Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Network (1976)

Arthur: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard: Why me?

Arthur: Because you're on television, dummy.

60 million people watch you every night of the week,
Monday through Friday.

Howard: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Sidney Lumet's Network has been released on 4K blu-ray today thanks to the fine folks at Criterion -- watch it today and despair at how timely it remains. Everybody remembers Howard Beale's speech about getting up and screaming futilely out your windows that you're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but it's what's done with that -- how the media and government collude to commodify and dull our rage itself -- that really makes Network tick, and stick. It's wild how long we've been driving off this cliff for y'all!

Man Not There, Woman Under Influence

If I was forced at gun-point (or perhaps in this instance umbrella-point is more apt) to list the ten most beautiful movies ever made, Jacques Tati's 1967 masterpiece Playtime would handily be on said list -- I've watched this sucker projected on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art, for goodness's ake. And I don't mean inside one of their movie theaters -- I mean in the actual art part of the museum they had this several minutes of this film projected on a wall right beside paintings for a few years and every time I walked past it I would sit down on the bench provided and re-watch the footage for the gazillionth time. It's about as perfect as such things go and so the news that Criterion is dropping the film onto 4K disc this upcoming February is some happy news indeed. (And obviously the folks at Criterion agree with me on this film's stature since this FOURTH release they've given it, after DVD, blu-ray, and their must-own Tati box-set.)

Indeed I don't usually start these monthly Criterion release announcement posts with one of their now constant 4K upgrades, but Playtime on 4K is obviously a most special ocassion. The rest of February's hardly a slouch though -- take for instance Sidney Lumet's 1976 media master-class Network, which is entering the esteemed Collection for the first time, and also in 4K. That movie turns 50 next year and feels as timely as ever -- and of course I speak of how we all would still have sex with Old William Holden even if we were hot young things like Faye Dunaway was. Obviously! Why -- what did you think I was talking about? 

Next up on February 3rd there's the 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma, which I must admit I've never seen -- I've seen the remake with Christian Bale but never the original with Glenn Ford. Should I? Tell me your opinion as if you're talking to someone who doesn't have a lot of patience with Westerns in general. Because you are. Nor do I have a lot of patience for John Cassavetes' much-beloved 1974 drama A Woman Under the Influence, which is getting what I believe is its first standalone release after being part of the Cassavetes box-set previously. I tend to agree with Pauline Kael's infamous opinion here -- that Rowlands is just doing Way Too Much in this movie. I understand why actors love the performance, but as a viewer I'm just not into it. (That said I'm sure this is getting this standalone drop because of Rowlands' recent passing and that's nice for her fans.)

February ain't stopping there, though -- you want a box-set of Ernst Lubitsch's musicals, you say? Well you got it! Their reinstated "Eclipse Series" is unloading four of the champagne-synonymous filmmaker's movies starting with The Love Parade in 1929 right through One Hour With You in 1932. I haven't seen a single one of these, but every time I have seen The Love Parade's title anywhere I think of that being the title of Tobey Maguire's book in Wonder Boys. (Is that weird? I'm weird. God I love Wonder Boys. Put Wonder Boys in the Criterion Collection dammit!) After that there's the great Kiyoshi Kurosawa's most recent thriller Cloud, which also happens to be streaming on Criterion Channel right now -- it's about an online reseller becoming unhinged as he tries to score questionable deals, and yes I related to it an awful lot. Which brings us to the last but hardly least February drop -- the Coen Brothers' 2001 black-and-white Noir-riff The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Scarlett Johannson among many others. Here's where I admit I don't think I've seen this since it came out? Which is strange indeed because I remember liking it. Huh. Well now's my chance! 

What out of February 2026's releases has you most excited?

May Showers Meet Umbrellas at Criterion

One of the most beautiful and romantic and perfect movies ever made, Jacques Demy's musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo as perhaps the most gorgeous couple ever put on-screen, is getting a 4K upgrade from the Criterion Collection in May! We knew this was coming because the restoration of the film played theaters earlier this year but it's still banner news! They have released this film in a box-set of Demy's movies before but I don't think any of us who love it will be able to resist upgrading it to 4K -- if ever a movie was made for 4K it's this one, with its color-scape that will make your eyes explode.

I watch this movie about every six months and never grow tired of it and I could just post pictures from it all day honestly, but Criterion has a busy May release calendar -- they're dropping six movies! Seven actually since one of these is a double-feature! So we should move on and get to the rest of the month. That double feature is Richard Lester's two Musketeers movies from 1973 and 1974, which star Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine and Chaplin among many others -- these movies are a lot of swashbuckling big-cast 70s fun. 

Next up a pair of classics I've been meaning to see for a very long time but still haven't yet -- Charles Burnett's 1978 Los Angeles poetic race drama Killer of Sheep and Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us from 1999. Killer of Sheep always make the "best movies ever made" lists while the Kiarostami film is sometimes called his greatest achievment and given the competition for that title that's really something. Any lovers of these two out here? 

Then there's Bruce Robinson's two Richard E. Grant showcases Withnail & I and How To Get Ahead in Advertising -- these I know are both fantastic movies since I've seen them both! I'm especially infatuated with the latter, which I only saw a couple of years ago and was blown away by. It feels super ahead of its time and is very very very funny. And then finally the sixth release is a 4K upgrade of In the Heat of the Night, because if there's one thing we need 200% more of in 2025 it's slapping white racists across the face. Gimme!

Super Schoenaerts Away

Finally, some news on our beloved Matthias Schoenaerts, who we haven't seen or heard much of since The Regime ended -- he was so great on that show, you guys -- Deadline reported earlier this week (thx Mac) that he will play the villain in a new Supergirl movie. Which... well, you know. A superhero movie doesn't excite me a whole lot. For a second I pictured him playing the Faye Dunaway role from the 1984 movie though, and...

... that was exciting. But no they say the bad guy will probably be a character named "Krem of the Yellow Hills" which... uhh yeah okay. That's a name. In the comic the character is the one that kills "a young alien girl's father [and] draws Supergirl into the conflict." I guess this one is a big sci-fi story they say, and not your typical superhero origin story. Sure. Milly Alcock from House of the Dragon has been cast as Supergirl, and in good news Craig Gillespie of I, Tonya and the Pam & Tommy miniseries is directing the film. I tend to like Gillespie's stuff more than I don't. And then in maybe the best news out of all of this, Matthias' character as drawn in the comic is a shirtless bearded ginger stud:

He could pull that off.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from 

Chinatown (1974) 

Noah Cross: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people
never have to face the fact

that at the right time and the right place,
they're capable of ANYTHING.

The masterpiece Chinatown is turning 50 in June and Paramount is doing the wise thing and dropping the film on a beautiful 4K remastered edition for the anniversary -- pre-order it right here. It really looks like the edition to have -- not only is it loaded with the usual kinds of special features (as if the film itself isn't all the special feature one needs) but the set also includes Jack Nicholson's 1990 sequel The Two Jakes, which he directed on top of reprising his role of the notorious private dick Jake Gittes. I know its reputation isn't a shadow of the original film's, but I can't remember whtether I have ever seen The Two Jakes or not -- if I did it was decades ago when I was too young to really pay attention. Have you seen it?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Buck: Hey, you wanna hear a story 'bout this boy? He owned a dairy farm, see. And his ol' Ma, she was kinda sick, you know. And the doctor, he had called him come over, and said, uh, "Uhh listen, your Ma, she's lyin' there, she's just so sick and she's weakly, and uh, uh I want ya to try to persuade her to take a little brandy," you see. Just to pick her spirits up, ya know. And "Ma's a teetotaler," he says. "She wouldn't touch a drop." "Well, I'll tell ya whatcha do, uh," - the doc - "I'll tell ya whatcha do, you bring in a fresh quart of milk every day and you put some brandy in it, see. And see. You try that." So he did. And he doctored it all up with the brandy, fresh milk, and he gave it to his Mom. And she drank a little bit of it, you know. So next day, he brought it in again and she drank a little more, you know. And so they went on that way for the third day and just a little more, and the fourth day, she was, you know, took a little bit more - and then finally, one week later, he gave her the milk and she just drank it down. Boy, she swallowed the whole, whole, whole thing, you know. And she called him over and she said, "Son, whatever you do, don't sell that cow!"

A very happy 93 to Gene Hackman today!

What's your favorite Hackman performance?

Michael Angarano, Maybe Male Centerfold

One day post-announcement and I'm already ready to set my DVR to record Minx, an upcoming series for HBO Max that Bridesmaids director Paul Feig is producing, which THR describes as "a half-hour comedy set in L.A. in the 1970s about a young feminist who joins forces with a low-rent publisher to create the first erotic magazine for women." Okay let's be real -- I was ready to hit record five seconds after seeing the show will star New Girl's Jake Johnson as the "low-rent producer" as well as, in an undisclosed role, our boy here Michael Angarano (aka Bertie forever Bertie). They might not be disclosing anything but given how un-shy Angarano's been over the past several years I'd honestly be shocked, shocked, if he wasn't playing a centerfold. The show will be led by Ophelia Lovibond from Elementary, and is being run by writer Ellen Rapoport -- there's a very funny story in that THR link about her showing up at her meeting with HBO with an entire trunk full of 70s pornography that'd already won me over on her, and then I checked her IMDb and saw she worked on Faye Dunaway's reality show The Starlet and I have just now named Ellen Rapoport a gay icon. Don't let me down, lady! Here's the idea, just with fewer pants:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Supergirl (1984)

Bianca: My dear Nigel, the way to a woman's heart
is through the elimination of her rivals.

A happy 80 to Brenda Vaccaro today!

.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1981

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I know I should be putting the finishing (or thereabouts) touches on our "Best of 2018" list but I need a break from that, so let's distract ourselves this afternoon with an afternoon round of our "Siri Says" series, which we haven't done since before the holidays. So I asked the lady who lives inside of my telephone for a number between 1 and 100 and today's pick is "81" so we will now head to The Movies of 1981 and pick our five favorites.

One sidenote about this year: 1981 is known far and wide as the prime year for my beloved Slasher Film genre - dozens of them were released in the wake of the enormous success of the original Friday the 13th the year before, capitalizing on its patented brand of nubile things plus knife tips. There are enough that I could make a list from just those and have plenty left over! Maybe I will sometime. But not today. Today we're being classy. Well, you know, as classy as I get. I still made room for Sam Raimi and exploding heads. I ain't no dummy.

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1981

Raiders of the Lost Ark

(dir. Steven Spielberg)

-- released on June 12th 1981 --

The Evil Dead

(dir. Sam Raimi)

-- released on October 15th 1981 --

Blow Out

(dir. Brian de Palma)

-- released on July 24th 1981 --

Scanners

(dir. David Cronenberg)

-- released on January 14th 1981 --

Possession 

(dir. Andrzej Zulawski)

-- released on May 27 1981 --

--------------------------------------

Runners-up: An American Werewolf in London (dir. John Landis), Time Bandits (dir. Terry Gilliam), Mommie Dearest (dir. Frank Perry), Reds (dir. Warren Beatty), Halloween II (dir. Rick Rosenthal), Body Heat (dir. Lawrence Kasdan)...

...... The Decline of Western Civilization (dir. Penelope Spheeris), Lili Marleen (dir. Fassbinder), Lola (dir. Fassbinder), The Burning (dir. Tony Maylam), Pennies From Heaven (dir. Herbert Ross), Road Games (dir. Richard Franklin), My Bloody Valentine (dir. George Mihalka), The Howling (dir. Joe Dante)...

... Polyester (dir. John Waters), Looker (dir. Michael Crichton), Superman II (dir. Lester / Donner), Happy Birthday To Me (dir. J Lee Thompson), The Funhouse (dir. Tobe Hooper), Escape From New York (dir. John Carpenter), Excalibur (dir. John Boorman), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (dir. George Miller), Friday the 13th: Part 2 (dir. Steve Miner)

--------------------------------------

Never seen: Thief (dir. Michael Mann), Gallipoli (dir. Peter Weir), My Dinner With Andre (dir. Louis Malle), Shock Treatment (dir. Jim Sharman), Taxi Zum Klo (dir. Frank Ripploh), Endless Love (dir. Shana Feste), Arthur (dir. Steve Gordon), Chariots of Fire (dir. Hugh Hudson), Diva (dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix), Quartet (dir. James Ivory), Modern Romance (dir. Albert Brooks), The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Bob Rafelson)

--------------------------------------

What are your favorites movies of 1981?

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Dunaway the Right Way

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Twas Dame Faye Dunaway's birthday yesterday and we wished her a resplendent one her least favorite way possible - by bringing up Mommie Dearest again! Click on over to The Film Experience for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" poll, of which she was both, a lot of both.

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BHFF Review: Knife + Heart

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Reporting from the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest for the next week!

There's always been a rabid queerness nipping at the heels of the films of Brian De Palma and Dario Argento - the latter's had a litany of sexually-fluid side-characters, and then of course there's the controversial (even at its time) cross-dressing slasher of Dressed to Kill. But even when they're not being explicit about it the construction of gender and the modern-day subversions of those norms has always been at the front of their minds. Well if not their minds their, uh, cameras, anyway.

More recently filmmakers like Pedro Almodovar began making those subtexts text - Bad Education and The Skin I Live In are lusty treatises on the subject. And now comes Knife + Heart, director Yann Gonzalez's latest which thrusts him right into the company of those mavericks - thrust being the operative word; "opera" being apt while we're at it, too. Call it a Thrusting Opera, then - perhaps in French that phrase will sound nicer? "Opéra de poussée." I like it. (Watch the trailer here.)

The lesbian Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) directs male homosexual pornography in what appears to be the late 1970s - a banner age for the medium, it must be said, with all the sexual freedom and mustaches to be had. Her movies are arty and ridiculous, but fun and hot too - I thought more than once of the photo-shoots that Faye Dunaway reigns over in Eyes of Laura Mars (Anne's right-hand faggot could be Rene Auberjonois' Gallic cousin in both form and content).

That sexual freedom will of course come crashing down in a couple of years as the plague descends on these folks, and Knife + Heart, while never explicitly referencing that, sends in a murder of crows anyway to start the picking. The leather-faced killer who appears out of the shadows and begins invading scenes from Anne's movies (not to mention reenacting scenes from Cruising) has his back-story - which is laid out to us in a delightfully on-point long-form swerve into la-la-land straight out of the giallo Gonzalez is paying tribute to - but he's nothing if not the cloud of death itself come to roost. It's no accident that the club everybody hangs out at is called The Future - dance yourselves dead, my lovelies.

That said Knife + Heart, a pulsing post-Disco nightmare, is nowhere near that simple - this isn't a tit-for-tat allegory casting the gays as a cloud of victimhood to get slashed through one by one. That's because everybody's gay in this world - it only takes the so-called straight-boy half a scene to unearth his inner homo - and the interplay among us, fraught with every complication, psycho-sexual or otherwise, is bracing; this is what it feels like looking from the inside out at our stories. No need to scour the edges of an Argento flick for a little queerish something - it's our time to shine, sweat and semen and blood on the dance-floor.

.

The @BrooklynHorror Film Fest is off to a killer start with KNIFE + HEART, the queer as fuck French techno giallo of your wet nightmares -- see more of what to see here https://t.co/jHfYpEobM5 And stay tuned for some reviews very soon! pic.twitter.com/BUeMAoeMdD

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 12, 2018

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

.

Today we're wishing a happy 40 to one of our favorite movies, Irvin Kershner's Eyes of Laura Mars starring Miss Faye Dunaway as a fabulous fashion photographer in 1978 New York who's suddenly been cursed with a psychic link to a murderer - she sees what he sees as he stalks and massacres a string of her besties!

With all due apologies to Laura's agent Elaine Cassel (played by Rose Gregorio) here who's got no good coming to her, no good at all, what we're really here for, what we're really here for every time we watch this movie, is 1) Faye's fabulous fashions and 2) the vision of 1978 New York, mostly Soho, on display.

That's not to say that Kirshner doesn't shoot the heck out of these killing sequences - this one in particular is hella grisly and mean-spirited and shows that he clearly had been watching himself some of the stylish giallo coming out of Europe (mainly Italy natch) during this period as he shot this.

I mean. Blink and that's Bava.

But really all we wanna do is eye that saucy riding cap, those slit-high gauchos, the plaids and tweeds and silks, oh my god every time I watch this movie all I want is to stand up from my desk and walk out onto the street and see every single woman in New York wearing the clothes that Faye wears in this movie. Pushing old ladies you've just stabbed in the face with an ice pick is one thing...

... but running on cobblestones in those boots is quite another!

Man I wish I lived in New York in 1978. Even if 

I had to get murdered by a maniac it'd have been worth it.

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die...