Laurent Lafitte Ten Times

Nice little treat today thanks to GQ France -- some suave man photos of actor Laurent Lafitte! He first caught our eyes as the "next door neighbor" in Paul Verhoeven's tremendous 2016 Huppert-vehicle Elle -- and sidenote holy shit that movie's turning 10 this year -- although looking back I'd definitely seen him in things before then like Mathieu Kassovitz's The Crimson Rivers and Guillaume Canet's Tell No One (apprently he only works for sexy directors!). And since Elle I've seen Laurent in the unsettling apocalypse-ish flick School's Out in 2018 and last year's big-budget smash The Count of Monte Christo. Still I don't see shoots of him popping up too often so this is a treasure. Hit the jump for the rest...

Catching Up With Matty

Those of us who worship at the altar of Matthias Schoenaerts are not fed well -- he hasn't been in anything since The Regime with Kate Winslet aired ten and a half lifetimes ago (otherwise known as uhh one year ago) and that's the way it's been for awhile -- one project a year, here and there, sporadically. We cannot surive this way, Matthias! Thanksfully there was some news on the Matty front this morning though -- he's signed in to star in a movie called Le Cowboy which has the super original storyline of a criminal roped into doing "one last job" that involves kidnapping a girl but then the two bond... yeah, we've seen this movie a thousand times before. Whatever. I'll watch him put his spin on it! The writer-director is Shane Atkinson whose film LaRoy Texas starring Steve Zahn and John Magaro played Tribeca last year and left not a huge impression on me, but I remember some people digging it. 

Anyway that spot of new news made me realize that if we're lucky we might be coming to an end on the Schoenaerts drought -- I had completely forgotten for one that he is playing the bad guy in the Supergirl movie that DC hired I Tonya director Craig Gillespie to direct and which has apparently already been filmed. And he's also somehow in The Old Guard 2 even though (spoiler) he died in the first one, and we just got the first image from that movie last week. (See below.) So that must be coming out soon, I guess.

First look at THE OLD GUARD sequel! (And here's to hoping everybody's favorite ancient crime-fighting homosexuals Marwan Kenzari & Luca Marinelli have added Henry Golding into their mix)

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM

And then of course there's The Way of the Wind, Terrence Malick's now many years in the making movie about Jesus (yes, Christ) that has Matthias playing the disciple Peter.  We first posted about that movie getting started SIX YEARS AGO. With Malick though who knows -- he could take another six years. The names in that stacked cast are endless -- Mark Rylance, John Rhys-Davies, Joseph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, FRANZ ROGOWSKI, Eileen Atkins, Aidan Turner, Mathieu Kassovitz. Also since it's Malick half of those people could end up on the cutting room floor -- it could be three hours of Mark Rylance spinning in a field for all we know. 

ETA an hour after posting this Netflix unloaded some more images from The Old Guard 2 including one very much confirming Matthias' presence therein, and another one of eternal boyfriends Luca Marinelli & Marwan Kenzari, and far be it from me not to add them to this post!

The Old Guard 2 is out on July 2nd.

Oh and here's the trailer too since we're here:

It's Raining Criterion Awesomeness This April

Besides Criterion putting out Lone Star today (which I just posted about) they're doubling down on awesomeness because it's the middle of the month and they're announcing their new releases! These releases are for April, and they kick off with (like Lone Star) a vastly underrated 90s drama -- Nancy Savoca's 1991 sweet-as-heck love story Dogfight starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. And also like Lone Star this is a movie I haven't seen since it came out so this will be a wonderful chance to refamiliarize myself with its wonders. Specifically River Phoenix with a buzzcut. I was young when this was out but this was the movie where I finally got River's dreamboat appeal. Boys in them 60s clothes and haircuts -- swoon. This hits disc on April 30th, check out all of the extra features (which includes a chat between Savioca, Taylor, and the great Marry Harron!) at the above link. 

And April is a big month for 4K upgrades from our fave physical media label -- they're upgrading three masterpieces with new restorations of Matthieu Kassovitz' La haine (mmmm Vincent Cassel). Mikhail Kalatozov’s legendary 1965 portrait of revolution I Am Cuba, and Peter Weir's perfect sumptuous and haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock (which is one of my favorite movies of all time). You can literally never go wrong with Peter Weir. And then to top off the awesomeness on April 16th they're dropping a 4K restoration of  Béla Tarr's hypnotic wonder Werckmeister Harmonies from the year 2000 -- this was the first Tarr film I ever saw and it is burned deeply in my brain. An incredible black-and-white astonishment, this one.

Good Morning, World

Today we wish a happy 69th -- ooh la la! -- birthday to the great and masterful director Jacques Audiard, one of our all-time faves! These snaps are of Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard in the 2012 masterpiece Rust and Bone, of course. I've seen everything back to 2005's The Beat That My Heart Skipped (oh Romain Duris!) and I recommend that along with every single thing since then, but I've seen nothing earlier -- I know I should see Vincent Cassel in 2001's Read My Lips but what about the even earlier ones? Anybody seen either of his first two, See How They Fall or A Self-Made Hero? Killer casts in both -- Kassovitz! Trintignant! Audiard really jumped right in with both feet right from the start! 

I Do, Mathieu, I Do

 

That wonderful photo there (via) is a swell reminder to me and now to every single one of you that 1) we should all look so good at 53, and 2) actor, director and beautiful 53-year-old person Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 masterpiece La Haine is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and there will be a brand new 4K restoration of the film opening here in NYC next week, on October 8th at BAM's virtual cinema. Pretty sure anybody anywhere can rent that sort of thing (well anybody anywhere in the United States of America, anyway) so I recommend you do just that! Don't make me sic Vincent Cassel on your asses...

10 Off My Head: Siri Says 1995

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There's been a tweet going around on Twitter for the past week where the Twitterati were asked to name their favorite movie for the year they turned 18, and in a weird happenstance of serendipity this week's edition of my "Siri Says" series will be doing just that. That is to say that today I asked Siri, the person who lives inside of my telephone, for a random number between 1 and 100 and she gave me 95, so we will be listing our favorite Movies of 1995. Which was the year I turned 18. (Go ahead, do your math, I'm ancient.) And as long as you've got your calculators out you can agree on this as well -- all of these movies are turning 25 this year to boot! 

Amazing! I was seeing an actual literal ton of movies in 1995, as I both worked in a video-store -- this was a year after Pulp Fiction came out and all of us Film Nerds had to work at video-stores, it was a rule -- and I began my tumultuous trek through Film School that fall. When I started this I was ready to say I saw everything that came out that year but then I began making this list and there are weird random ones that fell through the cracks and seem to've remained there -- I think you'll be surprised by some of the titles I've never seen, yonder down below. But first, my faves...

My 10 Favorite Movies of 1995

To Die For

(dir. Gus Van Sant)

-- released on October 6th 1995 --

Leaving Las Vegas

(dir. Mike Figgis)

-- released on October 27th 1995 -- 

Se7en

(dir. David Fincher)

-- released on September 22nd 1995 --

Babe

(dir. Chris Noonan)

-- released on August 4th 1995 --

The Doom Generation

(dir. Gregg Araki)

-- released on October 27th 1995 --

Showgirls

(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

-- released on September 22nd 1995 --

Safe

(dir. Todd Haynes)

-- released on June 30th 1995 --

Clueless

(dir. Amy Heckerling)

-- released on July 19th 1995 --

12 Monkeys

(dir. Terry Gilliam)

-- released on December 8th 1995 --

Sense & Sensibility

(dir. Ang Lee)

-- released on December 4th 1995 --

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Runners-up: Before Sunrise (dir. Linklater); Shallow Grave (dir. Danny Boyle); Living in Oblivion (dir. Tom DeCillo); The City of Lost Children (dir. Jeunet & Caro); Dolores Claiborne (dir. Taylor Hackford); Crumb (dir. Terry Zwigoff); Party Girl (dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer); To Wong Foo... Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (dir. Beeban Kidron)...

... Unzipped (dir. Douglas Keeve); Strange Days (dir. Bigelow); Kicking & Screaming (dir. Noah Baumbach); The Usual Suspects (dir. Bryan Singer); Copycat (dir. John Amiel); Mighty Aphrodite (dir. Woody Allen); The Brady Bunch Movie (dir. Betty Thomas); Home For the Holidays (dir. Jodie Foster); Toy Story (dir. John Lasseter)...

... Casino (dir. Scorsese); The Passion of Darkly Noon (dir. Philip Ridley); The Celluloid Closet (dir. Aldo Fabrizi); The Day of the Beast (dir. Alex de la Iglesia); Dead Man Walking (dir. Gregory Dark); La Haine (dir. Kassovitz); Jeffrey (dir. Christopher Ahsley); Waiting To Exhale (dir. Forest Whitaker); Flower of My Secret (dir. Almodovar)
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Never seen: Billy Madison (dir. Tamra Davis); Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (dir. Bill Condon); The Quick and the Dead (dir. Raimi); Tank Girl (dir. Rachel Talalay); Friday (dir. F. Gary Gray); Vampire in Brooklyn (dir. Wes Craven); Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead (dir. Gary Fleder); The Prophecy (dir. Gregory Widen); Bad Boys (dir. Michael Bay)...

... Pocahontas (dir. Mike Gabriel); The Bridges of Madison County (dir. Clint Eastwood); Hackers (dir. Iain Softley); Empire Records (dir. Allan Moyle); Goldeneye (dir. Martin Campbell); The Crossing Guard (dir. Sean Penn);  Clockers (dir. Spike Lee); Othello (dir. Oliver Parker); Fallen Angels (dir. Wong Kar-wai); Braveheart (dir. Mel Gibson)

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What are your favorite movies of 1995?

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather...

... Matthias & Friends hit the top button.

Those "friends" just happen to be the very fine actors Numan Acar and Mathieu Kassovitz, so shame on me for not properly crediting them right off the bat -- these three beards have joined together for Terrence Malick's next flick The Last Planet, which I've told you about previously. Schoenaerts is playing Saint Peter in the flick, which is some sort of religious fable and which also stars Mark Rylance as Satan and the great Géza Röhrig as Mr. Christ (some call him by his first name). 

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I would topple entire governments for Matthias Schoenaerts' attention and approval pic.twitter.com/nT81olKicm

— His Name Was Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 28, 2019

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Anyway Acar shared that top shot on his Instagram today -- he and Matthias have clearly hit it off since that picture immediately above on the left was also one he took -- giving me the first confirmation of some other actors cast in Malick's film besides the three we'd heard about; and now I check IMDb and there's actually a ton of actors listed...

... Aidan Turner is playing Saint Andrew! Uncle Benjen from Game of Thrones (aka Joseph Mawle) is playing Saul! Ben Kingsley and Joseph Fiennes and Douglas Booth are all playing... well, somebody, we don't know who yet! Oh, and...

... second most excitingly for me (after Matty obviously) is the word that Malick has hired Martin McCann for an unspecified role; if you don't know who McCann is he starred in a movie called The Survivalist in 2015 and gave one of my absolute favorite performances that year there -- he's worked steadily since then but not in anything big and not in anything I've seen and I keep checking on him, hoping he'll get a role worthy of his talent. There's no indication whether this will be that -- lord knows Malick loves to cast a billion people and then edit seventy percent of them out by the time the finished product rolls around -- but I can hope!
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The Killing of a Happy End

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Like I said yesterday we should put on our inspector caps because a ton of "first looks" at the movies about to play Cannes will be showing up this week, now that the fest is finally starting (which we also know is happening since I'm seeing people tweet images of their press badges and feeling profound swells of jealous rise in my belly). Here's a big pair: the first posters for Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Michael Haneke's Happy End. I like them both!

That Happy End poster in particular - with its watery emptiness (god what horrors await the characters down there???) and little red record symbol - is giving me some hard Code Unknown multiplied by Benny's Video vibes... definitely maybe with some Cache mixed in? Point being it's Haneke Squared. If you missed the first clip we posted yesterday click here for that.

I'll Take One Happy End, Please

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If they were to ever make a movie about Michael Haneke it just struck me that Matthieu Kassovitz - the director and actor who is acting in Haneke's next film Happy End - could probably play him. Haneke is all gray beard and moppet hair anyway; he'd be easy to fake once you piled all that stuff on over a black turtleneck. Voila Insta-Haneke!

Aanyway here on the occasion of Haneke's 75th birthday - Happy birthday, dude! - I figured I'd check and see if we had any idea how long we were going to be waiting for Happy End, and IMDb actually has a couple of Euro release dates now -- it's coming out in Germany and France in mid-October. So I imagine we'll be getting it in awards season here too? I daren't dream it'll play NYFF... daren't I? October is perfect timing. I dare, I dare to dream!!!

Good Morning, Gratuitous Saïd Taghmaoui

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Today we're wishing a very happy 43rd birthday to the actor and writer Saïd Taghmaoui, who co-wrote the great 1995 film La Haine with Mathieu Kassovitz and who has been in everything from Lost to American Hustle over the years -- he was a professional boxer before becoming an actor and, you know, it shows!

His Instagram is a pretty good place to keep an eye on him -- indeed I probably wouldn't have known he was such a hot piece under his clothes if it hadn't been for him posting pictures of that fact himself. His roles don't sexualize him the way he clearly deserves (and wants!) to be sexualized -- get on it, producers. Speaking of getting on it, I wouldn't mind, Saïd... aaaanyway hit the jump for several dozen more pictures...

Mathieu Kassovitz's Happy Ending

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Back in March we heard that Michael Haneke's new film was gearing up to film, and now comes word via Screen Daily that filming has actually gone and done that and the cameras are a'rollin. And not just that - actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz has joined the cast too! (Mmm Mathieu Kassovitz.)

If your memory needs refreshing the film is called Happy End (oh I am sure, Mr. Haneke, I am sure) and it's about an oblivious rich French family surrounded by immigrant encampments - the film already had Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant signed on so, you know, this film's bound to just be stuffed with terrible, just awful, performances. Hacks!
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I Am Link

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--- Madding Man - Two posts of interest at The Film Experience - here's Nat's take on the new Far From the Madding Crowd movie, which I personally was curious to read since neither he nor I had ever seen the Julie Christie movie or read the Thomas Hardy book. He liked the new movie with more reservations than I had (here's my review); I loved this though:

"What Bathsheba wants is, in the end, a moot point. The camera knows what it wants and what it wants is the good shepherd played by the greatest movie star Belgium has ever offered us. Schoenearts is irresistible to look at and the camera agrees, continually flattering him with intense closeups..."

Of course I loved that though. Also at TFE is the news that the incredible actress Cara Seymour is going to be taking over the site on June 9th! We have adored Cara Seymour every single day since we watched Christian Bale, naked save a pair of white sneakers, chase her with a chainsaw. I actually right this minute have a goldfish named "Christie" in her honor!

 --- Let's Experiment - Last week we told you that Tony Goldwyn and John Gallagher Jr had joined the cast of Greg McLean's upcoming office-centric horror thriller The Belko Experiment (written by James Gunn) which reads as a kind of "Lord of the Flies meets Office Space" ... well a few more very cool names have since leapt on-board - Michael "Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer" Rooker, for one! Also the terrific and seriously under-appreciated Melonie Diaz.
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--- The Quiet Man - The Playlist shares two pictures of Pedro Almodovar on the set of his next film called Silencio with actress... um is that Adriana Ugarte? She looks different with that hair. They say the film is "the story of the tumultuous life of Juliet, tracking the character across thirty years from 1985 to 2015." Okay. All I know is I'm super sad that Miguel Angel Silvestre doesn't seem to be in this; I was really hoping his small role in I'm So Excited would lead to him becoming Pedro's latest hunk of muse (I guess he's too busy having gay sex for the Wachowskis). Daniel Grao (pictured right) is in Silencio and he is promising, though. I saw him in a 2012 movie called The End and he's gorgeous. (Also gay from what I remember?)
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--- Big League - Last week I was trying to explain Penny Dreadful to a friend of mine who clearly doesn't get out enough (how could anybody have not heard of Penny Dreadful?) and I name-dropped The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie (and why did I think she'd have heard of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if she hadn't heard of Penny Dreadful?) and here we are less than a week gone and we're hearing that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is getting rebooted? I have powers. Terrible powers. Still that series has no place to go but up; I really love Alan Moore's comics.

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--- Hate 2-0 - Apparently the racial and religious tensions in Europe (France specifically) have got director Matthieu Kassovitz and star Vincent Cassel thinking it's time to revisit their 1995 film La Haine with a sequel. I loooove the original so very much but think this might be a terrible idea. In the twenty years since Kassovitz hasn't approached making anything as great as that movie, and I fear he might be too soft for the subject now.
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--- Witch of the North - Although I feel as if she's being spoilery with what she specifically chooses not to say, here's a nice interview with Melisandre herself the actress Carice Van Houten, who's been an MNPP Icon ever since she dyed her pubes that special shade of golden for the resistance. Fun Fact: She used to date Seth Meyer's twin brother! And Seth is the nerd who convinced her to take the role on Thrones. Thanks, Seth!
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--- Skin Born - I will link to it whenever anybody gives good love to Jonathan Glazer's already-a-masterpiece Under the Skin but I'm especially keen to do so since it's my pal Sean talking up the flick this time around, calling it "one of the most harrowing and singular scary movies you’ll ever see." Word. The way he describes the beach scene (oh you remember the beach scene, don't pretend you don't remember the beach scene) is especially nice.
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--- Never It - We already talked up the news that Cary Fukunaga had dropped out of making Stephen King's It into a movie (or rather a pair of movies) yesterday but now there's more details on what went wrong, and also the news that this pretty much strikes the entire project dead as a little boy who gets his arm ripped off by a killer clown in the gutter. (That is very.)
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Mathieu Kassovitz One Time

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Matthias Schoenaerts Five Times

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First off - who is that with him in that picture? Is it Mathieu Kassovitz? it looks like Mathieu Kassovitz to me but I'm not quite sure. Clearly they should touch more, though. Much, much more. And secondly thanks to Anon for yesterday letting us know in the comments that an English fan-site for Matthias is finally a thing - they have several pictures of him I hadn't seen before, including this lot. More Matty yes please. (click to embiggen)