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Jomo Fray can pinpoint the day when the bold idea of “first-person perspective” truly clicked.

The Brooklyn-based cinematographer and his director, RaMell Ross, had spent months discussing, studying, and experimenting for the filming of “Nickel Boys.” Based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, the movie is shot almost entirely through the eyes of its main characters, Elwood and Turner (played by Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson), two young Black men at an inhumane reform school in Florida.

The eureka moment came during a scene when Elwood’s grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) visits the school to deliver bad news to her grandson. “I was the camera operator for that scene,” said Fray. “And as she was building up the courage to tell Elwood something devastating, I looked away. I find it very difficult to look a person in the eyes when I know they’re telling me something that’s difficult for them.

Andrei Tarkovsky classics Solaris, Stalker, The Mirror and more besides are now available in full (and legally) on YouTube.

Celebrating its centenary in January 2024, Russian production company Mosfilm has spent the past few months quietly uploading many of its classic films to YouTube.

Among the additions are several works by Andrei Tarkovsky, including perhaps his most famous films, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979). Solaris, adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, is a simmering masterpiece – the story of psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatis Banionis), who’s sent to a distant space station to investigate some strange behaviour among its crew. Once there, he’s told that the planet the station orbits, the titular Solaris, may be sentient – and capable of somehow turning memories into physical reality…

Stalker’s a sci-fi piece of a very different sort. It’s loosely adapted from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic, and sees a group of scavenger,...

Like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Georgiy Daneliya’s 1986 film Kin-dza-dza! is, at bottom, biting social satire disguised as dystopian science fiction. Deploying unabashedly absurdist humor, both films decry the alienating effects of bureaucracy, abhor the arbitrary terrors imposed by an authoritarian regime, and exhibit a fascination with the makeshift nature of technology in their respective brave new worlds. While taking cues from contemporary events in the Soviet Union, Kin-dza-dza! nevertheless expands the scope of its satire to include not only Western capitalism, but, more importantly for its staying power, the follies and failings of our shared humanity.

Kin-dza-dza! also reveals a certain kinship with Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series since both feature clueless humans being whisked off on interplanetary adventures that force them to confront bizarre and often byzantine customs and regulations. At the start of Kin-dza-dza!, construction manager Vladiimir “Uncle Vova” Mashkov (Stanislav Lyubshin) and...

Science fiction has such flexibility and breadth as a genre that it should come to no surprise that so many popular sci-fi movies get released worldwide year after year. With so many sci-fi projects crowding the cinema and various streaming services, it's easy to miss some hidden gems in the genre that don't enjoy the same publicized fanfare. This oversight affects even the most critically acclaimed sci-fi movies which, despite the buzz, don't always get the general audience awareness they truly deserve.

From indie darlings to foreign films that don't receive major attention during their international distribution, there are plenty of overlooked sci-fi movies. For the purposes of this list, we've narrowed it down to movies that have scored exceptionally high with critics' scores on Rotten Tomatoes, but don't seem to have the wider viewership or recognition, even among sci-fi fans. Here are some near-perfect sci-fi movies that you might...

Whether the dread-inducing rituals of witches or a turpentine-fueled descent into hysteria, Robert Eggers’ cinema is of unflinching immersion. Trapped in the center of symmetrical frames and surrounded by immaculate production design, the only escape for his characters’ fury seems to be bounding off the screen onto the audience themselves. The effect oscillates between entrancing and grating, wearing one down until there’s no choice but to succumb to the mania and plunge into the madness. A considerable step up in scope, his third feature The Northman gratefully bears scant touches of a compromised vision, delivering a bloody, visceral Viking epic that utilizes a simple revenge template as the canvas to examine the contradictions of a hero’s journey.

“I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” These already-memed few sentences are all the synopsis one needs, setting up the story developed by...

Acclaimed writer/director David Lowery joins Josh and Joe to discuss the films that inspired The Green Knight.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Green Knight (2021)

Peter Pan & Wendy (2022)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Old Man And The Gun (2018)

A Ghost Story (2017)

Pete’s Dragon (1977)

Pete’s Dragon (2016) – Glenn Erickson’s review

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)

Ghost Story (1974)

Sword of the Valiant (1984)

Gawain and the Green Knight (1973)

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

Masters of the Universe (1987) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Andrei Rublev (1966) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s Muriel Awards blurb

War And Peace (1966) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928) – Charlie Largent’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Devils (1971)

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Conjuring (2013)

Jubilee (1978)

Benedetta (2021)

Dune (1984)

Dune (2021)

Hard To Be A God (2013)

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

Moby Dick (1956) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary,...

Even with all the havoc the coronavirus wreaked in the world, cinema could not be stopped, so why should Mark Cousins, the solicitous Irish critic-cum-tour guide whose 15-hour “The Story of Film: An Odyssey” was but a tip-of-the-iceberg survey of the medium’s infinite possibilities?

Making the most of his time in lockdown, Cousins compiled an appendix/capper to that marathon series, delivering “The Story of Film: A New Generation” on opening day of the Cannes Film Festival. This latest installment (doubtful the last) is less focused on where the medium’s been than on where it’s headed, focusing mostly on 21st-century examples, from Attenberg to Zama, that point the way forward.

At two hours and 40 minutes, it’s a longer epilogue than audiences needed perhaps, but then, no one would accuse Cousins of brevity. And for those who appreciate the director’s wide-eyed and open-hearted way of looking at cinema,...

Not that time stopped, of course. Nor is there interest in a kind of grand-standing disrespect towards whatever worthwhile cinema fit into the narrow 12-month window that just passed (gentle reminder: this is how I make a living) when I say my sense of the landscape has flattened: those well-honed patterns part and parcel of a cinematic year—festival announcements, festival reviews, acquisition news, established release dates, after-work press screenings preceded by shitty midtown food, preferred theaters, weekend subway trips—vanished, the few standing traditions (if “bugging publicists for links” meets the definition) oddly extraneous. A combination of streaming services, downloading out-of-print holy grails, Plex—an app that streams files from computer to TV as simply as if watching Netflix, leaving cumbersome Hdmi plug-ins a thing of the past—and finding myself freed from sundry exhaustions of the old world are the best thing that’ve happened to my cinephilia in years.

With what was supposed to be the summer movie season now just another relic of this pandemic-blasted year, and the rest of 2020’s major film releases in a continuing state of flux, it’s important to note that there has still been a fairly steady stream of new films coming out, some in limited theatrical release but others largely available via video on demand and streaming services.

With that in mind, and with the customary “opening weekend” a rather fluid and ambiguous term as well, below is a rundown of films we’ve caught in the past month, along with information on where you can find and watch them. Some are good, some not so much, but your mileage may vary for each. The important thing to know is that movies are still coming out–just not always in the ways we expect.

She Dies Tomorrow

Although it was released back on Aug.

I have a friend who loves to walk out of movies. He’ll give almost anything a try, but he knows his taste and can tell when he’s seen enough. It’s almost a matter of pride for him to cut bait at a certain point during the screening, once he has determined that the film is only going to disappoint him further.

That’s one approach, like the crowds who duck out of Broadway shows at intermission. Not me. I often describe myself as a “cinemasochist,” by which I mean that I’m game to suffer through nearly all movies, no matter how long, boring or bad they are out of some mixture of curiosity and duty — the exception being at film festivals, where I figure that committing to a dud means potentially depriving myself of the opportunity to find something better screening in another theater.

As a film critic,...

A rerelease of Aleksei German’s 1998 satire is a journey into a hallucinatory world shot with documentary realism

There is visual amazement in store for anyone seeing this quite extraordinary re-release from the Russian director Aleksei German – along with disorientation, bafflement, horror and disgust. German’s final film, Hard to Be a God, was released here in 2015, two years after his death.

This is the film that came before, in 1998. It is very loosely inspired by Joseph Brodsky’s essay-memoir In A Room and a Half, which was in fact adapted far more directly in the film by Andrei Khrzhanovsky in 2009.

In a spoiler-heavy reddit Ama, “Hereditary” director Ari Aster went in depth about his acclaimed new horror film starring Toni Collette. Her character’s actions at the end of the movie have raised questions among fans, and the writer/director offered a peek behind the curtain — as well as a preview of “Midsommer,” his upcoming sophomore feature.

After admitting he “likes the idea of divine intervention” in response to a question about Annie’s sleepwalking having greater meaning behind it, Aster offers his own take: Collette’s character “knows on some buried, suppressed level that her life is not her own, and she is the victim of unthinkable, Machiavellian scheming by her mother. But she cannot look directly that this (let alone inquire about it). It would destroy too much of her inner structure.

“So, she lives in a kind of denial. But in her sleep, this part of her is acting out.

What is the point of having a soul if everyone around you doesn’t? That’s the central question asked by Rainer Sarnet’s November, a bleakly told Estonian fairy tale tragedy adapted from Andrus Kivirähk’s novel Rehepapp. At its core is romance — the kind based in unrequited love that will never bear fruit. Liina (Rea Lest) is a peasant girl trying to catch Hans’ (Jörgen Liik) eye while his sights are affixed well above his social stature upon the German Baron’s (Dieter Laser) visiting daughter (Jette Loona Hermanis). They each leave their homes at night to watch the objection of their affection, the latter hiding in the shadows behind the Baroness as she sleepwalks and the former transformed into a wolf so she may spy in plain sight.

These two are seemingly the last young children in a town ravaged by the black plague. Many believed them...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Aleksei German, Jr.'s Under Electric Clouds (2015), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from November 10 - December 10, 2017 as a Special Discovery.All throughout Blade Runner 2049 I kept wondering why more of the film wasn't impressing me, despite so much of it being quite clearly so impressive. The lack came into sharper focus in hindsight. Where are the rest of the people? Where's an actual sense of life in 2049 L.A.? What happens here? What does it mean to live in this smog-ridden hellhole? The more the questions came to me, the more they started to feel like answers handed down by a complimentary and superior work of art. Under Electric Clouds is the film Blade Runner 2049 was attempting to be, give or take a couple of fist fights and explosions.

Dovlatov

Director: Aleksey German Jr.

Writer: Aleksey German Jr., Katherine Dovlatov

Since helping to complete his father’s posthumous opus Hard to Be a God, Russian director Aleksey German Jr.

Continue reading...

The award ceremony for the oldest Japanese cinema competition took place on February13 at the Bunkyo Civic Center, and the list of winners is:

Best Actor: Kazunari Ninomiya (Nagasaki: Memories of My Son)

Best Actress: Eri Fukatsu (Journey to the Shore, Parasyte The Final Chapter)

Best Supporting Actor: Masahiro Motoki (The Big Bee)

Best Supporting Actress: Haru Kuroki (When the Curtain Rises; Solomon’s Perjury)

Best Director (Japanese): Ryosuke Hashiguchi (Three Stories of Love)

Best Director (Foreign): George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Best Screenplay: Ryosuke Hashiguchi (Three Stories of Love)

Best New Actor: Atsushi Shinohara (Three Stories of Love)

Best New Actress: Suzu Hirose (Our Little Sister)

Eri Fukatsu

Best Ten Japanese Feature Films

Three Stories of Love

Fires on the Plain

Happy Hour

Our Little Sister

Journey to the Shore

Gonin Saga

This Country’s Sky

Solomon’s Perjury

Nagasaki: Memories of My Son

Being Good...

The more “international” body of tastemaker critics have anointed Todd Haynes’ Carol, Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s The Assassin, George Miller’s Mad Max, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin as the better film items for 2015 and top vote getters with the most noms for 2016 Ics Awards. Winners of the 13th Ics Awards will be announced on February 21, 2016. Here are the noms and all the categories.

Picture

• 45 Years

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Carol

• Clouds of Sils Maria

• The Duke of Burgundy

• Inside Out

• Li’l Quinquin

• Mad Max: Fury Road

• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

• Tangerine

Director

• Sean Baker – Tangerine

• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin

• Todd Haynes – Carol

• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin

• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road

Film Not In The English Language

• Amour Fou

• Arabian Nights

• The Assassin

• Hard to Be a God

• Jauja

• La Sapienza

• Li’l Quinquin

• Phoenix

• A...

Leave it to a Romanian director to make a movie that best expresses the dangers of the dyed-in-the-wool mindset of modern America. Culled partly from historical documents, Aferim! is a twisted history lesson whose messages transcend its insular time period of 19th-century Romania. Its story concerns Constable Costandin (Teodor Corban) and his son, Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), who chase after a wanted Gypsy slave for a large bounty offered by Boyar Iordache Cîndescu (Alexandru Dabija), a local noble. But even embedded in a timeline that’s centuries away, the story is strikingly relevant in showing how people maintain blinders in the face of inhumanity.

Directed by Radu Jude and shot in a stark black-and-white, Aferim! is at once playful and searingly serious with its snapshot of slavery and eye-for-eye justice. Jude has a wry, acidic wit not unlike Roy Andersson. But more often, the film’s roundabout musings on justice recall...

Dovlatov

Director: Aleksey German Jr.

Writer: Aleksey German Jr., Katherine Dovlatov

Since helping to complete his father’s posthumous opus Hard to Be a God, Russian director Aleksey German Jr. revealed his third feature, Under Electric Clouds in competition at Berlin in 2015 (where it won an award for cinematography). He’s just received another round of funding from Eurimages to support his latest project, Dovlatov, a film which explores four days in the life of cult Russian author Sergei Dovlatov in 1971, Leningrad. Collaborating with the author’s daughter Katherine, German is interested in capturing the particular scene of early 70s Leningrad. In May of 2015, German was still finishing up the script, while reports of filming preparation were reported from St. Petersburg in October.

Cast: Na

Production Co./Producer: Na

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. Tbd (domestic) Tbd (international).

Release Date: German’s first two films played at Venice, with his...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Variety‘s Kris Tapley on the top 10 shots of 2015:

John Seale came out of retirement to shoot George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and he even turned 70 years old during production. Not only that, but he was up on top of those war rigs tearing through the African desert operating camera himself in many instances, grips hanging off of the sturdy sport sailer who got his sea legs long ago. He took to the film’s action-filled spectacle like a duck to water.

Liv Ullmann recommends a Vittorio de Sica film:

Rolling Stone‘s David Ehrlich on why westerns are tragically more relevant than ever:

America...

As a cinephile, few things are more sublime than finding back-to-back features that hit some specific thematic sweet spot. Drive-in theaters may not be the popular viewing spot they once were, but with the overwhelming accessibility we now have, one can program their own personal double bill. Today we’ve run through the gamut of 2015 films to select the ten finest pairings.

As a note, there are a few recommended double features from the same director (Spike Lee‘s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus and Chi-Raq, Noah Baumbach‘s Mistress America and While We We’re Young, and Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy and Tom at the Farm), but we’ve elected to stick to a more thematic playing field. Check out list the below, and we’d love to hear your own picks, which can be left in the comments.

The Big Short and 99 Homes

Telling American’s modern horror story from two distinctly different,...

In the waning days of 2015, we’ll be polling Shock’s stable of fantastic freelancers to see what horror flicks made them tick the loudest. We continue with the inimitable, esoteric Shade Rupe… Hard To Be A God (Dir: Aleksei German) Unending brutal reality pounds the viewer in almost every frame of Aleksei German’s (pronounced Gher-man)…

The post Top 5 Favorite Fright Flicks of 2015: Shade Rupe’s List appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

With all the year's films now out in U.S. theaters, Metacritic.com has revealed what films, games and TV shows were the best of the year based on the aggregate scores of the top critics. I've divided the lists into three sections - films, TV shows and major video games. Check out the scores below:

Best Films

This list does Not include old film re-releases. Films also have to have over a dozen reviews to be considered, which is why high scoring works like "Virunga," "Big Men," "Night Will Fall" and "Stand Clear of the Closing Doors" are not included.

"Carol" - 96/100

"Anomalisa," "45 Years" - 95/100

"Inside Out" - 94/100

"Spotlight," "Sherpa" - 93/100

"Timbuktu," "The Look of Silence" - 92/100

"Jafar Panahi's Taxi" - 91/100

"Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem," "Hard to Be a God" - 90/100

"Mad Max: Fury Road," "Phoenix," "Son of Saul" - 89/100

"Democrats" - 88/100

"Brooklyn," " Diary of a Teenage Girl,...

Todd Haynes' "Carol" has been receiving a lot of love from various critics groups and this time, it topped the ranking of the year's best films at the annual Film Comment magazine poll!

Take a look at the complete list below and then wonder, didn't these critics see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens?"

Film Comment's Top 20 Films of 2015

1. "Carol"

2. "The Assassin"

3. "Mad Max: Fury Road"

4. "Clouds of Sils Maria"

5. "Arabian Nights"

6. "Timbuktu"

7. "Spotlight"

8. "Phoenix"

9. "Inside Out"

10. "The Look of Silence"

11. "Hard to Be a God"

12. "Anomalisa"

13. "In Jackson Heights"

14. "Son of Saul"

15. "Horse Money"

16. "Jauja"

17. "Tangerine"

18. "Brooklyn"

19. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"

20. "Bridge of Spies"

Film Comment's Best Undistributed Films of 2015

1. "Right Here, Right Now"

2. "Chevalier"

3. "The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers"

4. "The Academy of Muses"

5. "Don't Blink . Robert Frank"

6. "Cosmos"

7. "Journey to the Shore"

8. "Happy Hour"

9. "Lost and...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Quentin Tarantino has lashed out at Disney for taking over ArcLight Cinemas’ Cinerama Dome, on which it’s been expected The Hateful Eight will hold 70mm showings. Hear his comments to Howard Stern (via Hit Fix):

The worlds of Star Wars and Quentin Tarantino do have a common factor, however: Samuel L. Jackson, who interviewed The Force Awakens‘ Gwendoline Christie for Interview.

Watch the teaser for Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s return to horror, titled, of all things, Creepy (via Cinemaldito):

Benoît Jacquot is days from finishing production on his Son Corps, his adaptation of Don DeLillo‘s The Body Artist. Mathieu Amalric, Julia Roy, and Jeanne Balibar star.

Tom Hardy received three nods for his roles in Legend, The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road.Scroll down for full list

Toddy Haynes’ Carol leads this year’s London Critics’ Circle awards with seven nominations, with Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years receiving six.

Tom Hardy has received three acting nominations: best actor for Legend, supporting actor for The Revenant and British actor of the year for his roles in the aforementioned two as well as Mad Max: Fury Road.

Fury Road, along with Steve Jobs and The Revenant, received five nominations.

Brooklyn, Room and Bifa-winner Ex Machina garnered four apiece.

The winners will be revealed at a ceremony on January 17 at London’s May Fair Hotel.

At last year’s awards, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood won both best film and director.

Full list of nominees

Film Of The Year

45 Years

Amy

Carol

Inside Out

The Look of Silence

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

[link...

At the halfway point of December, there are, to put it lightly, many end-of-year lists hitting the web, and few publications have round-ups as consistently excellent as Film Comment‘s. (“Consistently excellent” translates to “aligns with my specific taste,” of course.) Their 20-film selection represents the year rather nicely, from the widely seen and frequently listed (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out) landing among some of our limited-release favorites, including Timbuktu, The Assassin, and Jauja. As editor Gavin Smith says, “That balance, which happens to be encapsulated in the top five in micro form, feels about right for the agenda of this magazine, which, since the very beginning, has been to champion the best in cinema wherever it hails from, all creatures great and small. Since we managed to run features on 11 of these and sung the praises of another five, it’s a pleasure to close...

Diving into the hundreds of new theatrical releases, including large chunks of grueling, gluttonous marathons through world cinema’s greatest offerings from a variety of film festivals, and coming to a reasonable list of selections demonstrating what one deems to be ‘the best,’ remains an utterly self-involved, sometimes fruitless tradition. Who, after all, can rightly determine what is indeed ‘best’ in an art form where one person’s trash is another’s treasure? Personally, I prefer to compile a list of ‘favorite’ things, items which remain meaningless unless you put stock in its author’s general tastes.

Amidst the incessant jabbering of awards season exaggeration, it’s difficult not to be swayed by the most topical, most shiny and brand new theatrical releases courting awards voters (which is why I felt it necessary to see Inarritu’s new film twice). Nearly half of my selections appeared on my mid-year list of favored theatrical releases,...

1. The AssassinThough it doesn’t always follow, the most beautiful film of the year should have the most beautiful poster, and Erik Buckham does Hou Hsiao-hsien right with this gorgeous piece. What looks at first like a combination of photography and illustration is in fact entirely taken from images from the film. Buckham told me “I didn’t want to use any imagery in the poster that did not come from the film itself, so everything you see is taken from screen grabs and some on-set photography.” What I always thought were stylized clouds surrounding Shu Qi are actually elements from an embossed picture of a rooster on a lacquered vase or some similar object. As Buckham confided, “I liked the look of the lines so I cropped in super close and played around with lighting and layer effects to blend it in with the background imagery. It was...

1. The AssassinThough it doesn’t always follow, the most beautiful film of the year should have the most beautiful poster, and Erik Buckham does Hou Hsiao-hsien right with this gorgeous piece. What looks at first like a combination of photography and illustration is in fact entirely taken from images from the film. Buckham told me “I didn’t want to use any imagery in the poster that did not come from the film itself, so everything you see is taken from screen grabs and some on-set photography.” What I always thought were stylized clouds surrounding Shu Qi are actually elements from an embossed picture of a rooster on a lacquered vase or some similar object. As Buckham confided, “I liked the look of the lines so I cropped in super close and played around with lighting and layer effects to blend it in with the background imagery. It was...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Setsuko Hara, 1920 - 2015The great Japanese actress of Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring and Mikio Naruse's Repast passed away in September but the news has only recently been released. An indelible screen presence whose absence from movies has been felt every year since 1966.My MotherTop 10s: Cahiers du Cinéma + Sight & SoundFor us it's still too early to make judgement—we've hardly caught up with all of 2015's great cinema!—but the esteemed magazines of Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound have made their selections for the best of the year:Cahiers du Cinéma1. My Mother (Nanni Moretti)2. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)3. In the Shadow of Women (Philippe Garrel)4. The Smell of Us (Larry Clark)5. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)6. Jauja (Lisandor Alonso)7. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)8. Arabian Nights...

With the calendar about to turn to December, one thing you can count on is a ton of Ten Ten/Best of the Year lists beginning to come down the pike. From critics groups to guilds to various organizations and publications, now is the time to start feting the top titles of 2015. This year, the season of giving, as it were, has begun with Sight & Sound publishing their esoteric list of the top 20 releases of 2015. This European film magazine is highly respected and always makes interesting choices, with this year being no exception. You’ll see that list below, though I also want to talk about what might do the best during this section of 2015 as well. We’ve got 32 days left in the year, so it’s very much crunch time, in all senses of the term. Which films from this year stand to do best with Top Ten...

With December right around the corner, it’s time for movie critics from around the world to start compiling their best-of-2015 lists, and the highly respected Sight & Sound magazine is kick-starting the process by unveiling its own list of the 20 Best Films of 2015.

Topping the incredibly diverse list of faves this year is Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, a Taiwainese martial arts film that won its helmer Best Director at Cannes when it debuted there earlier in 2015. It’s expected to be the frontrunner for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, and given that the voting body for Sight & Sound’s list includes 168 critics from all around the globe, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that an acclaimed arthouse pic from a renowned auteur placed so highly.

Todd Haynes’ lovely period piece Carol took second place, and there were plenty of other smaller titles included (such as Anomalisa,...

While our year-end coverage will arrive at… well, the end of the year, other outlets are getting the jump early. One of the first is the estimable Sight & Sound, who have culled together 20 of the year’s best films from 168 of their contributors and colleagues. Topping the list is Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s magnificent The Assassin.

Some may be surprised at the inclusion of Inherent Vice, but that hit U.K. theaters this year, while Arabian Nights, 45 Years, Son of Saul, Cemetery of Splendour, Amy, and Chantal Akerman‘s final film, No Home Movie, all cracked the top 10. Also rounding out the top 20 are two animated films: Charlie Kaufman‘s Anomalisa and Pixar’s Inside Out.

While some have yet to be released in the states, if you’ve missed a few during their theatrical run, we’re keeping tabs on where you can stream them here. In the meantime,...

The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine have announced their annual top movies of the year list, a poll conducted amongst 168 film critics from around the world.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "The Assassin" and Todd Haynes' "Carol" took the top spots with 38 and 35 votes respectively. 'Assassin' is coming off its big win at the Golden Horse Awards last weekend - often regarded as the highest prize for Chinese-language films.

Not far behind were "Mad Max Fury Road," the "Arabian Nights" trilogy, "Cemetery of Splendour," "No Home Movie," "45 Years," "Son of Saul," "Amy" and "Inherent Vice" (which premiered this year in many international markets).

Rounding out the Top 20 were "Anomalisa," "It Follows," "Phoenix," "Girlhood," "Inside Out," "Tangerine," "Taxi Tehran," "Hard to Be A God," "Horse Money" and "The Look of Silence" also made the list.

The full list is up at BFI.org.

As 2015 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our hands on the titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen. With the proliferation of streaming options, it’s thankfully easier than ever to play catch-up, and to assist with the process, we’re bringing you a rundown of the best titles of the year available to watch.

Curated from the Best Films of 2015 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up on. This is far from a be-all, end-all year-end feature (that will come at the end of the year), but rather something that will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to seek out notable, perhaps underseen, titles from the year.

Note that we’re going by U.

Under Electric Clouds

Written by: Alexey German Jnr.

Directed by: Alexey German Jnr.

Russia, 2015

In 2013, renowned Russian filmmaker Alexey German died before he could complete his astonishing final film Hard to Be a God which, after being completed by his wife, screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, and his son Alexey German Jnr, screened at last year’s London Film Festival. This year, Alexey German Jnr, himself an accomplished filmmaker, arrives with his studied portmanteau film about modern Russia, Under Electric Clouds. German’s film speculates on a Russia of the not too distant future, struggling to find its identity and deal with the legacy of the Soviet era in a series of loosely connected stories. The result is a reflective, contemplative, perhaps a little sleepy, but ultimately intriguing look at Russian malaise in the 21st century.

Its 2017, one hundred years since the October Revolution and a monolithic tower stands uncompleted. A construction...

Syndromes and a Century: German Jr.’s Existentialist State of Things

Aleksey German Jr., son of famed Russian auteur Aleksey German, comes into his own prominence with his third feature Under Electric Clouds, which took home a cinematography award following its premiere at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival. Much like his father’s cinema, German announces similar interests in existentialist societal woes impervious to logical narrative format, and exchanges deliberations of the past (his previous title, Paper Soldier takes place in 1961) for the looming future of 2017 (a date that may dawn before the title premieres in certain international markets). With production delayed so German could put the finishing touches on his father’s posthumous masterpiece, Hard to Be a God, this indictment on the decaying cultural state of Russia tuned exactly one hundred years after the Russian Revolution is a critique as obscurely damning as it elusively oblique in tone. Some...

Stars: Leonid Yarmolnik, Gali Abaydulov, Yuriy Ashikhmin, Remigijus Bilinskas, Aleksandr Chutko, Valeriy Boltyshev, Evgeniy Gerchakov, Yuriy Tsurilo | Written by Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita | Directed by Aleksei German

Cinema is often described as an experience; it can be emotionally draining and even an endurance. Hard to be a God (Trudno byt bogom) is one such film, and at three hours long it takes some watching; but for fans of cinema, it is worth every minute of it…

A group of scientists are sent to the planet Arkanar to aid it though the medieval phase of its history. Not permitted to interfere violently they are forbidden from killing. When one of the Scientists Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) tries to save the local intellectuals from being executed, he is finally pushed into action. Put into the position of a God, Rumata ponders what he can do, knowing the whole time that his actions are...

To mark the release of Hard to be a God on 14th September, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray. A group of scientists visits the distant planet Arkanar, and discovers a society still trapped in its own medieval era. Unable to interfere with the course of its history, they can only

The post Win Hard to be a God on Blu-ray appeared first on HeyUGuys.

★★★★☆ Aleksei German's epic Dark Ages sci-fi Hard to Be a God (2013) took over a decade to make its way onto DVD and Blu-ray this week. Shot on-and-off for more than six years, the revered filmmaker regretfully passed away before the lengthy edit could be completed, but thanks to his wife and co-writer, Svetlana Karmalita, and son Aleksei German Jr, audiences now have the opportunity to wallow in his final picture in all its repugnant glory. For Hard to Be a God is a three-hour wade through shit, mud and blood - in the best possible way. Plot is of secondary importance to German, and the majority of its transmission to the viewer comes in croaking introduction laid over monochrome images of a medieval township.

Snow gently drifts down as a static and beautifully composed establishing shot sets the scene, but it this is the last moment of such serenity. Marauding...

As sci-fi medieval fantasy, the late Aleksei German’s extraterrestrial epic makes Game of Thrones look like musical chairs

This uncategorisable epic is set on another planet, but it feels extraterrestrial in every sense – the sort of visionary undertaking that, according to cinema’s usual commercial and narrative logics, ought not to exist. But director Aleksei German was one of the great hard cases of Russian cinema. His previous film Khrustalyov, My Car! – a Fellini-like nightmare about Stalin’s purges – was a daunting monolith of often inscrutable extremity. If that film was the Ulysses of Russian cinema, Hard to Be a God is surely its Finnegans Wake.

Related: Aleksei German obituary

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A slo-mo kaleidoscope of medieval squalor, fear and pandemonium, Alexei German’s three-hour epic isn’t easy to watch, but it is awe-inspiring in its own monumentally mad way

The past is another planet – they do things differently there. This monochrome dream-epic of medieval cruelty and squalor is a non-sci-fi sci-fi; a monumental, and monumentally mad film that the Russian film-maker Alexei German began working on around 15 years ago. It was completed by his son, Alexei German Jr, after the director’s death in 2013. If ever a movie deserved the title folie de grandeur it is this, placed before audiences on a take-it-or-leave-it basis: maniacally vehement and strange, a slo-mo kaleidoscope of chaos and also a relentless prose poem of fear, featuring three hours’ worth of non-sequitur dialogue, where each line is an imagist stab with nothing to do what has just been said.

What on earth does it mean?...

A slo-mo kaleidoscope of medieval squalor, fear and pandemonium, Alexei German’s three-hour epic isn’t easy to watch, but it is awe-inspiring in its own monumentally mad way

The past is another planet – they do things differently there. This monochrome dream-epic of medieval cruelty and squalor is a non-sci-fi sci-fi; a monumental, and monumentally mad film that the Russian film-maker Alexei German began working on around 15 years ago. It was completed by his son, Alexei German Jr, after the director’s death in 2013. If ever a movie deserved the title folie de grandeur it is this, placed before audiences on a take-it-or-leave-it basis: maniacally vehement and strange, a slo-mo kaleidoscope of chaos and also a relentless prose poem of fear, featuring three hours’ worth of non-sequitur dialogue, where each line is an imagist stab with nothing to do what has just been said.

What on earth does it mean?...

With the first half of 2015 officially coming to a close, it’s time for our mid-year list of best theatrical releases. As seems to be the trend, a bulk of these titles were selections premiering in the late fall circuit of 2014, a move sometimes granting offbeat art-house selections a bit more breathing room (though not always). Here’s a glance at what represents the best of the year thus far, including two directorial debuts, one posthumous work, and one studio feature:

10. The Salt of the Earth – Dir. Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

Premiering at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, German auteur Wim Wenders explores the prolific career of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, here with the help of his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado serving as co-director. Known for capturing catastrophic events in striking fashion, the documentary finds the artist in search of something positive after decades documenting human nature at its worst.

This week on Off The Shelf, Ryan is joined by Brian Saur to take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of June 30th, 2015, and chat about some follow-up and home video news.

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Episode Links & Notes Top 5 Of 2015 (So Far)

Brian

5. Wolfen (Warner Archive)

4. River’s Edge (Kl Studio Classics)

3. Sullivan’s Travels (Criterion)

2. Blood and Black Lace (Arrow)

1. Breaking Away (Twilight Time)

Honorable: Thunderbirds, The Fisher King, Zardoz, Last Embrace, Return to Oz.

Ryan

5. 3-D Rarities (Flicker Alley)

4. Journey To The Center Of The Earth Re-issue (Twilight Time)

3. Thunderbirds (Shout! Factory)

2. Classics From The Van Beuren Studio (Thunderbean Animation)

1. Watership Down (Criterion Collection)

Honorable mentions: Spirited Away, The Train (Arrow), Man With A Movie Camera

News Saturn Awards: Winners Announced New Releases 1990: The Bronx Warriors Come Fly with Me The Decline Of Western Civilization Collection Escape From the Bronx...

As far as the immersive powers of cinematic spectacle go, it’s doubtful any will come close to rivaling the achievements of Russian auteur Aleksei German, a figure many have hailed as the post important director in his country following Tarkovsky. And yet, he is still largely unknown, at least in comparison to the worldly renown of his comparable peers. Over his five decades as a filmmaker, German only produced five films, a perfectionist whose later works far outshine the fastidiousness displayed in the comparable methods of someone like Stanley Kubrick.

Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...

This week on Off The Shelf, Ryan is joined by Brian Saur to take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of June 16th, 2015, and chat about some follow-up and home video news.

Subscribe in iTunes or RSS.

Episode Links & Notes Follow-up Unopened movies Christopher Lee News Thunderbean: Willie Whopper Blu-ray Pre-order Criterion September Line-up Scream Factory to release Army Of Darkness, Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood Arrow Video: Zardoz, The Mutilator, Requiescant, The Firemen’s Ball, Closely Watched Trains, Hard To Be A God, Society Masters Of Cinema / Eureka: The Skull Warner Bros. Hammer Horror Blu-ray Box Set Warner Bros Special Effects Boxset (Them!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Son of Kong, Mighty Joe Young) Sony to release The Last Dragon on Blu-ray Scorpion: Burn Witch Burn Kino Cartoon Classics Announced Kl Studio Classics F/X 2 and The Challenge Universal to put out...

Ivan Ostrochovský’s boxer drama Goat (Koza) has been named Best Film at the 20th Vilnius International Film Festival.

The film, which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in February, won the ¨New Europe - New Names¨ competition at the festival, which ran from March 19 to April 2.

The film, about a former Olympic boxer who goes on a punishing ‘tour’ to raise some fast cash, also took home the Cicae Art Cinema Award.

Goat (Koza), which won the works in progress prize at last year’s Karlovy Vary, is handled internationally by fledgling sales company Pluto Film.

The ¨New Europe - New Names¨ jury, which included Chilean director Cristián Jiménez, Israeli actress Hadas Yaron, and Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov, gave its award for Best Director to Ukraine’s Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy for The Tribe and its acting honours to Hungary’s Márton Kristóf (Afterlife) and Bulgaria’s Margita Gosheva (The Lesson).

Meanwhile, the Baltic...