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For over 25 years, Emmy-award winning directors/producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have jointly created multi-character documentary narratives that use the personal stories of their protagonists to paint a larger portrait of the human experience. They are especially known for meticulous archival research, which made works such as “Ballets Russes” (2005) and “Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul” (1988) so extraordinary. “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” explores the life of the legendary singer-songwriter through the prism of his internationally renowned song, “Hallelujah.” Dogwoof is the international sales agent for the Venice-bowing doc.

What inspired you to take on this topic?

It was a combination of things. We’d seen Leonard Cohen twice when he came through the Bay Area during his world tours in 2010 and 2013 and were deeply moved by those concerts, and especially by his performances of “Hallelujah.” Then one night over dinner, our friend, film historian David Thomson,...

Alexander Payne’s ambitious new comic fantasy has ideas to spare but a condescending tone and a disastrous racial caricature leave a bitter taste in the mouth

There was a time when Alexander Payne was, as far as the critical majority was concerned, close to unassailable in the ranks of modern American auteurs. His 1996 debut, Citizen Ruth, earned only a niche following, but the five features that followed, from 1999’s sourball classroom satire Election through to 2013’s mournful father-son comedy Nebraska, earned him a reputation as a kind of jaundiced observational poet of sad-sack America, a body of work bound by grim-faced humour, mundane tragedy and white male heroes with scarcely any heroic virtues at all. It’s a run that has netted him two Oscars, a flood of other honours, and repeated critical comparisons to Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and even John Updike. David Thomson himself gushed: “Payne is...

In the late 1970s, an associate professor in the Philosophy department at Johns Hopkins (thesis title: "The Nature of the Natural Numbers") began publishing essays on Hollywood movies. George M. Wilson wasn't the first person to undergo this shift in specialism. At the start of the decade, Stanley Cavell had published The World Viewed, a series of "reflections on the ontology of film." But Cavell had always been concerned with how works of art enable us to think through philosophical themes such as knowledge and meaning, and he held a chair, at Harvard, in Aesthetics. Wilson differed in that he brought a range of analytic gifts to an ongoing revolution: the close reading of American cinema, conceived as part of the "auteur" policy of Truffaut and other writers at Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, and concertedly developed in the following decades by critics in England such as V. F.

Mubi is hosting the exclusive global premiere of Gary Walkow's Radio Mary (2017), which will be showing November 28 - December 28, 2017.Gary Walkow’s filmmaking career has a peculiar shape. For a while he looked like a low-key American indie success story waiting for his breakthrough. His first feature The Trouble With Dick shared the Grand Prize at the 1987 Us Film Festival, which was renamed to Sundance a few years later. Notes From Underground (1995), a modern-day Dostoyevsky adaptation, premiered at Toronto and got good reviews and a modest bit of distribution; but Beat (2000), with Kiefer Sutherland and Courtney Love as Bill and Joan Burroughs, had a rocky reception at Sundance and seemed to mark the end of Indiewood’s flirtation with Walkow. After a hiatus that included an unfinished film, Walkow’s career began a second, more clandestine phase with Crashing (2007), a very low-budget comedy that eventually received DVD distribution, boosted...

Jean-Pierre Melville’s tale of an emotionless killer is distilled to a narrative minimum. Alain Delon stars as Jef Costello, an imperturbable, ultra- slick hit man who follows a strict personal code. When a contract goes bad, he’s caught between irreconcilable compulsions. Following this Zen-like assassin through the mean streets of Paris never seems to get old.

Le samouraï

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 306

1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 14, 2017 / 39.95

Starring Alain Delon, Francois Périer, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier, Jacques Leroy.

Cinematography Henri Decaë

Production Designer Francois de Lamothe

Film Editor Monique Bonnot, Yo Maurette

Original Music Francois de Roubaix

Written by Jean-Pierre Melville, Georges Pellegrin from a novel by Joan McLeod

Produced by Raymond Borderie, Eugène Lépicier

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Le samouraï has survived the Quentin Tarantino years Looking better than ever, and with its reputation intact, which is not a minor...

An array of film-makers and writers line up to praise the skill of the iconic sequence – but leave the trickier issues frustratingly unaddressed

The title is a technical term: 78 camera setups and 52 cuts, the extraordinarily labour-intensive work that went into the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 shocker Psycho, a sequence which took fully seven days of a 30-day schedule.

Alexandre O Philippe’s documentary is a tribute to this extraordinary moment in film history: electrifying, audacious, a smash-and-grab raid on on territory previously considered impossible or unacceptable. Philippe assembles a mighty chorus of directors and cinephile heavy-hitters such as Walter Murch, David Thomson, Sam Raimi, Eli Roth, Peter Bogdanovich, Bret Easton Ellis and Guillermo del Toro to rave enthusiastically about this scene – where it came from, how it was put together, and where it took cinema from then on (though disappointingly this lineup doesn’t include Gus Van Sant,...

Happy September, guys! This month’s home entertainment releases are wasting no time, as Tuesday looks to be another stellar day of horror and sci-fi titles coming our way. For those of you excited for Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is putting out The Final Cut version of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece in 4K Ultra HD, and Criterion is giving Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca their trademarked HD treatment with a stunning new release.

As far as new indie horror movies go, both A Dark Song and Raw come home this Tuesday and are well worth your time, and for those of you Winchester brothers fans out there, the 12th season of Supernatural is being released this week, too.

Other notable titles for September 5th include The Spell, The Atoning, The Basement, I Saw What You Did, and a 4K Ultra HD release of The Cabin in the Woods.

Blade Runner...

While the vast majority of our favorite films of last year have been treated with Blu-ray releases, one title near the top of the list we’ve been waiting the longest for is Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. It looks like it’s been worth the wait as The Criterion Collection have unveiled their September releases and it’s leading the pack (with special features also an interview with the director and Todd Haynes!).

Also getting a release in September, is Michael Haneke‘s Isabelle Huppert-led The Piano Teacher and the recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (arriving perfectly-timed to the end of the new Twin Peaks). There’s also Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic psychodrama Rebecca and the concert film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Check out the high-resolution cover art and full details on the releases below, with more on Criterion’s site.

“Citizen Kane” has been hailed for generations as the greatest movie ever made, but the newspaper mogul who inspired Orson Welles’ iconic portrait of a reclusive, affluent entrepreneur who dies alone did everything he could to act as if it never happened. Throughout his life, William Randolph Hearst kept the movie out of Hearst newspapers and never discussed it publicly, a tendency that was picked up by his heirs in the years following his death.

That all changed on Thursday night at the 60th Sf International Film Festival, when Hearst’s grandson, William Randolph Hearst III, spoke for a half hour before a screening of the film. The biggest surprise? He’s a huge fan of the movie — and has a lot of ideas about it.

Discovering a Masterpiece

“Inevitably, someone wants to ask me what I think and I usually disappoint them by saying how much I love the movie,...

Keep up with the always-hopping film festival world with our weekly Film Festival Roundup column. Check out last week’s Roundup right here.

Lineup Announcements

– The Sarasota Film Festival has announced its full lineup, including its Narrative Feature Competition, Independent Visions Competition, Documentary Feature Competition, World and Us Cinema Narrative, World and Us Cinema Documentary, Spotlight, and Short Films. The festival also announced its three Sff Focus Panels–Lgbtq Community; Environment, Science, & Sustainability; and Sports In Cinema – along with its Closing Night Awards. The 19th annual Sarasota Film Festival will take place from March 31 – April 9. You can find out more information at their official site.

“Film has an integral role in helping us analyze social and political issues in our society that demand attention, thought and dialogue” said Mark Famiglio, President of the Sarasota Film Festival. “Our program is designed to use the art of cinema as a catalyst for important conversations,...

The world of film-related books has been dominated by Star Wars for the last two years, and that’s not a bad thing. With insightful authors like Pablo Hidalgo and gorgeous efforts like Star Wars: Galactic Maps, there has never been a better time to be force-crazed. This month is no exception, but you’ll also find new releases about Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers, and even two involving X-Files prequels. Let’s start with a book that took on new relevance just weeks after its release.

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher (Blue Rider Press)

Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist, a hilarious and touching look at her life as Star Wars icon Princess Leia, was a must-read even before the sudden, shocking passing of its author in December. It is even more poignant now. While the book earned pre-release buzz over its revelation of an on-set affair with Harrison Ford,...

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.

Metograph

Takeshi Kitano and Isabelle Huppert retrospectives begin

Film Forum

The great “3-D Auteurs” continues, with Hugo having a special Sunday screening.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

“Total Verhoeven” continues.

Anthology Film Archives

“Memorable Fantasies” continues with the likes of Last Year at Marienbad, Céline and Julie Go Boating, and Pandora’s Box.

Museum of...

Film critic David Thomson, author of “A Biographical Dictionary of Film” and “How to Watch a Movie,” has a new book coming out this month, “Television: A Biography,” which examines the medium and its six-decade history. In the book, Thomson addresses the medium in two sections: “The Medium,” which explores the social and political climate of the television age, the move from novel craze to complacent habit and more; and “The Messages,” which considers the evolution of TV shows, the relationship between Americans and television and more. “The sacred fixed altar (the set) has given up its central place of worship and is now just one screen among so many, like the dinner table kept for state occasions in a life of snacking,” says Thomson.

Read More: Interview: David Thomson Talks New Edition Of ‘Dictionary Of Film,’ Roger Ebert, Future Of Cinema And Much More

In the excerpt below, read...

In his elephantine sixth edition of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (2014), critic David Thomson reserves his most scathing, uncharitable critique for Madonna. To him, her mere existence on film is an affront to the medium itself. He finds that she is incapable of understanding the art of acting, and spends the space of nine paragraphs belaboring the point. “There is nothing in Madonna to be advertised,”he writes, “except for her ironic, deflecting contempt. She is an ad for advertising.”It is a curiously mean-spirited entry in a book filled with thoughtful, sympathetic reconsiderations of women whom critics wrote off in their time. Thomson’s entries on Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak are among his most articulate and impassioned. Yet Thomson is utterly heartless when it comes to Madonna, suspecting that “[s]he is disappointed about something, and hugely driven by resentment.” Thomson wasn’t exactly staking out a contrarian position.

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005) is playing on Mubi June 18 - July 17, 2016 in the United States. Sin CityWhat happens when a performer’s face changes? This very question animated a bewildering piece by Owen Gleiberman last month in Variety, wherein Gleiberman—a man—pondered whether Renée Zellweger’s slightly aged, maybe plastic surgery-tinkered visage made her an entirely different performer. He sustained this mediation on the basis of a whopping three-minute trailer for Bridget Jones’ sBaby, hoarily declaring his good intentions to combat Hollywood’s sexist machinations at his piece’s onset. Yet, in spite of this pretense, his approach exhibited an astonishing lack of stringency, ultimately scrutinizing Zellweger along the same sexist lines he claimed to bemoan. Like others, I find this storied practice of male critics inspecting women’s faces pretty odious. If male critics have gotten craftier than such forefathers as John Simon (who,...

“I want to be in the Army.” That statement prompted a frantic phone call from my ex-wife, and an entire series of conversations. It also inspired a very particular screening of a very particular film, one in a series of recent screenings that have spoken to Toshi’s developing interests in both history and Hollywood. While movies are very important to Toshi, they are less important than Allen, and I suspect there will come a time where I lose Allen to other interests. That’s fine with me. Whatever he’s interested in and excited by, I’ll encourage him. Right now, his interests are more in games and puzzles and building things. Minecraft is pretty much the perfect intersection of all of Allen’s energies. As a result, when I am picking things that we’re all going to watch together, I find myself going mainstream and populist and easy.

“You are alone you your revolution, Ms. Dickinson,” spouts a stoic headmistress in the opening sequence of A Quiet Passion, a biopic of 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson and the latest work from proud Liverpudlian auteur Terence Davies. In the scene, young Emily has apparently rejected both a life in the seminary and the option to be a practicing catholic, a decision the famously atheistic director clearly vibes with. That sense of empathy and understanding with his subject is rife throughout this quietly cleansing and exquisitely considered film, which shows the writer from her late teens (portrayed by Emma Bell) through to adulthood (Cynthia Nixon) and old age.

This frank introductory scene is one of a few exceptions — it occurs outside the grounds of Dickinson’s family home, where the majority of this film takes place. Here, Davies imagines and reenacts delicately detailed social exchanges between the family members and their various bourgeois guests.

The new issue of Lola features work by the late Peter von Bagh and on Max Ophüls, Terrence Malick, Aoyama Shinji, Wang Bing and more. And the new issue of Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema focuses on Portuguese cinema and the work of Manoel de Olivera, Pedro Costa, Paolo Rocha and António Reis. Also in today's roundup: Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss 70mm and more, plus interviews with Caveh Zahedi and Charles Poekel, early word on new projects by Christopher Nolan and Hirokazu Koreeda, best-of-2015 lists from Jonathan Rosenbaum and others, a review of David Thomson's new book, How to Watch a Movie—and more. » - David Hudson...

The new issue of Lola features work by the late Peter von Bagh and on Max Ophüls, Terrence Malick, Aoyama Shinji, Wang Bing and more. And the new issue of Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema focuses on Portuguese cinema and the work of Manoel de Olivera, Pedro Costa, Paolo Rocha and António Reis. Also in today's roundup: Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss 70mm and more, plus interviews with Caveh Zahedi and Charles Poekel, early word on new projects by Christopher Nolan and Hirokazu Koreeda, best-of-2015 lists from Jonathan Rosenbaum and others, a review of David Thomson's new book, How to Watch a Movie—and more. » - David Hudson...

eOne Films UK managing director to speak at Screen Film Summit next week.

Speaking in advance of his appearance at next week’s Screen Film Summit (Dec 10), in which he will take part in the Question Time panel addressing big challenges facing the industry and what can be done to tackle them in the next five years, eOne Films UK managing director Alex Hamilton discussed key issues facing his company in the current distribution landscape.

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“The bullseye seems to be getting smaller for the underdog that breaks out,” Hamilton told Screen.

“Even if you have a five-star, critically acclaimed film, the market can be capricious. Sometimes we have films that are good but the reviews aren’t effusive. That can be a challenge.”

“The gap between the big wide-release model and the specialised-release model is a large one,” he added. “It’s a dangerous place to be but also tends to be where...

Paramount

Released in 1941, Citizen Kane’s depiction of a William Randolph Hearst-like publisher attracted the ire of Hearst himself, who used his influence to ensure that the film played to mostly empty houses. Fearing a lawsuit from the publisher, many cinema owners refused to screen the picture, which lost hundreds of thousands of dollars for Rko.

Kane’s status as “The Greatest Film Ever Made” grew after it gained popularity on television, where it caught the attention of critic Andrew Sarris, who called it “the work that influenced the cinema more profoundly than any American film since Birth Of A Nation.” Propelled by similarly laudatory reviews from Pauline Kael and David Thomson, Kane topped Sight & Sound’s top ten list for the first time in 1962, a position it held until 2012 when it was dethroned by Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

But you know what? Kane just isn’t that much fun to watch.

"Love & Mercy" actress Elizabeth Banks and "Room" wunderkind Jacob Tremblay will likely enjoy a boost on the awards circuit, as they—along with Paul Dano ("Love & Mercy") and Joel Edgerton ("Black Mass")—are among the recipients of the Santa Barbara Film Festival's 2016 Virtuosos Award. The 31st edition of the festival runs from Feb. 3 to Feb. 13. Watch: "Elizabeth Banks Saves Brian Wilson as 'Love & Mercy' Hero Melinda Ledbetter (Exclusive Video)" Though such precursors—like festival Audience Awards and critics' prizes—may have no directly measurable effect on the Oscar race, attention to particular films and performances can lead voters to take a second look, or help a title to rise to the top of the screener pile. For Banks, whose performance as Cadillac saleswoman Melinda Leadbetter in the Brian Wilson biopic is "a thing of wonder," according to critic David Thomson, the Sbiff honor not only adds to...

Film Movement brings Eric Rohmer’s classic period film The Marquise of O… to Blu-ray, the first time the title is made available in the Us (previously, it was sandwiched into a Region 2 Rohmer collection, the same set which features another rare title, 1982’s A Good Marriage). Awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (it tied with Carlos Saura’s Cria Cuervos), it would be the only accolade the famed filmmaker would collect from the event and it was his last time in competition.

It’s one of Rohmer’s earliest historical dramas (he would continue in this vein intermittently, with titles like Perceval and The Lady and the Duke), and initially seems like a black comedy on social mores before it seeps into a . A German co-production, the film is based on a short story by Heinrich von Kleist (Jessica Hausner’s 2014 film Amour Fou documents the writer’s curious denouement,...

Maureen O’Hara was one of the most luminous figures of Hollywood’s Golden Age, when colors popped and carefully lit stars shone brightly in darkened theaters. The way she gleamed on screen in glorious Technicolor, with that burning-red hair and those emerald eyes, is evocative of that fleeting time in cinema history. But O’Hara, who passed away Saturday at the age of 95, wasn't simply a pretty face on a big screen, despite her title as the Queen of Technicolor. She thrived on challenging roles, portraying women going toe-to-toe with brutes. As film historian David Thomson once explained, she was a woman in a man's world, tempestuous and tenacious, known for throwing her hands on her hips when facing opposition from gruff ��n‘ tough gunslingers.The Irish-born actress had a breakout role in Hitchcock’s tightly-coiled adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn (1939), the last film the director...

Lionsgate

Tom Hardy isn’t an ordinary actor – that’s as good as established. Not only is the Hammersmith-born performer capable of truly transformative performances (“He is outrageously tough sometimes and then very gentle,” says acclaimed film critic David Thomson of his versatility), but he’s also an enigma. He’s the kind of actor that you look at and wonder what is going on in his head. Which makes him all the more interesting.

Hardy has always showcased a knack for completely disappearing into his roles, something that he has achieved through a number of strange – and often questionable – methods. To say that he is a method actor might not be quite accurate, because Hardy doesn’t deal in specific approaches to the form; he does whatever he feels like (or whatever it takes) in order to get inside a character’s head – reason be damned.

Whilst some of...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 36: Three Wicked Melodramas from Gainsborough Pictures.

About the films:

During the 1940s, realism reigned in British cinema—but not at Gainsborough Pictures. The studio, which had been around since the twenties, found new success with a series of pleasurably preposterous costume melodramas. Audiences ate up these overheated films, which featured a stable of charismatic stars, including James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Stewart Granger, and Phyllis Calvert. Though the movies were immensely profitable in wartime and immediately after, Gainsborough did not outlive the decade. This set brings together a trio of the studio’s most popular films from this era—florid, visceral tales of secret identities, multiple personalities, and romantic betrayals.

Debates about Alfred Hitchcock have been raging for decades. Was he a cruel genius who treated his actors like cattle, torturing his icy blondes' performances out of them? (Some, like established movie star Grace Kelly, handled him better than others.) Some critics prefer the more whimsical British Hitchcock, tongue tucked in cheek, although his first breakout hit "The Lodger" (1927) was a sign of things to come. Clearly, Hitchcock learned from early Hollywood mentor David O. Selznick, who taught him a great deal, points out David Thomson in "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film." Over 50 years, the filmmaker always had visual flair and a distinct style, and knew how to implicate audiences in his dark, often opaque characters. Cary Grant, especially, excelled at playing charismatic men whose motives and true nature were open to interpretation, from "Suspicion" to "Notorious." Hitchcock was a true artist in the sense that he often...

Sabzian has posted "Toward a Social Cinema," a lecture Jean Vigo delivered in Paris almost exactly 85 years ago on the occasion of the second screening of his first film, À propos de Nice. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Ilpo Hirvonen on John Cassavetes's Love Streams, Phelim O'Neill's interview with Peter Strickland, new writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books on True Detective and on Star Trek and Mad Max, Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) on Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe, David Thomson on Elizabeth Banks in Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy, a discussion about Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense—and more. » - David Hudson...

Sabzian has posted "Toward a Social Cinema," a lecture Jean Vigo delivered in Paris almost exactly 85 years ago on the occasion of the second screening of his first film, À propos de Nice. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Ilpo Hirvonen on John Cassavetes's Love Streams, Phelim O'Neill's interview with Peter Strickland, new writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books on True Detective and on Star Trek and Mad Max, Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) on Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe, David Thomson on Elizabeth Banks in Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy, a discussion about Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense—and more. » - David Hudson...

The new 24th issue of The Seventh Art features a video interview with Matt Porterfield, Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell, the director and stars of I Used to Be Darker and a video essay on Ann Hui's Boat People. Also in today's roundup: The Paris Review on Better Call Saul and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffmann, Criterion's Michael Koresky on Yasujiro Ozu's Walk Cheerfully, That Night’s Wife and Dragnet Girl, Salon on Elia Kazan's America America, the best of Carl Theodor Dreyer, David Thomson on Marlon Brando, news of forthcoming work by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Marco Bellocchio and more. » - David Hudson...

The new 24th issue of The Seventh Art features a video interview with Matt Porterfield, Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell, the director and stars of I Used to Be Darker and a video essay on Ann Hui's Boat People. Also in today's roundup: The Paris Review on Better Call Saul and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffmann, Criterion's Michael Koresky on Yasujiro Ozu's Walk Cheerfully, That Night’s Wife and Dragnet Girl, Salon on Elia Kazan's America America, the best of Carl Theodor Dreyer, David Thomson on Marlon Brando, news of forthcoming work by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Marco Bellocchio and more. » - David Hudson...

It's been a strange couple of weeks of films with the boys. First, we had a period of almost three weeks where I didn't get to see them because of all sorts of different scheduling issues. The hardest part of adjusting to life as a divided family is making my peace with the very different way the kids and I spend time together now. I've gone from having hours with them every day to having a handful of hours every couple of weeks. It makes time feel much more precious, but it can add a layer of stress, as well, because I'm constantly aware of the ticking clock. I know the boys feel it, too. We talk when I don't see them, but it's not the same. You try having a serious conversation on the phone with a seven-year-old. It's just not satisfying, no matter what. Kids today don't really...

In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson cuts the career of larger-than-life English actor Charles Laughton into conveniently bite-sized, dismissible chunks, noting that many of Laughton's "great performances" — the snide quotation marks are Thomson's — have dated badly. But then, perhaps it's all too easy to miss the point of Laughton, even though he was oversized in more ways than one: He doesn't so much star in a film as take up magisterial residency in it, at times filling the frame to bursting.

That's certainly true of his performance in Alfred Hitchcock's 1939 Jamaica Inn, which plays in a crisply restored version at Film Forum on February 4, 5, 6, and 7 as part of a th...

Books:  "Moments that Made the Movies" by David Thomson San Francisco-based David Thomson, the film critic for The New Republic, has written more than 20 movie books, among them must-owns such as "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film," "The Big Screen," and "'Have You Seen...?': A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films."  The Brit transplant's long experience with writing accessible, entertaining, idiosyncratic, erudite and enlightening movie books led him to the most delightful one of all: "Moments that Made the Movies." Trust me. This is a keeper. Read: David Thomson Recalls Moments that Made the Movies It all came out of a conversation with Thomson's editor at Thames & Hudson, Will Balliett, who told Thomson that he wanted to do an illustrated book with text, not just a coffee table book. Thomson tossed out a few ideas and then said: "You know, if you ever talk to anyone about the movies they love,...

The new issue of the bilingual film quarterly desistfilm features interviews with Peter von Bagh and Jeanne Liotta and articles on Vertical Cinema, Patrick Keiller, Paul Morrissey's Mixed Blood (1985) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Also in today's roundup of news and views: James Sibley Watson's Tomatos Another Day (1930), a sober Lars von Trier, David Thomson on Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Christoph Huber on John Ford's The Searchers (1956), early rounds of best-of-2014 films and books lists and more. » - David Hudson...

The new issue of the bilingual film quarterly desistfilm features interviews with Peter von Bagh and Jeanne Liotta and articles on Vertical Cinema, Patrick Keiller, Paul Morrissey's Mixed Blood (1985) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Also in today's roundup of news and views: James Sibley Watson's Tomatos Another Day (1930), a sober Lars von Trier, David Thomson on Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Christoph Huber on John Ford's The Searchers (1956), early rounds of best-of-2014 films and books lists and more. » - David Hudson...

François Truffaut's 1975 collection of criticism, The Films in My Life, is being reissued, and Max Nelson reviews it for Film Comment. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Joanna Hogg on Chantal Akerman, Gilles Deleuze on cinema and philosophy, B. Ruby Rich on Roger Ebert, Darren Hughes and Michael Leary on Claire Denis, Matt Connolly on Martin Scorsese, Glenn Kenny's interview with David Thomson and news of forthcoming projects from Julie Delpy, Damien Chazelle, Terry Gilliam and more. » - David Hudson...

François Truffaut's 1975 collection of criticism, The Films in My Life, is being reissued, and Max Nelson reviews it for Film Comment. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Joanna Hogg on Chantal Akerman, Gilles Deleuze on cinema and philosophy, B. Ruby Rich on Roger Ebert, Darren Hughes and Michael Leary on Claire Denis, Matt Connolly on Martin Scorsese, Glenn Kenny's interview with David Thomson and news of forthcoming projects from Julie Delpy, Damien Chazelle, Terry Gilliam and more. » - David Hudson...

Edited by Adam Cook

Above: a sneak peak of Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, via our Tumblr. A wealth of content from the Melbourne International Film Festival's newly launched Critics Campus has been published here and here. For Rolling Stone, filmmaker James Gray writes on Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now on the occasion of its 35th anniversary:

"The film is indeed self-consciously mythic, and with its transcendent imagery, it enters the cosmic realm. Captain Willard is an enigmatic hero, and we need the narration (written by Dispatches author Michael Herr) to help us know him. Surely the man has his dark side: he kills a wounded Vietnamese woman and hacks Colonel Kurtz to death. But by the end, Willard retains enough of his soul to protect the innocent, childlike Lance (Sam Bottoms), and here we see that the human connection endures. The film's experience expands in this moment,...

Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a mesmerizing film. Most who go into it know that it tells a tragic (possibly true) story with no resolution. And so it becomes a slow burn, in which the atmosphere and dread of unseen danger hangs thick in every frame.

Weir broke through on the international film scene with this surprise hit, a film that introduced the world to one of the best directors of the ’80s and ’90s. He would go on to give us more traditional and yet masterful works like “Witness,” “Fearless,” “The Truman Show,” and “Master and Commander” and yet when I hear his name, “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is the first film I think of.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

It is a defiantly bizarre, terrifying film that defies easy categorization or even synopsis. On one hand, it’s a mystery, but it’s one without a conclusion (which notoriously...

Diving into a 1168 page reference book in the age of the internet, might seem like an outdated notion, but don't let the title of "The New Biographical Dictionary Of Film" fool you. More than just a dry, Wikipedia style encyclopedia of film talent, critic and acclaimed writer David Thomson brings his own unique wit, style and flavor to each entry, offering his own opinion on a director's career or actor's canon. The 'Dictionary Of Film' isn't just something you have on a shelf waiting for the rare moment when you're not near a computer or phone and you need to look something up. Thomson's depth of knowledge make the voluminous book one you'll want to keep nearby, turning to first for its insights, perspective, the dashes of added detail and context, and just the plain pleasure the verve of his writing style brings. The sixth edition of "The New Biographical...

We're very excited that the debut issue of Fireflies, a new print film zine (see above for beautiful Apichatpong-inspired artwork from the mag by Leith Maguire) established in Berlin and Melbourne that we've been eagerly waiting for, is set for release just around the corner—but first, the dedicated cinephiles behind the project could use some assistance with funding. Check out their Indiegogo campaign here. We're also proud to be partnering up with Fireflies in some exciting ways, so keep your eyes pealed! Tickets are now on sale for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York, which will be running from June 12th-22nd. Over at The Talkhouse, filmmaker Sean Baker shares some thoughts on William Friedkin's Sorcerer:

"Cream always rises to the top. A cliché term yes.. but one that I love because eventual victory is assured for those who deserve it. It’s bittersweet...

New cinema-centric books have dropped from some major names, including Anne Thompson and David Thomson, and tackle some of the great films of the last four decades — Network, The White Ribbon, err, Showgirls … As usual, it’s a gloriously mixed bag — Showgirls! — but all are worthy entries in the canon of film criticism. In fact, Adam Nayman’s spirited defense of Paul [...]...

The San Francisco International Film Festival, the nation's oldest film festival, is flexing its funding muscles. For its 57th edition, which begins tonight, the Sff is harvesting what its new executive director Noah Cowan calls a bumper crop of seven films made with funds from the San Francisco Film Society, which operates an ambitiously discerning but little-known film-funding program -- surprisingly unknown, in fact, to cash-sniffing filmmakers. Noah Cowan, 46, a veteran of the Toronto International Film Festival, and more recently the Bell Lightbox, talks as if the institution has put recent crises behind it – deaths of two of its directors (Graham Leggat and Bingham Ray), and the passing last year of the dedicated and much-loved philanthropist George Gund -- "a rock," said the critic and San Francisco resident David Thomson, who will receive the festival’s Mel Novikoff Award. (Novikoff, an art and repertory exhibitor in San Francisco, was also the record executive who.

Gia Coppola’s directorial debut based on James Franco’s collection of short stories has been named the centerpiece screening at the upcoming 57th San Francisco International Film Festival.

Pixar’s John Lasseter will receive the George Gund III Craft Of Cinema Award, while Stephen Gaghan will collect the Kanbar screenwriting award and film historian David Thomson receives the Mel Novikoff Award.

Festival top brass have unveiled the line-up of 168 films. As previously announced, The Two Faces Of January (pictured) and Alex Of Venice bookend the event.

The festival runs from April 24–May 8. For full details of the programme click here.

The 57th San Francisco International Film Festival has revealed its lineup for the 2014 fest, set to kick off April 24 and run through May 8. Along with unveiling its various premieres, the festival will be handing out a few key awards. The 2014 George Gund Craft of Cinema Award will go to Pixar chief John Lasseter on May 1; the Mel Novikoff Award will go to film historian David Thomson on May 4; and the Founders Directing Award will go to Richard Linklater ("Boyhood"). Gia Coppola's "Palo Alto," which arrives in theaters May 9, is the fest's centerpiece gala. At a glance, this year's edition of the fest will host 168 films (74 of which are narrative features, 29 documentaries and 65 shorts), with 56 countries represented and 40 different languages; 3 World Premieres, 5 North American Premieres and 5 U.S. Premieres; with 200 filmmakers and industry guests expected to attend. The full schedule is available on Sfiff's website. List of...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 17, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95

Studio: Criterion

A group of young woman mysteriously vanish in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath in the 1975 drama-mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock put director Peter Weir (The Way Back) on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema.

Set at the turn of the twentieth century, Picnic at Hanging Rock concerns a small group of students from an all-female college and a chaperone, who vanish while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing.

Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo Edition of the movie includes the...

I just received my review copy of Ingmar Bergman's Pesona (3/25) today so I'm a little high on Criterion love at the moment and only minutes after receiving that in the mail I received today's announcement listing the films coming to the Collection in June. I'm sure many will be excited to see Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock getting the Blu-ray upgrade. The remastered release includes a new piece on the making of the film, a new introduction by film scholar David Thomson as well as Weir's 1971 black comedy Homesdale among other additional features. The disc will hit shelves on June 17. The title I'm most looking forward to is Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse the third film in his informal trilogy that includes L'avventura and La notte. This is the only one of those three I haven't yet seen and what a cast as it tells the story of...

Arrow Video is excited to announce the UK Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD and Steelbook release of the 1987 British thriller, White of the Eye, which will be making its worldwide Blu-ray debut, and UK DVD debut from 31st March 2014. Described by the distinguished critic David Thomson as “one of the great secret works in cinema”, White of the Eye is one of the most bizarre and unforgettable thrillers ever made. Arrow Video’s Francesco Simeoni said: "Donald Cammell was such an unfortunate filmmaker, side-lined by critics who thought Nicolas Roeg was the creative force behind Performance, projects which would never come to fruition, studio interference and personal problems, his life was arguably more famous than his films. White of the Eye is possibly his most problem free film, though even this film suffered cuts, which we have included, although sadly no sound could be found. Though the film was cut, Cammell never commented,...

When "Avatar" was competing at the Oscars four (!) years ago, 3D was a relative novelty in multiplexes -- and a total one in the awards race. With the technology now a fixture in both contexts, have voter perceptions of it changed? This is the question asked Jen Chaney, as she notes the progression from "Avatar's" relegation to technical awards to the very real possibility of "Gravity" becoming the first 3D Best Picture. (Alfonso Cuaron, meanwhile, will most likely make it two in a row for 3D films in the Best Director race.) "There will be a 3D Best Picture winner at some point in our lifetimes," she concludes. "If not now, if not this year, then certainly in the not-so-distant future." [The Dissolve] A lovely piece by David Thomson on the origins of the Oscars, and how it all started with Louis B. Mayer's beach house. [Vanity Fair] Check out the 45-second scene...