News

The Santa Barbara Film Festival will open with the world premiere of Aaron Maurer’s documentary Invisible Valley, which profiles the stories of the disparate people that make up the Coachella Valley. It kicks off a festival that will run March 31-April 10 with a hybrid edition that includes online elements and screenings at a pair of pop-up beachside drive-in venues.

The full lineup revealed Tuesday features 47 world premieres and 37 U.S. premieres from 45 countries alongside the fest’s annual tributes featuring the likes of Bill Murray, Carey Mulligan, Sacha Baron Cohen and Amanda Seyfried which will be livestreamed online.

Every film screening will be offered for free this year, with a ticketed online component that will showcase the entire film lineup along with the tributes, industry panels and filmmaker Q&As.

The fest will close with a series of short documentaries by local filmmakers.

Here’s the trailer for Invisible Valley,...

Is this any way to treat a lady? Lovely Nina Foch just wanted a job, but she instead becomes the fall-gal in a psychologically perverse plan to deny her very identity. Cult director Joseph H. Lewis makes deft use of cinematic suspense techniques to compel our involvement in a bizarre conspiracy: not just convincing a woman that she’s insane, but that she’s literally not herself.

My Name is Julia Ross

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 65 min. / Street Date February 19, 2019 / Available from Arrow Films (UK) / 39.95

Starring: Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Leonard Mudie, Anita Bolster, Doris Lloyd, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Henry Batista

Visual Effects: Lawrence Butler, Donald Glouner

Musical director: Mischa Bakaleinikoff

Written by Muriel Roy Bolton, from the novel by Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson)

Produced by Wallace MacDonald

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

2019 is shaping up just fine for Blu-ray releases of small-scale,...

In a novel effort to stress that film noir wasn’t a film movement specifically an output solely produced for American audiences, Kino Lorber releases a five disc set of obscure noir examples released in the UK. Spanning a near ten year period from 1943 to 1952, the titles displayed here do seem to chart a progression in tone, at least resulting in parallels with American counterparts. Though a couple of the selections here aren’t very noteworthy, either as artifacts of British noir or items worthy of reappraisal, it does contain items of considerable interest, including rare titles from forgotten or underrated auteurs like Ronald Neame, Roy Ward Baker, and Ralph Thomas.

They Met in the Dark

The earliest title in this collection is a 1943 title from Karel Lamac, They Met in the Dark, a pseudo-comedy noir that barely meets the criteria. Based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert (whose novel...