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This February, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the return of beloved shows like Invincible and Reacher to the much-anticipated teen romantic drama film My Fault: London. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Prime Video this month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 10 best films that are coming to Prime Video in February 2025 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

A Fish Called Wanda (February 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96% Credit – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A Fish Called Wanda is a heist comedy film directed by Charles Crichton from a screenplay by John Cleese. The 1988 film revolves around a group of thieves and con artists who team up to pull off the perfect heist, but things go horribly wrong because they all try to double-cross each other.

There’s a reason we keep coming back to the heist movie genre, again and again and again. That’s because although most movies would have you believe that committing crimes is bad, we can’t help but respect a character who does it well. Robbing a little old lady on the street is unforgivable, sure, but robbing a wealthy old lady who keeps her hoard of ill-gotten money in an impenetrable vault surrounded by lasers and mercenaries? You gotta respect the moxie of anybody who even tries. And if they succeed, well dang, good for them. It sounds like they earned every penny.

There’s no shortage of classic heist movies, but with income inequality on our minds, and billionaires actively destroying everything decent about this planet every single day, the genre seems particularly alluring in the 21st century. Maybe that’s why we’ve had so many classic...

From heartfelt dramas to laugh-out-loud comedies, there are plenty of great movies featuring the talented Gilmore Girls cast. The show is known for its witty dialogue, complex characters, and the charm of small-town life in Stars Hollow. Even now, close to 20 years after the series ended, Gilmore Girls remains a positively-reviewed, beloved show that's stood the test of time.

Beyond their roles in the show, the main Gilmore Girls cast members have each starred in movies that range from feel-good blockbusters to indie favorites, each offering a chance to showcase the actors in fresh, diverse settings. Whether a die-hard fan of Lorelai and Rory or intrigued by the show’s supporting characters, these films are a must-watch for a deeper appreciation of the cast’s wide-ranging skills.

Lauren Graham - Bad Santa (2003) Directed by Terry Zwigoff

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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...

In Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin’s new documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Robert Crumb is the man who came to dinner.

In one of the film’s central scenes, Crumb and his late wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb join longtime friends Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly to break bread and discuss their respective connections as titans of the ’70s and ’80s underground comic movement. For purposes of this scene, Crumb is just a friendly and reflective old guy, a normal person having a normal dinner with his normal, if culturally significant, pals.

Crumb’s ease in this scene is disarming because while here he’s simply a peer and a colleague, he’s something much more significant in a broader cinematic context. Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb casts an impossibly long shadow over any nonfiction film about artists, comic or otherwise, but really over any biographical documentary of any kind.

The foul mouthed holiday film is now, more or less, a cinema tradition. From Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation to Harold Ramis’s The Ice Harvest, there are plenty of these anti-Christmas yet still kinda Christmas movies across all genres. Smart-ass action movies like Die Hard, most of the work of Shane Black, but also gruesome slasher pictures like Black Christmas, edgy Amblin' movies like Gremlins, and even Stanley Kubrick’s unclassifiable psychodrama Eyes Wide Shut. There is something about subverting that supposedly wholesome and giving holiday spirit into some alternate kind of energy that filmmakers keep coming back to. Dito Montiel’s effervescent yet surprisingly violent black comedy noodles around in this this space, to mixed effect. It is set in the...

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

The American Cinematheque is kicking off a robust new Los Angeles nonfiction film festival dubbed This Is Not a Fiction, running from April 10-18. The festival opens with docuseries “Thank You, Good Night: The Bon Jovi Story,” with Jon Bon Jovi in-person at the Aero Theatre for the L.A. premiere screening.

The event will include in-person tributes to distinguished documentary filmmakers including Barbara Kopple, Joe Berlinger, Brett Morgen, Bill Morrison, Kirsten Johnson, Terry Zwigoff, Jeff Tremaine and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, as well as a virtual Q&a with Frederick Wiseman.

Other premieres will include “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” “Power,” “Strong Island,” “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg,” a restoration of “Lumumba: Death of a Prophet” and “Incident,” plus special presentations of Morgan Neville’s “Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” and “Girls State.” A celebration of the 15th anniversary of “30 for 30” will feature a panel...

Scarlett Johansson has been a star in a wide variety of films over the past thirty years. She had a prosperous early career, starring in films such as Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001). However, she also had the unpleasant experience of hearing fans boo one of her career’s best films.

Yes, we are discussing Under the Skin. Despite the negative feedback, the talented actress did not let it bring her down. Instead, she sought sound advice that helped her keep things in perspective. Her career has seen critical and commercial peaks and troughs over the last 20 years, some of which are not necessarily aligned.

Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin

In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, Johansson stated that she would rather experience both the highs and lows of success and failure than “tepid” mediocrity. The audience “booed” the 2013 flick, which made...

Peter Dinklage was originally considered for a role in Bad Santa before starring in Elf. Terry Zwigoff, the director, felt that Dinklage's delivery of the lines in his audition for Bad Santa were "truthful", but not funny. Tony Cox was ultimately cast as Marcus in Bad Santa, one of the roles that opened doors for little person actors to play more well-rounded characters.

Though already one of his earliest breakout American roles, Peter Dinklage was originally eyed for Bad Santa before going on to star in Elf. Both released in 2003, the former centered on an alcoholic thief and his criminal partner posing as a mall Santa and elf in order to conduct a heist at the end of the holiday season, while the latter starred Will Smith as a human who learns he's not actually an elf after being raised in the North Pole by Santa and goes to find his birth father.

There’s a scene in the 2010 film Eat Pray Love where Julia Roberts’s character Liz basks in the experience of eating a guilt-free pizza. It was an important character moment for her–and for many audience members. And whatever your specific dietary preferences or requirements may be, we hope that you’ll enjoy whatever your guilt-free “pizza moment” is this Thanksgiving, surrounded by friends and family (chosen or otherwise.)

Food, of course, has played as major a role in cinema as any other basic human biological function, from the sprawling bowls of pasta in the works of Martin Scorsese, to the last decade’s trend of thoughtfully investigative health-leaning food docs such as Food Inc. and Forks Over Knives. Today, though, we’re leaving the scare-mongering at the kids’ table and indulging in some seriously calorie-dense, celebratory depictions of food on film.

So cinch up that lobster bib and...

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

When we talk about Christmas movies and holiday classics, so often, we're talking about movies that came out decades ago, like "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), "Miracle on 34th Street" (1957), "A Christmas Story" (1983), or "Scrooged" (1988). Even "Home Alone" was released in 1990 and that feels downright modern compared to many of these films that have been in rotation for longer than a fair number of you reading this have been alive. The point is, it's tough to gain that coveted holiday classic status. But 20 years ago, Jon Favreau and Will Ferrell teamed up to give us the definitive modern Christmastime classic: "Elf."

The journey this movie traveled to eventually become the classic that it is today was not a simple one. It was in...

Mubi has unveiled their November 2023 lineup, featuring notable new releases such as Ashley McKenzie’s Queens of the Qing Dynasty and Alain Gomis’ Thelonious Monk documentary Rewind & Play. Also in the lineup is three stellar earlier films from Christian Petzold––Yella, Jerichow, and The State I Am In––along with John Cassavetes’ Husbands and Gloria, a Hayao Miyazaki short, and a retrospective dedicated to Argentinian-born, French-educated filmmaker and theorist Nelly Kaplan.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

November 1

A Very Curious Girl, directed by Nelly Kaplan | A Mischievous Rebellion: Films by Nelly Kaplan

The Pleasure of Love, directed by Nelly Kaplan | A Mischievous Rebellion: Films by Nelly Kaplan

Charles and Lucie, directed by Nelly Kaplan | A Mischievous Rebellion: Films by Nelly Kaplan

Papa the Little Boats, directed by Nelly Kaplan | A Mischievous Rebellion: Films by Nelly Kaplan

Yella, directed by Christian Petzold | Phantoms Among Us: The Films of Christian Petzold

Jerichow,...

With its 30th-anniversary rerelease the family-friendly Witches of Eastwick secures its status as a sweet-natured and sometimes weirdly brutal cult favourite

Maybe it’s beside the point to have a 30th-anniversary rerelease for Disney’s Halloween witch comedy starring Bette Midler – it’s been on a kind of permanent, low-level rerelease for three decades. The persistent, annual revival on US TV since it bombed on its cinema release in 1993 is supposed to be what’s gradually turned this film into a slow-burn success and then a cult favourite. Watching it again reveals Hocus Pocus to be … well … the pretty good film that it should have been recognised as at the time, a sort of family-friendly Witches of Eastwick.

A cheeky 17th-century prologue sequence in Salem, Massachusetts establishes that – whatever Arthur Miller might claim – witches with evil power were a real thing and the menfolk of the time were entirely justified in hating and fearing them.

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

One of the most frustratingly mangled Hollywood success stories pertains to the supposed post-production salvation of "Bad Santa." Written by the then up-and-coming duo of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (based on a pitch from Joel and Ethan Coen), and directed by Terry Zwigoff (hot off the Academy Award-nominated "Ghost World"), the legend holds that Zwigoff's cut of the film was so relentlessly mean-spirited as to be unreleasable. This was backed up 13 years after the film's successful theatrical release by a selectively edited New York Times oral history, which privileges Bob Weinstein's version of the story.

You can't argue with the results. "Bad Santa" was the surprise, coal-in-the-stocking Christmas hit of 2003. Billy Bob Thornton's portrayal of an alcoholic mall Santa, who lazily participates in seasonal, criminal shenanigans with his elf helper, Marcus (Tony Cox), hit anti-consumerist notes with shocking brio. It reveled in the profane freedom of its...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2022, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

When reflecting on my year in cinema, I recognize the experience of where and when I viewed the following films as inexplicably tied to how I remember them. The theatrical experience is sacred—this is no secret. But it bears repeating in the face of certain entities whose ethos revolves around its destruction (or “disruption”). Certainly the greatest cinema transcends. I did not see my number one movie of the year on a big screen, but I look forward to a future date when I can. And after years of repeat home viewing, I was finally able to catch two of my all-time favorite films: The Thin Red Line and Groundhog Day, on the big screen in 2022—on 35mm no less. Home viewing has its place. But...

Though we aim to discuss a wide breadth of films each year, few things give us more pleasure than the arrival of bold, new voices. It’s why we venture to festivals and pore over a variety of different features that might bring to light some emerging talent. This year was an especially notable time for new directors making their stamp, and we’re highlighting the handful of 2022 debuts that most impressed us.

Below one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres, and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.

The African Desperate (Martine Syms)

One of the most exciting directorial debuts of the year, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate is an electrifying ride through a day in the life of Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily). An Mfa grad on her final day of academia, she navigates...

Terry Zwigoff's 2003 film "Bad Santa" was more or less destined for cult classic status. Starring an Academy Award-winning actor, "Bad Santa" was deliberately crass and misanthropic, an antidote to the treacly sentimentality that ordinarily infuses films explicitly about Christmas.

In "Bad Santa," Billy Bob Thornton plays an itinerant mall Santa named Willie who uses his seasonal job to plan last-minute mall heists with his partner Marcus (Tony Cox), who poses as one of Santa's Elves. The heists typically go well, but just barely, as Willie is a wrathful, cruel alcoholic who has a great deal of trouble controlling his constant base impulses toward cussing and lechery. The late Bernie Mac played Gin, a mall manager who caught wise to Marcus' and Willie's plan, and Lauren Graham played Sue, a woman with a Santa Claus fetish that Willie was happy to indulge. Nine-year-old Brett Kelly played an unobservant boy named...

The possibilities are endless when it comes to who could've played a given part in a film that went on to become a classic. Many actors are often first approached for a role, only for them to turn it down or see scheduling get in the way. Warren Beatty and Elvis were famously in the running to star in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," to use an example that actually could've really worked. Normally, when we imagine another actor in a role that seemed tailor-made for them in retrospect, it's difficult to see anyone else fill their shoes. In the case of Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa," it seems unlikely that anyone could have been a more perfect choice to fill the boots of an alcoholic, foul-mouthed mall Santa Claus who's actually a crook in disguise. 

It almost happened though. It's not surprising that a lot of actors...

With the holiday season fast approaching, it's that time of year when movie journalists and film critics start wheeling out their lists of alternative and anti-Christmas classics. If ever there was a film tailor-made for such picks, it is "Bad Santa."

In the true spirit of seasonal generosity, screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa created a script gleefully intended to offer offense to all comers, and everyone involved looks like they're having plenty of fun working their way onto Santa's naughty list. Yet the key to the film's longevity is that it remains firmly on the side of clever-offensive; if it was simply another bland gross-out comedy, it probably wouldn't have become an instant cult classic that, despite its potty mouth and all-round vulgarity, still warms our cockles after repeat viewings.

As the instantly forgettable sequel proved, you can be crass, foul-mouthed, and gross, but to pull it off and...

Cinema Eye Honors, the organization that recognizes outstanding artistic achievement in nonfiction and documentary films & series, announced the first round of their 2023 awards and nominations at its annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch held in Los Angeles.

In the five Broadcast categories, HBO film “Four Hours at the Capitol,” an inside look at the January 6th riot, led with three nominations: Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Other projects like the Disney+ docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back” and Showtime’s “We Need to Talk About Cosby” also received more than one nomination.

Other announcements at the event include the annual Shorts List, which spotlights 10 of the year’s top documentary short films, and the recipient of the Legacy Award this year, Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 film “Crumb.”

“I’m glad to find out you don’t have to be dead to receive this award,” Zwigoff said in a written statement. “I...

Exclusive: The Cinema Eye Honors announced its first round of nominations today for artistic achievement in documentary film and series, with HBO’s Four Hours at the Capitol earning the most of any contender [full list below].

The documentary by Jamie Roberts about the January 6 insurrection scored nominations for Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Peter Jackson’s Disney+ series The Beatles: Get Back, landed two nominations — for Broadcast Series and Broadcast Editing. Get Back swept five Primetime Emmy categories last month.

‘Downfall: The Case Against Boeing’

Rory Kennedy’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, snubbed by the Emmys, earned a Cinema Eye Honors nomination for Broadcast Film. It will go up against Four Hours at the Capitol, and Emmy winner George Carlin’s American Dream, the two-part HBO film directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, among other contenders.

Nanfu Wang’s HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which premiered after the...

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” “The Beatles: Get Back,” “Playing With Sharks,” “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” and “How To With John Wilson” are among the nonfiction television programs that have been nominated in the Cinema Eye Honors broadcast categories, Cinema Eye Honors announced at the organization’s annual fall lunch in Los Angeles on Thursday.

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” Jamie Roberts’ HBO film about the Jan. 6 insurrection, received three nominations to lead all programs. “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci,” “John Wilson” and “Playing With Sharks” each received two nominations.

Along with “Four Hours at the Capitol” and “Playing With Sharks,” broadcast film nominees were “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” and “George Carlin’s American Dream.” Nonfiction series nominees were “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Black and Missing,” “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey,” “LuLaRich” and “Mind Over Murder.” Nominated anthology series...

Child actors often grown up to become veteran actors, but Thora Birch was always different: She wanted to be the one who had the answers. Birch made her mark in “Hocus Pocus,” “American Beauty,” and “Ghost World,” but she had her eye on being the person who told the actors what to do. After producing indie films “Petunia” and “The Competition,” she’s now got that opportunity as the director of Lifetime movie “The Gabby Petito Story,” in which she also takes a role as Gabby’s mom, Nichole.

The daughter of pornographic performers, Birch started acting at four and snagged major commercials before turning to films with “Purple People Eater” at age six. Her three-decade career also includes a recurring role on “The Walking Dead” and starring in the sci-fi podcast “Overleaper.”

Along the way she’s earned BAFTA, Emmy, and Golden Globe nominations and she’s worked with...

When Owen Kline was 14 years old, he wrote cartoonist Johnny Ryan a fan letter. “I didn’t know who he was,” Ryan told IndieWire. “I just thought it was amusing that a child was sending me fan mail.” Featuring characters like Loady McGee and stories like “The Whorehouse of Dr. Moreau,” Ryan’s “Angry Youth Comix” were not exactly age-appropriate for Kline. But the introduction proved fruitful. Years later, the now 30-year-old Kline went to Ryan when he was working on his first feature, the A24-distributed “Funny Pages.”

“Funny Pages” centers on a New Jersey teen obsessed, like Kline was and clearly still is, with underground comics. After his art teacher and mentor dies in a shockingly horrific accident, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) decides to quit school with the idea of devoting himself to his craft.

Kline was in need of drawings to represent his protagonist’s body of work,...

Daniel Zolghadri in Owen Kline’s Funny Pages. Photo: A24 This generation is being lied to. It will take years of deprogramming to undo the damage. After a decade-and-a-half of Marvel films dominating popular culture and a cascade of other IP derived from comics slipping in through the door they’ve bashed open,...

Exclusive: Former top ICM talent and literary agent John Burnham, who left earlier this month to become a manager and partner at Atlas Artists and Atlas Literary, has signed Alex O’Loughlin as a client.

This marks a reunion for the duo. Burnham represented O’Loughlin for years as an agent and facilitated the actor’s casting as the lead of CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 reboot, which ran for 10 seasons. Soon after the Hawaii Five-0 pilot had been picked up to series in 2010, O’Loughlin left ICM to follow Chris Hart, who had been an agent on his team, to UTA. The actor, who most recently did not have a manager, continues to be repped by UTA.

The Hawaii Five-0 alum joins a long list of Burnham clients who stayed with him in the transition to management and followed him to Atlas Artists, including John Cusack, Stephen Dorff, Diane English, Stephen Frears,...

Exclusive: John Burnham, a cornerstone talent and literary agent who has spent more than 25 years at ICM Partners, is leaving to become a manager and partner at Atlas Artists and Atlas Literary, the Atlas Entertainment subsidiary. The exit is amicable, and Burnham will bring with him a client list of renowned writers, filmmakers and actors he now will represent as a manager.

The long list of clients that will follow him includes Oscar, Emmy and Pulitzer winners. The roster includes Brandon Cronenberg, John Cusack, Stephen Dorff, Diane English, Kleber Mendonca Filho, Stephen Frears, Walter Hill, Felicity Huffman, Adrian Lyne, Sophia Macy, William H. Macy, Clara Mamet, David Mamet, Joe Mantegna, Nicholas Martin, Elaine May, Malcolm Mays, Takashi Miike, Pat McKinley, Keith McNally, David Milch, Rob Reiner, Emma Tammi, Caroline Thompson, David Twohy, Wayne Wang, Peter Weir, Alice Winn, John Woo and Terry Zwigoff. Others will follow as his exit gets sorted.

Fritz the Cat – The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1972, 74/ 1.85:1/ 80, 76 Minutes

Starring Skip Hinnant

Directed by Ralph Bakshi, Robert Taylor

The typical toddler tends to relate more to the cuddly animals in a Disney cartoon than their own flesh and blood playmates. Robert Crumb and his brother Charles were anything but typical toddlers yet the boys were preoccupied with what was known as “funny animal comics”—everything from Bugs Bunny to Pogo. Their fascination took on an obsessive twist; for Robert the material was inspiration for his remarkable future as an artist, for Charles it was a trip down a long, dark rabbit hole. Those who weathered Terry Zwigoff’s harrowing Crumb learned a lot about the bleak side of childhood fantasy but they also learned about Robert’s compulsive work ethic and his focus on a house cat named Fred—a “typical big old...

As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.

Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.

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

300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015

5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968

Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017

Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015

America, Garrett Bradley, 2019

Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953

Angels Wear White,...

Scarlett Johansson, whose long-awaited solo Marvel movie Black Widow finally hits theaters and Disney+ next month, is being feted this fall as the 35th recipient of the American Cinematheque Award. After going with a virtual presentation last year for 2020 honoree Spike Lee, the organization’s marquee event returns to normalcy, with its November 18 ceremony taking place at the Beverly Hilton where it was held last in 2019, when Charlize Theron was the recipient.

The event is an annual fundraiser for the nonprofit organization that continues its year-round programming at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. After a year-plus shutdown due to the pandemic, the Aero just reopened June 10. The Egyptian, now under the purview of Netflix, is undergoing renovations before reopening as a venue both Netflix and American Cinematheque (on the weekends) will be using for their programming.

American Cinematheque board chair Rick Nicita announced Johansson...

Don’t laugh: it began with a Tumblr post. Scrolling through, an eerie clip caught my eye—a bloody, sea-reflected sunset, the sudden attack of a struggling statue (Bernini’s The Rape Of Proserpina) shoved to the fore with an otherworldly wail and jaguar howl. What was this? The only clue was writhing block print: Ramsay Films. Brief digging revealed it was a production logo of the Ramsays, a seven-son filmmaking squad who, overseen by patriarch/producer Fatehchand U. Ramsay (F.U. for short), pioneered horror filmmaking in India.Outside India, the Ramsays seem critically unknown. Despite breaking ground in a cult genre, no New York film buff I asked had ever heard of them. It’s not too surprising considering the Ramsays occupy a cinematic blind spot in their own country. Industry outsiders lacking the influence and resources of bigger studios, whose films were too populist (and formulaic) to ever be critical darlings,...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

In “Ghost World,” everybody wants out, yet no one knows how to work the door. Nor do they want to. They’re more content to study the padding in the cell than to even consider an exit. That includes unapologetic and misunderstood loner Enid (Thora Birch) and her less tortured but still moody best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson). Two characters in search of an exit. And then there’s Norman, the man sitting on a bench waiting for the bus that doesn’t come. Until it does, pulling Enid’s world out from under her.

More from IndieWireWhat's New on Disney+: 'The Straight Story' Is David Lynch's Healing of America's DividesStreaming Wars: Indie Streamers Are Getting Nimble in...

“I can’t imagine making a movie without him.” That’s what Quentin Tarantino said about first assistant director William Paul Clark, whose roots with the writer-director go back to Pulp Fiction. Since then, Clark has worked on nearly every Tarantino picture while also facilitating great work by a wide array of directors from Mark Pellington and Gregg Araki to Terry Zwigoff and Barry Levinson. As an enthusiastic cinephile with an infectious passion for both making and watching movies, Clark seems to have had the time of his life working with Tarantino on last year’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Taking on […]...

“I can’t imagine making a movie without him.” That’s what Quentin Tarantino said about first assistant director William Paul Clark, whose roots with the writer-director go back to Pulp Fiction. Since then, Clark has worked on nearly every Tarantino picture while also facilitating great work by a wide array of directors from Mark Pellington and Gregg Araki to Terry Zwigoff and Barry Levinson. As an enthusiastic cinephile with an infectious passion for both making and watching movies, Clark seems to have had the time of his life working with Tarantino on last year’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Taking on […]...

Cinephile’s treat or ticket-peddling gimmick? Either way, this monochrome edition puts the masterful satire in a new light

There’s a moment in Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary about Robert Crumb when the cartoonist leans over his teenage son, tweaks the colour on TV so the film he’s watching becomes black and white, and says: “There! Isn’t that better?”

Maybe. Audiences might be wary of special black and white presentations of new movies. Bong Joon-ho’s award-winning Parasite is now getting this treatment, which in 2016 was also conferred on Mad Max: Fury Road with a “black and chrome” edition.

It’s exciting, and fascinating, to see a great director of documentaries try his or her hand at a dramatic feature, since in theory the essential skill set should all be there. The best documentarians possess an acute visual sense, and they are all, of course, potent storytellers. Yet for every attempt at this sort of crossover that triumphs, like Terry Zwigoff leaping from “Crumb” to “Ghost World,” there are many more that don’t. Remember Joe Berlinger’s misbegotten “Blair Witch” sequel? Or Barbara Kopple’s “Havoc”? Or Michael Moore’s “Canadian Bacon”? And then there was Andrew Jarecki’s “All Good Things,” an attempt, by the creator of “Capturing the Friedmans,” to dramatize the life of the accused killer Robert Durst that proved to be such an ambitiously awkward movie that it spurred him to return to nonfiction with the far more powerful Robert Durst docu-series “The Jinx.

Bad Santa was an unexpected Christmas hit, featuring a drunk, foul-mouthed Billy Bob Thornton as a crook who takes on the role of Santa Claus with unexpected and hilarious results. The cult comedy classic went down well with most audiences but was slammed by some for showing an incarnation of Santa who was crass, vulgar and perpetually intoxicated. And now, Thornton has revealed in a new interview that he took the ‘drunk’ part of the character to method acting extremes, particularly for the infamous drunken rampage scene.

“I drank about three glasses of red wine for breakfast… Then I switched over to vodka and cranberry juice, and then I had a few Bud Lights. By the time I got to that scene there, I barely knew I was in a movie.”

Of course, this incident is only one indication of a serious alcohol problem that Thornton was dealing with at the time.

Netflix scored big with bawdy teen comedy “Sex Education” at the start of the year, but it appears its latest attempt at a sex positive comedy was a misstep. Created by actor Rightor Doyle, “Bonding” centers around a gay stand-up comic who comes into his sexuality when he takes on a gig as an assistant to a dominatrix. In a creator’s statement posted to Instagram, Doyle explained that the show is based on his personal experience as a struggling comedian in New York.

“As a young gay man still struggling with my own sexuality, guarding the door while one of my best friends from home tied a naked man to a four poster bed and whipped him was jarring to say the least,” wrote Doyle, while also touting “influences ranging from Pedro Almodóvar to Terry Zwigoff.”

Although many fans chimed in with messages of support, not all were convinced...

Seemingly concocted by director Terry Zwigoff as an antidote to the sugary Christmas movies that have clogged the arteries of moviegoers for so many years, this 2003 film about a disreputable Santa impersonator makes good on its promise of bad taste, bad manners and bad Santas. Produced by the Coen Brothers and starring a convincingly dissipated Billy Bob Thornton, the film co-stars Bernie Mac and the late John Ritter (this was his last film; he passed away in September of that same year.)

The post Bad Santa appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Speaking about her #MeToo experience in a Los Angeles Times profile, Mira Sorvino admits that “it’s been a hard year, not going to lie.” The Oscar-winning actress, one of many women to accuse Harvey Weinstein of both sexually harassing her and intentionally derailing her career, says that “the idea that there was this malevolent hand that actually had changed the course of my professional life was devastating to me.”

“I was like, that’s why I’ve had a bad downturn in my career. Why I couldn’t be in any studio movies for a decade and a half. I won an Oscar. My work hasn’t changed. My performances are still comparable to my old performances. Just the access was denied,” Sorvino said.

In a New Yorker report published last October, Sorvino accused Weinstein of massaging her shoulders and attempting to get physical in a Toronto hotel room in 1995. Following that report,...

Mira Sorvino‘s experiences with sexual harassment in Hollywood started early.

In an interview with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s HFPA In Conversation podcast, the 50-year-old actress revealed that her negative experiences in the industry stemmed far beyond her accusations against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“In looking back over at my career, I realized that one of my very first auditions when I was 16, I was completely treated inappropriately by the casting director,” she explained without naming the man. “In order to scare me for this horror movie scene, he tied me to a chair, he bruised my arm,...

Watch @savannahguthrie’s full interview with @MiraSorvino about Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, Sorvino’s latest project and more. pic.twitter.com/j75xQJ0As3

— Today (@TODAYshow) June 6, 2018

For Mira Sorvino, seeing Harvey Weinstein indicted and arrested last week on multiple charges of rape and criminal sexual act was nothing but a “really good first step.”

The 50-year-old actress — who was one of the many women who came out against Weinstein in the fall, saying that the movie mogul brought her to his hotel room where he massaged her shoulders and tried to make further physical advances by chasing her around the...

Mira Sorvino is not celebrating the end of Harvey Weinstein just yet. Appearing on “Today” this morning for her first televised interview since coming forward with her own allegations against Harvey Weinstein last year, and the Oscar-winning actress offered a hopeful, if pragmatic answer as to how she felt seeing the former producer arrested and arraigned late last month.

“He has raped many people that I love, so it’s not really a happy occasion,” she said. “I think maybe there will be some celebration when he gets convicted and goes to jail. That is when the process will be complete and we will see justice really being served. But until then, this is a great first step.” Sorvino added, “It feels like a really good first step, it’s him finally facing real, real criminal consequences for his criminal behavior. And so for that I feel gratified but, honestly,...

“Script girl.” “Best boy.” “Cameraman.” Each of these on-set job descriptions are terribly outdated, but only one of them persists in our collective vocabulary, such an ingrained part of the cinematic lexicon that few people ever think to challenge what it implies. “Script girl” has been rebranded as the more inclusive script supervisor, while “best boy” — a relic from a time when it was automatically assumed that a man would be a master’s most capable apprentice — remains common parlance in the film industry, yet meaningless to the rest of the world.

“Cameraman,” on the other hand, remains the kind of thing that people say without thinking, every utterance of the word helping to reaffirm the gender bias that created it. And so we find ourselves in a world where women comprise only four percent of the American Society of Cinematographers (as of 2015, anyway), and the phrase “female cinematographer” is...

Mira Sorvino is the latest actor to come forward expressing regrets over working with Woody Allen. Sorvino won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1995 for her acclaimed turn in Allen’s comedy “Mighty Aphrodite.” The actress expressed her regrets in an emotional open letter written specifically to Dylan Farrow, Allen’s daughter who has alleged for years that the director molested her as a child.

Read More:Paul Sorvino Threatens Harvey Weinstein for Harassing and Blacklisting Daughter Mira: ‘I Will Kill the Motherf*cker’

“I confess that at the time I worked for Woody Allen I was a naive young actress,” Sorvino writes in the letter, published exclusively on The Huffington Post. “I swallowed the media’s portrayal of your abuse allegations against your father as an outgrowth of a twisted custody battle between Mia Farrow and him, and did not look further into the situation, for which I am terribly sorry.

Paul Sorvino has a message for Harvey Weinstein: “I will kill you motherfucker.” The “Goodfellas” actor threatened the disgraced former head of The Weinstein Company to TMZ, telling the outlet that he hopes Weinstein goes to jail or worse for his alleged behavior. Over 90 women have come forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment and/or abuse, including Sorvino’s daughter, actress and Oscar winner Mira Sorvino.

Read More:Peter Jackson Reveals Harvey Weinstein Blacklisted Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino From ‘The Lord of the Rings’

“If I meet [Weinstein] on the street — he oughta hope that he goes to jail, because if we come across, I think he’ll be lying on the floor, somehow, magically,” Paul Sorvino said. “He’s going to go to jail. Oh yeah. That son of a bitch. Good for him if he goes, because if not, he has to meet me. And I will kill the motherfucker.

Ever wonder how many F-Bombs are dropped in some of your favorite movies like Pulp Fiction, Superbad, The Devil's Rejects, The Big Lebowski and Reservoir Dogs? Well, JoBlo's got you covered with F*Bombs. Here we count each and every use of the word f*ck in select classic flicks. On this new episode, we take on Terry Zwigoff's Christmas classic Bad Santa starring Billy Bob... Read More...

Director Terry Zwigoff says he too encountered resistance from Harvey Weinstein over casting actress Mira Sorvino. “I was interested in casting Mira Sorvino in Bad Santa,” Zwigoff tweeted last night, “but every time I mentioned her over the phone to the Weinsteins, I’d hear a Click.” “What type of person just hangs up on you like that,” Zwigoff continued. “I guess we all know what type of person now. I’m really sorry Mira.” Zwigoff’s tweet follows a similar claim by Lord o…...

In the over 90 sexual harassment and abuse accusations made against Harvey Weinstein, one of the most consistent claims alleged that Weinstein would threaten the careers of the actresses who refused his advances. Mira Sorvino is one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, and according to directors such as Peter Jackson and Terry Zwigoff, Weinstein and his brother did just that.

Read More:Peter Jackson Slams Harvey Weinstein’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Blacklist Denial as ‘A Deflection From the Truth

Zwigoff worked with Miramax on the Billy Bob Thornton-starring Christmas comedy “Bad Santa,” which was produced by Bob Weinstein under the Miramax-owned Dimension Films. The director said in a tweet that he was interested in casting Sorvino for an unspecified role in the comedy, but that every time he brought up her name to Bob and Harvey Weinstein they would immediately hang up on him. Zwigoff alleges this happened numerous...