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Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Boys in the Boat (George Clooney)

This is, from start to finish, an underdog sports picture. Edgerton puts a welcome spin on the gruff-but-caring coach archetype, and Turner does the same with his lead character. Soft-spoken, stern, and handsome, this is a role someone like Ronald Reagan would have excelled at bringing to the screen some 80 years ago; Turner, luckily, is more interesting to look at and a better actor. Alexandre Desplat’s score is maybe the most playful thing about this film, and it works when it needs to. The race sequences are unquestionably Boys‘ highlight, Clooney making use of zoom lenses and well-placed cameras to capture the speed and fluidity of each competition. There is a real tension mined in these scenes,...

The title of Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore refers to Marie (Bernadette Lafont), whose status as a 30-year-old marks her as effectively middle aged to her modestly younger peers, and Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a hospital nurse who copes with the tedium of her experience with casual sex. These reductive, misogynistic archetypes of female behavior aren’t reflective of the film’s own views, but those of Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a disaffected young intellectual who lives with Marie and is increasingly drawn to Veronika.

Alexandre airs his misogyny from the start as he meets up with his ex-girlfriend (Isabelle Weingarten). Speeding past any attempt at reconciliation, Alexandre proposes marriage, then proceeds to rant about her new relationship. Asking if she does the same things with her new beau as they did together, Alexandre maintains an outward veneer of calm but cannot keep the venom out of his voice.

Janus Films has released a trailer for the 4K restoration of Jean Eustache’s 1973 opus The Mother and the Whore, which will open at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on June 23. An official synopsis of the restoration reads: After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May ’68 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a […]

The post Trailer Watch: 4K Restoration of Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Janus Films has released a trailer for the 4K restoration of Jean Eustache’s 1973 opus The Mother and the Whore, which will open at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on June 23. An official synopsis of the restoration reads: After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May ’68 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a […]

The post Trailer Watch: 4K Restoration of Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It used to be two options: live in a major city that busts out the one awful print or download the VHS rip from a dark-web torrent site. No wonder it was only hosannas upon learning the complete corpus of Jean Eustache would get its decades-overdue restoration––on basis of The Mother and the Whore alone it marks a moment in film history.

Janus Films (by extension Criterion) acquired the catalog from Les Films du Losange and begin their series, “The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache,” this month at Lincoln Center before a larger rollout in weeks, months to come, and with it a trailer for Mother‘s 4K restoration is here. Just the first shot of Jean-Pierre Léaud––who, I feel compelled to note, is enduring hard times and seeking help via friends––completely rewires sense of a movie I’ve loved for a decade. But it’s all in tip-top shape: deep blacks,...

Pathé’s 4K restoration of No Fear No Die is a highlight of the Revivals program Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced the Revivals selections of the 60th New York Film Festival. Highlights include Pedro Costa’s O Sangue (Blood); Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun; Jacques Tourneur’s Canyon Passage starring Brian Donlevy (with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg consulting on this restoration); Claire Denis’s No Fear No Die with Isaach De Bankole, Alex Descas, and Jean-Claude Brialy; Mikko Niskanen’s Eight Deadly Shots; Manoel de Oliveira’s The Day Of Despair on the life of Camilo Castelo Branco, played by Mario Barroso; Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion starring Ni Shujun, and Balufu Bakupu-Kanyinda’s Le Damier, screening with Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists (in the Currents program).

The 60th New York Film...

Film at Lincoln Center has announced the cinephile-favorite Revivals section for the 60th New York Film Festival, coming to NYC September 30 through October 16. The program showcases new restorations and preservations of important works from canonical filmmakers.

This year’s selection includes the hard-to-find “The Mother and the Whore” — which cameoed in the form of a poster featured in 2005’s “The Squid and the Whale” and brought the scandalous Jean Eustache some renewed attention. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun, the philosophical love triangle set against the sexual revolution divided Cannes audiences in 1973. Earlier this year, the Les Films du Losange restoration opened the Cannes Classics section. It makes its North American premiere at NYFF.

Many of the significant works featured in the lineup include the world premiere restoration of Claire Denis’ “No Fear No Die”; a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s incendiary, audience-provoking “Black God, White Devil...

Notebook is covering the Cannes Film Festival with an on going correspondence between critics Leonardo Goi and Lawrence Garcia, and editor Daniel Kasman.One Fine Morning.Dear Danny and Leo,It is indeed very good to be back at Cannes—not just because it means seeing an entire slate of anticipated titles, but also because it means endless opportunities to talk about them, both in these correspondences and in person, which I'd missed more than I'd realized. Indeed, there’s so much to discuss that I’ll just dispense with the throat-clearing and get to the movies. Like you, Leo, I found both God’s Creatures and Scarlet productive to consider in relation to each other, what with their shared folktale affinities and archetypal approach to character. The most impressive aspect of God’s Creatures was how Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer managed, for a time, to balance the film's appealing behavioral ambiance,...

Late French post-New Wave director’s filmography was recently acquired and restored by Les Films du Losange.

Paris-based Les Films du Losange has posted a raft of fresh deals on the restored 4K catalogue of late French filmmaker Jean Eustache, whose cult drama The Mother And The Whore opens Cannes Classics on Tuesday.

It has sold to Spain (Filmin), Japan (Mermaid Films), Portugal (Leopardo), Switzerland (Cinémathèque Suisse) and Italy (I Wonder).

New York-based distributor Janus Films, a sister company to classic film label The Criterion Collection, announced earlier this month it had acquired the catalogue for North America as...

For years—I’m talking years—the films of Jean Eustache, post-New Wave genius and forefather of more than you’d ever realize, were basically impossible to find in high quality and through means we could strictly speaking call “legal.” The how and why are plenty complicated, but fear not: Les Films du Losange acquired and are overseeing 4K restorations of his complete catalogue, and Janus soon thereafter took up U.S. rights. What will hopefully prove a big rollout begins this month—Eustache’s most iconic film The Mother and the Whore is coming to Cannes Classics, and now we have a trailer foretelling a major upgrade.

“A major upgrade” speaking as one who saw Mother on a dusty 35mm print with several other freaks in 2013, at which time the movie left an indelible impression for its unsentimental depiction of post-68 Parisians—an image made more powerful for including Jean-Pierre Léaud,...

Love triangle: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun and the late Bernadette Lafont in The Mother and the Whore Photo: Les Films du Losange The Cannes Classic section will showcase a restored copy of Jean Eustache’s groundbreaking The Mother And The Whore in the presence of actors Françoise Lebrun and Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Also in attendance on 17 May in the Debussy Theatre will be the director’s son Boris Eustache who was born in 1960 and worked on his father’s second feature and appears as an actor in Eustache’s short film Les photos d’Alix. He supervised the restoration.

The film which will be re-released in French cinemas after the Festival, is considered one of the key works of post-Nouvelle Vague French cinema. Eustache tragically shot himself in his Paris apartment just a few weeks before his 43rd birthday, leaving a legacy of two features and numerous shorts. The director...

This year’s line-up will also celebrate classics such as Singin’ In The Rain and Indian director Satyajit Ray’s 1970 work The Adversary.

Late French filmmaker Jean Eustache’s recently restored cult 1973 drama The Mother And The Whore will open Cannes Classics this year, the line-up for which was announced on Monday (May 2).

Other highlights include two episodes of the series The Last Movie Stars directed by Ethan Hawke about Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman; a screening of Singin’ In The Rain to coincide with the 70th anniversary of its release and a restored 4K version of Vittorio de Sica’s 1946 work Sciuscià.

Claude Chabrol was the most prolific of the New Wave directors. He didn’t only do murder thrillers; this fine selection of Chabrols from the ten year period 1985-1994 begins with a pair of detective tales but moves on to a masterful adaptation of a great book and two engrossing experiments, one of them picking up where an earlier French master left off. The players are terrific as well: Jean Poiret, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer, Christophe Malavoy, Jean Yanne, Marie Trintignant, Jean-François Garreaud, Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet.

Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol

Blu-ray

Cop au Vin (Poulet au vinaigre), Inspector Lavardin (Inspecteur Lavardin), Madame Bovary, Betty, Torment (L’enfer)

Arrow Video

1985-1994 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 9 hours and 17 minutes / Street Date February 22, 2022 / Available from Arrow Video (UK website) / Available from Amazon U.S. / 99.95

Common Credits:

Cinematography: Jean Rabier (3), Bernard Ziterman (2)

Production Designer:...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.It’s not always necessary to know a filmmaker’s biography in order to fully appreciate his or her work, but in the case of François Truffaut, it is not only beneficial, it may also be unavoidable. Few directors have so ardently worn their lives on their cinematic sleeve as Truffaut, persistently projecting his passions on the screen for all to see. Born February 6, 1932, he was a child of World War II, but only later in his career was that great tragedy the subject of conspicuous focus. Rather, his recurring concerns were of a more personal nature, ranging and reappearing throughout his work in the form of fleeting flirtations and complex affairs, the multifaceted unrest of childhood, and, of course, the cinema itself. As a wayward young man, Truffaut found refuge...

Influential filmmaker’s best-known film is 1973 Cannes grand jury winner ’The Mother And The Whore’.

French film company Les Films du Losange has acquired the entire catalogue of influential post-New Wave director Jean Eustache, comprising five feature-length works and six short films.

The deal with the late filmmaker’s son Boris Eustache is a coup for Les Films du Losange’s new co-heads Charles Gillibert and Alexis Dantec who recently took over the company, which was established in 1962 by New Wave directors Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder.

It brings an end to a dispute blocking the exploitation of the filmography for several decades,...

Jacques Rivette's Out 1, Noli Me Tangere (1971) is showing on Mubi in the United States.There’s a lot of confusion about what improvisation in movies consists of—when it is or isn’t used, and sometimes what it means when it is used. Those who think that the dialogue in Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind is improvised don’t realize that the screenplay by Welles and Oja Kodar with that dialogue was published years ago, long before the film’s posthumous completion. It’s worth adding, however, that the film’s mise en scène was improvised by Welles on a daily basis. Similarly, those misled by director Robert Altman’s dreamy pans and seemingly random zooms in The Long Goodbye into concluding that the actors must be inventing their own lines are ignoring the careful work done by screenwriter Leigh Brackett, not to mention Raymond Chandler.

While Lulu Wang’s emotional family drama “The Farewell” may have broken through last year, and upcoming comic book adaptations “Birds of Prey” (by Cathy Yan) and “The Eternals” (from Chloé Zhao) spell fresh opportunities for filmmakers of Chinese descent in 2020, a rollicking little follow-the-money caper called “Lucky Grandma” from first-time feature director Sasie Sealy and co-writer Angela Cheng proves there are plenty more emerging Chinese American talents just waiting for their shot. All it takes is a little good fortune — and the support of a few encouraging festivals, like the Tribeca team that gave this film a boost — and they should be on their way.

, Sealy’s high-attitude debut stars Tsai Chin of “The Joy Luck Club” as a surly, age-toughened widow who, reluctant to accept that it’s time to move in with her son (Eddie Yu), follows her fortuneteller’s advice and takes her life savings to the casino.

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.

Bam

A series on Czech titan Věra Chytilová has commenced.

Metrograph

King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan has been restored.

Films about Thelonious Monk play back-to-back.

Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant and a print of Cronenberg’s Spider can be seen.

Museum of the Moving Image

A series on Latin America’s recent sci-fi...

A Very Curious Girl. Courtesy of Lobster Films.Nelly Kaplan’s eloquent, vitriolic comedies are often social parables of vengeance, in which the weak rise up to serve the powerful their comeuppance. Joan Dupont recently described in Film Quarterly how the Argentine-born Kaplan had a modest start: She arrived in France, in 1953, at the age of 22, with mere 50 dollars and a letter of introduction to Cinémathèque française Director Henri Langois. She then worked as assistant director to film legend Abel Gance, with whom she had a romance, and launched her own career, making some fifteen films, among them vivacious comedies, documentary portraits of artists, and films for television—including a documentary, Abel Gance and His Napoléon (1984), about the filming of Gance’s epic, Napoléon (1927). And yet, despite her promising start and her having worked into the early 1990s, by the time Dupont wrote about her, Kaplan had been mostly forgotten.

There’s not much that pioneering filmmaker Nelly Kaplan couldn’t do: a former economics student who dabbled in journalism and film criticism, surrealist fiction and film theory, and even documentary and narrative filmmaking, Kaplan was already hard at work crafting her rich resume and unique tastes when the French New Wave hit. Kaplan’s films fit comfortably inside the expectations and confines of the New Wave — they’re funny, sexy, and political in tone — but Kaplan always added a pop of surrealism that made them uniquely her own.

In celebration of her oeuvre, still a blind spot even for some hardened film fans — hell, even her long-time mentor and sometimes partner Abel Gance supposedly never even told her that he saw and adored her most famous film — New York City’s Quad Cinema is launching a retrospective of her work later this month. The series begins with the U.

It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.

The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...

Into the InfernoThe lineup for the 2016 Telluride Film Festival (September 2nd - 5th) have been announced:Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, Us)The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (Errol Morris, Us)Bleed For This (Ben Younger, Us)California Typewriter (Doug Nichol, Us)Chasing Trane (John Scheinfeld, Us)The End of Eden (Angus Macqueen, UK)Finding Oscar (Ryan Suffern, Us)Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy/France)Frantz (François Ozon, France)Gentleman Rissient (Benoît Jacquot, Pascal Mérigeau, Guy Seligmann, France)Graduation (Cristian Mungiu, Romania/France/Belgium)Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog, UK/Austria)The Ivory Game (Kief Davidson, Richard Ladkani, Austria/Us)La La Land (Damien Chazelle, Us)Lost in Paris (d. Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, France/Belgium)Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, Us)Maudie (Aisling Walsh, Canada/Ireland)Men: A Love Story (Mimi Chakarova, Us)Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, Us)My Journey through French Cinema (Bertrand Tavernier, France)Neruda (Pablo Larraín,...

Kenneth Lonergan’s Sundance hit, Denis Villeneuve’s Venice selection, and Pablo Larrain’s acclaimed Chilean biopic are among select titles heading to Colorado this weekend.

The 43rd edition of the Telluride Film Festival includes Clint Eastwood’s Tom Hanks starrer Sully, Barry Jenkins’ anticipated triptych Moonlight and Maren Ade’s Cannes triumph Toni Erdmann.

Joining them are Aisling Walsh’s Maudie, Gianfranco Rosi’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Fire At Sea, Damien Chazelle’s Venice opener La La Land and also from the Lido, Rama Burshtein’s Through The Wall.

Telluride runs from September 2-5. The main slate line-up appears below.

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, Us, 2016)The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (Errol Morris, Us 2016)Bleed For This (Ben Younger, Us, 2016)California Typewriter (Doug Nichol, Us, 2016)Chasing Trane (John Scheinfeld, Us, 2016)The End Of Eden (Angus Macqueen, UK, 2016)Finding Oscar (Ryan Suffern, Us, 2016)Fire At Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy-France, 2016)Frantz ([link...

Buoyed by its worldwide premiere at the ongoing Venice Film Festival – early reviews are praising the musical as an audacious, deeply romantic feature – Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash follow-up La La Land has booked its place at Telluride 2016.

The picture, one that stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in central roles, is one of the many soon-to-be-released features to be locked in for the imminent film festival, joining the ranks alongside Manchester By the Sea, Moonlight, Things to Come, Bleed For This and Clint Eastwood’s airborne thriller Sully. It is, without question, a fairly stacked lineup, which only has us all the more excited for the onset of the Toronto International Film Festival later this month.

But over the coming weekend, it is Telluride that will take center stage. Similar to La La Land, today’s unveiling confirms a second festival appearance for Denis Villeneuve’s intriguing sci-fi pic Arrival.

One of the last question marks of the early fall film festival onslaught was Telluride Film Festival, who announces their line-up just a day before the event kicks off. Today now brings the slate for the 43rd edition of the festival, which runs from Friday through Monday.

Featuring the world premiere of Clint Eastwood‘s Sully, there’s also the Venice favorites La La Land and Arrival, as well as past festival highlights and some highly-anticipated dramas headed to Tiff, including Manchester By the Sea, Moonlight, Things to Come, Bleed For This, Toni Erdmann, Una, Neruda, and more. Check out the line-up below, along with links to our reviews where available.

Line-Up

Arrival (d. Denis Villeneuve, U.S., 2016)

The B-side: Elsa Dorfman’S Portrait Photography (d. Errol Morris, U.S., 2016)

Bleed For This (d. Ben Younger, U.S., 2016)

California Typewriter (d. Doug Nichol, U.S., 2016)

Chasing Trane (d. John Scheinfeld,...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 69th edition of the festival:COMPETITIONOpening Night: Café Society (Woody Allen) [Out of Competition]Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)American Honey (Andrea Arnold)Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)La Fille Inconnue (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)Juste La Fin du Monde (Xavier Dolan)Ma Loute (Bruno Dumont)Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)Rester Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)Mal de Pierres (Nicole Garcia)I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)Bacalaureat (Cristian Mungiu)Loving (Jeff Nichols)Agassi (Park Chan-Wook)The Last Face (Sean Penn)Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)Elle (Paul Verhoeven)The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding-Refn)The Salesman (Asgha Farhadi)Un Certain REGARDOpening Film: Clash (Mohamed Diab)Varoonegi (Behnam Behzadi)Apprentice (Boo Junfeng)Voir du Pays (Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin)La Danseuse (Stéphanie Di Giusto)La...

Section to include world premiere of Bertrand Tavernier doc; a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin and a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...

Section to include a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin, the 70th anniversary of the Fipresci prize, a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman and the double Palme d’Or of 1966.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...

Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.

Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.

Check out the line-up below.

For the first time in the Us, Jacques Rivette’s 1961 directorial debut, Paris Belongs to Us is available thanks to an accomplished new restoration from Criterion. A neglected title associated with the same crew of vibrant auteurs eventually known as the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Rivette’s thunder was stolen by more famous films from critics turned filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Francois Truffaut (even though it technically went into production before several of theirs). The initial lackluster response explains Rivette’s slower rise to notability, his particular methods and idiosyncrasies eventually embraced nearly a decade later when items like Mad Love (1969) and the monolithic Out 1 (1971), the legendary near thirteen hour production, were released.

Anne (Betty Schneider) is a young literature student in Paris, following in the footsteps of her older brother, Pierre (Francois Maistre). Afetr a disturbing interaction with a neighbor at her hostel,...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

Two playful journeys into women’s lives — one a mystery forged in darkness, one an adventure-turned-ritualistic-requiem. Jacques Rivette’s Duelle and Noroît originally set up a four-part circle of films that were never finished. But these never-released-in-America masterpieces comprise his most wondrous ode to classical Hollywood, each based on a forgotten text. In Rivette’s own obsessive mise-en-scéne, their fantasies are grounded through realism, constructed worlds where the camera simply documents performance.

The streets of Paris remain conspicuously quiet through Duelle, a noir-fantasy modeled off Rko’s The Seventh Victim. The frizzle-haired ingénue Hermine Karagheuz balances on a ball before coming crashing back down, and suddenly a woman gives her the task of finding a missing man (encouraged by the booming sounds of the...

The Eighth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-produced by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema.

The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, and we’re especially pleased to present Jacques Rivette’s long-unavailable epic Out 1: Spectre Additional restoration highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s A Married Woman and Max Ophüls’ too-little-seen From Mayerling To Sarajevo. Both Ophüls’ film and Louis Malle’s Elevator To The Gallows – with a jazz score by St. Louis-area native Miles Davis — screen from 35mm prints. All films will screen at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (47- E. Lockwood)

Music fans will further delight in the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra’s accompaniment and original score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s...

[Editor's Note: This post is presented in partnership with Time Warner Cable Movies On Demand in support of Indie Film Month. Today's pick, "Paulette," is available now On Demand. Need help finding a movie to watch? Let TWC find the best fit for your mood here.]  Read More: Indiewire Partners With Time Warner Cable Movies On Demand for Indie Film Month Does crime pay? In Jérôme Enrico's funny French crime comedy, it just might, but the road won't be an easy one to traverse.  The film follows the titular Paulette (played by the dearly departed Bernadette Lafont in one of her final roles) as she becomes a marijuana dealer when her pension cannot cover her expenses.  "Paulette" will air on TWC on February 14. Check out our exclusive clip from the film above. High jinks follow.  Read More: Watch: Tim Robbins is a Master of Pantomime in New 'Perfect Day' Clip Indiewire has partnered with Time...

Winter is the perfect time for staying in and truly investing in lengthy cinematic narratives, and few demand (and reward) the attention than Jacques Rivette's "Out 1." The holy grail of French cinema has long been unavailable or kicking around in less than ideal releases, but Kino Lorber and Carlotta Films are finally bringing the movie stateside in a massive DVD/Blu-ray box set (complete with substantial extras), and we want to give one to a lucky Playlist reader. Read More: Review: Jaques Rivette's Newly Restored Masterpiece 'Out 1' Starring Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Leaud, and Michael Lonsdale, the twelve-hour epic follows two theater groups as they prepare to perform avant-garde adaptations of plays by Aeschylus. Here's the synopsis:  Paris, April 13th 1970. Two theater groups each rehearse avant-garde adaptations of plays by Aeschylus. A young deaf-mute begs for change in cafés while playing the harmonica. A young woman seduces men.

Jacques Rivette's Out 1, noli me tangere (1971), featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Michael Lonsdale, Michèle Moretti, Bulle Ogier, Bernadette Lafont and Bernadette Onfroy as well as Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder, has seen one-off screenings at festivals and retrospectives over the past 40-plus years, but never a proper theatrical release—until now. Starting today, a new restoration from Carlotta Films Us begins its rollout at Bam in New York before heading to Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. For starters. Releases on DVD and Blu-ray will follow—in the Us from Kino Lorber. We're gathering reviews, interviews, the trailer and more. » - David Hudson...

Jacques Rivette's Out 1, noli me tangere (1971), featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Michael Lonsdale, Michèle Moretti, Bulle Ogier, Bernadette Lafont and Bernadette Onfroy as well as Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder, has seen one-off screenings at festivals and retrospectives over the past 40-plus years, but never a proper theatrical release—until now. Starting today, a new restoration from Carlotta Films Us begins its rollout at Bam in New York before heading to Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles and Oklahoma City. For starters. Releases on DVD and Blu-ray will follow—in the Us from Kino Lorber. We're gathering reviews, interviews, the trailer and more. » - David Hudson...

Big news via Blu-ray.com. Carlotta Films and Carlotta Films Us will send a new 2K restoration of Jacques Rivette's Out 1 (1971), with Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale and Bulle Ogier, out to theaters before releasing a Blu-ray edition in France and the Us later this year. More silver discs under review: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean Renoir's The River, J. Hoberman on Orson Welles's The Lady of Shanghai and Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse, Carson Lund and Jeremy Carr on a total of four films by Yasujiro Ozu, Imogen Sara Smith on Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and Howard Hampton on Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. » - David Hudson...

Big news via Blu-ray.com. Carlotta Films and Carlotta Films Us will send a new 2K restoration of Jacques Rivette's Out 1 (1971), with Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale and Bulle Ogier, out to theaters before releasing a Blu-ray edition in France and the Us later this year. More silver discs under review: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean Renoir's The River, J. Hoberman on Orson Welles's The Lady of Shanghai and Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse, Carson Lund and Jeremy Carr on a total of four films by Yasujiro Ozu, Imogen Sara Smith on Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and Howard Hampton on Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. » - David Hudson...

Sean Penn: Honorary César goes Hollywood – again (photo: Sean Penn in '21 Grams') Sean Penn, 54, will receive the 2015 Honorary César (César d'Honneur), the French Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Crafts has announced. That means the French Academy's powers-that-be are once again trying to make the Prix César ceremony relevant to the American media. Their tactic is to hand out the career award to a widely known and relatively young – i.e., media friendly – Hollywood celebrity. (Scroll down for more such examples.) In the words of the French Academy, Honorary César 2015 recipient Sean Penn is a "living legend" and "a stand-alone icon in American cinema." It has also hailed the two-time Best Actor Oscar winner as a "mythical actor, a politically active personality and an exceptional director." Penn will be honored at the César Awards ceremony on Feb. 20, 2015. Sean Penn movies Sean Penn movies range from the teen comedy...

Marie Dubois, actress in French New Wave films, dead at 77 (image: Marie Dubois in the mammoth blockbuster 'La Grande Vadrouille') Actress Marie Dubois, a popular French New Wave personality of the '60s and the leading lady in one of France's biggest box-office hits in history, died Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at a nursing home in Lescar, a suburb of the southwestern French town of Pau, not far from the Spanish border. Dubois, who had been living in the Pau area since 2010, was 77. For decades she had been battling multiple sclerosis, which later in life had her confined to a wheelchair. Born Claudine Huzé (Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé according to some online sources) on January 12, 1937, in Paris, the blue-eyed, blonde Marie Dubois began her show business career on stage, being featured in plays such as Molière's The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. François Truffaut discovery: 'Shoot the...

Chomet: I really wanted to do a film which was about music but not to be obviously to be a film where everyone suddenly bursts into song - although there's a couple of scenes like that Sylvain Chomet has made his first full-length foray into live action features with Attila Marcel, after previously contributing a vignette to Paris Je t'Aime. The film considers the nature of memory as its silent protagonist Paul (Guillaume Gouix), steps back in time with the help of his neighbour to try to recall the childhood trauma that left him mute. Whimsy and melancholy blend together to make this a heady but satisfying brew that features terrific performances from a supporting cast including Anne Le Ny and the late Bernadette Lafont. I caught up with Chomet before his film opened the 2013 French Film Festival in Edinburgh to talk about his latest work.

How did it feel...

As the bad-grandma title character in the comic rude-fest Paulette, the late Bernadette Lafont is all in, never playing for sympathy or sugarcoating the nastiness — more than can be said of the movie itself. Set in projects on the edges of Paris, the French pic spins off a mildly promising premise: Struggling pensioner starts dealing hashish and proves darn good at it. With director Jerome Enrico mining the material for only the most obvious gags, the social commentary of the central joke never rises to the level of hard-hitting satire, instead settling on a broadly observed collection of

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‘La Cage aux Folles’ director Edouard Molinaro, who collaborated with Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, dead at 85 Edouard Molinaro, best known internationally for the late ’70s box office comedy hit La Cage aux Folles, which earned him a Best Director Academy Award nomination, died of lung failure on December 7, 2013, at a Paris hospital. Molinaro was 85. Born on May 31, 1928, in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, to a middle-class family, Molinaro began his six-decade-long film and television career in the mid-’40s, directing narrative and industrial shorts such as Evasion (1946), the Death parable Un monsieur très chic ("A Very Elegant Gentleman," 1948), and Le verbe en chair / The Word in the Flesh (1950), in which a poet realizes that greed is everywhere — including his own heart. At the time, Molinaro also worked as an assistant director, collaborating with, among others, Robert Vernay (the 1954 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Jean Marais) and...

The Selfish Giant | Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa | Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs | Ender's Game | Wolf Children | One Chance | Closed Circuit | Le Skylab | Muscle Shoals

The Selfish Giant (15)

(Clio Barnard, 2013, UK) Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder. 91 mins

In the tradition of Kes, or Fish Tank, this offers a child's-eye view of poverty that's too strong for real-life kids of the same age. Despite the fairytale origins, miracles are in short supply in this Bradford suburb, where two drop-out mates scavenge for opportunities. But the balance between harsh realism and mythical lyricism is beautifully struck, and the two leads really are miraculous.

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)

(Jeff Tremaine, 2013, Us) Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll. 92 mins

Old-suited Knoxville and his "grandson" take to the road for Borat-style pranks.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (U)

(Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn, 2013, Us) Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Will Forte. 95 mins

Food/fauna surrealism part...

Hélène Vincent, Guillaume Gouix, and Bernadette Lafont in Attila Marcel French filmmaker Sylvain Chomet will return to the French Film Festival UK this year with his first full foray into live action Attila Marcel, which has been selected as the opening gala film.

Chomet - who spent five years in Scotland making the animated hit The Illusionist - will attend the film's premieres in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow to help kick off the 21st edition of the UK touring event that was founded in Scotland. He expects to be accompanied by his producer Claudie Ossard who has been responsible for some of France’s biggest hits of recent decades, including Amelie, Delicatessen and In The House.

The title of Attila Marcel comes from a song Chomet wrote for his first big hit Belleville Rendez-vous. He said: “I had the title and I knew it was going to be a film...

Cher Danny,

Frederick Wiseman’s Film Festival—now that would be something perfect for capturing the Tiff experience, with its swarms of filmmakers and volunteers and reviewers, its exhilaration and exhaustion. Then again, that festival might also be the granola screening room seen early on in Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves, where perfunctory applause for a cinematic eco-pamphlet is followed by an awkward Q&A session straight out of Wiseman’s High School.

The scene smartly situates its protagonists, young activists played by Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning, as alienated not just from mainstream society but also from potential alternatives—on the fringe of the fringes, a familiar position for Reichardt’s characters. Their more radical form of protest (the bombing of a Portland dam) is revealed languidly, shard by shard, in a series of concise interactions stressing process (how to buy 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer without the proper documentation?...

The French actress Bernadette Lafont has died, at 74. Fresh-faced and with an energetic spontaneity that could make her seem a barely containable force on screen, Lafont was one of a handful of performers who helped shape the face of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and 1960s. She was still a teenager when she made her debut, alongside her then-husband Gerard Blain, in Francois Truffaut’s debut short, Les Mistons (1957). A year later, she and Blain co-starred in Claude Chabrol’s first film, Le Beau Serge. She subsequently appeared in Chabrol’s A Double Tour (1959 ...

News.

Above: veteran character actress Eileen Brennan, known best for her roles in The Last Picture Show, has passed away at the age of 80. Above: The great French actress Bernadette Lafont (1938 - 2013), who we know so well from her contributions to the French New Wave, has left us. Ginette Vincendeau at Sight & Sound remarks how Lafont "occupied a specific niche in the New Wave female galaxy" and after a career dip "re-emerged triumphantly at the end of the 1960s." This Sunday, August 4 marks the end of your chance to enter the Tribeca Film Festival's Imagination Series: Film Competition, a contest where pitching your conceptual interpretation of a script by Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher not only gives you a shot at getting your idea produced, but if you win your film will be shown at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Sounds to us like a fast track for ambitious young filmmakers. Gentlemen and ladies,...

In most of the world, only dedicated cinephiles noted the passing of French actress Bernadette Lafont, but in France, citizens nation-wide are still mourning the loss of one of the country's great cinematic icons. Lafont passed away from a heart problem last Thursday at the age of 74. The actress' filmography, which covers well-over 100 films, reads like a who's who list of the most important French directors of the last fifty years. She made her debut in François Truffaut's first short film, The Mischief Makers, in 1957 and went onto work with directors including Costa Garvas, Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Claude Miller and Julie Delpy. And so, in honor of Lafont's work, let's take a look at seven of her standout...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

French actress Bernadette Lafont, the face of France's New Wave cinema in the 1950s and the star of some 120 films, died Thursday aged 74. Lafont debuted in Francois Truffaut's 1957 "Les Mistons," worked with other famed French directors including Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle, Nelly Kaplan and Jean Eustache during a career that spanned more than 50 years. The brunette beauty took the Cesar Award for her role in Claude Miller's 1985 film "L'Effrontee" and received an Honorary Cesar in 2003. Lafont continued to work until recently, including with an appearance in Julie Delpy's 2011 film "Le Skylab." She had been hospitalized in her home town of Nimes on Monday after falling ill and died early Thursday, the hospital...