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The Occupant begins with a premise familiar to global audiences: a desperate act for a loved one. Geologist Abby, portrayed by Ella Balinska, finds her life’s purpose distilled into a single, high-stakes mission. Her sister, Beth, is dying, and the only hope is an experimental treatment with a price tag that pushes Abby to the world’s edge.

She accepts a dubious mining job in the remote Georgian Taiga, a region whose stark, post-Soviet landscape serves as a potent backdrop for a story of transactional desperation. The inciting incident is swift. After finding a peculiar, valuable mineral, her transport helicopter goes down. She awakens alone, a solitary figure against the vast, unforgiving cold of the Caucasus mountains.

The setting becomes her primary antagonist, a character of immense, indifferent power. Her only connection to humanity is a disembodied voice on her radio, and the strange rock she carries hums with an unnatural energy,...

With more and more films crossing borders and getting viewed in countries miles away from the land it was made, the idea that only a certain kind of film is made in a particular country and is thematically, aesthetically, and stylistically unique to that particular land is challenged in today’s highly connected world. These films from foreign lands not only affect how people watch or consume cinema but also how people make films.

Although such cinematic trade and influences had always been a part of any country’s cinema culture, earlier it was films only by certain masters of ‘world’ cinema that became easily available to watch, courtesy of film societies and film clubs. This, however, was limited only to connoisseurs of cinema who had access to such societies and clubs. This has changed with the advent of, firstly, the internet and various legal (and illegal) ways of accessing films,...

In a global entertainment landscape often dominated by high-stakes competition and relentless action, Islands & Trains arrives as a quiet but confident statement. It is not a game to be conquered, but a space to be inhabited, a digital model-making kit that taps into a deep, cross-cultural current of nostalgia.

It evokes the patient hobbyism of physical model railroading, a pastime cherished from the meticulous layouts in German basements to the compact designs in Japanese apartments. The central premise is one of elegant simplicity: presented with a blank ocean canvas, the player uses a clean palette of tools to raise land, cultivate scenery, and lay railways.

There are no objectives, no timers, no external pressures to perform. This is a pure exercise in creation, a rejection of the goal-oriented loops that define so many interactive experiences. Once the diorama is complete, a single train can be sent to circle through the handcrafted world,...

Stories set in space are a dime a dozen. Some space sagas dwell on unknowable mysteries (which are best left unexplored), while others take a more personal approach, presenting the discomfiting opportunity to look deeper within. Many of these stories also emphasize human perseverance, underlining our collective triumph over what's out there.

But Stanisław Lem's sci-fi novel "Solaris" (which spawned both a George Clooney-led Hollywood adaptation and an Andrei Tarkovsky classic) doesn't have much hope for humanity. It explores the futility of communicating with extraterrestrial life and how utterly misguided such an endeavor would be. In "Solaris," rationality and science can only get you so far, as some truths are not meant to be comprehended by the human mind. So, when scientists arrive at the Solaris Station to continue investigating the titular sentient planet, they are faced with a psychological mirror that nearly breaks their fragile sense of self.

A promise made beneath cathedral oaks turns into a descent into terror in Bury Me When I’m Dead, which arrives on digital and VOD this 18 July. Writer-director Seabold Krebs delivers a gothic-tinged ghost story that fuses domestic tragedy with supernatural horror as Devon Terrell’s Henry struggles to honour his wife’s dying wish and unearths consequences darker than he could imagine.

When Catherine (Charlotte Hope) is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, the couple retreats to her childhood estate. Henry swears to lay her to rest in a remote woodland clearing, but a secret liaison with their friend Rebecca (Makenzie Leigh) has him riven with guilt. Following Catherine’s sudden death, Henry abandons his vow, returning her body to the city under threat from her formidable father Gary. That final betrayal unleashes a sequence of increasingly disturbing events, leading him to suspect that Catherine has risen from the grave to exact revenge.

Travolta and a team of misfits are forced to raid a tawdry gambling den, but the stakes are disappointingly low in this ineptly made work

Here is a cheap-ass knockoff of Ocean’s Eleven starring John Travolta that makes the Soderbergh film look like something by Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman. High Rollers is a heart-slowing work of staggering stupidity and charmlessness, ineptly made and quite frankly dull except when its flaws become so egregious you can’t help but guffaw.

The idea is that Mason Goddard leads a rodent pack of skilled thieves and conmen. The gang is first met at the beach wedding of two of the group’s younger members, tech whiz Link and dim hunk Caras (Swen Temmel). Alas, the nuptials are interrupted when international criminal Salazar (Danny Pardo) and his henchmen swoop in and kidnap Mason’s wife Amelia. Salazar demands that Mason and his crew,...

In 2010, Sang-yeop Yeun, an actor who went professionally as Steven, booked a role on "The Walking Dead," a zombie horror television show based on a long-running comic book series. While this wasn't his first professional credit -- you may have forgotten his cameo on "The Big Bang Theory" -- it was his breakout role, immediately endearing the performer to a wide audience and opening the doors on his career.

Since then, Yeun has played a rich and varied slate of roles in a wide variety of genres and tones while simultaneously seeming like a kind-hearted, self-effacing, and easily funny hang, thanks to a series of viral appearances with Conan O'Brien and a post-fame uncovered Second City sketch. He strikes one as an unpretentious actor who can do it all, and his body of work supports this thesis with aplomb.

In celebration of the versatile, engaging, and not-to-be-weird-but-very handsome performer, we've...

Just because a movie or show is spun off from a hit doesn’t mean it will stand on its own. This is the case with pretty much everything that is linked to John Wick. We saw it over the weekend with Ballerina – which seriously underperformed at the box office – and we saw it with TV series The Continental. And while John Wick franchise head Chad Stahelski still has faith in Ballerina as a producer, he continues to look down upon The Continental.

Chad Stahelski recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for an extensive interview in which he discussed not only the John Wick movies but the multiple spin-offs that have been out and are in the works. One of the key takeaways that that he says those who actually worked on The Continental just assumed that because it was a John Wick spin-off that it would be a hit.

The following article contains spoilers for the John Wick franchise.

Chad Stahelski, the filmmaker behind the visionary action franchise John Wick, has offered his harsh opinion on the TV spin-off released by Peacock, The Continental. The director behind all the John Wick films participated in the TV project as executive producer. However, he still slammed the series, saying that it lacked everything that made the action movies led by Keanu Reeves so memorable.

Stahelski recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about the extremely successful action franchise, which has recently released its latest spin-off, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. The film stars Ana de Armas, and actually features Reeves reprising his role as the legendary assassin-for-hire. Ballerina takes place between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4, and early reviews confirm that it's a solid addition to the franchise. Unlike The Continental: From the World of John Wick.

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to Bi Gan’s Chinese fantasy drama Resurrection, winner of this year’s Special Jury prize at the Cannes festival.

Told in six parts, the film takes place in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream and a woman decides to follow a monstrous creature into the dream world.

Chinese singer and actor Jackson Yee stars with Shu Qi. Bi Gan wrote and directed and the film was produced by China’s Huace Pictures and Dangmai Films with France’s CG Cinema. Losange Films is handling sales.

A statement...

Janus Films has acquired North American rights to Bi Gan’s Resurrection, with the film winning the Special Jury prize at the recently-concluded Cannes Film Festival.

Marking Bi’s third feature, Resurrection stars Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao and Li Gengxi.

The deal was negotiated by Janus Films and Losange Films.

Resurrection unfolds in six parts spanning a century, set in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream. However, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld.

Bi previously directed Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey into Night — with the latter premiering in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2018.

Resurrection was produced by China’s Huace Pictures and Dangmai Films with France’s CG Cinema, and features a score by French band M83.

“Bi Gan’s Resurrection is a kaleidoscopic, time-skipping, genre-mashing odyssey through cinema and dreams that will thrill fans of daring,...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to writer/director Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” which won the Prix Spécial Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

“Resurrection” was produced by China’s Huace Pictures and Dangmai Films with France’s CG Cinema and features a score by M83. The deal was negotiated by Janus Films and Losange Films.

The movie, which is told in six parts spanning 100 years, takes place “in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, and one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld,” according to the official synopsis. It stars singer and actor Jackson Yee and actress Shu Qi.

TheWrap’s review of the film called it “dense and delirious,” adding that “his film pastiche plays a bit like ‘Kill Bill’ replacing all narrative structure with dream logic.”

Janus Films commented in a Tuesday statement, “Bi Gan’s ‘Resurrection’ is a kaleidoscopic,...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to “Resurrection,” the Special Award winner at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival from visionary Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan.

The film, which premiered in competition at Cannes, marks the third feature from Bi Gan, whose previous credits include “Kaili Blues” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

Told in six parts spanning a century, “Resurrection’s” framing story takes place in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, with one creature remaining entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. The film stars Chinese superstar singer and actor Jackson Yee and veteran actor Shu Qi, known for her collaborations with Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

“Resurrection” was praised by Variety critic Jessica Kiang as “a marvelously maximalist movie of opulent ambition that is actually five or six movies, each at once playful and peculiar and part of an overarchingly melancholy elegy for the dream of...

One of the most audacious young auteurs working today, 35-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan makes movies that don’t pull you in as much as they slowly wash over you. Moody, melancholic and filled with daunting technical feats, especially the director’s signature logistics-defying long takes, his films are beautifully realized meditations on nostalgia and loss in which the cinema is often a character itself.

In his beguiling new feature Resurrection, movies are both subject and object of a story spanning a hundred years of film history, from the silent era to the end of the last century. Reflecting on the seventh art’s past, present and possible future at a moment when many believe it to be in its death throes, Bi Gan has crafted a time-tripping, genre-jumping paean to the big screen in which he revives the films he loves and then buries them a second time over — hoping,...

An already acclaimed filmmaker in his own right after 2015’s Kaili Blues won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and 2018’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was selected for the Cannes Film Festival – the Un Certain Regard title blew the Croisette away. A seven year journey, we get more Andrei Tarkovsky, Wong Kar-wai and way more cinema references with Resurrection. With production taking place at different junctures over the last years, this stars Jackson Yee and Shu Qi in multi time periods and cinema universes – tells the story of a woman whose consciousness enters an eternal time zone during a medical procedure.…...

Pope Francis, who died at the age of 88 on Easter Monday, had a special relationship with cinema going back to his childhood in Buenos Aires.

“I owe my cinema culture above all to my parents who took us to the cinema a lot,” the pontiff said in a 2013 interview, a few months after his election as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the Argentinian capital in 1936 to parents with roots in northern Italy, Italian cinema figured highly in his early cinema-going.

In the same 2013 interview, Pope Francis named Federico Fellini’s 1954 Oscar-winning work La Strada, starring Giulietta Masina as fragile protagonist Gelsomina who is abused by brutish circus strongman Zampanò, played by Anthony Quinn, as the film he loved the most.

“I identify with that film, in which there is an implicit reference to Saint Francis,” said the pontiff referring to its themes of love...

Now that he has a reprieve from filming a TV show in the bowels of Lumon Industries, Ben Stiller has been making a number of guest appearances on various internet talk shows, such as Chicken Shop Date, the YouTube series that involves deep fried chicken but doesn’t end with celebrity guests passing out and/or getting explosive diarrhea.

Stiller also popped by the Konboni Video Club, where actors and filmmakers peruse the aisles of a Parisian video store and discuss some of their favorite movies and TV shows. Stiller chatted about acclaimed works of cinema like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and also some of his own movies like There’s Something About Mary. Of course, only one of those begins with a scene in which a guy gets his balls stuck in a zipper.

Stiller also paused to shout-out The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the 1947 comedy in which Danny Kaye...

In a world increasingly fascinated by existential science fiction, Mickey 17 offers a refreshing yet unsettling look at identity, mortality, and the ethics of cloning. Directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Robert Pattinson, the film dives deep into what it means to be human when your existence is disposable. If you’ve just watched it and found yourself craving more cerebral, emotionally complex sci-fi, you’re not alone. This list of movies like Mickey 17 explores similarly mind-bending themes—from isolation and artificial intelligence to the haunting fragility of memory and consciousness—each film provides a unique reflection on life beyond the ordinary.

Moon (2009)

Moon is a quiet, haunting film that deals with isolation in a deeply personal way. Set on a lunar base, the story follows Sam Bell, an astronaut nearing the end of his three-year stint mining helium-3. Sam’s only companion is a robot named Gerty, and the...

If you’re sunk in a swamp of solitude, there are movies.

If you’re drowned in the deluge of chaos, there are movies.

If you’re drenched in a drizzle of nostalgia, there are movies.

If you’re struck by the lightning of love, there are movies.

If you’re threatened by a downpour of death, there are movies.

If you’re at home on a rainy day, there are movies.

The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to watch a movie. Some of the greatest films in cinematic history owe their greatness to the presence of rain. Rain in cinema is often said to be the symbol of nostalgia, solitude, chaos, love, rejection, death, decay, and so on. But are not some things just simply what they are and nothing more? In the end, rain is just rain, water returning to its origin. The...

In the 2010s, a coalition of farmers and eco-activists declared Notre-Dame-des-Landes, a commune in western France, a Zone to Defend (Z.A.D.) and occupied the region to block the construction of an airport. Over the next decade, they resisted multiple attempts by the state to evict them, attracting supporters in the tens of thousands, until Emmanuel Macron yielded to their demands in 2018. Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action aims to now answer the question of what happens to a movement after it triumphs, by documenting the self-sustaining community that sprang up after the occupation became permanent.

To this end, the film draws on the slow cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr, and, above all, Chantal Akerman with an assemblage of long takes—some shorter, some longer, all several minutes in length—that depict the work processes, leisure activities, and ongoing mobilization efforts of the Z.A.D.

Alfred Hitchcock, the late “Master of Suspense,” and Jiří Menzel, the late Czech director who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 1966’s Closely Watched Trains, will get some screen love during the 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival.

The “Homage-Restoration” section of the fest will feature, among others, Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason, and late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s Meetings With Anna, starring Aurore Clément and Jean-Pierre Cassel, in new 4K restorations.

Anna is about an emotionally unavailable filmmaker who is traveling through Western Europe to promote her new film, meeting with strangers, friends, former lovers, and family members. North by Northwest is known as a tale of mistaken identity, featuring a man pursued by agents of a mysterious organization.

The Beijing festival organizers also unveiled that this year’s “Homage” section will put a...

Entering what he described as “the Vatican of film,” composer Hans Zimmer decided to take a more solemn approach to his selections in the Criterion Closet. Pouring over the options, the Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve collaborator chose to recognize a fair amount of dark choices, starting with war film “The Battle of Algiers,” then moving on to Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog.”

“Oh, God, I went for all the heavy ones, didn’t I?” Zimmer said. “‘Night and Fog.’ The film that, to me, in its most unflinching way, describes the Third Reich, the Holocaust, and the concentration camps. So you have to have strong nerves to go and watch this one.”

Another bleak pick, Zimmer went on to grab Andrei Tarkovsky’s biographical drama “Andrei Rublev,” which uses the story of the 15th century artist to craft an intricate portrait of medieval Russia.

“Favorite film my whole life long.

Science fiction movies built the foundation of the feature film medium at the turn of the century, with Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon being one of the first movies that could be considered to be a blockbuster. The best science fiction films have always been the ones that were capable of merging the pure entertainment of seeing fantastical universes and space-faring adventures with themes that reveal something about the human condition.

As one of the most important and influential film critics of all time, Roger Ebert championed science fiction filmmaking that pushed the boundaries of what was previously thought to be possible in the medium, bringing new thrills and ideas to the big screen. According to him, the best science fiction movies tell stories that are both larger-than-life and relatable to a wide audience of viewers.

Cloud Atlas Is One of the Best Literary Adaptations Ever

The Wachowski...

In 2014, It Follows gained notoriety among horror fans and critics for its suspense and impressive visuals. Over a decade later, It Follows has retained the praise and admiration of an audience that can be divisive and finicky about the offerings they’re presented with. Director David Robert Mitchell tapped into the vein of many standard slasher and horror tropes and, in many ways, went completely against them in a film that thrives on suspense, atmosphere, remarkable cinematography, and a commentary on sexual promiscuity that hadn't been seen since Shivers by David Cronenberg.

It Follows can almost be seen as the definitive anti-slasher film of the modern era. Sacrificing visceral effects and sensationalized death in favor of connecting the audience to the characters through dissonance and reinforcing the more subtle horror of what one doesn’t see. The slasher genre, which was rather basic and took delight in punishing teenagers for promiscuity and drug use,...

O, the cinema. Where images come to life. After centuries of visual entertainment being restrained to static scenes in paintings and photographs, moving pictures allowed us to see beyond the image. A story told in 24 images every second. Combining the visual beauty of paintings with the engaging storytelling of literature. Over the decades of cinema’s existence has come with it the task in making these images look as beautiful as they can be. To have them carry the same emotional weight that paintings provide with a simple snapshot. These five films used their superb cinematography and art direction to prove that the moving image has to the ability not only to depict breathtaking images worthy of framing on a wall, but take us into a world in a fashion that only cinema can deliver. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited...

While vampires are known to turn into bats in fiction, British actor Robert Pattinsonis probably the only person known to have done just that in real life, making his initial breakthrough as vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise before capping off his ascendance to stardom by becoming the latest actor to take on the eponymous hero in the Batman franchise. His latest role is as the down-on-his-luck protagonist in Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi dark comedy, Mickey 17 (2025); it's the director's first film since his brilliant, Oscar-winning satire Parasite (2019).

But devoted fans of Pattinson will know that Mickey 17 is not the first sci-fi film in which he portrays a destitute man forced by a dystopian government into embarking on a mission that he is unlikely to survive. Nor is it his first time collaborating with an acclaimed director from outside the US and the UK. Indeed, Pattinson already satisfied both...

Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel is heading up The Inquest Of Pilot Pirx – a new film adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem story.

Perhaps best known for his World War II drama Downfall, director Oliver Hirschbiegel is set to make a new sci-fi film based on a short story by Polish author Stanislaw Lem.

First announced last year, The Inquest Of Pilot Pirx is based on Lem’s short story The Inquest, originally published in 1968. Its lengthier title comes from an earlier 1979 Polish adaptation (pictured), also based on the same tale. It tells the story of a routine repair mission to one of Saturn’s rings that has a fascinating additional purpose.

The ship’s crew, led by one Commander Pirx, is a mixture of humans and androids. What follows is essentially a Turing Test in space – if the androids prove to be indistinguishable from humans, then the company that makes them will put them into production.

What Martin Scorsese is for New York; what Paul Thomas Anderson is for Los Angeles; Yasujiro Ozu is for Tokyo and Federico Fellini is for Rome, so Tom Tykwer is for Berlin.

Tykwer has only made three films set in the German capital — his 1998 breakout Run Lola Run, the mid-career highlight 3 (2010) and now The Light, the opening film of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival — but no other director so exemplifies the city, in all its messy glory and contradictions.

“I’ve spent nearly 40 years in Berlin, and everything I need is here,” says Tykwer from his apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. “I have the people I love, the cinemas I need, and the city’s strange aesthetic — these beautiful districts next to catastrophically ugly architecture. It’s what delights and infuriates and inspires me.”

The Light is also Tykwer’s third Berlinale opening-night film, following Heaven (2002) and The International (2009) and...

Despite the mixed reviews that Nosferatu has received from critics and audiences, there’s no denying the fact that it’s further cemented Rober Eggers’ reputation as a director who fully comprehends visual storytelling. It was a full decade ago when audiences were first made aware of Eggers’ ability to tap into visual presentation and atmospheric tone following the release of The Witch. Taking place in New England in the 1600s, a time period rife with religious piety where the concepts of god, the devil, and paranoia of those who made a pact with the latter of these two deities permeate every aspect of human life. The Witch tapped into folklore and a fear of the unknown that exists at the forefront of the human experience.

The Witch thrives on a combination of folklore and atmosphere not seen since Amando de Ossorio's Blind Dead films. Eggers’ narrative utilizes cinematic...

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, the distance from hope to despair is a short jump—a chasm crossed with the help of something so immediate as a television transmission. As his birthday celebration winds down on a gloomy summer evening in remote Sweden, retired intellectual Alexander (Erland Josephson) tiptoes half-drunk into his living room to find a group of friends and family bewitched by the soft blue glow of a TV set’s screen, out of which emanates an announcement of nuclear conflict.

The warning winds down, the TV is turned off, and the mood descends—first into stunned silence, then into outright hysteria, and then into a kind of sedated anxiousness from which the film never quite resurfaces. In certain contexts, this dramaturgical pivot might register a bit maudlin, but in 2018, when Twitter and cable news provide an endless gushing stream of outrages, the film’s evocation of...

If the four-year gap between Frank Ocean’s debut studio album Channel Orange and his follow-ups Endless and Blonde felt long, it’s now been over double the wait to see if another album will ever materialize from the wunderkind artist. We now have a major update on Ocean’s creative output, but rather than a new album in the works, he’s started shooting his directorial debut.

Variety reports David Jonsson has landed the lead role of Ocean’s directorial debut, which Ocean also wrote and is now shooting in Mexico City. While no plot details have arrived, a bit more digging reveals the current title is Philly and shooting actually began in mid-December. As seen below, Ocean was also spotted in Mexico City this past summer shooting footage. Earlier rumors suggested A24 and Taylor Russell were involved in the project, but that has yet to be confirmed.

It...

Every now and then, a film comes along that transcends its genre, reshaping the cinematic landscape and becoming something of a cultural phenomenon. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one such movie.

Released in 1975, this thriller didn’t just win audiences over; it reinvented the concept of the summer blockbuster. But its influence didn’t stop there. Jaws secured a rare spot in the hearts of filmmakers worldwide, including one of the most celebrated animators of all time, Hayao Miyazaki.

A scene from Jaws | Credits: Universal Pictures

From the pulse-pounding score that sticks to your bones to the ever-tightening noose of suspense, Jaws was a cultural earthquake, setting the stage for the blockbuster era that would follow. And then there’s that shark. It didn’t just swim into our screens—it sunk its teeth into the very heart of Hollywood, leaving a legacy that continues to send ripples through the industry.

At next month’s European Film Market in Berlin, the first footage will be shown to buyers from medieval fantasy epic “The Stolen Child.” Variety spoke to the writer-director Sebastian McKinnon about the film, whose international rights are being represented by Picture Tree Intl. The film’s trailer debuts below.

The synopsis for “The Stolen Child” is as follows: “In an age where Humans and Faeries coexist, tragedy strikes the Human Realm when its King and Queen meet an untimely death. Their young son, now the sole heir, faces the daunting task of ruling a kingdom teetering on the edge of collapse. Overwhelmed by grief and fear, the child’s plight moves the Faerie Queen, who compassionately spirits him away to the Faerie State, to preserve his innocence. Yet, this well-meaning act unwittingly deepens the crisis in the Human Realm.

“As the balance between the two worlds crumbles, a unique...

Brothers and collaborators John David and Malcolm Washington didn’t come to play in the Criterion Closet. As writer/director and star of “The Piano Lesson” Malcolm put it at the start of their visit, “We’re here to do some shopping.” And shop they did, filling their tote bags with some of cinema’s greatest delights, starting with the hefty 10-film series from Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieślowski, “Dekalog,” Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” and the Hughes Brothers’ “Menace II Society.”

“Actually, I learned a lot from Allen Hughes,” John David said of the “Menace II Society” co-director. “The influence and the importance of sound and music and how it can really change the mood or the scene in a way that I never stopped to think about it before.”

He also praised the work of John Cassavetes, particularly “Faces” and “Opening Night,” calling the naturalism on display “very inspiring.” Calling...

It may have taken 12 years for Walter Salles to direct another feature after his 2012 adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” but with his awards-buzzy political bio-drama “I’m Still Here,” the Brazillian filmmaker proves that cinema will always remain in his veins. Extolling the power of the form, Salles took to the Criterion Closet recently to share his appreciation for a number of films that have shaped him as an artist and continue to inspire. After starting with Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev,” Salles went on to select Jim Jarmusch’s absurdist comedy “Stranger than Paradise.”

“I think it was so refreshing to…starting to do films and see that narratives could be actually told in a different manner than the Greeks had teached us at the beginning, you know, the structure with five acts and character arcs and everything else,” said Salles, “and what Jim Jarmusch offers us...

If anyone can dethrone Tom Cruise from the top of the streaming charts, it's going to be Laurence Fishburne. His 2024 sci-fi film, Slingshot, knocked Top Gun: Maverick from the top spot on the Paramount+ streaming chart.

The film stars Casey Affleck as ambitious John, joining Fishburne as Captain Franks, Tomer Capone as Nash, and Emily Beecham as John's girlfriend, Zoe. Directed by Mikael Håfström (1408), Slingshot is about a team of astronauts heading on a multi-year mission to one of Saturn's moons, Titan, to gather different natural materials to help Earth.

They use a technique called the slingshot, where the ship takes advantage of the gravitational field of a planet to travel, which also saves fuel. The crew must go through 90-day hibernation cycles for the long journey. When John wakes up from one of many hibernation cycles, he begins to suffer from paranoia and loses touch with reality.

You'd be...

Everyone's a critic, art's subjective, and everyone has their own personal favorites, so saying "the best of all time" is relative at best or even pointless. When Rotten Tomatoes applies that label to a film, though, it has a bit more weight, considering it's an aggregate site that usually represents a wide range of critics' opinions. In their list of the 150 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, the absolute essentials, Rotten Tomatoes has placed 2001: A Space Odyssey at the very top. And it just so happens to be streaming for free as of New Year's Day; watch it on Tubi here.

Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece marks a kind of evolution in the science-fiction genre, which is ironic considering the film is pretty much all about evolution. There's before 2001, and there's after 2001. That's because of the level of intellectual complexity, sophistication, production design, ambition, and artistry, which was galaxies away...

Christopher Nolan's acclaimed sci-fi epic Interstellar will land on Netflix very soon, and if you haven't seen it yet, now's your chance to watch one of the best science fiction films ever made.

Per the report by What's on Netflix, on Jan. 1, Netflix subscribers will be able to get their Nolan fix by streaming the sci-fi epic starring Matthew McConaughey. Eating holiday leftovers and seeing a profound sci-fi film like Interstellar never sounded better.

Interstellar follows Joseph Cooper (McConaughey), a retired NASA test pilot who lives with his children on a farm, set in a future where humanity faces extinction. Cooper is recruited by NASA to lead a mission to find a habitable planet in another galaxy. Against his daughter's wishes, Cooper gets on board, and departs on what's surely a suicide mission.

What Cooper finds in outer space is unexpected; the mission partly fails, and Cooper sees his child,...

January 2025 could mark a bleak month for very specific reasons, but in that month one can watch a nicely curated collection of David Bowie’s best performances. Nearly a decade since he passed, the iconic actor (who had some other trades) is celebrated with The Man Who Fell to Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Linguini Incident, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Basquiat. (Note: watch The Missing Pieces under Fire Walk with Me‘s Criterion edition for about three times as much Phillip Jeffries.) It’s a retrospective-heavy month: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Crowe, Ethan Hawke, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Paolo Sorrentino, and Sean Baker are given spotlights; the first and last bring with them To Die For and Take Out‘s Criterion Editions, joining Still Walking, Hunger, and A Face in the Crowd.

“Surveillance Cinema” brings Thx 1138, Body Double, Minority Report, and others, while “Love in Disguise” offers films by Lubitsch,...

Benjamin Booker is back with another new song, “Same Kind of Lonely,” from his forthcoming first album in seven years, Lower, out early next year.

“Same Kind of Lonely” is balanced deftly between the serene and the unsettling, with fuzz-bomb guitars rushing beneath the tender hush of Booker’s voice. Then the song’s bridge is abruptly interrupted by a burst of gunfire and screaming, which Booker recently told Rolling Stone, he sampled from video of a school shooting.

Booker said he included the audio because those random moments of horror “happen in our lives,...

Andrei Tarkovsky classics Solaris, Stalker, The Mirror and more besides are now available in full (and legally) on YouTube.

Celebrating its centenary in January 2024, Russian production company Mosfilm has spent the past few months quietly uploading many of its classic films to YouTube.

Among the additions are several works by Andrei Tarkovsky, including perhaps his most famous films, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979). Solaris, adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, is a simmering masterpiece – the story of psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatis Banionis), who’s sent to a distant space station to investigate some strange behaviour among its crew. Once there, he’s told that the planet the station orbits, the titular Solaris, may be sentient – and capable of somehow turning memories into physical reality…

Stalker’s a sci-fi piece of a very different sort. It’s loosely adapted from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic, and sees a group of scavenger,...

Making any video game is a minor miracle, and the developer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (out now), Gsc Game World, has defied the odds by finishing the game amid Russia’s invasion of its home country, Ukraine. Gsc’s experiences of living through and fighting against an invasion have influenced the brutality of this game, and a player’s will to survive in the harsh and oppressive world of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will be tested.

Set in an alternate history based on the real-life 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown,...

From the early stages of film history, two broadly contrasting factions of filmmakers can be identified based on their approach to film aesthetics. The first group, which placed their faith in montage, can be classified as formalists, while the second group, which emphasized a more realistic representation of the world, can be classified as realists. Early film theorists sought to establish cinema as a legitimate art form by emphasizing its capacity to deviate from the real world. They argued that cinema had the right to diverge from reality in order to distinguish itself as an art form that evokes a subjective sense of the real.

Early filmmakers like Georges Méliès can be seen as one of the proponents of this notion, as their films delve into fantasy worlds that have little in common with the real world, often structured in an episodic manner, with separate images stitched together through editing.

There's a certain kind of profound confusion Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl inherits from the series' namesake, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film, Stalker. Both are heavily influenced by the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers. Despite and in light of their many differences and similarities, all three share one important facet: the Zone, a setting fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind. Developer Gsc Game World admirably and ambitiously brings this setting to life in Stalker 2, an open-world, survival-horror immersive sim.

Experiencing everything Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has to offer can take 100 hours. With this in mind, Screen Rant is publishing this article as an unscored Review In Progress. The review will be updated - and a score added - when our reviewer has spent more time with the game.

You play as Skif, who is drawn to the Zone because it practically requested his presence by mysteriously destroying his house with an Artifact,...

“What a thrill to be here in the Criterion … cupboard,” said Jude Law as he cheekily hinted at his British sensibilities within what is actually — quite famously — known as the Criterion Closet. Though America has many faults, this is not one of them and we will forgive Law this grievous correction.

Taking a stop in the closet amidst promoting his period cop thriller “The Order” and the upcoming Disney+ series “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew,” Law took home six films that reflect his broad appreciation for cinema and all it can offer. After pulling off Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” and discussing its “stillness” alongside another one of the filmmaker’s epic works, “Andrei Rubelev,” the actor selected a classic French film with connections to one of his earliest roles.

“So this holds a very special place in my heart. ‘Purple Noon’ or ‘Plein Soleil,’ which was the first realization of ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley...

“Wasteland Chronicles,” directed by Viera Čákanyová, Barbora Sliepková and Lucia Kašová, has received the New Visions Award at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival for the most promising European project.

It comes with post-production services valued at €15,000 (courtesy of Upp) and €5,000 (Soundsquare). You can find the full list of winners here.

“The first idea for the film came from Lucia. The ex-Minister of Environment in Slovakia made a promise to get rid of three toxic landfills. We wanted to follow up on that. She suggested we direct it together. We would join our voices to talk about these issues, focusing on one of these sites,” Sliepková told Variety after picking up the award.

“Each of us has a different approach and we decided it can actually be a strength. We will do it in three separate chapters; they will all have different visual and narrative styles.”

The upcoming hybrid documentary, produced...

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The worst thing that ever happened to M. Night Shyamalan's was the August 5, 2002 cover of Newsweek magazine. The filmmaker was red hot coming off the surprise box office success of "The Sixth Sense" and a solid double of a hit in "Unbreakable," and about to pack theaters once again with his blockbuster sci-fi/horror opus "Signs." He was the toast of Hollywood, seemingly on the cusp of becoming a smash-crafting industry unto himself. It was a lot for one guy to deal with before the then prominent publication got completely carried away and declared the then 32-year-old director "The Next Steven Spielberg." Afterwards? It dogged him like a curse.

Shyamalan didn't handle this particularly well. Leaving aside how you feel about M. Night's movies, he followed up the mild disappointment of "The Village" with the strangely hostile "Lady in the Water,...

Across “Lemon Tree,” “The Syrian Bride” and “Shelter,” Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis has built a sturdy body of work, telling defiant stories of Middle Eastern women from different walks of life. With “Reading Lolita in Tehran” — a moving adaptation of Iranian-American author and professor Azar Nafisi’s memoir — he adds an understated, yet generally absorbing and similarly minded entry to his oeuvre, warmly transposing Nafisi’s experience in the post-revolution Iran onto the screen with sensitivity.

Unfolding in episodic segments and significant jumps in time that sometimes feel too abrupt, the screenplay by Marjorie David follows Nafisi (an expressive Golshifteh Farahani) across a 24-year period, after the young academic holding a fresh American degree settles in Tehran with her husband Bijan (Arash Marandi) in 1979, on the heels of the country’s Islamic Revolution. A title card at the start contextualizes the couple’s return to their homeland. Historically, it was...

“I thought I would have a strategy,” said Anna Kendrick as she peered around thousands of classic cinematic treasures. “And now that I’m here, I don’t. But that’s okay. Sometimes great things happen when you don’t have a great plan.”

So begins Kendrick’s venture into the beloved Criterion Closet. The Academy-Award nominated actress and now director took a stop by Criterion’s offices in New York while promoting her recently released Netflix film, “Woman of the Hour,” and found herself throwing plans out the window, instead letting her experience be driven by chance. Having a musical background herself, Kendrick started with a classic in the genre, Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical “All That Jazz.”

“You always want to say that you saw all these movies, like, at least a decade ago, right? But I just saw this a few years ago,” said Kendrick. “‘All That Jazz.

Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Ingmar Bergman are three of the most celebrated filmmakers of the 20th Century, but far too often, cinephiles forget to include a fourth name on that list: Andrei Tarkovsky. This Russian filmmaker's one-of-a-kind vision frequently melds gorgeous, sparse, and static images with a philosophical undercurrent that has kept critics and scholars engaged in commentary for decades. And while films like Andrei Rublev and Stalker are typically heralded as his best, that's doing a disservice to perhaps the greatest science-fiction epic ever made, Solaris.

No other film in history is as singular a work of art as Solaris. It manages to pack in all of Andrei Trakvosky's trademarked existential musings with some jaw-dropping visuals and a meditative pace that makes watching it feel like a religious experience. As the film's central character hurtles towards the great unknown, so too does the audience, and by the time Solaris is over,...