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Though the Criterion Collection may be taking their beloved closet on the road to celebrate their 40th anniversary, only the lucky few have been able to step foot in the actual hallowed space. Now, renaissance man Bill Hader can say he’s done so twice. The actor, writer, and director behind the hit HBO series “Barry” first entered the Criterion Closet in 2011. Dressed for the occasion with an orange shirt sporting the Kaibyō from the poster for the 1977 Japanese horror film “House,” Hader drew selections such as Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s grotesque “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” which he referred to at the time as “a great date movie.”

Referencing this pick in his latest video, Hader displayed “Salò” once again and said, “It is not a good date movie. Just want to clear that up.”

After making a few jokes at the expense...

For the past three years, the American Cinematheque has presented “Bleak Week,” an annual festival devoted to the greatest films ever made about the darkest side of humanity. This year, the festival will not only be unspooling in Los Angeles June 1 – 7 — with special guests including Al Pacino, Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman, and Karyn Kusama — but will travel to New York for the first time with a week of screenings at the historic Paris Theater starting June 9.

“We are honored to co-present ‘Bleak Week: New York’ in partnership with one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the world,” Cinematheque artistic director Grant Moninger told IndieWire. “This year, over 10,000 people will attend ‘Bleak Week: Year 3’ in Los Angeles, proving that audiences are hungry for such powerful and confrontational cinema. Many people thought they were alone in their desire to explore films with uncomfortable truths, but the truth is that they are part of a large community,...

John Waters is taking issue with Canada’s moniker of being full of the friendliest citizens — at least not when it comes to cinema ratings.

Waters told the Toronto Star that in 1970, the Ontario censor board allegedly burned a print of his film “Multiple Maniacs,” which had been sent for a rating. Waters didn’t hold back his half-century-long disdain for the offense: “Tell them I spit on their grave,” the “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray” filmmaker said.

“I am pro-Canada, even though I sent ‘Multiple Maniacs’ to the distributor [in 1970], which had to go through the Ontario censor board, and they sent me a receipt that just said ‘destroyed.’ They burned the print!” Water said. “Tell them I spit on their grave.”

He added that since that experience, he’s worked in Canada multiple times.

“I’ve been to Toronto many times with my films and my books. It’s a...

From Serge Daney's Footlights: Critical Notebooks 1970–1982, translated by Nicholas Elliott and published by Semiotext(e). The series Never Look Away: Serge Daney's Radical 1970s screens January 26 through February 4 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York.Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.The fact that Salò is Pasolini’s last film doesn’t mean that it must at all costs be seen as his “will”.1 It’s simpler to see it as the reconstruction of what masters on the road to perdition would do in a final attempt to enjoy [jouir de] their power, in a comparable context (Italian fascism) and a similar setting (Salò).It has too often been forgotten that, in the history of Italian fascism, the republic of Salò (September 1943–January 1944) is only the grotesque final act, the repetition as grand guignol of what had already failed as farce, the setting for “some last cowardly turpitudes.”2 Salò is not fascism triumphant,...

As December begins, you might be looking forward to spending time with friends and family over the holidays—and in need of some gift-giving inspiration. Look no further than Notebook's Cinephile Gift Guide, the proverbial online Shop Around the Corner (1940).Below is our third annual, lovingly curated guide to the holiday season. It's sure to spread film-themed cheer, and we hope it's thorough enough to surprise all of the film fans in your life.Jump to a category:Books about cinemaBooks by filmmakers and artistsHome videoMusicHome goods, posters, and gamesApparel Books About CINEMAFirst up is UK culture and music critic Ian Penman’s kaleidoscopic, genre-bending offering to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors. The book has drawn comparisons to Charles Baudelaire and Roland Barthes, but is undoubtedly a sui generis response to a singular legacy.On offer this year from Another Gaze Editions is My Cinema by Marguerite Duras, a...

Clockwise from top left: Oldboy (Cj Entertainment), Antichrist (IFC Films), Frontier(s) (EuropaCorp), Audition (Vitagraph Films) Graphic: AVClub In 1983, horror movie maestro David Cronenberg was asked why movie audiences like scary films. His answer was that “most people would prefer to [confront their fears] in a metaphorical way, in a controlled way. They...

Clockwise from top left: Oldboy (Cj Entertainment), Antichrist (IFC Films), Frontier(s) (EuropaCorp), Audition (Vitagraph Films)Graphic: AVClub

In 1983, horror movie maestro David Cronenberg was asked why movie audiences like scary films. His answer was that “most people would prefer to [confront their fears] in a metaphorical way, in a controlled way. They...

In 1516, English philosopher Thomas More published Utopia, a piece of speculative fiction filled with musings about the ideal society. Of course, it was all nonsense. So even though it took a few more centuries for the word to come into use, “dystopia” has always captured the human imagination better than utopia. Literally stories about “bad places,” dystopias show humanity at its worst.

As you might expect, dystopias tend to be cynical works of imagination. But that’s not all they are. By looking at how dark things could be, dystopias shine a light on the world as it currently is. Works of literature like Watchmen and television series such as Black Mirror have told their stories about bleak alternate realities to issue warnings about the arms race and social media, making grotesques out of the real world.

While this list of darkest cinematic dystopias may not contain the absolute worst images of humanity,...

Some audiences search out the most disgusting and depraved films that they can find. Movies have the ability to leave their mark on a psychological level or a more visceral one that seeks to leave you feeling queasy and dirty. Here’s a look at 10 movies that are sure to scar you for life.

10. ‘Grotesque’ (2009) L-r: Hiroaki Kawatsure as Kazuo Kojima and Shigeo Ôsako as The Doctor | Media Blasters

A mysterious man identified only as “the doctor” kidnaps a young couple (Hiroaki Kawatsure and Kotoha Hiroyama) and begins to perform extreme torture on them. He puts them through a game for survival designed to slowly destroy their hopes of making it out with their lives.

Kôji Shiraishi’s Grotesque falls into the “torture porn” sub-genre that James Wan’s Saw and Eli Roth’s Hostel popularized in the 2000s. However, this Japanese exploitation horror flick pushes all boundaries, introducing...

Every self-respecting or self-hating cinephile has a relationship — whether twisted, confounding, adoring, appalled, or all of the above — to Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible.” His 2002 would-have-been midnight movie turned international sensation told a rape-revenge story from back to front, starting with the resolution working backward to the events preceding a horrifying crime in a red-lit tunnel in Paris. It starred Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, who were then still married and very much in love and looking for a project to do together. Noé was then a Cannes Critics’ Week wunderkind, high off the modest fumes of the success of 1998’s “I Stand Alone,” and not yet the shock-making director of subsequent films like “Enter the Void” and “Climax” we know now.

“Irréversible” is now being re-released theatrically with a “Straight Cut” — in other words, the sequence of the movie now recut into chronological order — that originated first as a bootleg...

This post contains major spoilers for "Infinity Pool."

In Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises," war veteran Jake Barnes, who has suffered an injury leaving him unable to have sex, tells a friend who's sleeping with his beloved, "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." In Thomas Wolfe's 1940 novel "You Can't Go Home Again," protagonist George Webber, a novelist, returns to his hometown after writing about it in a successful book. The novel's contents have outraged his old neighbors and family, appalled by what had secretly laid within George's psyche.

In Brandon Cronenberg's latest film, "Infinity Pool," writer James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) learns about being caught between these two literary extremes in the most disturbing, humiliating, and embarrassing way possible. Now three films into his directing career, "Infinity Pool" further cements Cronenberg's auteurist signature style, his tropes, themes, and aesthetic.

A pedestrian hurries by the Twitter offices, tweeting an opinion about the trailer for Ari Aster’s new movie. Photo: Angela Weiss Rather than waste time and effort scrolling through social media to find the best opinions about cinema, Twitter user @garaboldin has saved us all a lot of hassle...

This post contains spoilers for "Speak No Evil."

2022 gave us some of the most original horror movies of recent years. Surprise hits like "Barbarian" and "Smile" received considerable recognition and made Disney and Paramount, respectively, a decent profit. But there were a host of innovative and novel horror delights which, though not as popular, pushed the boundaries of the genre in unique and often downright harrowing ways. If it wasn't "Skinamarink" with its liminal trauma nightmare, it was films such as "Speak No Evil" — a movie so upsetting its test screening responses ranged from, "The director has to be mentally examined," to, "This film should not be recommended to human beings."

The idea of a "disturbing movie" has almost become a sub-genre of horror itself. YouTube is littered with videos of TikTok types claiming to have watched "the most disturbing films so you don't have to" or running down a...

Director Luca Guadagnino discusses a few of his favorite films with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Bones And All (2022)

A Bigger Splash (2015)

Suspiria (2018)

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Apocalypse Now (1979) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Amarcord (1973) – Bernard Rose’s trailer commentary

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Jason And The Argonauts (1963) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

After Hours (1985) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Journey To Italy (1954)

Empire Of The Sun (1987)

The Flower Of My Secret (1995)

The Last Emperor (1987) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

1900 (1976)

Last Tango In Paris (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Psycho (1960) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Suspiria (1977) – Edgar Wright’s U.S. and international trailer commentaries,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNighthawks.Buenos Aires—1970s Los Angeles—outer space—all of these destinations are contained in Issue 2 of the Notebook print magazine, which will ship out at the end of January. Click here to learn more and subscribe.If you read this New York Times profile of Jennifer Lawrence carefully, you’ll find that she is planning a project with Lynne Ramsay—an adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love. In a follow-up tweet, Kyle Buchanan added that Martin Scorsese will produce.X Crucior is the heavy-metal name of the next film project written by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks—a musical, of course, continuing their momentum with Annette (2021). No director is attached yet, but if it's not too much to ask, a reunion with Guy Maddin would be fun.According to The Times,...

The idea of a grown man having sex with a teenage girl is disturbing. This is — sort of — the point of "Roost." I think? It's never really clear what the thriller is trying to say. To be honest, I may have just missed the memo: partway through this film, my urge to crawl out of my skin was so strong that I think my soul left my body. When it was all over, I stumbled out of the theater in a haze, mumbling apologies to those I bumped into, desperately searching for a dark quiet corner to silently scream in private.

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, "Roost" is a drama about a young 16-year-old girl who falls in love with a much older man via FaceTime. Why she didn't clue in that he was older by the glaringly obvious signs is a mystery. Maybe she was blinded by his flattery of her poetry.

Some films are so disgusting, repellent, violent, prurient, or tasteless that audiences find themselves unable to easily define them.

Films like Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," Gaspar Noë's "Irreversible," Ruggerio Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust," Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer," Tom Six's "The Human Centipede" trilogy, or even John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" are all brazenly confrontational films, each seemingly intended not to draw the audience in, but send the audience out. To keep viewers repelled and disgusted. One might argue that such "extreme" cinema seeks not merely to elicit a visceral response from an audience -- as, say, a mid-2000s torture porn film may do -- but to move them to a level of disgust so intense that they cannot help but push their mind into the realm of politics and philosophy.

To state a broad point: "Extreme" horror,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDore O.'s Alaska (1968)The German avant-garde artist Dore O., whose poetic films were at once vast and intimate explorations of dreams, has died at 75. O. was a founder of the Hamburg Filmmakers Co-op (1968-1974), a participant in the famous German exhibit documenta 5 in 1972, and a prolific painter. The DVD label Re:voir Video had recently released a collection of six restored films by O. In 1988, the critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote: "Dore O. has become classic, and suddenly it turns out that her work has passed the various currents of time unharmed: the time of the cooperative union, the women's film, the structuralists and grammarians, the teachers of new ways of seeing."Subscriptions are now open for Notebook magazine, our print-only publication devoted to the art and culture of cinema. Subscribe now and you’ll...

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, whose latest feature “Rimini” plays in the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, is winding down production on his next film, Variety can reveal.

“Sparta” is a companion piece to Seidl’s competition entry and revolves around the brother of that film’s protagonist, the washed-up singer Richie Bravo. “[‘Rimini’] actually originated as a much larger story,” the director told Variety. “This original story that I started writing was about the two brothers and their father.” Though Seidl wouldn’t share further details about the plot of “Sparta,” he noted that “both protagonists are caught up by their past.”

Marking the director’s return to the Berlinale’s main competition since 2013’s “Paradise: Hope,” “Rimini” is the story of a faded middle-aged crooner trying to make ends meet in the titular Italian resort town during a bleak, blustery off-season. His precarious world is...

The director of Spencer, Pablo Larraín, discusses a few of his favorite movies with host Josh Olson.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Spencer (2021)

Jackie (2016)

Tony Manero (2008)

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) – David DeCoteau’s trailer commentary

Back To The Future (1985) – Tfh’s time-traveling quiz

Fitzcarraldo (1982) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Herzog guide

Burden of Dreams (1982)

Aguirre: The Wrath Of God (1972)

Paris, Texas (1984) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary

Dr. Strangelove (1964) – Michael Lehman’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

Salò, Or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Theorem (1968)

Medea (1969)

Naked (1993)

Secrets And Lies (1996) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Vera Drake (2004)

Topsy-Turvy (1999)

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

A History Of Violence (2005)

There Will Be Blood (2007)

The Master (2012)

Phantom Thread (2017) – Dennis...

Filmmaking provocateur Gaspar Noé is back with a surprise new film, “Vortex.” A mysterious, Instagram-style first-look image from the drama has been released, showing someone ghostlike under a bedsheet. Not much about “Vortex” is known yet, though it will have its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the newly created Cannes Premiere section. The cast includes the iconic Italian director Dario Argento, plus Françoise Lebrun and Alex Lutz.

A report in Variety on the film’s Cannes premiere describes “Vortex” as “a documentary-style film revolving around the last days of an elderly couple.” ScreenDaily reports that Noé “had been racing to finish the film” for Cannes, as production only started this year. Some intel dug up by The Film Stage pegs “Vortex” as fusing the styles of French filmmaker Jean Eustache and the Italian giallo horror genre, of which Argento is a figurehead. No official details from...

John Waters has released Prayer to Pasolini in conjunction with his 75th birthday on April 22nd. A tribute to controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Waters’ audio set is currently available in digital format. A 7-inch vinyl version of the two-part title track is available as part of Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 6 and is limited to 1000 copies.

The directors were both maligned in the Seventies for Waters’ Pink Flamingos and Pasolini’s final work, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, over explicit scenes that led to the films being banned.

Italy is bringing to an end a century-long policy of film censorship. The country has abolished state censorship of films by scrapping legislation that has been in place since 1913, which allowed the government to censor and ban movies such as Pasolini’s Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. […]

The post Italy Officially Abolishes Government Film Censorship appeared first on /Film.

Italy has officially abolished film censorship by scrapping legislation that since 1913 has allowed the government to censor scenes and ban movies such as, most famously, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris.”

The move — which is symbolically important, though censorship is de-facto no longer practiced — definitively does away with “the system of controls and interventions that still allowed the Italian state to intervene on the freedom of artists,” said Culture Minister Dario Franceschini who late Monday announced a new decree ending the government’s powers to censor cinema.

Hundreds of films from all over the world have been banned locally during the past decades for religious, “moral” and political reasons.

Under the new decree, film distributors will self-classify their own movies based on existing audience age brackets such as “over-14″ (or aged 12+ if accompanied by a parent) and “over 18” (or 16+ accompanied by adults).

Subsequently,...

Welcome back to Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel, I invite a guest to discuss an arthouse, foreign, or experimental film of their choice.

Warning: The episode features discussions about suicide. If you feel you are in crisis or know someone who is struggling, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It is a free, 24-hour hotline at 1.800.273.Talk (8255).

For the eleventh episode, I switched up the format of the show a little bit and talked to both Charlie Nash, a contributor at Edge Media and various other publications, and his close friend, William Willoughby, a veteran who was kind enough to speak about the film’s relationship with his own Ptsd, about Elem Klimov’s controversial and influential 1985 Russian anti-war film, Come and See––which is available on The Criterion Collection and to stream on The Criterion Channel. Klimov’s...

Italian film producer whose credits included Last Tango in Paris and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The producer Alberto Grimaldi, who has died aged 95, worked with most of the giants of Italian cinema, including Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. Fittingly for someone who began his career as a lawyer, he seemed to spend almost as much time in court, defending the films he had developed and financed, as he did on set. Hardly surprising when his credits included Bertolucci’s erotic chamber piece Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Pasolini’s remorseless study of fascism, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). These were among eight of his films that Italian censors and prosecutors accused of offending public decency.

After a three-year legal battle over Last Tango in Paris, Grimaldi received a suspended prison sentence in 1976, along with the director and the film’s stars,...

Kaludjercic has worked at leading festivals and at top sales and distribution outfits.

Growing up in her native Croatia against the backdrop of the violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia, Vanja Kaludjercic had limited access to cinema, let alone auteur filmmaking.

“I’d always been interested in cinema and culture but there wasn’t much going on at all for many years after the war,” says Kaludjercic, who kicks-off her maiden edition as artistic director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) this week.

Rotterdam is the latest chapter in a remarkable 20-year career that has encompassed roles in the...

Let the best-of-the-year lists commence. While guilds and critics groups will soon be delivering their opinions, one of the few of genuine interest each year comes from a single person: the wonderfully eccentric director John Waters, whose eclectic tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen.

Topping his list this year is Tyler Cornack’s spring release Butt Boy, which features a strange tale of missing persons potentially disappearing up someone’s rectum, followed by the recommended psychological body horror film Swallow. Also among the list are the latest films from Pedro Almodóvar, Craig Zobel, Quentin Dupieux and, as a 10th place tie leading to 11 selections, new courtroom dramas by Steve McQueen and Aaron Sorkin.

Check out the list below via Baltimore Fishbowl, which will appear in the next issue of Artforum. We’ve also included links to our reviews.

1. Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)

2. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)

3. The Hunt...

If you put a big red button in front of someone and tell them not to push the button, all that person is going to want to do is push the damn thing.

So then to the strange case of Megan is Missing, a low budget exploitation movie shot in 2006, given a limited release in 2011 which is now suddenly trending due to some high profile TikTok users talking about how utterly horrible it is and apparently warning others off with hyperbolic statements such as:

@bella.clare

please watch this film at your own risk. It is something i will never watch again . i am forever traumatized.

@lilnutmegg

If you are thinking of watching Megan is Missing, please don’t. I love horror/thriller/murder mysteries and I can watch them very easily, but this one I will never ever forget. I couldn’t even finish it.

Not to miss a trick,...

Tinto Brass's Deadly Attractions and Sinful Desires is showing September - October, 2020 on Mubi.Above: Salon KittyKnown today as a maestro of erotic cinema, Italian director Tinto Brass’s legendary status is hard-won and attributable to his dogged dedication to filming sex. There’s a whiff of aimless opportunism in his genre-hopping early career, which included flirtations with neorealism, psychedelic experimentalism, and even a spaghetti western. But in Salon Kitty (1976), his first English-language film, Brass began to consolidate and wield influences. Salon Kitty brandishes its references in plain acknowledgement of the director’s derivative tendencies, meanwhile offering glimpses of Brass-original motifs that he would later (rather ingeniously) repurpose in erotic contexts. In Salon Kitty, we can perceive the director’s artistic resolve stiffening, amounting to a film that’s greater than the sum of its cherry-picked parts. Based on the stranger-than-fiction, true story of a Berlin brothel of co-opted...

Just judging by the slate, last year’s New York Film Festival offered a testament to the nearly six-decade-old fest’s place in the fall awards circuit firmament, and in New York filmgoing culture. Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” world premiered on opening night last year, and a strong slate of future Oscar nominees all had their Gotham bows at the fest.

This year is a different story, for reasons that should be all too obvious, and the festival is making no bones about its off-year status, right down to a cheeky John Waters-designed poster that brags: “No awards! No world premieres! Fewer films than Toronto!” Not that many New Yorkers are likely to care about such old-normal measuring sticks, especially when the festival is offering a cornucopia of well-curated cinema that will unspool over a leisurely pace, starting Sept. 25 and extending through Oct. 11. Below are some highlights.

At...

John Waters is the designer of the 58th New York Film Festival poster and is presenting Art Movie Hell at the Drive-In Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center revealed today the 58th New York Film Festival poster, featuring Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, Barry Jenkins, Agnès Varda, and Jean-Luc Godard. The poster was designed pre-pandemic by John Waters. He also selected two films for his John Waters Presents: Art Movie Hell at the Drive-In, Gaspar Noé’s Climax and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days Of Sodom.

58th New York Film Festival poster designed by John Waters

“Waters’s NYFF58 poster is both a fond tribute and witty parody of the historic festival, poking fun at the long-held stereotypes, valid critiques, and presumed pomp and circumstance of the annual Lincoln Center event. The concept was developed before the current health crisis, in collaboration with and inspired by Globe Poster,...

Each year, the New York Film Festival invites an artist to take a crack at visually representing the event with an exclusive poster, and this year, it’s cult filmmaker John Waters’ turn to do the honors. His movies having been perennially shut out of the New York Film Festival, Waters makes his NYFF debut here, with a poster featuring the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Martin Scorsese, Barry Jenkins, Agnès Varda, and Jean-Luc Godard. The poster serves as a parody of critiques hurled at the festival over the years. See below.

“Since none of my films were ever chosen to be in the New York Film Festival, I was thrilled to be asked to design this year’s poster. I always knew I’d get my ass in there somehow!” Waters said. “What better way to show my respect and irreverence for this prestigious event than to bring along Globe Poster,...

When Dau. Natasha premiered at the Berlinale less than a moon cycle ago it was unprecedented and an entirely unique film. We now have precedent for the Dau movies and they are the Dau movies themselves. Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s constructed totalitarian nightmare is justifiably taking fire at the moment (over allegations regarding consent and the mistreatment of actors) but if Degeneration is to be the last Dau feature to see the light of day it will be a fitting coda. Yes, Natasha was a startling introduction–as provocative as it was fascinating–but Degeneration is something else: the first Dau epic novel and, perhaps, the first masterpiece of the series.

All in all, the two are scarcely comparable. Natasha had a running time of 146 minutes and took place over the course of a few days in the early ‘50s, with only a spattering of events and characters seen on screen.

Hot off the breakthrough success of 2018’s “I Can Only Imagine,” Alabaman brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin are back to convert an even wider secular audience with another harmless and tin-eared Christian rock biopic that combines the melodrama of Douglas Sirk with the edginess of Bible camp. But while “I Still Believe” name-checks Jesus so often that he should probably get residuals for it, this heartrending true story about love, loss, and

Or at least it might have been if the Erwin brothers weren’t so unwaveringly earnest with their sermonizing — so hellbent on finding God that they forgot to make any of their characters feel human. Sanitized to the point that it makes “A Walk to Remember” seem like “Salò” by comparison. Led by a “Riverdale” actor whose outspoken piety can’t offset the suspicion that he was body-snatched away from his sinful day job at the CW (the...

This year Locarno International Film Festival celebrates its 70th anniversary. It is one of the most admired and respected film festivals in the world and historically a festival that has been combining tradition and innovation. We had the privilege to discuss some ideas on cinema, curatorship and festivals worldwide with its artistic director Carlo Chatrian, who has been running Locarno for 5 years now.Notebook: Can you share a few thoughts of what we can expect from the 70th edition of the Locarno Film Festival?Carlo Chatrian: Locarno reaches its 70th edition, but we do not want to make a simple celebration. Instead, we want to look ahead rather than look back to the great history of the festival. That's why we decided to have a special section called the Locarno70 which will show debut films that have premiered in Locarno all through its long history. For me, it’s a...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV 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.)

This week’s question: Inspired by Baby Groot’s “Mr. Blue Sky” dance sequence at the beginning of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” what movie has the best opening credits sequence?

April Wolfe (@awolfeful), La Weekly

Hands down, it’s R.W. Fassbinder’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun.” I watch the opening sequence at least three times a year and show it to every filmmaker I can. I love any film that begins with a bang, and this one does quite literally: We open up on an explosion that rips out a hunk of brick wall, exposing a German couple in the middle of a rushed marriage ceremony.

Mark, Aaron, Cole, and Dustin go further than most people want to go. This is our exploration of the gross film, and whether the subgenre has any artistic merit. Our main episode is a deeper look at Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), followed by a history of gore and violence in film, and then a discussion about Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò.

About the film:

Lars von Trier shook up the film world when he premiered Antichrist at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In this graphic psychodrama, a grief-stricken man and woman—a searing Willem Dafoe and Cannes best actress winner Charlotte Gainsbourg—retreat to their cabin deep in the woods after the accidental death of their infant son, only to find terror and violence at the hands of nature and, ultimately, each other. But this most confrontational work yet from one of contemporary cinema...

Each weekend we highlight the best repertory programming that New York City has to offer, and it’s about to get even better. Opening on February 19th at 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is Metrograph, the city’s newest indie movie theater. Sporting two screens, they’ve announced their first slate, which includes retrospectives for Fassbinder, Wiseman, Eustache, and more, special programs such as an ode to the moviegoing experience, and new independent features that we’ve admired on the festival circuit (including Afternoon, Office 3D, and Measure of a Man).

Artistic and Programming Director Jacob Perlin says in a press release, “Jean Eustache in a Rocky t-shirt. This is the image we had in mind while making this first calendar. Great cinema is there, wherever you can find it. The dismissed film now recognized as a classic, the forgotten box-office hit newly resurrected, the high and the low,...

In an ideal world, every filmmaker would live long enough to see the premiere of their final film, even if their life is ended sooner than expected. It’s one thing to experience shooting the film and editing the final product, but it is another thing entirely to witness your creation with an audience seeing it for the first time. Pier Paolo Pasolini is one such director who never witnessed his final film in the company of an audience. 20 days before the premiere of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom at the 1975 Paris Film Festival, an unknown assailant, or group of assailants, murdered Pasolini. A well-known provocateur in film and the political arena, Pasolini unknowingly saved his most controversial work for last.

Salò is a notorious adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s equally infamous novel The 120 Days of Sodom. In Pasolini’s film, however, the novel’s four wealthy,...

On November 2, 1975, the body of Pier Paolo Pasolini was found by a beach in Rome’s Ostia neighborhood. Being the result of a heavy beating and multiple run-overs by his own car, this death is so ignoble — and so mysterious; despite a conviction, the culprit has never really, truly been identified — that it casts a permanent pall over his legacy. (Worse yet, as one below video will show, that Pasolini was still working on Salò, a movie whose controversial status is only heightened by the murder.) Today marks the horrible occasion’s 40th anniversary, but it doesn’t necessitate mourning. If anything, now is a time to honor the man who always forced us to consider things we might not wish to acknowledge — our desires, our vices, our limits, our connections to art, and our relationship with the alternately beautiful and disgusting human body.

Embedded for your viewing pleasure, then,...

Special Mention: Dead Ringers

Directed by David Cronenberg

Written by David Cronenberg and Norman Snider

Canada, 1988

Genre: Thriller / Drama

Dead Ringers is one of David Cronenberg’s masterpieces, and Jeremy Irons gives the most highly accomplished performance of his entire career – times two. This is the story of Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both played by Irons), identical twins who, since birth, have been inseparable. Together, they work as gynecologists in their own clinic, and literally share everything between them, including the women they work and sleep with. Jealousy comes between the two when Beverly falls in love with a new patient and decides he no longer wants to share his lady friend with Elliot. The twins, who have always existed together as one, have trouble adapting and soon turn against one another. Unlike the director’s previous films, the biological horror in Dead Ringers is entirely conveyed through the psychological...

Europictures

Rating: ★★★

Abel Ferrara has been toying with the idea of making a film on the life of late Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini since the early 1990s. The original idea was set to be quite different from the one we’ve got, mind, and would see actress and collaborator Zoe Lund (Ms. 45, Bad Lieutenant) playing a sort-of female version of Pasolini living the life that he did (the project was scrapped when Lund tragically died in 1997).

It’s easy to understand why Ferrara, the enfant terrible of New York cinema, was and is attracted to Pasolini: both men have been accused of peddling exploitation from those who find their work morally objectionable but, conversely, they have also been hailed as genuine auteurs and makers of important art (Pasolini more so than Ferrara, it must be said).

Pasolini chronicles the final 24 hours in the late director, novelist, critic and intellectual’s life.

Abel Ferrara’s account of the last days of the Italian auteur, played by Willem Dafoe, is beautiful and enigmatic

“Narrative art is dead – we are in a period of mourning”; “To scandalise is a right, to be scandalised a pleasure”; “Refusal must be great, absolute, absurd…” Abel Ferrara’s infatuated tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini is littered with such gnomic bon mots, which could apply equally to either director. Like Pasolini, Ferrara has courted both outrage and admiration; he made his name with The Driller Killer, and remains most celebrated for Bad Lieutenant, a film drenched in equal parts with Catholic ideology and censor-baiting exploitation.

This handsomely oblique film focuses on the very end of Pasolini’s life, as he completes work on Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom and makes plans for Porno-Teo-Kolossal, the unmade magnum opus which is here reimagined by Ferrara in startling, elegiac fashion. Willem Dafoe...

Anomalisa wins Grand Jury Prize; Robert Pattinson-starrer The Childhood Of A Leader wins best debut.Scroll down for full list of winners

From Afar (Desde Alla), the first Venezuelan production to appear in Competition at the Venice Film Festival, has won the Golden Lion for Best Film.

The directorial debut of Lorenzo Vigas concerns a middle-aged man (Alfredo Castro) who pays young boys to spend time with him. One day he befriends an 18-year-old delinquent (Luis Silva), a development that affects both profoundly.

The film, sold by Celluloid Dreams, is produced by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who co-wrote the script.

The Silver Lion for Best Director went to Argentinian film-maker Pablo Trapero for kidnap drama The Clan (El Clan).

Trapero has a good relationship with Venice, having won two prizes for his 1999 debut, Crane World, returning in 2004 with Rolling Family and sitting on the Golden Lion jury in 2012.

The Clan is based on the real-life exploits...

Over the past few years, the Venice Film Festival, which celebrates its 72nd anniversary in September, has presented newly restored versions of classic films in the Classics section at the festival. Yesterday their list of restored films to be shown was released, and among the 21 classic films selected are Akira Kurosawa’s 1965 "Red Beard," Sergej Ėisenstein’s 1938 epic "Alexander Nevsky," 1946 fantasy "A Matter of Life and Death" co-directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s highly controversial and graphic 1975 film "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom." But a very welcome surprise was...

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij among Venice Classics titles; Bertrand Tavernier selects four films.

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij and A Matter of Life and Death are among 21 titles announced today to screen in Venice’s (September 2-12) Classics section, which will reveal further titles later this month.

Director Bertrand Tavernier, who is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award, has selected and will present four films for the Classics strand: Pattes Blances (White Paws) by Jean Grémillion, La Lupa (The Vixen) by Alberto Lattuada, Sonnenstrahl (Ray of Sunshine) by Pál Fejös and A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger.

The 21 restorations:

Akahige (Red Beard) by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1965, 185’, B&W), restoration by Tōhō Co., Ltd.

Aleksandr Nevskij (Alexander Nevsky) by Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn (Ussr, 1938, 108’, B&W), restoration by Mosfilm

Amarcord by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1973, 123’, Color) restoration by Cineteca di Bologna with the support of yoox.com and the...

Top 100 horror movies of all time: Chicago Film Critics' choices (photo: Sigourney Weaver and Alien creature show us that life is less horrific if you don't hold grudges) See previous post: A look at the Chicago Film Critics Association's Scariest Movies Ever Made. Below is the list of the Chicago Film Critics's Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time, including their directors and key cast members. Note: this list was first published in October 2006. (See also: Fay Wray, Lee Patrick, and Mary Philbin among the "Top Ten Scream Queens.") 1. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock; with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam. 2. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin; with Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow (and the voice of Mercedes McCambridge). 3. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter; with Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Tony Moran. 4. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott; with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt. 5. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero; with Marilyn Eastman,...

Scariest movies ever made: The top 100 horror films according to the Chicago Film Critics (photo: Janet Leigh, John Gavin and Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho') I tend to ignore lists featuring the Top 100 Movies (or Top 10 Movies or Top 20 Movies, etc.), no matter the category or criteria, because these lists are almost invariably compiled by people who know little about films beyond mainstream Hollywood stuff released in the last decade or two. But the Chicago Film Critics Association's list of the 100 Scariest Movies Ever Made, which came out in October 2006, does include several oldies — e.g., James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein — in addition to, gasp, a handful of non-American horror films such as Dario Argento's Suspiria, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, and F.W. Murnau's brilliant Dracula rip-off Nosferatu. (Check out the full list of the Chicago Film Critics' top 100 horror movies of all time.

Abel Ferrara's Pasolini has released its first trailer.

Willem Dafoe will take on the eponymous role as the controversial filmmaker in the biopic.

Pier Paolo Pasolini was best known for his work on films such as Marquis de Sade adaptation Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and The Gospel According to St Matthew.

The film focuses on the filmmaker's final days.

After Pasolini was murdered, a prostitute confessed to the crime but later claimed that he had been forced to do so when his family was threatened.

Pasolini's muse Ninetto Davoli also features in the movie.

The film is yet to announce a release date.