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The Oscar race is a marathon, not a sprint. There are dozens of pit stops along the way and trophies to be given out before the 2025 Oscars on March 2. Keep track of precursor wins here with our scorecard. This includes honors from major film festivals, critics groups, guilds, and televised shows of the 2024-25 Oscar season. Wins are listed in order of announcement and in accordance with candidates' FYC campaigns.

Updated: Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025, with Screen Actors Guild Awards winners.

Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards threw in some last-second curveballs in the Oscar race in the final three categories of the night.

Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) won Best Actor, stopping Adrien Brody's win streak for The Brutalist. Brody had dethroned Chalamet from the top spot of the SAG odds on Friday. Chalamet will now try to win the Oscar with only SAG under his belt. Since BAFTA became an Oscar precursor 24 years ago,...

Agat Films – Ex Nihilio’s Muriel Meynard was named producer of the year at France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize ceremony held on February 17 in Paris.

The prize is awarded to the French film producer who has made the greatest impact over the past year.

Meynard has been with the Agat Films – Ex Nihilio producing collective since 2006. Her recent credits include Louise Courvoisier’sHoly Cow,Cesar-nominated documentaryMadame Hoffmanand Roberto Minervini’s The Other Side.

Upcoming films include Michel Leclerc’sNot All Men But…and Stéphane Demoustier’sThe Great Arch.

Agat Films – Ex Nihilo...

Agat Films – Ex Nihilio’s Muriel Meynard was named producer of the year at the 18th annual edition of France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize ceremony held on February 17 in Paris.

The prize is awarded to the French film producer who has made the greatest impact over the past year.

Meynard has been with the Agat Films – Ex Nihilio producing collective since 2006. Her r;ecent credits include Louise Courvoisier’sHoly Cow,2025 Cesar-nominated documentaryMadame Hoffman,and Roberto Minervini’sThe Other Side.

Upcoming films include Michel Leclerc’sNot All Men But…and Stéphane Demoustier’sThe Great Arch.

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Companion is a sci-fi thriller film written and directed by Drew Hancock. The 2025 film follows a young couple going on a weekend getaway with friends at a remote cabin. Their fun getaway soon turns bloody when it is revealed that one of them is a companion robot. Companion stars Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillen, and Rupert Friend. So, if you loved the thrilling story, sci-fi elements, and compelling characters in Companion, here are some similar movies you should check out next.

M3GAN (Starz & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Universal Pictures

M3GAN is a sci-fi horror thriller film directed by Gerard Johnstone from a screenplay by Akela Cooper. The 2022 film follows Gemma, a brilliant roboticist who takes in her niece, Cady, after she lost her parents in an accident. Gemma designed a lifelike doll known as M3GAN,...

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Hulu is one of the best places to find the best movies and TV shows you can watch on any streaming service. Every month, it adds hundreds of new titles to its content library, but with that, there are also some titles that have got to go. So, today, we are here to tell you about the best film you should watch before it leaves Hulu in February 2025.

The Beta Test (February 3) Credit – IFC Films

The Beta Test is a dark comedy thriller film co-written and co-directed by Jim Cummings and Pj McCabe. The 2021 film follows an engaged Hollywood agent, who has an intimate night with an anonymous woman but he soon becomes paranoid that his fiancée will find out about his infidelity. The Beta Test stars Jim Cummings, Pj McCabe, Virginia Newcomb, and Jessie Barr.

Spencer (February...

The 30th annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival, hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and Unifrance, is celebrating the work of acclaimed actor Vincent Lindon.

While the 2025 festival is not entirely honoring Lindon himself, the actor appears in a whopping trio of featured films and also will be onsite for Q&As and introductions. Lindon stars in Quentin Dupieux’s meta-comedy “The Second Act,” which opened the 77th Cannes Film Festival, as well as Gilles Bourdos’ dramatic thriller “Cross Away” and Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin’s “The Quiet Son” (Lindon won Best Actor at the 81st Venice Film Festival for that drama).

And Lindon isn’t the only beloved French star to join this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: Actors Isabelle Huppert and Édgar Ramírez, plus auteurs Olivier Assayas and Bertrand Bonello are among those who will have features screening. Bonello, while known as a director, lent his composing skills to “Planet B.

Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz reunite at a special reception party for his movie Mickey 17 held on Sunday (January 26) in Paris.

The 38-year-old actor and the 36-year-old actress, of course, co-starred in the DC movie The Batman, and met up at the event, which he served as host.

Also in attendance were actors Elizabeth Debicki, Danny Ramirez, Lee Jung Jae, Daphne Patakia, Jeremy O’Harris, Marisa Berenson, Louis Garrel, Paul Hameline and Sang Heon Lee, models Adriana Lima and Gabbriette, singers Eric Nam, Paco Amoroso and Camelia Jordana, filmmakers Bertrand Bonello, Kim Chapiron, Romain Gavras and Zoe Wittock and producer Mohammed Al Turki.

Just a couple of days prior, Robert was in attendance at the Dior Homme fashion show during Paris Fashion Week.

The week before, Robert joined his Mickey 17 director Bong Joon Ho at a press conference for the movie in Seoul, South Korea.

The upcoming movie was...

Jacques Audiard’s musical film Emilia Pérez swept the 30th edition of France’s Lumière Awards on Monday evening, winning Best Film, Director and Screenplay as well Actress for Karla Sofia Gascón and Music for Camille and Clément Ducol.

The wins add further steam to the Cannes Jury Prize winner’s awards season run following its quadruple Golden Globes triumph and European Film Awards victory, where it also clinched Best Film, Director, Screenplay and Actress for Gascón.

The movie is currently on six of the 10 announced category shortlists for the 97th the Academy Awards and nominated in 11 categories for the 2025 Baftas film awards.

Further awards seasons hopefuls also featured in the Lumière prizes, with Mati Diop’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dahomey – which made it into Best International Feature Film (for Senegal) and Documentary Academy Award shortlists – won Best Documentary.

Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’s Flow – which is also on...

Exclusive: Egyptian and American filmmaker Sam Abbas has unveiled upcoming picture Europe’s New Faces capturing the migrant experience, from crossing the Mediterranean Sea out of Libya to settling in Paris-based squats.

The observational work is the fruit of three years of filming migrant communities living illegally in abandoned buildings across Paris, as well as on the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (Msf) rescue ship Geo Barents, which operated across the Mediterranean from June 2021 until late 2024, saving 12,675 people in 190 operations.

“Making this film I spent close to three years with migrants in different capacities and got a glimpse into a world so different from my own that it’s hard to fully comprehend. A world with constant and never-ending challenges. A world in which socially, the isolation is profound,” said Abbas.

“Surrounded by cultural and language divides, they face stereotypes and biases that keep them from feeling welcome, leaving many...

While we’ve still not learned what Bertrand Bonello’s “completely different” follow-up to The Beast might be, it’s safe to say a verdant 2024 put his stock at a record high. In the meantime he’s made the rare venture into scoring another director’s film: his soundtrack for Aude Léa Rapin’s Planet B has popped up on Spotify, compressing Bonello’s dual interests in ambient soundscapes and harsh textures into a fleet 22 minutes.

Rapin’s feature, which recently premiered at the Sitges Film Festival, stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and concerns an activist who, after being shot with a flash-bang gun, awakens on the unknown world “Planet B.” Bonello’s soundtrack does well to capture the fear and confusion that scenario suggests, with some hint of physical menace à la certain stretches of The Beast‘s score. It’s a nice detour as we await the best film of,...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

As always, what is considered best is first determined by what can be seen, and this year there were many films that I missed. When it came to popular releases, for example, some took too long to be released in the UK; some were showing while I was reviewing other films; and others just simply passed me by. And the same problems were even more pronounced when it came to watching short/experimental films. Nevertheless, there was much that I enjoyed this year, and several films that did not make the final cut might well do so if I were to make the list again at a later date. I hope that my current selection will point you towards something informative and/or entertaining, and that it will add,...

A great love can transcend space and time. At least, that’s what Love Me, written and directed by Sam Zuchero and Andy Zuchero, promises in its first trailer. The film stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as two apparent vloggers, who have left behind one hell of a digital...

As we continue to explore the best in 2024, today we’re taking a look at the articles that you, our dear readers, enjoyed the most throughout the past twelve months. Spanning reviews, interviews, features, podcasts, news, and trailers, check out the highlights below and return for more year-end coverage.

Most-Read Reviews

1. The Goldfinger

2. From Darkness to Light

3. The Devil’s Bath

4. Only the River Flows

5. Longlegs

6. The Nature of Love

7. The 2024 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films, Reviewed

8. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2

9. Trap

10. Dune: Part Two

Most-Read Interviews

1. Richard Linklater on Sex, Murder, Hit Man, and the Infantilization of Culture

2. Will Menaker on the Year in Cinema: Oppenheimer, Scorsese, Friedkin & Beyond

3. Lee Daniels on The Deliverance, Shifting Culture, Douglas Sirk, and That Glenn Close Performance

4. “All Great DPs Become Alcoholics”: Rob Tregenza on Shooting Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

5. In a Violent Nature Director Chris Nash on Creating a New Kind of Slasher,...

Here is the complete list of winners and nominees from the Florida Film Critics Circle: Best Picture: The Beast [nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Hundreds of Beavers] Best Director: Bertrand Bonello (The Beast) [nominees:  Sean Baker (Anora), Luca Guadagnino (Challengers), Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys)] Best Actor: Kieran Culkin

The post The Beast Named Best Picture by Florida Film Critics Circle appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

Each year offers some important movie-going lessons, and 2024 was no exception. Buy tickets early when taking kids to see Wicked. Never count out Mike Leigh, George Miller, or Clint Eastwood. Bow to Francis Ford Coppola, whether you enjoy Megalopolis or not. Start reappreciating Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman. Stop watching Alien: Romulus before the ending.

And, of course, choose your Uber driver carefully; on my way to my first screening at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, mine raced through a stop sign, got pulled over, and made me miss the one press screening of The Brutalist. (I’m still stewing over that.)

Now, to my list of 2024 favorites; read on to see if I eventually caught up with Brady Corbet’s film.

Honorable mentions: A Different Man,...

Every year, movie fans around the world engage in a familiar ritual -- the ranking of our favorite films of the year. And every year, we tend to realize the same thing: Hey, this was a pretty dang good year for cinema, huh?2024 offered all manner of cinematic pleasures, from glossy studio epics to small arthouse projects. This particular list runs the gamut, striving to capture just how varied the great movies were this year. You'll find giant blockbusters alongside tiny indie releases, realistic dramas alongside gory horror movies, some of the biggest hits of the year alongside box office bombs. This varied collection of titles all have one thing in common: They brought us joy and catharsis and everything in-between. They reminded us why we love movies in the first place.If you're wondering how this list came to be, and why so many titles didn't make the cut,...

Physical media culture is alive and thriving thanks to the home video tastemakers hailing everywhere from The Criterion Collection to Kino Lorber and the Warner Archive Collection. Each month, IndieWire highlights the best recent and upcoming Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K releases for cinephiles to own now — and to bring ballast and permanence to your moviegoing at a time when streaming windows on classic movies close just as soon as they open.

The holidays are here, which means it’s high time to treat the cinephiles in your life (or yourself) to some new (and classic) home releases. Though the Barnes & Noble Criterion Flash Sale is now out of the way, Criterion itself is currently offering 30% off discs, and we’ve highlighted a few of the label’s new 4Ks, including the Coens’ 2008 Best Picture winner “No Country for Old Men” and Wim Wenders’ 1984 “Paris, Texas,” which IndieWire named the fourth best film of the 1980s.

Many of our favorite films of 2024 mined our collective historical and cinematic past in varied, fascinating ways. No less than two films on our list renegotiated the lingering after effects of the Holocaust, while two others daringly confronted our preconceptions of popular on-screen sexual pairings. Still others found characters forced to return to a hometown they’d long left behind or to grapple with disappearances from decades earlier.

Yet, for all their looking back, these films don’t engage in thoughtless nostalgia for an earlier time. Rather, they’re in conversation with the past in ways that not only illuminate it, but arm audiences with new ideas, understandings, and concepts that help them navigate the horrors of the world when the past inevitably threatens to repeat itself. Even a film set in the past and that is, among many other things, about the allure and pitfalls of nostalgia, Jane Schoenbrun...

Jacques Audiard’s musical film Emilia Pérez is the frontrunner at the nomination stage for the 30th edition of France’s Lumière awards.

The prizes, which are regarded as the French equivalent of the Golden Globes, will be voted on by members of the international press hailing from 38 countries this year.

They cover 13 categories spanning film, direction, screenplay, actress, actor, female revelation, male revelation, first film, animation, documentary, international co-production, cinematography and music.

Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Pérez has clinched six nominations, followed by Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize this year, and Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, with five nominations each.

Other frontrunners with four nominations each, include François Ozon’s When Fall Is Coming and Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail.

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Forum des images in Paris on January 20, 2025.

The full...

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez has topped the nominations for France’s Lumière Awards.

The French-made, Spanish-language film earned six nominations for best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, music and actress for Karla Sofía Gascón in her starring role as the titular transitioning Mexican drug lord.

The Lumière nominations cap a strong week for Emilia Perez, which garnered 10 nominations for the 2025 Golden Globes,and was the big winner at the European Film Awards with five prizes.

Scroll down for full list of nominees

Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, which tracks the daily life of an undocumented Guinean asylum seeker in Paris,...

As Martin Scorsese once said, “Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there’s a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they’re put together. It’s been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that’s true.” The right piece of music––whether an original score or a carefully selected song––can do wonders for a sequence, and today we’re looking at the 25 films that best expressed that notion in 2024.

From seasoned composers to accomplished musicians, as well as a smattering of soundtracks, each perfectly transported us. Check out our rundown of the top 25, which includes streams to each soundtrack in full where available.

25. Plastic (Ide Kensuke/Exne Kedy)

24. Disco Boy (Vitalic)

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23. Red Rooms (Dominique Plante)

22. Dune: Part Two (Hans Zimmer)

21. Nosferatu (Robin Carolan)

20. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (John Debney)

19. The Wild Robot (Kris Bowers...

The Seattle Film Critics Society has announced its nominations. See full list below. Winners will be announced Monday, December 16. Best Picture · Anora – Sean Baker · The Beast – Bertrand Bonello · The Brutalist – Brady Corbet · Challengers – Luca Guadagnino · Conclave – Edward Berger · Dune: Part Two – Denis Villeneuve · Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The post Complete Seattle Film Critics Society Nominations List appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.

“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist–moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As our year-end coverage continues, we must pay dues. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year.

All We Imagine as Light (Ranabir Das)

The most immediate feeling evoked by Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light is love in Mumbai, defined by the way light shines off lamps and shops, how rain glistens off surfaces of roads and vehicles that crowd the streets. This is perfectly captured by cinematographer Ranabir Das, who alternatively shows close, intimate shots of his characters with the damp sweat of the heat on the skin, to more distanced perspectives of them canoodling in buses or holding hands on the...

Back in September we reported that French filmmaker Alice Winocour had begun pre-production on her fifth feature film and a major casting announcement has just landed. Variety reports that Angelina Jolie has been cast (one of three central women characters in the film) in Coutures aka “Stitches.”

Following in the fashion walkways portraits of fellow French filmmakers Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) and Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent), this French and English language film is set in the world of high fashion and unfolds in Paris. Jolie stars in the movie as a filmmaker and is one of three women whose lives will collide during Fashion Week.…...

Catherine Breillat‘s psychosexual reckless return to form is here. Her acclaimed latest film, “Last Summer” (Sideshow/Janus), will premiere on the Criterion Channel on November 21 with a live-streaming event, as IndieWire announces exclusively. The “Last Summer” live-stream, happening that evening at 6 p.m. Pt/9 p.m. Et, is in line with Criterion’s new tradition of launching the Sideshow/Janus titles early — the streamer similarly launched Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” that way over the summer.

“Last Summer” also joins the Criterion Channel as a retrospective of provocative filmmaker Breillat’s oeuvre streams on the platform, including “Fat Girl” and “Anatomy of Hell” and “Sex Is Comedy.” Starring Léa Drucker in one of the year’s best performances, “Last Summer” earned raves earlier this year and at Cannes and other festivals in 2023. The streaming premiere is good cause to remember “Last Summer” for your year-end lists. Bonus features accompanying...

Rue the Christmas blues no more — the Criterion Channel has you covered with plenty of great films to stream this holiday season thanks to the platform’s December lineup.

As announced on Wednesday, Criterion Channel starting December 1 will host a greatest-hits collection of “Pope of Trash” John Waters’ most iconic movies. Divine-starring classics such as “Multiple Maniacs” (1970), “Female Trouble” (1974), “Hairspray” (1988), and “Polyester” (1981) fit the bill, while you shouldn’t miss a camped-up Kathleen Turner as a murderous suburban matriarch in “Serial Mom,” a role her agents told her would ruin her career. Well, the rest is history. For a bonus, John Waters also provides interview commentary on a selection of some of his own favorite movies, including Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 “Brink of Life,” Samuel Fuller’s 1964 “The Naked Kiss,” and Barbara Loden’s influential 1970 classic “Wanda.”

Elsewhere, Criterion Channel celebrates five decades of Alfred Hitchcock’s career with a murderer’s row of all-timers,...

After crafting the best film of 2023 with The Beast, Bertrand Bonello is prepping his next feature. While he was tight-lipped on details, he tells Variety, “It’s a little early to talk about it. It’s going to be very different. It’s going to be completely different. The writing is finished, and we’re going to start the casting process. I’m going to announce it once the casting is done. I hope to start shooting next September.” Speaking about how cinema is changing, he added, “This mutation is freaky and fascinating. If you don’t involve it in your creation, you’re out. It’s always an equilibrium. You must protect the past and welcome the future. If you just welcome the future, you’re lost in the movement. If you protect the past, you’re out now.”

The ever-prolific Takashi Miike has unveiled his next film, Sham,...

The French director Bertrand Bonello, whose science-fiction drama “The Beast” played in competition at Venice last year, is sitting in the sunshine in medieval Lucca, dressed in white and thinking of the future. He’s speaking to Variety about what he’s learned from the film, which screened this week at Lucca Comics and Games, how cinema is changing and artificial intelligence.

“The Beast” is set in Paris in 2044 when AI reigns supreme. In such a technologically regulated society, human emotions have become a threat, and to get rid of them, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis, her great love. But she’s overcome by fear, a premonition that catastrophe is on the way.

Lea Seydoux plays Gabrielle, while George MacKay is Louis. The film is based on the novella “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James.

“The Beast...

As 2024 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our eyes on titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen, so—as we do each year—we’re sharing a rundown of the best titles available to watch at home.

Curated from the Best Films of 2024 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some with which we’ve recently caught up. While our year-end coverage is still to come, including our staff’s top 50 films of 2024, this streaming guide will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to find notable – perhaps underseen – titles of late.

Note that we’re going by U.S. releases and that streaming services are limited solely to the territory as well. If you want to stay up-to-date...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a film about retribution and redemption. Not just on screen, but in execution. After their last attempt at a blockbuster was shelved in the name of a tax loophole, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah seem intent on unleashing all their pent-up energy, whether they’re selling us Batgirls or Bad Boys. Even if it bears the baggage of a meta redemption arc for its star, Ride or Die brings enough stylistic gusto to its action in the absence of Michael Bay but has a hard time justifying most other decisions, which adopt the tedium rampant in modern blockbuster filmmaking. – Conor O. (full review...

Mubi has unveiled next month’s streaming lineup, including an exciting lineup of notable new releases: Bertrand Bonello’s Coma (along with Nocturama), Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet (as her newest film premieres at the New York Film Festival), Martin Rejtman’s The Practice alongside his previous features, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, and more.

As David Katz said in his review from 2022’s Berlinale, “Coma is anything but a navel-gazing work, and more one of imaginative empathy. It is not Being Bertrand Bonello, but addressed to and concerning a person of a far-removed generation and gender: his teenage daughter Anna. Some amusing early interactions with pop culture, especially music, come from this cross-generational conversation: ‘turn that garbage off’ et al. But Bonello looks at the Zoomer state of mind, as he does for much else of importance, and has cutting, perceptive and troubling things to say.”

Check out the lineup below,...

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all U.S. rights to The Shrouds, written and directed by David Cronenberg and are planning a spring 2025 theatrical release.

The film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it screened In Competition. It played the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Gala program and is set for its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival next month.

The deal was negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with Sbs International. Producers are Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz and Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. It’s an Sbs, Prospero Pictures & Saint Laurent Productions Film with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Eurimages, Ontario Creates in association with Sphere Films, Crave & CBC Films with the support of Canal +, Ocs & the Centre National du Cinema et de L’image Animée.

“Building on a...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Blink Twice (Zoë Kravitz)

Over a close-up of a turtle, ominous sound design builds at such a deep frequency that the walls of a press-screening room in Beverly Hills began rattling. Once the shaking stopped and it’s realized this was not the third Los Angeles earthquake in as many weeks, the setup of Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice is doled out in impressively economical fashion: Rent is due for Frida (Naomie Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat). Rather than pay up and keep the wheels spinning in their going-nowhere-fast lives, Frida has a plan: retrieving a hidden wad of bills, she purchases gowns so she and Jess can crash a fancy gala after their waitress shifts end. Looking suitably glamorous,...

Pull out your copy of the latest septic tank health and safety regulations, because Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s masterfully unsettling and thought-provoking triumph “Evil Does Not Exist” will soon be streaming at home.

The Criterion Channel will exclusively premiere “Evil Does Not Exist” in a live streaming event this Sunday September 22 at 8:00 p.m. Et/5:00 p.m. Et. Then the film will live on the Criterion Channel as its exclusive streaming home starting October 1.

This is the latest of several live streaming events the Criterion Channel has hosted, with previous ones including Janus Films’ pickup “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” directed by Neo Sora, and Sideshow and Janus’s “The Beast,” directed by Bertrand Bonello. The live streams are a novel way of making a film’s streaming premiere an event unto itself and is one of several innovations the Criterion Channel has rolled out over the past year, such as...

Sideshow and Janus Films have scooped up North American rights to Maura Delpero’s acclaimed Italian period drama Vermiglio, winner of the Venice Film Festival’s silver lion grand jury prize.

The film debuted in competition in Venice and received its North American premiere Tuesday night at the Toronto Film Festival. Sideshow and Janus say they will release the title in North American theaters in the coming months.

Vermiglio is a follow-up to Delpero’s well-received 2019 directorial debut Maternal. She wrote, directed and produced the new feature, which is loosely based on her own family history.

“We were deeply moved and impressed by Vermiglio, a new Italian classic that is intimate in scale but epic in scope, unfolding like a memory over four ravishingly shot seasons during the Second World War,” said Sideshow and Janus Films.

The Italian-language movie is named after the small village where it is set, high...

French cinema rarely ventures into full-blown sci-fi — a genre largely dominated by deep-pocketed U.S. productions — but filmmaker Aude Lea Rapin (“Heroes Don’t Die”), rose to the challenge with “Planet B,” a dystopian thriller headlined by Adele Exarchopoulos and Souheila Yacoub (“Dune 2”) playing rebels with a cause. The movie world premieres at Venice where it kicks off the Critics’ Week section.

Like many sci-fi movies, “Planet B” has a politically charged storyline, centering on hardcore climate activists who get locked up in a virtual prison in a seemingly idyllic location. Among the hot-button topics explored in the movie are immigration, police brutality, the limits of radical activism and threats to democracy.

Yacoub and Exarchopoulos star alongside an ensemble cast of up-and-comers, including India Hair, Jonathan Couzinié, Yassine Stein, Paul Beaurepaire and Eliane Umuhire.

Exarchopoulos plays Julia, the leader of the group of eco-activists who are imprisoned and tortured psychologically,...

Canadian director Xavier Dolan has revealed he is writing a period horror movie set in 1880s France, which he hopes to shoot in late 2025.

If the project comes together, it will be Dolan’s first feature since Matthias & Maxime, which premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

“It’s something I wrote before the pandemic, and I’m looking at again… It’s a genre film, a horror film, set in 1880s in France.,” Dolan told the Canadian cinema Sans Filtre podcast.

During the episode, Dolan talked at length about the personal impact of negative reviews for his sixth feature It’s Only the End of the World when it premiered in Competition in Cannes in 2016.

Dolan hit back at the time, and the experience appears to continue to play into his work.

Talking about the new horror movie project, he said: “It feels removed from my life and...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)

Where to begin with Bertrand Bonello’s wonderful The Beast? It’s been so gratifying to see the initial reaction to the French filmmaker’s tenth feature, after several decades of increasingly remarkable work––the majority of it dark, beautiful, and sleazy. In fact, for what a discomforting and despairing experience much of The Beast is, when I’ve thought back its moments of real, uncomplicated cinematic pleasure, its verve and sense of joyousness, are what mark my memories. It’s romantic, without a capital-r. – David K. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers opens in an intentionally disorienting manner: We are in New Rochelle, New York for a tennis challenger.

There are stabs of the same fear that made The Beast fascinating, but this tale of a bored teenager in a scary, affectless future is too unfocused

Prominent French film-makers are supported by their national industry and even their lockdown projects have been received with respectful attention. Earlier this year Olivier Assayas’s autofiction Hors du Temps, or Suspended Time, premiered in Berlin – a dreamy Covid-era indulgence that he just about got away with. Now we have a chance to see Bertrand Bonello’s musing sketch Coma: a lockdown essay that preceded his brilliant futurist film The Beast, with many of the same ideas and tropes.

Coma broods on a scary, affectless future in which humanity will evolve away from the primacy of love and selfhood, and in which sexuality and violence will then be prominent as a symptom of the need to feel something, anything. As so often,...

France goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round of a snap parliamentary election in which far right National Rally (Rn) party looks set to come out on top.

With less than 48 hours until the booths open, polls are forecasting Rn is on course to win between 200 to 230 seats in France’s 577-seat National Assembly lower house.

This will not give it an absolute majority but could result in the party’s 28-year-old president Jordan Bardella becoming prime minister with the backing of its leader Marine Le Pen.

Emmanuel Macron, who called the election in response to hefty far right gains in European Parliament elections in mid-June has vowed to stay in place as president until the end of his term in May 2027, although it is not clear what power he will wield if the new government is led by Rn.

The prospect of Rn taking political control...

French filmmakers Cedric Klapisch, Bertrand Bonello and Gilles Lellouche, and actors Laurent Lafitte, Romane Bohringer and Isabelle Carré, are among the more than 1,000 film and culture professionals and organisations who have signed an open letter warning of the dangers of a potential far-right government and its implications for the industry.

The open letter, published in Le Monde newspaper, and spearheaded by producers union the Arp, comes two weeks after French president Emmanuel Macron’s surprise decision for a snap election to elect a new National Assembly that will see voters head to the polls for a two-round process on June...

Sideshow and Janus Films have snapped up U.S. distribution rights to Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s latest feature Caught by the Tides, which premiered to rave reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The two distributors said they will “release the film exclusively in theaters in the coming months.”

Caught by the Tides is composed almost entirely of improvisational footage Jia shot across China over nearly 25 years with his troupe of longtime collaborators. In an interview at Cannes, the director told The Hollywood Reporter that he began to sculpt a feature from the hundreds of hours of footage he had accumulated during the quiet days of China’s long, three-year pandemic shutdown.

THR‘s lead critic summed up the resulting film’s innovative narrative and formal approaches by writing that it “ebbs and flows like poetry.”

Like virtually all of Jia’s work, stretching back to his...

Clockwise from top left: Green Border (Kino Lorber), I Saw The TV Glow (A24), Evil Does Not Exist (Janus Films), Kinds Of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros.) Graphic: AVClub Now that the film festivals have settled down and the blockbusters have started rolling out in earnest,...

Clockwise from top left: Green Border (Kino Lorber), I Saw The TV Glow (A24), Evil Does Not Exist (Janus Films), Kinds Of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros.)Graphic: AVClub

Now that the film festivals have settled down and the blockbusters have started rolling out in earnest,...

With the global rise of fascism, increasingly frequent and brutal climate crises, and an upcoming U.S. election that no one short of the Cenobites from Hellraiser is looking forward to, it’s no surprise that cinema in 2024 has been grappling with some heavy and heady existential themes. Fear and anxiety thus play a central role in numerous films on our list, both in relation to concrete concepts like sexual assault and corporate malfeasance or more nebulous ones embodied by sound or even left invisible altogether, though still strongly felt.

Even if the general feeling of impending doom is increasingly in the air, certainly not every filmmaker felt the need to surrender to nihilism or despair. Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is, yes, a dystopic vision of modern society, but the aims of this raucous, wily satire are scarcely didactic. And...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

One of the 2022’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further proclaims...

Loosely based on Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle, Bertrand Bonello’s 2023 film, The Beast is an intriguing watch that blends unlikely genres. It is a period horror drama in addition to a sci-fi romance, and each timeline contributes to the theme at large. Starring Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as the protagonists, Gabrielle and Louis, The Beast revolves around a love story unfolding in 1910, 2014, and 2044, but unfortunately, the story always ends on a tragic note. Gabrielle learned about her connection with Louis in her past lives while going through a DNA purification procedure in 2044. The more she found out about her connection with Louis, the more she fell in love with him. Can they overcome their tragic curse? Or, will history repeat itself once again?

Spoiler Alert

What happened to Louis and Gabrielle in 1910?

There was an immediate connection between Louis and Gabrielle when they met at an exhibition party.

As we approach 2024’s halfway point it’s time to take a temperature of the finest cinema thus far: we’ve rounded up our favorites from the first six months of this year, some of which have flown under the radar. Kindly note that this is based solely on U.S. theatrical and digital releases from 2024.

Check out our picks below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)

Where to begin with Bertrand Bonello’s wonderful The Beast? It’s been so gratifying to see the initial reaction to the French filmmaker’s tenth feature, after several decades of increasingly remarkable work––the majority of it dark, beautiful, and sleazy. In fact, for what a discomforting and despairing experience much of The Beast is, when I’ve thought back its moments of real, uncomplicated cinematic pleasure, its verve and sense of joyousness, are what mark my memories.

Bertrand Bonello is a director who is rather hard to put into any category, such is the eclectic nature of his work. His latest follows on that trend, with his first deviation into the science-fiction genre, based on Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle. We had the pleasure in speaking to the talented auteur in Paris earlier this year, as part of a small roundtable.

Bonello spoke in great detail about the themes of the movie, and his fears – and hopes – for AI. He also talks about replacing Gaspard Ulliel in the leading role, and why he feels George MacKay was such a special talent to work with. He also discusses the wonderful Léa Seydoux and her approach to the project, while he speaks about his career and the industry as a whole, and why he has never quite been able to fit in.

To note, while...

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (May 31-June 2)Total gross to dateWeek 1. If (Paramount) £1.6m £9.6m 3 2. The Garfield Movie (Sony) £1.3m £6.3m 2 3. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (Disney) £1.1m £13.3m 4 4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros) £963,053 £4.5m 2 5. The Fall Guy (Universal)

£523,218 £11m 5

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.27

Without a hot new tentpole release, this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office has been dominated by holdovers, with Paramount’s If clinching the top spot, and The Garfield Movie overtaking Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

John Krasinski’s live action-animation hybrid If has finally broken out of its second place slot in its third weekend on release,...