News

The lineup has been unveiled for year’s edition of the Venice International Film Festival, taking place August 28 through September 7. Aside from films previously announced as coming to Tiff, some major new announcements include Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network, James Gray’s Ad Astra, Roy Andersson’s About Endlessness, Ciro Guerra’s Waiting for the Barbarians, David Michôd’s The King, Benedict Andrews’ Kristen Stewart-led biopic Seberg, and Roman Polanski’s J’accuse. Only two films by female directors made into the competition lineup: Haifaa Al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate and Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth.

Check out the lineup below (hat tip to Mubi), which also includes other sections at the festival.

Competition

The Truth (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa Al-Mansour)

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)

Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas)

Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)

Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan)

Ad Astra (James Gray)

A Herdade (Tiago Guedes)

Gloria Mundi (Robert Guédiguian...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of Modern Art

An all-inclusive Michelangelo Antonioni retrospective has kicked off.

Metrograph

“Goth(ic)” continues with an all-timer of a weekend.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg screens on Friday.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

“The Non-Actor” has its final weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Rialto retrospective continues with the likes of Hiroshima, mon amour and Rififi.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Abundant Acreage Available (Angus MacLachlan)

Faith-based cinema is as diverse a genre as there is, from the extreme, often violent portraits of devotion from established directors like Martin Scorsese and Mel Gibson, to the attacks on logic in the God’s Not Dead and Left Behind pictures. Angus MacLachlan, a great storyteller of the not-too-deep south, offers a nuanced example of what this genre can bring, returning with the moving Abundant Acreage Available.

Netflix has released a list of all of the movies and TV shows that are coming to Netflix in the month of October along with the release dates of them. They've got some good stuff coming including some Netflix originals that I'm excited about seeing including Stranger Things Season 2, Mindhunters, 1922 and more.

Look over al the titles and let us know which titles you're looking forward to seeing. I also provided a lit of everything that's leaving Netflix next month.

Available October 1

88 Minutes

A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song

Before Midnight

Blood Diamond

Boogie Nights

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Cleverman: Season 2

Death Sentence

Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Eagle vs. Shark

Eyes Wide Shut

Generation Iron 2

Ghost Patrol

I Love You, Man

Ice Guardians

Lockup: Disturbing the Peace: Collection 1

Made of Honor

Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous...

While October usually signals the arrival of all sorts of spooky, creepy, scary, and otherwise appropriately Halloween-themed films to both theaters and streaming services, this month’s batch of new titles on Netflix offers up a delightfully wide variety of choices that aren’t all tied to the year’s primary celebration of fear. Sure, those titles are there — from more mainstream chillers like “Cult of Chucky” and the new original “The Babysitter,” to more offbeat picks like the cannibal coming-of-age tale “Raw” and the seminal “Donnie Darko” — but this month’s incoming list has more than enough for movie fans who don’t want to shriek at their televisions.

Read More:’30 Rock’: The 25 Episodes You Need to Watch Before Tina Fey’s Iconic Comedy Leaves Netflix

Oh, and it’s also a month we’re going to deem Official Unofficial Noah Baumbach Month on Netflix, as the filmmaker...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

In honor of Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!,” which just became one of the only movies to ever earn an “F” Cinemascore rating, what is the craziest movie that a major Hollywood studio has released this century?

Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf), Time Out New York

Talk about a self-answering question. Unless you can point to another movie that brews such an aggressive whirlwind of psychosexual anxiety, starring the biggest star in the world (who is also romantically involved with the director), then we’re talking about “mother!” I’m sure you’ve got “The Wolf of Wall Street” at the ready as an alternative, but how crazy is that film, given...

Release the Hounds! You don’t want your pup to be tardy for the party.

Aug. 26 is National Dog Day, and canines across America are showing their puppy pride on Instagram (and beyond) with the hashtag #partydog. All types of pups have turned up for this celebration. Let’s check out who’s on the VIP list.

Catalina Wine Mixer #PartyDog

(Very Good) Birthday Boy #PartyDog

Purple People-eater #PartyDog

Pity #PartyDog

Eyes Wide Shut #PartyDog

Pizza #PartyDog

Pool #PartyDog

Sophisticated #PartyDog

Flip Cup #PartyDog

Cone of Shame #PartyDog

Undercover #PartyDog

Diaper #PartyDog

How are you and your dog celebrating? Tell...

From July 13th through August 2nd, the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival offered attendees over 400 short, experimental, and feature-length film projects, which is just a mind-blowing fact to me. Over the course of several weeks, I had the opportunity to check out two titles that had been garnering some buzz as of late on the festival circuit—Better Watch Out and Fashionista—and they both delivered very unique but equally thrilling viewing experiences for this writer.

Better Watch Out: A delightfully depraved holiday treat, Chris Peckover’s Better Watch Out is one of those rare genre experiences where the less you know going into it, the more satisfying the payoffs are in this biting and darkly comedic spin on the holiday classic Home Alone. But don’t expect toy car shenanigans, slippery ice-covered stairs, or anyone slapping their face in horror after using dad’s aftershave— screenwriter Zack Kahn has more wicked intentions for viewers,...

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

Spanish actress and triple threat Ana Asensio wrote, directed and starred in her feature film debut “Most Beautiful Island,” which won South by Southwest’s grand jury award for narrative feature, and audiences will finally be able to see the thriller, billed as being in the vein of “Eyes Wide Shut” about immigrant life in America, when Orion Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Film release the movie this fall.

Co-starring Natasha Romanova, David Little, Nicholas Tucci, Larry Fessenden and Caprice Benedetti and produced by Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix, “Most Beautiful Island” had its New York premiere at this week’s BAMcinemaFest. The film is a psychological thriller set in the world of undocumented female immigrants hoping to make a life in New York City.

Read More: ‘Most Beautiful Island’ Review: Ana Asensio’s SXSW Winner Is a Spellbinding Thriller About Immigrant Life In AmericaShot on Super 16mm with a voyeuristic sensibility, the movie chronicles one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young immigrant woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As her day unfolds, she is whisked through a series of troublesome and unforeseeable extremes. Before the day is over, she finds herself a central participant in a cruel game where lives are placed at risk for the perverse entertainment of a privileged few.

“[Ana Asensio]is fearless in front of and behind the camera,” Peter Goldwyn, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films, said in a statement. “’Most Beautiful Island’ is a memorable film which captured hearts, minds, and the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW.”

Check out the rest of our weekly Acquisitions Rundown after the break.

Related storiesFilm Acquisition Rundown: Netflix Buys Drake Doremus' 'Newness,' Gravitas Picks Up 'Abundant Acreage Available' and MoreFilm Acquisition Rundown: Focus Buys Paolo Sorrentino's 'Loro,' The Orchard Picks Up 'Thumper' and MoreFilm Acquisition Rundown: Mubi Buys Philippe Garrel's 'Lover for a Day,' FilmRise Picks Up 'Women Who Kill' and More...

It’s probably when Paul F. Tompkins (as Dean Rosedragon) sits in a dimly lit office room, backed by blaring thrash metal, that Season 3 of Seeso’s “Bajillion Dollar Propertie$” officially transcends parody.

Like a frog that doesn’t realize it’s being boiled as the water gets warmer, “Bajillion Dollar Propertie$” started as a simple skewering of Bravo and Hgtv reality shows but gradually become its own beast, just by stepping up the absurdity. The result is a show that’s learned enough about its main characters to know when to throw everything out of the window.

Platinum Realty is home to some of the unluckiest and barely-qualified Realtors in the greater Los Angeles area and this season those employees wander even further out into the weird zone. While Season 1 focused on who would be made partner, and Season 2 was about their quest for a “Diamond Dealmaker Award” (culminating...

Need to catch up? Check out the previous The Handmaid’s Tale recap here.

As we continue to delve deeper into the highly disturbing dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale, this week’s episode offers a comforting reminder that some truths cannot be changed, no matter how radical the regime.

Black markets always find a way around rigid trade structures. American women may never truly be free from the tyranny of sequins and high heels. And the most buttoned-down among us are usually the freakiest when the lights go out.

Read on to see what — and whom! — Offred runs into...

A new video looks beyond Fincher at the Evil Men Do

Sin, as defined by most major religions and moral institutions, is as old as man. It is inherent to our nature, because ultimately sin is self-serving, and at the end of the day we are all self-serving creatures. Wrath, pride, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, greed — as opposed to the Ten Commandments of Christianity which include distinct acts like adultery and murder, the seven deadly sins are things of which most all of us are guilty of multiple times over. We’ve all committed them, even on a minor scale. Ever think someone has a nicer car than you? Envy. Ever gotten a touch of road rage? Wrath. Ever hit the snooze button more than once? Sloth.

These are petty examples to be sure, but they illustrate how commonplace the seven deadly sins are in our daily lives, and thus they prove why the seven deadly sins...

Need to catch up? Check out the previous The White Princess recap here.

When an outbreak of plague* is the best thing that happens to you, you are experiencing some rough times, indeed.

Yet in an episode of The White Princess in which Elizabeth and her mother are put under house arrest, Henry is stabbed and Teddy is thrown in the Tower of London, a little sweating sickness seems like manna from heaven.

How can this be? Read on for the highlights of “Hearts and Minds.”

*Yes, I know it’s not actually the plague. But because Ned mentions it in the episode,...

A video essay examines our most private moments.

Strap on your thinking caps for this one, film fans, because it’s a doozy.

According to director Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth, Don’t Look Now, The Witches), mirrors are cinema in all its glory and in fact the essence of the medium. See, mirrors are the only time we truly look at ourselves; photographs of us are from other perspectives, for other people or posterity, and as such we don’t show our real faces in them, we show projections of who we think we should be or how we think we should feel in a certain situation. But the mirror isn’t public, it’s private, it is us alone with ourselves and thus the way we look into mirrors, into ourselves, is different from every other face we show the world.

The mirror is an eye, Roeg...

2017-03-31T12:19:06-07:00Jennifer Lawrence to Get Kinky in 'Red Sparrow'

Jennifer Lawrence has stumbled into a new role that looks anything but clumsy, quirky and relatable — think somewhere between Eyes Wide Shut, Black Swan, and The Americans. 20th Century Fox revealed its first look at Red Sparrow on Thursday at Cinemacon, the annual gathering of movie theater owners and Hollywood studios, and if sexual intensity is what you want, put down the Fifty Shades Darker DVD and listen up.

Based on the trilogy of novels from former CIA agent Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow is directed by Hunger Games: Mockingjay helmer Francis Lawrence, who's re-teaming with Lawrence for something a little less "young" and a little more "adult." From the first-look trailer we just saw in Las Vegas: Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is a brilliant young ballerina who suffers a gnarly leg break.

Her career...

“Most Beautiful Island”

A short, stressful, and utterly spellbinding debut that transforms the immigrant experience into the stuff of an early Polanski psychodrama, “Most Beautiful Island” was a worthy winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize for best narrative feature, and might prove to be a breakthrough moment for a major new talent: Spanish actress Ana Asensio not only wrote, directed, and produced this fraught metropolitan thriller, she also appears in just about every frame.

It would be criminal to reveal too much about what happens to her character, a Manhattan immigrant who’s struggling to make a life for herself in the big city and in for the longest night of her life, but it’s thrilling to watch the anxiety of neo-realism as it slowly bleeds into something that resembles the suspense of the orgy sequence from “Eyes Wide Shut.” Creating a lucid sense of reality only so...

A short, stressful, and utterly spellbinding debut that transforms the immigrant experience into the stuff of an early Polanski psychodrama, Ana Asensio’s “Most Beautiful Island” is a worthy winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize for best narrative feature, and — more importantly — strong evidence of a cinematic juggernaut in the making.

Asensio, a thirtysomething Spanish actress whose work is virtually unseen on these shores, not only wrote, directed, and produced this fraught metropolitan thriller, she also appears in just about every frame. And while the film might begin by suggesting that its heroine was chosen at random (a mesmeric prologue follows seven different women as they weave through the sidewalks of Manhattan, the camera picking them out of a crowd as if to wordlessly reassert that most of the Naked City’s seven million stories remain untold), Asensio’s compulsively watchable lead performance splits the difference between the specific and the representational.

We won’t see “Isle of Dogs” until sometime next year, but there are still plenty of Wes Anderson movies to rewatch in the meantime. Vimeo user Candice Drouet has put together a brief video detailing some of the idiosyncratic writer/director’s influences. Avail yourself of it below.

Read More: Wes Anderson’s ‘Isle of Dogs’ Crowdfunding Campaign Raises Over $250k for Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation

A number of scenes from Anderson’s films are shown side-by-side with their influences: A train sequence from “The Grand Budapest Hotel” bears a strong resemblance to one in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps,” for instance, while a sequence that finds Willem Dafoe riding a motorcycle in goggles was clearly inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia.”

Read More: ‘Isle of Dogs’ Plot Details Revealed as Fox Searchlight Picks Up Wes Anderson’s Film for 2018 Release

Also featured: “Torn Curtain,” “Vertigo,” “The Red Shoes,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Steadicam series continues with films by Tarantino, PTA, De Palma, Scorsese & more.

The Tampopo restoration is also showing.

Metrograph

Minnelli, Demy, Haynes, and Sirk fill up “Christmas at Metrograph.”

Coraline plays on Christmas Eve.

Museum of the Moving Image

Hugo screens in 3D on Christmas Eve.

Eyes Wide Shut...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Author: The Jt Leroy Story (Jeff Feuerzeig)

Author: The Jt LeRoy Story relives the literary hoax of the early aughts, the truly weird and out of control tale of Jt LeRoy. An allegedly gender-fluid HIV positive son of a West Virginia truck stop hooker, he rose to the heights of indie stardom befriending the likes of Courtney Love, Shirley Manson, Lou Reed, Michael Pitt, Billy Corgan and filmmakers Gus Van...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

The great Maggie Cheung is celebrated in a 20-film retrospective, with two Wong Kar–wai features screening this Friday and Saturday and the Police Story trilogy showing on Sunday.

Programs featuring the early works of Todd Haynes et al. play on Friday; two John Ford classics and The Boxtrolls play on Saturday.

Film Society...

Simon Brew Dec 8, 2016

Tom Cruise continues to deliver in blockbuster movies: but it can't just be us who'd love to see him making a few more leftfield choices.

Over the weekend, we got the release of the trailer for 2017’s The Mummy movie. In it, as many were quick to point out, Tom Cruise is soon running again. Few actors run with the speed and intensity of Tom Cruise on the big screen, and few actors seem committed to the productions they take on in the manner that Cruise is. Whenever we’ve interviewed anyone to do with a Tom Cruise movie, they all volunteer just how far the man goes out of his way to have a chat, make them feel settled, and make them feel part of things.

See related Matt Reeves interview: Dawn, Andy Serkis and blockbuster filmmaking Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes review

Appreciating it’s internet law,...

Let it be known — Jon Bon Jovi, aged 54, can still rock like nobody’s business. The singer and his band put on a pitch-perfect performance Saturday night for an exclusive group of lucky fans in Miami Beach. The hour and a half concert, held at the hot new Faena Hotel, was simultaneously streamed on SirusXM’s Bon Jovi Radio.

Bon Jovi mixed up classic hits like “Living on a Prayer” with numerous titles from their new album This House is Not for Sale, which they’ve been debuting at small appearances this fall ahead of their February world tour. If...

The year is coming to an end, and as you catch up on all the excellent offerings from home, there’s remain a plethora of reasons to make your way to the theater. It should be noted that many of the below titles will expand wider come January, so check your local theater listings. If you’re in NYC, one of the year’s best documentaries, I Am Not Your Negro, will be getting a one-week run at Metrograph starting December 9, so seek it out of you’re close by, and look for it in this feature come February.

Matinees to See: Harry Benson: Shoot First (12/9), The Wasted Times (12/23), The Founder (12/16), Patriots Day (12/21), Passengers (12/21), Assassin’s Creed (12/21), A Monster Calls (12/23), and Live By Night (12/25)

15. Frank & Lola (Matthew Ross; Dec. 9th)

Synopsis: A psychosexual noir love story, set in Las Vegas and Paris, about love, obsession, sex, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately,...

No adult supervision required! At midnight, Britney Spears released the music video for "Slumber Party," directed by Colin Tilley and featuring Tinashe. "We ain't gonna sleep tonight..." she tweeted, quoting the lyrics. The song is the second single off of Glory, following the lead track "Make Me… (feat. G-Eazy)." The sultry clip shows the superstars in a sexier light—literally and figuratively. "It's kind of like a younger Eyes Wide Shut theme," the 34-year-old pop star explained to Extra's Mario Lopez in late October. "So, it's kind of a little risqué. It's very sexy, it's very moody—and it's fun! It's...

Sunday’s episode of “Westworld” turned up the heat in a major way.

Read More: ‘Westworld’ Review: ‘Contrapasso’ Searches for Purpose in Between the Orgies

The fifth episode of the HBO series, called “Contrapasso,” sees William (Jimmi Simpson), Logan (Ben Barnes) and robot host Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) visit a new area of the park called Pariah, a city comprised of criminals and apparently dozens of group sex enthusiasts.

The ensuing orgy scene takes the show just short of entering the pornographic realm. “I The ensuing orgy scene takes the show just short of entering the pornographic realm. “I think all of us have a modicum of taste that keeps us from taking it too far into the pornographic world and keeps it in the sensual world,” co-executive producer and supervising director Richard J. Lewis told THR. Staging the scene, however, did require dozens of “special extras” and a “sex stylist,...

Need to catch up? Check out last week’s Westworld recap here.

This week, Westworld takes us to Pariah, a far-flung section of the park where rules don’t exist and everyone is spoiling for a fight. Think Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, except that instead of a gift shop, there’s a couple having public sex in a stagecoach.

This anything-goes town becomes a proving ground for both Dolores and William, who finally find the impetus to define their own destinies. For her, it’s a breakthrough that, perhaps not coincidentally, comes with a body count. For him,...

A quick review of tonight's Atlanta coming up just as soon as I feel like I'm in a Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut... "Juneteenth" is another remarkable half-hour of TV in a debut season full of them. It's one of the purely funniest episodes of Atlanta so far, as the Juneteenth party thrown by Van's friend turns into a parade of ridiculous people behaving ridiculously, and Earn and an increasingly drunk Van doing their best to hide their natural reactions to them. But it also works as an achingly poignant look at where things stand between the two of them now that Van is no longer the obvious breadwinner. Alfred and Darius were absent, but they weren't really needed, thanks to how well Donald Glover and Zazie Beetz played Earn and Van's response to Craig the honorary black man, to the aging playwright boasting of her play about a...

More so than ever it seems, we've become increasingly obsessed with acknowledging the anniversaries of beloved movies, TV shows and music. Not that there's anything wrong with celebrating our pop culture past, mind you. In fact, for someone as nostalgic as myself, I completely embrace it. Which brings me to a little milestone of my own. This one, though, doesn't simply focus on a particular piece of celluloid, but instead, revolves around a certain actor whose work has been an enduring presence throughout my movie-going life.

For the last 30 years, not only have I sat and watched every single Tom Cruise film that has come out since 1986, I have done so in an actual, honest-to-goodness movie theater. That's a total of 33 silver screen experiences (34 if you count his Austin Powers in Goldmember cameo), including the latest, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. Yeah, you might say I'm a fan.

However, prior to the start of this streak -- and...

Michael Shannon stars in 10 (!) films this year, but only one is what we’ve all been waiting for from the actor: an erotic thriller. Matthew Ross‘ Frank & LolaFrank & Lola[/link], which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, follows his character’s relationship with a fashion designer (Imogen Poots). As one can see in the first trailer, which debuted today ahead of a December release, their sexual games turn dark as more of the past is unveiled.

We said in our review, “Frank & Lola, a noirish erotic thriller from journalist-turned-director Matthew M. Ross, finds leads Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in top form. They excel as lovers in this tightly-wound psychosexual love story that has elements of the best of Eyes Wide Shut. Frank (Shannon) is a high-flying chef working in top-end restaurants in Las Vegas. At the bar of his establishment he meets Poots’ Lola as she glides into his bar,...

Imagine if you took DVD copies of The Road To Wellville, Eyes Wide Shut, and Sucker Punch, and you compressed them all together with some Finnish guy’s hydraulic press. If you took that mashed-up disk and popped it into the entertainment system, what came out on the TV would probably look a lot like this trailer for A Cure For Wellness. That’s not necessarily a criticism. Those three films went off the rails to varying degrees, but they were all visually arresting and striving for something tonally challenging. Director Gore Verbinski seems to be aiming for something in the center of their overlapping sets.

Written by Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road), and starring Chronicle’s Dane DeHaan and Nymphomaniac: Vol. II’s Mia Goth, this period piece follows a young executive who travels to a wellness center in the Swiss Alps to collect his company’s CEO. However once...

“Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind a door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them.”-- Carl Th. DreyerOn the one hand, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman is the everyday portrait of a woman living her life, watching wedding videos, going to the pool, meeting a lover, driving her young niece around, washing her hands, picking up flowers, and so on. On the other, it’s a horror-noir straddling two rival strands of the genres: the nice anti-hero with the dark secret buried in the past that threatens to be unearthed (Out of the Past; so many...

Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of Modern Art

The Mark Lee Ping-Bing retro has its last weekend, with titles including Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s Dust in the Wind and his rarely screened The Puppetmaster.

Museum of the Moving Image

“David Bordwell: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture” offers a crash course in one sliver of film history. Citizen Kane...

Welcome to every parent’s worst nightmare. A fully erect middle finger to the idea of abstinence-only education, Eva Husson’s “Bang Gang: A Love Story” is the opposite of a cautionary tale — it’s a salaciously soft-core movie about the upside of indiscriminate teen sex. Opening with a permissive Carl Jung quote that speaks to the trajectory of self-improvement (“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious”), Husson’s directorial debut is too derivative of forebears like “Kids” and “The Rules of Attraction” to earn a spot alongside them, but it nevertheless moves along on the strength of its slyly transgressive undertow.

Here is a rare new entry in that smallest of sub-genres: Movies that don’t punish teens for fucking their brains out (surprise surprise: it’s French). Which isn’t to say that the kids get off without any consequences, but rather that their libidos don’t sentence them to an after-school special. Kids, if you value the freedom to make your own mistakes, do everything in your power to prevent your parents from seeing this film.

“Bang Gang” (more on that title later) begins with a flash-forward that’s hard to shake, the camera tracking through an airy house in the affluent coastal city of Biarritz as dozens of naked teenagers hump each other in all manner of positions; the scene is like the orgy sequence from “Eyes Wide Shut” as it might have been shot by Terry Richardson.

But Husson doesn’t let you gawp at all the lithe young bodies for long, as the film soon begins to feel the weight of some unknown heaviness. “It was the year no one could forget,” an anonymous voiceover solemnly intones, genuflecting on some past trauma with the same wistful sense of wisdom with which Leonardo DiCaprio remembered his time on a remote Thai beach.

Not that it matters much, but we’ll later learn that the voice belongs to Alex (the English-born Finnegan Oldfield), a lanky high school senior whose only discernible quality is a general disregard for other people’s feelings. He and his clownish best friend Nikita (Fred Hotier, one of the film’s numerous first-time actors) can often be found smoking a blunt somewhere and streaming videos of porn star Sasha Grey in action. These two boys own several of the opening scenes, but Husson’s attention seems anchored to the first girls with whom we see Alex and Nikita fool around: Laetitia (Daisy Broom) is a virginal brunette with a strict father. George (potential breakout star Marilyn Lima) is a compact blonde who looks like an Olsen twin by way of Vanessa Paradis.

Their roles seem codified by the color of their hair, especially when George and Alex have sex while their two comparatively demure friends watch from the sidelines, but Husson is itching to test your assumptions, and the dynamic between these characters is soon twisted beyond recognition with the introduction of a shy, curly-haired fifth wheel named Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefebvre).

Read More: Two Teens Discuss an Awkward Encounter in Exclusive Clip from ‘Bang Gang: A Love Story’

Betrayal! Anger! Jealousy! All of it shot with the dreamy poeticism of Andrea Arnold and glazed with a blissed-out electronic score by M83 collaborator White Sea. Alex doesn’t care about George — she’s a conquest, and he disposes of her as soon as she’s reaffirmed his self-worth. But George has an idea to ease her pain, an inclusive plan for all their friends that will allow her to view people as interchangeably as Alex does: She calls them “bang gangs,” but they’re basically orgies. Games of truth or dare in which “truth” isn’t an option. These kids are ready to maul each other to begin with, but sprinkle in some throbbing house music and a flurry of cocaine and you’re off to the races.

Each of these characters threaten to make this their movie at some point, and while that lack of focus prevents them from achieving even the slightest whiff of depth, it also endows Husson’s story with the mutability of teenage friendships, which tend to shift with the tides. To some extent, these kids become as interchangeable to us as they are to each other. As the film’s latter half descends into an overlong blur of bang gangs, the anonymity of all that sex increasingly begins to seem like the point, as George and her friends eagerly reduce their bodies to dildos and vessels because they all just want to feel wanted, no matter the cost.

You’ve never seen a high school movie with such a conspicuous absence of body shaming, as these horny teens give each other a satisfaction that they can’t give themselves. “We all have superpowers,” George declares to the camera before getting railed by a half-dozen dudes off-screen (Husson only shows enough of the action to make viewers believe in what’s happening behind closed doors, and her camera ogles the male cast members almost as much as it does the girls). But maybe they shouldn’t be quite so eager to record the sexcapades on their phones — welcome to the age of Chekhov’s YouTube video.

Storm clouds are clearly forming on the horizon from the start, as Husson repeatedly interlaces scenes with radio reports of a gruesome train derailment. It’s a clumsy attempt at illustrating the myopia of her characters, and one that doesn’t work without the sociopolitical heft that “A Bigger Splash” recently used to anchor the same technique. These boys and girls are clearly sticking their heads into the ground (or whatever holes they can find), but their broad tunnel-vision is spread too thin to maintain much of its taste. “Bang Gang” may have a bit more sizzle than Mia Hansen-Løve’s similarly themed “Goodbye, First Love,” but it desperately misses that film’s wonderful sensitivity.

But Husson, to her credit, does succeed in “making the darkness conscious” for these thirsty young fuck buddies. Their story is so whitewashed that it flirts with irresponsibility — there’s no violence, and any STDs contracted can be cured with a pill.

At one point, a girl refers to the simplicity of her abortion as “a modern day fairytale,” and the same description could be applied to the whole film. But if “Bang Gang” climaxes a bit too cleanly, its moral rings true all the same: Kids have to be kids before they can become adults.

Grade: B

“Bang Gang: A Love Story” opens in theaters on Friday.

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Related stories'Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story' Exclusive Clip: Two French Teens Discuss An Awkward Encounter'Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)' Trailer and Poster: French Teens Explore Sexuality at Organized OrgiesNew Trailer For The Provocative 'Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story' Gets Naked...

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Warner Bros has struggled with its blockbusters of late. But back in summer 1997 - Batman & Robin's year - it faced not dissimilar problems.

Earlier this year it was revealed that Warner Bros, following a string of costly movies that hadn’t hit box office gold (Pan, Jupiter Ascending, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., In The Heart Of The Sea), was restructuring its blockbuster movie business. Fewer films, fewer risks, more franchises, and more centering around movie universes seems to be the new approach, and the appointment of a new corporate team to oversee the Harry Potter franchise last week was one part of that.

In some ways, it marks the end of an era. Whilst it retains its relationships with key directing talent (Ben Affleck, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Nolan for instance), Warner Bros was, for the bulk of the 1990s in particular, the studio that the others were trying to mimic. It worked with the same stars and filmmakers time and time again, and under then-chiefs Terry Semel and Robert Daly, relationships with key talent were paramount.

Furthermore, the studio knew to leave that talent to do its job, and was also ahead of the pack in developing franchises that it could rely on to give it a string of hits.

However, whilst Warner Bros is having troubles now, its way of doing business was first seriously challenged by the failure of its slate in the summer of 1997. Once again, it seemed to have a line up to cherish, that others were envious of. But as film by film failed to click, every facet of Warner Bros’ blockbuster strategy suddenly came under scrutiny, and would ultimately fairly dramatically change. Just two summers later, the studio released The Matrix, and blockbuster cinema changed again.

But come the start of summer 1997? These are the movies that Warner Bros had lined up, and this is what happened…

February - National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation

Things actually had got off to a decent enough start for the studio earlier in the year, so it's worth kicking off there. It brought Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo back together, for the fourth National Lampoon movie, and the first since 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Interestingly, it dropped the National Lampoon moniker in the Us, and instead released the eventual movie as Vegas Vacation. It was a belated sequel, back when belated sequels weren’t that big a thing.

The film was quickly pulled apart by reviewers, but it still just about clawed a profit. The production budget of $25m was eclipsed by the Us gross of $36m, and the movie would do comfortable business on video/DVD. Not a massive hit, then, but hardly a project that had a sense of foreboding about it.

Yet the problems were not far away.

May – Father's Day

Warner Bros had a mix of movies released in the Us in March and April 1997, including modest Wesley Snipes-headlined thriller Murder At 1600, and family flick Shiloh. But it launched its summer season with Father’s Day, an expensive packaged comedy from director Ivan Reitman, starring Robin Williams and Billy Crystal. It had hit written all over it.

Father’s Day was one of the movies packaged by the CAA agency, and its then-head, Mike Ovitz (listed regularly by Premiere magazine in the 1990s as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, if not the most powerful man). That he brought together the stars, the director and the project, gave a studio a price tag, and the studio duly paid it. Given Warner Bros’ devotion to star talent (Mel Gibson, then one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and a major Warner Bros talent, was persuaded to film a cameo), it was a natural home for the film. It quickly did the deal. few questions asked.

That package, and CAA’s fees for putting it together, brought the budget for a fairly straightforward comedy to a then-staggering $85m. The problem, though, was that the film simply wasn’t very good. It’s one of those projects that looks great on paper, less great when exposed on a great big screen. Warner Bros has snapped it up, without - it seems - even properly reading the script.

Premiere magazine quoted a Warner Bros insider back in November 1997 as saying “when [CAA] calls and says ‘we have a package, Father’s Day, with Williams and Crystal and Reitman, we say ‘great’”, adding “we don’t scrutinise the production. When we saw the movie, it took the wind out of us. We kept reshooting and enhancing, but you can’t fix something that’s bad”.

And it was bad.

The movie would prove to be the first big misfire of the summer, grossing just $35m in the Us, and not adding a fat lot more elsewhere in the world. Warner Bros’ first film of the summer was a certified flop. More would soon follow.

May - Addicted To Love

A more modestly priced project was Addicted To Love, a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick. Just over a year later, Warner Bros would hit big when Meg Ryan reunited with Tom Hanks for Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. But here? The film was a modest success, at best.

Directed by Griffin Dunne (making his directorial debut), and put together in partnership with Miramax, Addicted To Love was based around the Robert Palmer song of the same name. But whilst it was sold as a romcom, the muddled final cut was actually a fair bit darker. There was an underlying nastiness to some moments in the film, and when the final box office was tallied, it came in lower than the usual returns for pictures from Ryan or Broderick. Counter-programming it against the release of The Lost World: Jurassic Park didn’t massively help in this instance either, especially as the Jurassic Park sequel would smash opening weekend records.

Addicted To Love ended up with $34.6m at the Us box office. It would eke out a small profit.

June - Batman & Robin

And this is when the alarm bells started to ring very, very loudly. Summer 1997 was supposed to be about a trio of sure-fire hit sequels: Batman 4, Jurassic Park 2 and Speed 2. Only one of those would ultimately bring home the box office bacon, the others being destroyed by critics, and ultimately leaving far more empty seats than anticipated in multiplexes.

Batman & Robin, it’s easy to forget, came off the back of 1995’s Joel Schumacher-steered Batman reboot, Batman Forever that year's biggest movie). It had one of the fastest-growing stars in the world in the Batsuit (George Clooney), and the McDonald’s deals were signed even before the script was typed up. You don’t need us to tell you that you could tell, something of a theme already in Warner Bros' summer of '97.

That said, Batman & Robin still gave Warner Bros a big opening, but in the infancy of the internet as we know it, poisonous word of mouth was already beginning to spread. The film’s negative cost Warner Bros up to $140m, before marketing and distribution costs, and it opened in the Us to a hardly-sniffy $42m of business (although that was down from previous Batman movies).

But that word of mouth still accelerated its departure from cinemas. It was then very rare for a film to make over 40% of its Us gross in its first weekend. But that’s just what Batman & Robin did, taking $107.3m in America, part of a worldwide total of $238.2m. This was the worst return for a Batman movie to date, and Warner Bros had to swiftly put the brakes on plans to get Batman Triumphant moving.

It would be eight years until Batman returned to the big screen, in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. Warner Bros would undergo big changes in the intervening period.

As for the immediate aftermath of Batman & Robin? Warner Bros co-chief Robert Daly would note at the end of '97 that “we’d have been better off with more action in the picture. The movie had to service too many characters”, adding that “the next Batman we do, in three years – and we have a deal with George Clooney to do it – will have one villain”.

Fortunately, Warner Bros’ one solid hit of the summer was just around the corner…

July - Contact

And breathe out.

Warner Bros bet heavily again on expensive talent here, with Robert Zemeckis bringing his adaptation of Carl Sagan’s Contact to the studio for his first film post-Forrest Gump. Warner Bros duly footed the $90m bill (back when that was still seen as a lot of money for a movie), a good chunk of which went to Jodie Foster. It invested heavily in special effects, and gave Zemeckis licence to make the film that he wanted.

The studio was rewarded with the most intelligent and arguably the best blockbuster of the summer. I’ve looked back at Contact in a lot more detail here, and it remains a fascinating film that’s stood the test of time (and arguably influenced Christopher Nolan’s more recent Interstellar).

Reviews were strong, it looked terrific, and the initial box office was good.

But then the problem hit. For whilst Contact was a solid hit for Warner Bros, it wasn’t a massively profitable one. Had Father’s Day and Batman & Robin shouldered the box office load there were supposed to, it perhaps wouldn’t have been a problem. But when they failed to take off, the pressure shifted to Contact.

The movie would gross $100.9m in the Us, and add another $70m overseas (this being an era were international box office rarely had the importance it has today). But once Warner Bros had paid its bills, there wasn’t a fat lot over for itself. Fortunately, the film still sells on disc and on-demand. Yet it wasn’t to be the massive hit the studio needed back in 1997.

July - One Eight Seven

From director Kevin Reynolds, the man who helmed Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Waterworld, came modestly-priced drama 187, starring Samuel L Jackson (in a strong performance). Warner Bros wouldn’t have had massive box office expectations for the film (although it can't have been unaware that the inspirational teacher sub-genre was always worth a few quid), and it shared production duties on the $20m movie with Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions. But still, it would have had its eye on a modest success. What it got in return was red ink.

The film’s not a bad one, and certainly worth seeking out. But poor reviews gave the film an uphill struggle from the off – smaller productions arriving mid-summer really needed critics on their side, as they arguably still do – and it opened to just $2.2m of business (the less edgy, Michelle Pfeiffer-headlined school drama Dangerous Minds had been a surprise hit not two years before).

By the time its run was done, 187 hadn’t even come close to covering its production costs, with just under $6m banked.

Warner Bros’ summer slate was running out of films. But at least it had one of its most reliable movie stars around the corner…

August - Conspiracy Theory

What could go wrong? Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts were two of the biggest movie stars in the world in 1997, at a time when movie stars still equated to box office gold. Director Richard Donner, one of Warner Bros’ favourite directors, had delivered the Lethal Weapons, Maverick, Superman, The Goonies and more for the studio. Put them altogether, with Patrick Stewart (coming to wider public consciousness at the time off the back of his Star Trek: The Next Generation work) as a villain, and it should have been a big hit.

Conspiracy Theory proved to be one of the more ambitious summer blockbusters of the era. It lacks a good first act, which would be really useful in actually setting up more of what’s going on. But Gibson played an edgy cab driver who believes in deep government conspiracies, and finds himself getting closer to the truth than those around him sometimes give him credit for.

Warner Bros was probably expecting another Lethal Weapon with the reunion of Gibson (who had to be persuaded to take Conspiracy Theory on) and Donner (it’s pretty much what it got with the hugely enjoyable Maverick a few years’ earlier), but instead it got a darker drama, with an uneasy central character that didn’t exactly play to the summer box office crowd.

The bigger problem, though, was that the film never quite worked as well as you might hope. Yet star power did have advantages. While no juggernaut, the film did decent business, grossing $137m worldwide off the back of an $80m budget ($40m of which was spent on the salaries for the talent before a single roll of film was loaded into a camera). That said, in the Us it knocked a genuine smash hit, Air Force One, off the top spot. Mind you in hindsight, that was probably the film that the studio wished it had made (the cockpit set of Warner Bros' own Executive Decision was repurposed for Air Force One, fact fans).

Still: Warner Bros did get Lethal Weapon 4 off Gibson and Donner a year later…

August - Free Willy 3: The Rescue

Yeah.

Warner Bros opened its third Free Willy film on the same day as Conspiracy Theory (can you imagine a studio opening two big films on the same day now), but it was clear that this was a franchise long past its best days (and its best days hardly bring back the fondest of memories).

Still, Free Willy movies were relatively modest in cost to put together, and Warner Bros presumably felt this was a simple cashpoint project. But in a year when lots of family movies did less business than expected (Disney’s Hercules, Fox’s Home Alone 3, Disney’s Mr Magoo), Free Willy 3 barely troubled the box office. It took in just over $3m in total, and Willy would not be seen on the inside of a cinema again.

August - Steel

Not much was expected from Steel, a superhero movie headlined by Shaquille O’Neal. Which was fortunate, because not much was had.

It had a mid-August release date in the Us, at a point when a mid-August release date was more of a dumping ground than anything else. And even though the budget was set at a relatively low $16m, the film – and it’s an overused time – pretty much bombed. It took $1.7m at the Us box office, and given that its appeal hinged on a major American sports star whose fame hardly transcended the globe, its international takings did not save it (it went straight to video in many territories).

It was a miserable end to what, for warner bros, had been a thoroughly miserable summer.

So what did hit big in summer 1997?

Summer 1997 was infamous for big films failing to take off in the way that had been expected – Hercules, Speed 2, and the aforementioned Warner Bros movies – but there were several bright spots. The big winner would be Barry Sonnenfeld’s light and sprightly sci-fi comedy Men In Black, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Star power too helped score big hits for Harrison Ford (Air Force One), Julia Roberts (My Best Friend’s Wedding) and John Travolta (Face/Off).

This was also the summer that Nicolas Cage cemented his action movie credentials with Face/Off and Con Air. Crucially, though, the star movies that hit were the ones that veered on the side of 'good'. For the first of many years, the internet was blamed for this.

Oh, and later in the year, incidentally, Titanic would redefine just what constituted a box office hit...

What came next for Warner Bros?

In the rest of 1997, Warner Bros had a mix of projects that again enjoyed mixed fortunes. The standout was Curtis Hanson’s stunning adaptation of L.A. Confidential, that also proved to be a surprise box office success. The Devil’s Advocate didn’t do too badly either.

However, two of the studio’s key filmmakers failed to really deliver come the end of 1997. Clint Eastwood’s Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil failed to ignite (although many felt he was always on a hiding to nothing in trying to adapt that for the screen), and Kevin Costner’s The Postman would prove arguably the most expensive box office disappointment of the year. No wonder the studio rushed Lethal Weapon 4 into production for summer 1998. Oh, and it had The Avengers underway too (not that one), that would prove to be a 1998 disappointment.

The studio would eventually take action. The Daly-Semel management team, that had reigned for 15 years, would break up at the end of 1999, as its traditional way of doing business became less successful. The pair had already future projects that were director driven to an extent (Eyes Wide Shut), and it would still invest in movies with stars (Wild Wild West). But the immediate plan of action following the disappointment of summer 1997 – to get Batman 5 and Superman Lives made – would falter. It wouldn’t be until 1999’s The Matrix (a film that Daly and Semel struggled to get) and – crucially – 2001’s Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone that the studio would really get its swagger back...

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Movies Feature Simon Brew Warner Bros 16 Jun 2016 - 05:19 Conspiracy Theory Father's Day Addicted To Love Contact National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation One Eight Seven Steel Batman & Robin Free Willy 3: The Rescue...

Has this past week or so been weird? Have you been prone to communication and technology mishaps, or strange feelings of sluggishness and an inability to get stuff done? If you weren’t aware, Mercury is in retrograde, and it’s likely the reason for any weirdness lately.

What is Mercury retrograde, you might ask? It’s a month-long cycle that happens a few times a year where the planet Mercury rotates at a slower than usual pace, making it appear to actually be traveling backwards. This is simply an illusion, of course, but astrologers have long associated this situation with problems involving communication, technology, and travel.

Whether or not you believe in the power the cosmos hold over us, Mercury Retrograde is an interesting concept that a lot of people follow intensely. Here at Cineplex, we talk about movies, so we’ve created a list of our favourite titles...

Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

The most exciting theater to hit New York in years opens today. They’ll begin with The Purple Rose of Cairo and Taxi Driver on Friday. Saturday and Sunday unbelievably packed, the schedule including The Spirit of the Beehive, Vivre Sa Vie, The Long Day Closes, Femme Fatale, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, and Noah Baumbach‘s...

Let’s start with this obvious point: few cities need another repertory outlet less than New York City, which provides enough decent-to-outstanding options every week (or day) to fully occupy any caring customer. And so when a new theater, Metrograph, was announced this past August, the largely enthusiastic response — people taking note of a good location, a dedication to celluloid presentations and new independent releases, its strong selection of programmers, and other services (e.g. a restaurant and “cinema-dedicated bookshop”) — went hand-in-hand with some people’s skepticism, or at least a certain raising of the eyebrows. The question of necessity was premature, but such is the influx of available material that it should inevitably come up.

It’s safe to say their first selections silenced those skeptics. Metrograph’s slate is strong in a way that’s uncommon; one could say it’s exactly the sort that a cinephile with...

With over 60 films covered, a number of interviews and more coverage from the Sundance Film Festival, it’s time to wrap up the first major cinema event in 2016. We already got the official jury and audience winners (here) and now it’s time to highlight our favorites, as well as complete coverage from the festival.

One will find our top fifteen favorites (in alphabetical order), followed by the rest of our reviews (from best to worst, including previously premiered features), then interviews. Check out everything below and stay tuned to our site, and specifically Twitter, for acquisition and release date news on the below films in the coming months.

The Best

Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)

Kirsten Johnson has been a cinematographer and / or camera operator on documentary films for 20 years. This has taken her all over the world and led her to meet all kinds of people. She’s been in Bosnia,...

Focus Features

Sex and the cinema have always gone hand in hand, predominantly because they are both subjects that heavily rely on the idea of fantasy. Inevitably, filmmakers have thus exploited sex – and all that is associated with the act – to varied results across the span of the century.

There are the “classic” films built around themes of sex, of course: Last Tango in Paris, Belle de Jour, In the Realm of the Senses, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Then there also those films that have been branded as outright “sexy” – films such as Wild Things, Cruel Intentions, Y Tu Mamá También, The Dreamers and Secretary – which exist purposely to ignite something in the loins. And it’s those sorts of films that this list is interested in.

Everyone is familiar with Basic Instinct and Eyes Wide Shut as far as sexy cinematic ventures go, but what about the...

Frank & Lola, a noirish erotic thriller from journalist-turned-director Matthew M. Ross, finds leads Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in top form. They excel as lovers in this tightly-wound psychosexual love story that has elements of the best of Eyes Wide Shut.

Frank (Shannon) is a high-flying chef working in top-end restaurants in Las Vegas. At the bar of his establishment he meets Poots’ Lola as she glides into his bar, and director Ross sets the scene by opening the film on the ensuing sex, a moody awkward sequence that heightens a sense of menace behind these beautiful starlets.

As time passes, Frank grows ever-conscious of the age gap between them both, and has suspicions about a rich younger man (Justin Long) who offers Lola a dream job at a fashion outlet. Soon his worst fears are confirmed, as Lola returns home one night in tears, admitting to a one night...

The films of Rob Zombie are interesting to me, but I've never liked any of them. I don't think he's a very good filmmaker, but I'm always curious to see what he does next. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because he throws a bunch of crazy weird shit out there that we don't normally get to see in most movies. 

His latest film, 31, premiered at Sundance and so I decided to give it a shot. If you're a fan of Zombie's movies makes, then you will most likely enjoy this movie. I didn't like the movie at all. Zombie has really done nothing to improve his skills as a filmmaker. He's still just making the same old crap that involves crazy redneck people going on murderous rages and brutally killing people. 

The movie is almost a carbon copy of A House of a 1000 Corpses but with a slightly different plot.

31 was undoubtedly made for those of us who have enjoyed Zombie’s work over the years. It may not be as ambitious as The Lords of Salem or as epic as The Devil’s Rejects but, by and large, it’s a ton of blood-soaked fun that gives us real characters to connect with, introduces us to some incredibly twisted assassins and goes for broke at every possible turn.

The story feels like Zombie’s own horror-fied version of The Running Man (with a bit of a Kubrickian flavor to it) and features breakout performances from Richard Brake and Jeff Daniel Phillips. Folks who aren’t into Zombie’s work probably won’t enjoy 31, but any film that gives the amazing Meg Foster the opportunity to wield a chainsaw like a total badass is aces in my book.

31’s story is pretty straightforward; a group of carnies (Sheri Moon Zombie,...

Photo Credit: Loris T. Zambelli

Actress Analeigh Tipton really seems to be moving her way up in the acting world. While you may not recognize her name, she's likely a face you've seen before in supporting roles. Between movies like Lucy and Warm Bodies, she's slowly making her way up the Hollywood ranks. Now, it looks like she's starring in the upcoming film, Sadie.

The psychological thriller only has a handful of photos released via their Facebook page, but if they're any indication, it boasts quite the visuals.

Photo Credit: Loris T. Zambelli

Described as Black Swan meets Eyes Wide Shut, the film is sure to please those who like their thrillers to have an erotic edge to them.

The synopsis to Sadie is as follows:

"Sadie (played by Tipton), a budding erotic novelist who, along with an enigmatic woman named Francesca, are enticed by an ex-lover to join him at an Italian villa.

Merry Christmas ladies and gentlemen and happy holidays! With today being December 25th and a lot of folks gathering with family and friends around the fireplace, I though it made perfect sense to mention some options for what to watch, aside from the standard holiday options. Sure, there’s plenty of old standbys, but I’m sure you’ve all seen them dozens of times before, so I’m here with a handful of lists to share with you, in the hopes that you might discover something new to enjoy during the Christmas season. I even made sure to post this in the wee hours of the morning (after midnight, essentially) so you can have this as a guide no matter what time you wake up. Consider it a public service and my gift to you the reader! Below you’ll find three different lists, offering up a total of...

Jason from Mnpp here, wishing you and yours a Ha Ha Happy Holidays with a Ho Ho Ho in your heart -- since it's Christmas Week I figured what better way to celebrate the festive mood than with the hilarious and heartfelt brand new Christmas classic, right up there with Batman Returns and Eyes Wide Shut, that is Sean Baker's Tangerine. Like Keiran argued recently my favorite character in the film is also Alexandra (played by a lovely Mya Taylor), but for "Beauty vs Beast" purposes its gotta be Sin-dee (the very funny Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) versus her pimp-snatching rival and "real fish girl" Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan's hilarious performance should be getting more attention too)...

Previously Two weeks ago we looked back at the 25th anniversary of The Grifters and set two of Tfe's fave actresses against each other in a con-woman cage-match -- well repeating history it...

Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Perhaps the year’s most intriguing retrospective is “Lynch/Rivette,” and it begins this weekend. Pairing seven films from David Lynch with eight from Jacques Rivette, it seeks to find commonalities between two thoroughly unique film artists. Things begin with Friday’s double-billing of The Duchess of Langeais and Blue Velvet...

This is a Great film noir. A straying husband's 'innocent' dalliance wrecks lives and puts his marriage in jeopardy. Been there, done that?   Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott are menaced by Raymond Burr, while wife Jane Wyatt is kept in the dark. Andre de Toth's direction puts everyone through the wringer, with a very adult look at the realities of the American marriage contract, circa 1948. Pitfall Blu-ray Kino Lorber Studio Classics 1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt, Raymond Burr, John Litel, Byron Barr, Jimmy Hunt. Cinematography Harry Wild Art Direction Arthur Lonergan Film Editor Walter Thompson Written by Karl Kamb from the novel by Jay Dratler Produced by Samuel Bischoff Directed by André De Toth

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Is 'domestic noir' even a category? I think so. Some of the creepiest late- '40s noir pictures take intrigue,...

Christmas time is almost here and to celebrate early, Nitehawk Cinema has announced special holiday programming beginning on December 10th. Also in this round-up: a Q&A with Landon Gimenez, details on the debut book from Onion Contributor Mike Levine (aka Dr. Vireuss), and All Through the House screening info.

Nitehawk Cinema's Screenings: "It's the most wonderful time of the year, and Nitehawk Cinema will be celebrating the entire month with a full range of repertory and special programming, which will include:

Our Deuce December installment featuring Night Warning on 12/10 - the William Asher cult classic! Our brunch and midnite screenings for December will all be part of the Nitehawk Saves Xmas series, featuring titles such as Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, Elf, and Home Alone.

1. Special Event Screenings

Night Warning (aka Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker) (96 mins, William Asher, 1982)

Thursday, December 10 at 9:30 pm

Price: $15

Part of Nitehawk Cinema's The Deuce series.

Oh, "Spectre," you vex me. You vex me mightily. There is a sense as you're watching the first half of the film that they're having fun playing with the iconography of the entire series, staging scenes that nod at moments from a number of the other films. There's one in particular, a sort of brutal homage to the fight with Robert Shaw on the train in "From Russia With Love," that I think might be the best moment in the film. In those moments, "Spectre" is enjoyable and a fitting entry to celebrate the history of Bond on film. But the things that the film gets wrong, it gets so powerfully wrong that I can honestly say they have retroactively ruined the Daniel Craig films for me. I will have to actively ignore the information and ideas that are introduced here if I'm going to enjoy the three films that have already been released.