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This August, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment with the highly anticipated Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, an all-new action-comedy film starring John Cena and Awkwafina titled Jackpot!, and an animated Batman series titled Batman: Caped Crusader. 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 August 2024 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Fargo (August 1)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Fargo is a dark comedy crime drama film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The 1996 film follows the story of Jerry, a sales manager who is under a huge debt. To repay his loan he hatches a plan to hire two henchmen to kidnap his wife and...

After giving everyone a case of the chills because of his performance as Charlie Cullen in The Good Nurse, Eddie Redmayne is ready to kill again. Redmayne will star in The Day of the Jackal series, a new project destined for Peacock and Sky. The concept is a reimagining of the 1973 film adaptation from Universal Pictures. In The Day of the Jackal, Redmayne plays the Jackal, a professional assassin hired by a French paramilitary dissident to kill French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

Inspired by Frederick Forsyth’s novel of the same name (and Universal’s film adaptation), the new version brings the character and story to a contemporary setting, letting our corrupt geo-political landscape loose in a world of deception, lies, cover-ups, and death. In addition to telling an intriguing tale of careful murder, The Day of the Jackal series will meditate on the concept of an anti-hero.

Ronan Bennett...

We can depend on H.G. Clouzot to find people at their most desperate, at their worst. His updated adaptation of Manon Lescaut dissects the trauma of amour fou And the hypocrisy, opportunism and political horror of postwar France. Resistance fighter Michel Auclair and provincial tart Cécile Aubrey are lovers caught in a web of vice and treachery, much of it of their own making. Their desperate escape takes them to an inhuman landscape devoid of mercy. Clouzot may pity these characters, but he sure doesn’t give them a break.

Manon

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 105 min. / Street Date February 25, 2020 / Available from Arrow Academy 39.95

Starring: Serge Reggiani, Michel Auclair, Cécile Aubry, Andrex, Raymond Souplex, André Valmy, Henri Vilbert, Héléna Manson, Dora Doll, Robert Dalban.

Cinematography: Armand Thirard

Film Editor: Monique Kirsanoff

Production designer: Max Douy

Original Music: Paul Misraki

Written by Jean Ferry, Henri-Georges Clouzot from the...

” There is nothing dirty when we love each other. “

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Manon (1949) will be available on Blu-ray From Arrow Academy

This masterful adaptation of Prévost s 1731 novel Manon Lescaut marks quite a departure for Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French director lauded for his acclaimed thrillers The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques.

A classical tragic romance transposed to a World War II setting, Clouzot s film follows the travails of Manon (Cécile Aubry), a village girl accused of collaborating with the Nazis who is rescued from imminent execution by a former French Resistance fighter (Michel Auclair). The couple move to Paris, but their relationship turns stormy as they struggle to survive, resorting to profiteering, prostitution and even murder. Eventually escaping to Palestine, the pair attempt a treacherous desert crossing in search of the happiness which seems to forever elude them…

Clouzot s astute portrayal of doomed young lovers caught in...

Fred Zinnemann’s counter-assassination thriller remains topflight filmmaking, torn from reality and shot through with an unsentimental dose of political realism. Edward Fox’s implacable killer outwits the combined resources of an entire nation as he stalks his prey, and when bad luck forces him to improvise, he racks up more victims on his kill list. Step aside Bond, Bourne and Marvel — the original Jackal is the man to beat.

The Day of the Jackal

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95

Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion, Michel Subor, Howard Vernon.

Cinematography: Jean Tournier

Film Editor: Ralph Kemplen

Second Unit Director: Andrew Marton

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written...

Welcome to a pair of vintage mysteries with George Simenon’s popular Inspector Jules Maigret, a gumshoe who gets the tough cases. Top kick French actor Jean Gabin is the cop who keeps cool, until it’s time to rattle a recalcitrant suspect. In two separate cases, he tracks a serial killer in the heart of Paris, and travels to his hometown to unearth a murder conspiracy.

Maigret Sets a Trap

and

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case

Blu-ray (separate releases)

Kino Classics

1958, 1959 / B&W /1:37 flat; 1:66 widescreen / 118, 101 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber: Trap, St. Fiacre / 29.95 ea.

Starring: Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Jean Desailly, Olivier Hussenot, Lucienne Bogaert, Paulette Dubost, Lino Ventura, Dominique Page / Jean Gabin, Michel Auclair, Valentine Tessier, Michel Vitold, Camille Guérini, Gabrielle Fontan, Micheline Luccioni, Jacques Marin, Paul Frankeur, Robert Hirsch.

Cinematography: Louis Page

Film Editor: Henri Taverna

Original Music: Paul Misraki...

One of the best international thrillers ever has almost become an obscurity, for reasons unknown – this Blu-ray comes from Australia. Edward Fox’s wily assassin for hire goes up against the combined police and security establishments of three nations as he sets up the killing of a head of state – France’s president Charles de Gaulle. The terrific cast features Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig and Cyril Cusack; director Fred Zinnemann’s excellent direction reaches a high pitch of tension – even though the outcome is known from the start.

The Day of the Jackal

Region B+A Blu-ray

Shock Entertainment / Universal

1973 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date ? / Available from Amazon UK / Pounds 19.99

Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion,...

Chicago – One of the legendary films in cinema history is Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bete,” also known to generations as “Beauty and the Beast.” The restored re-release is touring the country, and in Chicago it’s currently at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com will lead a discussion of the film there on Monday, April 11, 2016.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

The story is adapted from a traditional fairy tale, but in Cocteau’s hand is more adult-like, even more so than the sophisticated Disney animated version. The “Beauty” is about sexual blossoming, and the “Beast” is willing to accommodate, but first some trials must be had. What makes the film so unusual is the palette on which this multi-textured story takes place, an expressly creative landscape of dreams, with a production design (by Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré) that uses every inch of the ‘Academy Aspect...

Danièle Delorme and Jean Gabin in 'Deadlier Than the Male.' Danièle Delorme movies (See previous post: “Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 Actress Became Rare Woman Director's Muse.”) “Every actor would like to make a movie with Charles Chaplin or René Clair,” Danièle Delorme explains in the filmed interview (ca. 1960) embedded further below, adding that oftentimes it wasn't up to them to decide with whom they would get to work. Yet, although frequently beyond her control, Delorme managed to collaborate with a number of major (mostly French) filmmakers throughout her six-decade movie career. Aside from her Jacqueline Audry films discussed in the previous Danièle Delorme article, below are a few of her most notable efforts – usually playing naive-looking young women of modest means and deceptively inconspicuous sexuality, whose inner character may or may not match their external appearance. Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (“Open for Inventory Causes,” 1946), an unreleased, no-budget comedy notable...

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

‘La Cage aux Folles’ director Edouard Molinaro, who collaborated with Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, dead at 85 Edouard Molinaro, best known internationally for the late ’70s box office comedy hit La Cage aux Folles, which earned him a Best Director Academy Award nomination, died of lung failure on December 7, 2013, at a Paris hospital. Molinaro was 85. Born on May 31, 1928, in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, to a middle-class family, Molinaro began his six-decade-long film and television career in the mid-’40s, directing narrative and industrial shorts such as Evasion (1946), the Death parable Un monsieur très chic ("A Very Elegant Gentleman," 1948), and Le verbe en chair / The Word in the Flesh (1950), in which a poet realizes that greed is everywhere — including his own heart. At the time, Molinaro also worked as an assistant director, collaborating with, among others, Robert Vernay (the 1954 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Jean Marais) and...

"Funny Face" shouldn't have worked. It was a musical with a borrowed score, based on a stage play its author had failed to sell, with a leading man past his prime and a leading lady, 30 years younger, who had a thin singing voice. Indeed, the film, released 55 years ago today (on February 13, 1957), was not a hit. Yet today, it's regarded as a visually sumptuous classic, with Fred Astaire dancing with impossible grace at 58 and Audrey Hepburn in one of her most stylish, iconic performances. Still, as beloved as "Funny Face" is, many viewers may not know of the real-life love story that inspired the movie, or about the film's ties to such far-flung projects as the "Eloise" novels and the counterculture drama "Five Easy Pieces." Here, then, are 25 little-known facts about "Funny Face." 1. The movie's title and four of its songs came from George Gershwin's 1927 Broadway musical "Funny Face.

Rank the week of July 19th’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time: New Releases Limitless

(DVD & Blu-ray | PG13 | 201)

Flickchart Ranking: #1890

Times Ranked: 3217

Win Percentage: 51%

Top-20 Rankings: 12

Directed By: Neil Burger

Starring: Bradley Cooper • Robert De Niro • Abbie Cornish • Anna Friel • Andrew Howard

Genres: Psychological Sci-Fi • Psychological Thriller • Science Fiction • Thriller

Rank This Movie

Take Me Home Tonight

(DVD & Blu-ray | R | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #5722

Times Ranked: 1234

Win Percentage: 49%

Top-20 Rankings: 2

Directed By: Michael Dowse

Starring: Topher Grace • Anna Faris • Dan Fogler • Teresa Palmer • Chris Pratt

Genres: Comedy • Comedy Drama • Coming-of-Age • Drama • Period Film • Romance • Romantic Comedy • Romantic Drama

Rank This Movie

The Reef

(DVD & Blu-ray | Nr | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #10667

Times Ranked: 152

Win Percentage: 47%

Top-20 Rankings: 2

Directed By: Andrew Traucki

Starring: Adrienne Pickering • Gyton Grantley • Zoe Naylor • Damian Walshe-Howling • Kieran Darcy-Smith

Genres: Horror • Natural Horror • Thriller

Rank This Movie

Tekken

(DVD & Blu-ray | Nr | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #9314

Times Ranked: 332

Win...