celebrating 30 years of The Film Foundation, featuring a new interview with Martin Scorsese by Ari Aster, as well as a number of their most essential restorations, including films by Jia Zhangke, Ritwik Ghatak, Luchino Visconti, Shirley Clarke, Med Hondo, and more.

There’s also David Lynch’s new restoration of The Elephant Man, retrospectives dedicated to Ngozi Onwurah, Nadav Lapid, and Terence Nance, a new edition of the series Queersighted titled Queer Fear, featuring a new conversation between series programmer Michael Koresky and filmmaker and critic Farihah Zaman, and much more.

See the lineup below and learn more on the official site.

Shifting points of view, complicated flashbacks, elaborate optical effects and a fluid approach to objective reality are not typically characteristic of American movies released in the early sound era, which makes Phil Goldstone’s 1933 picture The Sin of Nora Moran a real discovery. Goldstone was a producer and director who worked on Hollywood’s “poverty row,” the section of studios located around Sunset and Gower that cranked out extremely low budget features designed to fill out the bottom halves of double bills; like Frank Capra, Edgar G. Ulmer, and several other filmmakers who spent all or part of their careers on […]...

Shifting points of view, complicated flashbacks, elaborate optical effects and a fluid approach to objective reality are not typically characteristic of American movies released in the early sound era, which makes Phil Goldstone’s 1933 picture The Sin of Nora Moran a real discovery. Goldstone was a producer and director who worked on Hollywood’s “poverty row,” the section of studios located around Sunset and Gower that cranked out extremely low budget features designed to fill out the bottom halves of double bills; like Frank Capra, Edgar G. Ulmer, and several other filmmakers who spent all or part of their careers on […]...

A top movie monster is back from filmic perdition, restored to his full might and power. Rabbi Lowe’s answer to the persecution of the ghetto is a mysterious unthinking automaton capable of terrible destruction. Paul Wegener’s indelible clay statue stands as a core myth in Jewish lore. But he’s still here, usually in allegories about mankind losing control of its own creations. With its imposing architecture and impressive special effects, this early expressionist masterpiece is one of the design highlights of silent cinema.

The Golem

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1920 / B&w with tints / 1:33 silent ap. / 76 min. / Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam / Street Date April 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Lyda Salmonova, Ernst Deutsch, Lothar Müthel, Fritz Feld.

Cinematography: Karl Freund, Guido Seeber

Art Direction and design: Hans Poelzig, Kurt Richter, Edgar G. Ulmer

New Music scores: Stephen Horne, Admir Shkurtai,...

Dušan Makavejev was born on King Milutin Street in Belgrade on October 13, 1932. This was about nine years before the city was occupied by the Nazis, at which point the Chinese embassy across the street became the headquarters of the German Chief Command of the Southeast. As a child, he watched German officers go in and out of the building, one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, would later become the Secretary of the United Nations—though of course the young Makavejev didn’t know this at the time. Following the Second World War, it was under Tito's Communist, but anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia that Makavejev first emerged as a major Eastern European filmmaker, initially associated with the loosely defined Novi Film (new film) movement. His eclectic career, the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Anthology Archives, garnered praise from the likes of Amos Vogel, Robin Wood, Stanley Cavell, Jonas Mekas, and Roger Ebert,...

The Notebook is covering Tiff with an on-going correspondence between critics Fernando F. Croce Kelley Dong, and editor Daniel Kasman.The Wild Goose LakeDear Kelley and Danny,When this dispatch reaches you, I shall be back in my Californian abode, exhausted and slightly under the weather and elated to have been able to have spent the last ten days immersed in movies and friends. I’ll keep the sentiment short so we can get more quickly to my final viewings, but do know that I wait all year to be at Tiff with you, and that I happily carry your kindness and cinephiliac knowledge and passion with me home.I absolutely get what you mean about that much-needed jolt during the festival, Danny. For me, that came in the form of Diao Yinan's The Wild Goose Lake, an invigorating dive into the Chinese underworld that at times plays like Carol Reed...

Universal Horror Collection: Vol. 1

Blu ray

Shout! Factory

1934, ’35, ’36, ’40 / 1.33 : 1 / 66 / 61 / 79 / 70 min.

Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi

Cinematography by John J. Mescall, Charles Stumar, George Robinson, Elwood Bredell

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Lew Landers, Lambert Hillyer, Arthur Lubin

Like the cat who swallowed the canary, Boris Karloff made for a serenely sinister antagonist. Even when portraying bloodthirsty devils like the vampire Gorca in The Three Faces of Fear or a debauched satanist looking for trouble in The Black Cat, “Dear Boris” was the very model of a well-mannered monster.

Bela Lugosi, Karloff’s unofficial rival on the Universal lot, showed similar restraint in his star-making turn as Dracula – but the same halting, imperious manner that gave otherworldly dignity to the Count would typecast Lugosi as a kind of oddball antihero – the cultivated eccentric driven to madness or worse. He approached each of those roles with a manic intensity that might net...

Billy Wilder would’ve celebrated his 113th birthday on June 22, 2019. The six-time Oscar winner left behind a series of classically quotable features from Hollywood’s Golden Age, crafting sharp witted and darkly cynical stories that blended comedy and pathos in equal measure. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wilder was born to a family of Austrian Jews in 1906. After working as a journalist, he developed an interest in filmmaking and collaborated on the silent feature “People on Sunday” (1929) with fellow rookies Fred Zinnemann, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer. With the rise of Adolph Hitler, Wilder fled to Paris, where he co-directed the feature “Mauvaise Graine” (1934). Tragically, his mother, stepfather and grandmother all died in the Holocaust.

SEEOscar Best Director Gallery: Every Winner In Academy Award History

After moving to Hollywood, Wilder enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter,...

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.

Museum of the Moving Image

A particularly outstanding weekend for “See It Big! Action” offers Big Trouble in Little China on Friday, a John Woo double-bill of Hard Boiled and Face/Off on Saturday, and Die Hard this Sunday.

A Carlos Reygadas series is underway, with all of his pre-Our Time features screening through Sunday.

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.

Museum of the Moving Image

“See It Big! Action” brings some of the genre’s greatest offerings, from Police Story to this century’s favorite, Miami Vice.

Los Angeles Plays Itself leads “Essay L.A.,” a series of “essay and collage films [that] explore the terrain and spatial imagination of Los Angeles.”

A nearly century-spanning tribute to the laser light show,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSTerrence Malick's A Hidden Life.The various lineups for Cannes 2019 have been announced: the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, and the separate but simultaneous events, the Directors' Fortnight, Critics' Week, and Acid.Stephen Chow has confirmed that he will be directing the follow-up to his 2004 film Kung Fu Hustle, in which he also starred as the lead character. Recommended Viewinga tense and harrowing trailer for Ava Duvernay's When They See Us, a miniseries that follows the plight of the Central Park Five, five boys falsely accused of brutally raping a jogger. The series, which spans from 1989 to 2014, also marks another collaboration between Duvernay and cinematographer Bradford Young.Flying Lotus and David Lynch come together for the song "Fire is Coming," off of Flying Lotus's new album Flamagra. The music video, which...

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” (1843) a large feline named Pluto follows the narrator “with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend.” Poe’s narrator struggles to put into words how, exactly, this pursuit fills him with terror. Cinema has provided a solution to capturing the elusive, uncanny cat: its quiet steps, eerily graceful jumps, gleaming eyes, and mythologized ability to dodge death nine-fold. Unlike dogs, cats are more independent and can’t be relied on to come when they’re called. Cats are expert at hiding, fitting into unbelievably tiny spaces, and their claws are extremely sharp. Hovering in the liminal field between wilderness and domestication, the house cat is often used in horror to parallel the genre’s interest in showing the disintegration of the home or domestic life into chaos. Poe’s story has been loosely adapted as a horror film several times,...

Frankenstein 1970

Blu ray

Warner Archive

1958 / 2:35:1 / 83 Min. / Street Date – April 9, 2019

Starring Boris Karloff, Don Barry, Jana Lund

Written by Richard H. Landau

Cinematography by Carl E. Guthrie

Directed by Howard Koch

Color TVs, swimming pools and cars (especially cars). American culture of the 50s was fueled by desire for the newest status symbol – even the title of the latest monster movie was pitched to the upwardly mobile – get behind the wheel of the atomic powered Frankenstein 1970.

Take a look under the hood though and apart from a few modernistic bells and whistles (most notably its CinemaScope framing) director Howard Koch’s movie is doggedly retrograde. The swooning ingenues, skeptical villagers and dank dungeons – all would have fit comfortably in a Universal horror film of the 30’s.

The movie’s real attraction is a more than welcome blast from the past – Boris Karloff returns to Mary Shelley’s monsterverse...

Recently released by Criterion, Detour is --- from what I understand --- a criminally underseen, Poverty Row film noir. I was pleased to see the restoration on the big screen at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Ma shortly before receiving a review copy, and I'm happy to say that on the second viewing at home, Detour is still excellent.  The film is imperfect to be sure, but nonetheless riveting due to its direction, story, and performances. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Detour was released in 1945, and follows pianist Al (Tom Neal), who is the most worried-looking protagonist I think I've ever seen. He hitchhikes across America from New York to Los Angeles in a road trip sure to turn the...

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

Stars: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Edmund MacDonald, Claudia Drake | Written by Martin Goldsmith | Directed by Edward G. Ulmer

Thanks to its absurd plotting and an even more absurd running time (it’s not even seventy minutes long), Detour is a breeze of a watch. Essentially a noir road movie, it’s fast, funny, grimy and atmospheric, and it comes with an absolute belter of a last ten minutes.

We meet our protagonist Al (Tom Neal) as a dishevelled drifter, hitchhiking his way across Nevada. He remembers his glory days in New York. He was a pianist and she – Sue (Claudia Drake), the love of his life – was a singer. One day she decided to jet off to L.A. to chase her Hollywood dream. Al wanted to chase his dream of Sue. He was flat broke but determined to marry her, so off he went.

On the way he hitches...