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A glimpse at upcoming UK DVD and Blu-ray release dates well into 2025: here’s what’s coming to disc and when.

Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.

Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.

Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…

Just released

First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)

First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)

Scroll to the bottom of the this list for more releases over the last few weeks.

Last two weeks

17th March: Yojimbo & Sanjuro double set

17th March:...

“I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, in his notes on The Last Tycoon. To which Cher Horowitz in Clueless would say: “Ugh, as if!”

Nearly 30 years after she spoke those iconic lines, we are witnessing the second act in the career of Alicia Silverstone.

Her Super Bowl ad for shopping platform Rakuten, where she slipped back into Cher’s yellow tartan skirt to recreate the Clueless debate scene, went viral (as did her first TikTok appearance, again as Cher, spoofing the “as if!” scene with her son Bear), returning Silverstone to the top of the pop culture conversation.

In the independent film world, Silverstone has never been hotter. With roles in The Lodge —the 2019 Sundance chiller from Goodnight Mommy directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz — and Jennifer Reeder’s new meta-horror film Perpetrator, which premiered in the Panorama section...

Legendary French stage and screen actor Michel Bouquet has died. He was 96. The César Award winner passed away today at a Paris hospital, his spokesperson confirmed to Afp. A tribute on the official website of the Elysée Palace did not cite a cause of death.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

Born in 1925, Bouquet began his film career in 1947 and went on to appear in more than 100 movies. In the 1960s and ’70s, he collaborated with New Wave directors François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol in such films as Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid and Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife and Just Before Nightfall, among others.

Later in his career, Bouquet won a European Film Award for Jaco Van Dormael’s Toto Le Héros (1991) and took two Best Actor Césars for Anne Fontaine’s How I Killed My Father (2001) and Robert Guédiguian’s The Last Mitterand...

Mubi is kicking off the new year with a selection of our 2021 highlights, including some of which haven’t picked up proper distribution yet. Most notably, their own release, Alexandre Koberidze’s dazzling What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, will premiere along with a New Voices in Georgian Cinema series. Also arriving is Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden, Ana Katz’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu, and Nino Martínez Sosa’s Liborio.

As part of a series of first films, they’ll also feature works from Janicza Bravo, Noah Baumbach, Garrett Bradley, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Terry Gilliam, and more. A double bill of Federico Fellini classics, Nights of Cabiria and The White Sheik, will also come to the platform.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

January 1 | Kicking & Screaming | Noah Baumbach | First Films First

January...

From the bustle of neon-lit Shinjuku and its ultramodern skyscrapers to the traditional scenery of Mt. Fuji, cherry blossoms, and Shinto shrines, Tokyo has served as a source of creative inspiration for generations of international filmmakers. Anticipating the 2020 Summer Games, when the eyes of the world will once again fall upon Japan’s dynamic capital, Tokyo Stories: Japan in the Global Imagination considers the ways Japan—and the elusive concept of “Japaneseness” —is rendered and interpreted outside its borders with a revealing selection of Tokyo-set films by foreign directors, including Japanese co-productions, Hollywood blockbusters, and European arthouse favorites.

The series kicks off November 8 with Werner Herzog’s latest film Family Romance, LLC, a quasi-documentary narrative feature concerning the function of role-playing in matters of love and business, screening in New York for the first time since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Herzog is one of...

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.

Metrograph

A series of New York-set films from 1981 begins with work by Abel Ferrara, Frederick Wiseman and more.

Alain Corneau’s Série noire has been restored and brought to screens. See the trailer here.

“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” continues with The Awful Truth.

House, Mulholland Dr., Ms. 45, and Fantastic Planet play late-night, while Edward Scissorhands screens early.

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.

Metrograph

Alain Corneau’s Série noire has been restored and brought to screens. See the trailer here.

“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” has a stacked weekend of Antonioni, Tashlin and more.

House, Mulholland Dr., and Fantastic Planet play late-night, while The Black Stallion screens early.

Film at Lincoln Center

A number of new restorations...

The work of Jim Thompson has had a healthy life on screen, ranging from adaptations in America and beyond, notably in Europe. Ahead of Yorgos Lanthimos tackling one of his most popular novels, we have a new restoration for 1979’s Série noire, which is adapted from Thompson’s 1954 novel A Hell of a Woman by writer Georges Pérec and director Alain Corneau.

Ahead of opening at New York City’s Metrograph this Friday, we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer for the restoration courtesy of Rialto Pictures. Starring Patrick Dewaere as Franck Poupart, a down-on-his-luck salesman who gets involved in a robbery scheme that pushed him ever further into despair, perhaps humorously so. Named one of the best French films of all time by Time Out, see the trailer below.

In one of the strangest pairings in film adaptation history, prankish French modernist experimentalist Georges Perec (Life: A User...

Jean-Pierre Marielle played in more than 100 films Photo: Unifrance

The death of veteran French cinema and theatre actor Jean-Pierre Marielle, at the age of 87, leaves another gap in the group who became known as “the band of the Conservatoire” whose ranks included his late life-long friend Jean Rochefort, as well as Claude Rich and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

He played in more than 100 films, both comic and tragic, with such directors as Michel Audiard, Bértrand Blier, Claude Sautet, Bértrand Tavernier, Claude Miller and Alain Corneau for whom memorably he created the role of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (opposite Gérard Depardieu) as the musician Marin Marais in All The Mornings Of The World (Tous Les Matins Du Monde) in 1991.

With his warmly distinctive deep vocal timbre, imposing stature and pepper and salt beard and moustache, Marielle – who was born in Paris on 12 April, 1932 and died yesterday (24 April) in hospital after a long illness –started his career.

Look at all these people who share Charlize Theron's birthday! Our favorite Atomic Blonde isn't even the only South African Oscar winner born on this day. It's quite a day in showbiz history all told. Which of these luminaries will you celebrate today inside your hearts?

Jeanne Moreau as Mata Hari in 1964

1876 Mata Hari, exotic dancer / spy / juicy role for both Greta Garbo & Jeanne Moreau

1884 Billie Burke, Glinda the Good Witch herself (also an Oscar nominated actress for Merrily We Live, 1938)

1901 Yuliya Solntseva, actress/director (the only female to win Best Director at Cannes until Sofia Coppola this summer)

1902 Ann Harding, Oscar nominated actress (Holiday, 1930)

1914 Ted Moore, Oscar winning cinematographer from South Africa

1927 Carl "Alfafa" Switzer of Our Gang fame

1942 Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion

1942 Bj Thomas, singer of the Oscar-winning "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"

1942 Caetano Veloso, singer of the sublime "Cucurrucucú Paloma" which is...

City of Lights: City of Angeles. The largest French film festival in the world and one of the largest festivals in L.A.!

Colcoa French Film Festival, “9 Days of Premieres in Hollywood” takes place April 24 to May 2 in the prestigious theaters of the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood (3 theaters (600, 160 and 37 seats), a 210 capacity lounge and a 1,500 capacity lobby).

Colcoa is the acronym of “City of Light, City of Angels” the original name of an event celebrating relationships between filmmakers from two capital cities of cinema. In 2015, the festival’s name was officially changed to Colcoa French Film Festival. Colcoa was founded in 1997 by The Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique collaborative effort of the Directors Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association, the Writers Guild of America West, and France’s Society of Authors Composers and Publishers of Music (Sacem). Colcoa is also supported by l’Association...

Here is a film that feels its age, the age of its maker. But this doesn't mean a young hotshot's film or that of an old master. French director Olivier Assayas is 59, and his Clouds of Sils Maria feels it. A unique thing, a movie that feels an expression of middle age, of considerate maturity, of a medias res—a favored storytelling technique for the director—movie very much aware of this age between the entitled, risk-taking energy of the young and the settled, comfortable wiseness the senior artist.Yet it's not about him, the auteur, it's about a woman, an actress, a veteran: Juliette Binoche as an actress of Binoche's age (50), caliber and reputation. After the death of the playwright and director who made her acting name as the young girl in a psychosexual play opposite an older woman, she is moved to star in a theatrical revival now...

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...

Here is a film that feels its age, the age of its maker. But this doesn't mean a young hotshot's film or that of an old master—though Cannes had its share of both. French director Olivier Assayas is 59, and his Clouds of Sils Maria feels it. A unique thing, a movie that feels an expression of middle age, of considerate maturity, of a medias res—a favored storytelling technique for the director—movie very much aware of this age between the entitled, risk-taking energy of the young and the settled, comfortable wiseness the senior artist.

Yet it's not about him, the auteur, it's about a woman, an actress, a veteran: Juliette Binoche as an actress of Binoche's age (50), caliber and reputation. After the death of the playwright and director who made her acting name as the young girl in a psychosexual play opposite an older woman, she is moved...

As yet another remake of Carrie heads into theaters this weekend, you may be wondering what the man who brought us the original film adaptation of Stephen King's novel, Brian De Palma, has been up to. It's been several years since he's given us one of his patented thrillers, but his latest flick, Passion, is about to change that.

Read on for details about the home video release of Passion!

From the Press Release

Two beautiful young corporate executives engage in a dangerous and tantalizing competition that will take a deeply personal and violent turn in Passion, the wildly received new thriller from suspense master Brian De Palma. The film, starring Rachel McAdams (as she's never been seen before) and Noomi Rapace, arrives on high-definition Blu-ray and DVD on November 5, 2013, from eOne. The SRPs are, respectively, $29.98 and $24.98.

Forty years after his breakthrough thriller Sisters put him in the suspense/horror pantheon,...

Passion is ostensibly Brian de Palma's remake of a well-reviewed French thriller from a few years back, called Love Crime, directed by Alain Corneau, co-written by Natalie Carter, and starring Kristin Scott Thomas. But, much like Brian De Palma's semi-remake Scarface, and pretty much every film he's ever made, with Passion (starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams), he has little interest in actualizing source material in the way that audiences will find “faithful.” Fans of the original are likely to find none of what they found appealing in this interpretation – the original, like every screenplay he's built from in the past, just provides the frame for his cinematic obsessions, fetishes, worship of Hitchcock, and anarchic visual experimentation.

Read more...

Passion plays as if writer/director Brian De Palma took Alain Corneau's screenplay for Love Crime, added on six minutes to the ending and shot every scene in one take no matter how well it turned out. All the elements from Corneau's original are here, but none of the intrigue. It's a stilted and stiff production with absolutely zero fluidity from scene to scene and lines such as "How about you call me... Never!" after Rachel McAdams is stood up by her booty call and she tosses her cell phone across the room. It's big moves, daring proclamations and over-acting met with an absence of thrills. The score tells you things are about to get intense, but it isn't long before you realize that's just not the case. I should note my opinion of this film is going to be much different when compared to someone that hasn't seen the original.

Over the years, while his Movie Brat brethren Scorsese and Spielberg have adapted their respective styles to align with evolving audience tastes and advancing technology, embracing 3D and motion capture with their most recent works, Brian De Palma has remained reassuringly steadfast. Meanwhile, Terrence Malick, the other New Hollywood veteran, experiments in increasingly radical filmmaking syntax with each passing movie. But De Palma is dogged: he continues to explore themes and techniques that have obsessed him since his ‘70s/’80s salad days of “Carrie” and “Body Double." His latest, “Passion,” is a remake of 2010‘s “Love Games," the swan song of French filmmaker Alain Corneau, but it feels more like De Palma remaking his own back catalog. Towards its end, the film begins to play like a greatest hits collection, with wry nods and winks to his most woozy thrillers. De Palma-nuts are sure to be delighted as the film...

Though he's made some of the most indelible films of our time, like "Carrie," which sits near the top of the heap of the greatest of all horror flicks, and "Scarface," which grew to become the defining film of American urban excess, Brian De Palma is nowhere near as celebrated as he should be. Known for creating as many outré thrillers and sex-infused noirs as popular action films (consider the range of differences when looking at "Sisters," "Body Double," "The Untouchables," and "Mission: Impossible"), he has notoriously been hit-or-miss when it comes to his critics, who are likely to argue with each other over whether a given De Palma work is high art or half-decent trash. Even now, De Palma's latest, "Passion," a remake of late French director Alain Corneau's final film, "Love Crime," is proving critically divisive. And yet, it's some of the most wicked fun to be...

Since the earliest stages of Brian De Palma's career, his thrillers have constantly walked a line between self-parody and earnest pastiche. "Passion," a reworking of the late Alain Corneau's final film "Love Crimes," reassuringly falls into this camp, signaling a return to form for the director despite its many flaws. Much more than a simple revamp of existing material, "Passion" is a veritable De Palma remix, at once a classy suspense movie and an unquestionably silly affair. Regardless of its glaring flaws, "Passion" is reassuringly old school.   Borrowing only the fundamental plot of the original, "Passion" follows Berlin-based advertising honcho Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her meek assistant Isabel (Noomi Rapace), whose attempts to forward her career are constantly hampered by her boss' power-hungry antics. As Isabel grows desperate to wrestle some modicum of control when Christine takes credit for one of Isabel's ideas, Isabel launches into a clandestine affair.

Passion Fruit: De Palma’s Return to Genre a Flimsy Revamp

Arguably one of the greatest American directors from the mid 70s to late 80s, Brian De Palma returns with Passion, a remake of the late Alain Corneau’s last film, Love Crime (2010), with the end result unfortunately feeling dead on arrival. Part of the problem might be comparisons to the already pulpy but superior Gallic original, but De Palma, never a stranger to retooling material he’s attracted to (always criticized for borrowing heavily from Hitchcock and Eisenstein), here only manages to create a trashy, stale revamp that plays out nearly exactly the same way as the film it apes. Doubles have always been a favorite motif of his, and perhaps this is the unkempt sister image of Love Crime, escaping from behind the mirror.

Isabelle James (Noomi Rapace) works for a high powered advertising agency and has developed...

He introduced Scorsese to De Niro, sorted out the start of Star Wars, and terrified a whole generation with Carrie. As Brian de Palma returns with a typically sexually charged thriller, he talks to Damon Wise

• Philip French on de Palma's Dressed to Kill

• Al Pacino and Brian De Palma to join forces again for Joe Paterno biopic

• Danny Leigh on the $1,000 Scarface Blu-ray set

Brian de Palma sighs. "I just like to shoot beautiful women," he says, "as elegantly as possible." The director is recalling how critics reacted to his new film Passion when it debuted at the Toronto film festival last year. Although he has dabbled in many genres in a 45-year career – from gangster to heist, from sci-fi to horror – critics drew immediate comparisons with a brace of movies De Palma made in the early 1980s, in particular Dressed to Kill and Body Double. Preferring not to dwell on his technical accomplishments,...

Starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, Passion (2012) sees American director Brian De Palma return to his favourite stomping ground of the overblown psychosexual thriller, a sub-genre which he made his own with such schlocky delights as Body Double, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out. The 71-year-old director spoke with John Bleasdale at last year's Venice Film Festival about the changing film industry, the impact of technology and why he should have really been a silent film director. Five years after 2007's angry Iraq War j'accuse Redacted, Passion - an English-language remake of Alain Corneau's 2010 thriller Love Crime (Crime d'Amour) - sees De Palma in a more playful mood.

"Passion is a good mystery story," the director explained on the Lido. "I liked working with women. I set out to make what I thought was a clever mystery even cleverer. Redacted is completely driven by men and so making this we're doing the opposite.

The Place Beyond the Pines; Passion; Evil Dead; Spring Breakers; The Gatekeepers

After the affectingly low-key musings of Blue Valentine, director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance reunites with Ryan Gosling for a sprawling quasi-epic tale that combines the vérité observational feel of its predecessor with the sweeping pan-generational structure of a Greek tragedy.

In The Place Beyond the Pines (2012, StudioCanal, 15), Gosling plays a hot-headed stunt rider who discovers that he has fathered a child for whom he determines to provide, by fair means or foul. Turning to robbery, his path crosses with that of Bradley Cooper's lawman, who in turn takes up the narrative thread – until the sins of the fathers come to be revisited upon their respective sons. Those seduced by the dreamy intimacy of Sean Bobbitt's cinematography may find the third act contrived, as realism gives way to archetype, but the performances remain utterly believable throughout. Eva Mendes...

It's Wednesday, hump day, which means the weekend is now appearing on the horizon, but there's still a bit of a journey before the work week is done and you can put up your feet for a couple days. And given that we're in the middle of summer, it means that prime time TV is a wasteland and given the blockbuster options right now, there isn't much reason to head to the multiplex. But quietly arriving on VOD today is Brian De Palma's "Passion," and to nudge you along in ordering it up this evening the first four minutes of the movie have been placed online. As you know, the pic, a remake of Alain Corneau's "Love Crime," stars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace as friends working at the same ad agency. But that soon becomes tested when personal and professional rivalry and betrayal come to the fore in a twisty,...

Professional contemporary women often strive to show and prove their talent and worth in their respective job to their bosses, hoping to prove that they’re indeed worthy to take on a high-profile and important workload. This is certainly the case with the two lead female characters in esteemed writer-director Brian De Palma’s new crime drama mystery, ‘Passion.’ While the two women initially form a strong professional bond in their company, their mutual longings to further prove their worth suspensefully exposes a realm where their wildest passions fiercely rage. ‘Passion,’ which is a remake of the 2010 Alain Corneau-helmed French psychological suspense thriller ‘Love Crime,’ follows Christine (Rachel McAdams), a powerful [ Read More ]

The post Interview: Brian De Palma Talks Passion appeared first on Shockya.com.

Erotic thrills are assured in Brian de Palma's ('Carrie') upcoming thriller 'Passion'. Based on the French movie 'Crime d'amour', from Alain Corneau and Natalie Carter, IFC Films are set to roll out 'Passion' onto VOD from 1 August and follow up with a limited theatrical release on 30 August. And if you're in two minds as to whether you want to check out this latest offering from De Palma perhaps a double dose of on-screen hotness in the form of Rachel McAdams -below ('Mean Girls') and Noomi Rapace ('Prometheus') will change your mind. Or indeed the fact that the movie will contain some pleasingly risque scenes between the two beauties. Paul Anderson ('A Lonely Place to Die'), Karoline Herfurth ('Errors of the Human Body') and Rainer Bock also star....

Building the hype ahead of the August 30th theatrical release, “Passion” has just dropped an intense teaser trailer.

The forthcoming flick stars Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, and Paul Anderson under the writing and direction of the legendary Brian DePalma.

“Passion” will also be available on VOD beginning August 1st, and was based on the 2010 French film “Love Crime” from Alain Corneau.

Per the synopsis, “The rivalry between the manipulative boss of an advertising agency and her talented protégée escalates from stealing credit to public humiliation to murder.”...

After premiering last fall at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, the new erotic thriller Passion from director Brian De Palma (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) is arriving in theaters later this summer. The seductive tale is fueled by sex and murder as Rachel McAdams (Midnight in Paris, The Notebook) and Noomi Rapace (Prometheus, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) play two rising female executives in a multinational corporation whose fierce competition to rise up the ranks is about to turn cut-throat. The reviews have been pretty lukewarm on this one, but it could be saucy enough to check out. Here's the new Us trailer for Brian De Palma's Passion, via The Film Stage: Passion is directed by Brian De Palma (Carrie, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Snake Eyes, The Black Dahlia, Redacted), and the film is actually a remake of the 2010 French film Love Crime directed by Alain Corneau,...

Brian DePalmas' Passion is finally hitting theaters on August 30. I saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival last year in a small side theater that felt almost like a private screening. I wasn't impressed. To quote the opening paragraph of my review: Passion plays as if writer/director Brian De Palma took Alain Corneau's screenplay for Love Crime, added on six minutes to the ending and shot every scene in one take no matter how well it turned out. All the elements from Corneau's original are here, but none of the intrigue. It's a stilted and stiff production with absolutely zero fluidity from scene to scene and lines such as "How about you call me... Never!" after Rachel McAdams is stood up by her booty call and she tosses her cell phone across the room. It's big moves, daring proclamations and over-acting met with an absence of thrills.

★★☆☆☆ Having slunk onto UK screens for the first time last year - presumably to pre-empt the release later in 2013 of Brian De Palma's English language remake Passion (2012) - French director Alain Corneau's Love Crime (Crime d'amour, 2010) is a muddled and ultimately unsatisfying attempt at making a tense, psychosexual European thriller. Even the presence of Kristin Scott Thomas as Machiavellian antagonist-cum-victim Christine is unable to shake this frustratingly inconsistent game of 'cat-and-cat' into life, with the usually dependable Ludivine Sagnier arguably coming off worst as put-upon plaything Isabelle.

Read more »...

Jack Reacher; Love Crime; She Monkeys

Of the few physical descriptions offered in Lee Child's source novel One Shot, one fact is clear – the hero of this ongoing avenging angel series is very big (Clive James's phrase "a condom stuffed with walnuts" has been invoked) and very tall. Not so Tom Cruise, who brings many qualities to the title role of Jack Reacher (2012, Paramount, 15), of which both heft and height are notable only by their absence. Replacing physical bulk with bankable box-office power, Cruise ambles through this oddly inert actioner as the eponymous, ghost-like figure, (re)appearing from nowhere after a clearly culpable crackpot is arrested following an apparently random daylight massacre. Teaming up with Rosamund Pike's glamorously attired defence lawyer, whose district attorney father (Richard Jenkins) has sent several prisoners to their deaths, Reacher follows the money to the Zec, a milky-eyed maniac with a very...

Arriving at UK cinemas primarily to preempt the release of the forthcoming Brian De Palma remake starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams is Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. Initially released in its native France over two years ago – and sadly just weeks before Corneau lost his battle with cancer – its UK release will represent for some an entertaining if lightweight slice of European cinema, while for others simply give a taste of what to expect from De Palma in 2013.

Ludivigne Sagnier stars as Isabelle, a young and ambitious businesswoman who works under the ruthless executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Although at first Isabelle believes their working relationship, while perhaps a little warped, is a mutually beneficial one, it soon becomes clear that is far from the case. Christine delights in toying with her young assistant; first stealing her business ideas, and then later, when threatened, she publicly humiliates Isabelle and...

Alain Corneau, the French director who died in 2010 at the age of 67, shortly after completing this glossy thriller, was little known in Britain. After working as an assistant to Costa-Gavras he made some notable crime movies, including Choice of Arms (starring Yves Montand) and Série noire, a transposition of Jim Thompson's pulp novel A Hell of a Woman from Chicago to suburban Paris starring Patrick Dewaere. But his masterpiece is the stately 1991 Tous les matins du monde, featuring Depardieu père et fils and set in the world of 17th-century baroque musicians.

Already remade by Brian De Palma as Passion, Love Crime starts well as a psychological drama in which two highfliers – bitchy, sadistic Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) and seemingly submissive Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) – come into conflict as their heads batter the glass ceiling of the American multinational they work for in Paris. It goes badly off course, however, when...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | Smashed | Neil Young Journeys | Chasing Ice | Love Crime | Dead Europe | UFO | False Trail | Code Name: Geronimo | Tinkerbell And The Secret Of The Wings | Babette's Feast | Baraka | What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A)

(Peter Jackson, 2012, Us) Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis. 169 mins

So the three-movie idea is more likely down to financial demands than creative ones, and the now-notorious higher frame rate reduces cinematic spectacle to pin-sharp TV movie, but this is terrifically wrought escapism. Freeman is the perfect lead, too. But what could have, should have been a masterpiece ends up a fantasy epic with too much epic and not enough fantasy.

Smashed (15)

(James Ponsoldt, 2012, Us) Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul. 81 mins

Winstead shows impressive range as a young alcoholic teacher trying to get back on track. The familiar subject feels fresh applied to a new demographic.

Hammy acting, Japanese dinner-jazz and noir cliches all conspire to scupper the late Alain Corneau's tale of violence and obsession

Brian De Palma has now completed his remake of this French film from 2010, a slightly bizarre and creakily constructed tale of violence and obsession from the late Alain Corneau, who died of cancer shortly after the film was completed. It looks like a standard-issue Joe Eszterhas erotic thriller, but made in the style of a stately French drawing-room comedy.

The stars are Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, as Christine and Isabelle. Christine is the sleek and successful senior executive in the French branch of a Us corporation, whose actual business is imagined rather vaguely. Isabelle is her junior, and Christine appears to be mentoring her; but also attempting to get kittenishly close emotionally, while remaining dishonest and manipulative. The relationship sours, and then there is a chill of murderous resentment in the air.

The boss-from-hell story gets whipped up, Parisian-style, into a wicked bonbon of oh-so-delicious nastiness. Prim, reserved Isabella (Ludivine Sagnier: The Devil's Double) is besotted -- in a professional way -- with her boss, slick, flirty Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas: Bel Ami). The sleek, minimalist office of their multinational corporation can barely disguise, however, all the messy backstabbing that runs the interpersonal politics, and Isabella’s white-collar crush get crushed when Christine’s claws come out and mentor turns mean. What happens then is so outrageous and so sublimely hilarious -- in the blackest, driest way possible -- that you may not believe your eyes? Do you really just see that? This last film of French director Alain Corneau, who died in 2010, is pure nefarious fun, as a satire of office politics and corporate sociopathy, for one of the most cleverly executed crimes I’ve ever seen on film, for its base feminism.

Sagnier had acted since infancy and was touted as 'the new Bardot'. Yet nine years ago, when her big moment came, she shunned it. The French actor talks about staying grounded, her latest film Love Crime – and why she's now finally ready for her breakthrough movie

It is a chill December day when I meet Ludivine Sagnier at her local cafe, in a grungy neck of eastern Paris. No press minders or lavish hotel suite for Ms Sagnier. I'm sitting inside, fretting that I must have the wrong venue, when I spot her through the greasy window. She has her wool hat pulled low; she's sucking on a cigarette, stamping her feet to keep warm. She might be an office worker on lunch break or a student idling between lectures. Sometimes the lack of a statement can be the most eloquent statement of all.

Nearly a decade ago, Sagnier arrived at a crossroads.

Sneak Peek actresses Kristen Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, in a trailer supporting the reissue of director Alain Corneau's 2010 French thriller "Love Crime", described as "Working Girl" meets "Fatal Attraction""...in a tale of money, power, sex and murder..." :

"...'Isabelle' (Sagnier) is a young executive who must negotiate a stressful workplace at a company presided over by bossy 'Christine' (Scott Thomas), at first a figure of hero-worship for the young employee.

"But Isabelle is not prepared to deal with the head games and psychological manipulations that pile on, eventually leading to her implication in a brutal crime..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Love Crime"...

Brian De Palma's new film Passion was one of our favorites at the Toronto International Film Festival. I raved and rambled on about the film in one of our correspondences (though, as you'll see, I was wrong about one key facet of the film's production):

A remake of the solid Alain Corneau corporate thriller Love Crime, De Palma plunges without hesitation into the iconography, audience expectations, and conventions of noirs, sex thrillers, corporate intrigue, post-Hitchcock films and Brian De Palma movies themselves, retaining the shell appearance of all of these things but hollowing them from the inside out. The result is something out of late Resnais—a study of a study. And that study, of course, is of the cinema image. Remember how Rebecca Romijn watches Stanwyck in Double Indemnity at the beginning of Femme Fatale, as if taking notes? The characters in Passion have taken notes from...

Good camp films know what they are doing. They manipulate the audience into feeling exaggerated sorts of emotion and possess a sort of bravura that makes them unabashedly watchable. Based on Alain Corneau’s 2010 film Love Crime, Brian De Palma’s new offering, Passion, is definitely campy, but oftentimes it borders on just plain stupid. It is aimlessly over-the-top with eye-rolling twists and turns – for nearly the last quarter of the film, De Palma wastes the audience’s time with fake out after fake out (just kidding, guys – she was dreaming… Times Five!). The director lacks the artfulness in filmmaking that he once possessed in classics like Dressed to Kill. Christine (Rachel McAdams, scenery-chewing rather excellently) is a young, high-powered ad executive working in Berlin. She wants to work in New York City again but needs the right account to bring her enough success to propel that next move. Her answer, or...

Canadian distributor Entertainment One has picked up North American rights to Brian De Palma's sexy femme faceoff "Passion," with plans for a 2013 release. The psychological thriller, which stars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace, played at both Venice and Toronto. The deal was negotiated by ICM Partners along with Sbs’ Saïd Ben Saïd and eOne’s David Reckziegel and Sejin Croninger; ICM Partners also reps De Palma. "Passion" is a remake of the 2010 French film by Alain Corneau, "Love Crime," starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier. The screenwriter for "Love Crime," Natalie Carter, collaborated with De Palma on the adaptation. Here's Toh's Toronto Q&A with De Palma, which covers everything from the hair-raising sex toys in "Passion" and improvised on-set makeouts between McAdams and Rapace to his good wishes for the upcoming "Carrie" remake.

Well, whatever was going on during the negotiations with IFC Films, it appears Brian De Palma's latest won't be landing the arthouse veterans. But instead, the movie will hit screens with another distributor who is continuing to make a stronger stamp on the theatrical marketplace. Entertainment One, who made their first real big-screen venture with David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis" this summer and will be releasing the classical world drama "A Late Quartet" with Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, have nabbed the North American distribution rights to "Passion." Starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, the film is a remake of Alain Corneau's "Love Crime," and tells the tale of two women at an ad agency who clash when their personal relationship falls victim to an office betrayal. The usual De Palma ingredients of sex and deception are found in plentiful number here, though the movie got a mixed.

Entertainment One will distribute Brian De Palma's Passion, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in North America. Variety reports that the company made the announcement today for the deal and plans to release the film into U.S. and Canadian theaters some time next year. Produced by Said Ben Said, Passion is based on the 2010 French thriller helmed by Alain Corneau called Love Crime (Crime d'amour). In Passion, a young businesswoman plots a murderous revenge after her boss and mentor steals her idea. Also in the cast are Paul Anderson, Karoline Herfurth and Rainer Bock.

Entertainment One will distribute Brian De Palma's Passion, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in North America. Variety reports that the company made the announcement today for the deal and plans to release the film into U.S. and Canadian theaters some time next year. Produced by Said Ben Said, Passion is based on the 2010 French thriller helmed by Alain Corneau called Love Crime (Crime d'amour). In Passion, a young businesswoman plots a murderous revenge after her boss and mentor steals her idea. Also in the cast are Paul Anderson, Karoline Herfurth and Rainer Bock.

When was the last time you were excited about a Brian De Palma film? Was it during the last decade? Well, his latest, the sexy, psychological thriller “Passion” starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, might get your pulse racing in another way. It’s a remake of Alain Corneau’s posthumously released 2010 film “Love Crime” (which starred Ludivine Sagnier and Kristin Scott Thomas) in which a young businesswoman plots revenge after being ritually humiliated and threatened and having her ideas stolen by her boss and mentor. It was only a week ago that we listed it amongst our 5 Fall Festival Films That Still Need Distribution after playing at Tiff and in Venice (where we saw it and awarded it a lackluster C+ rating). Well, maybe someone over at IFC Films read that piece because they now look set to acquire the picture’s North American distribution rights. The film had...

IFC Films is in negotiations to acquire domestic distribution rights for the Brian De Palma-directed thriller Passion. The film, a remake of Alain Corneau's 2010 French noir Love Crime, features Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams at the center of of a steamy tale that chronicles professional and romantic jealousies at a Berlin ad agency. Video: Rachel McAdams talks Passion in THR's Toronto Video Lounge. Passion, which De Palma adapted from Corneau and Nathalie Carter's French-language screenplay, made its debut to buyers at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month on the heels of its premiere at the Venice

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by Vadim Rizov

Passion is the first "Brian De Palma film" in ten years. He's made movies since 2002's career summary Femme Fatale, but neither 2006's The Black Dahlia or 2007's Redacted foregrounded his trademarks: comically lurid sex scenes, smoothly menacing gliding camera movements that can turn three feet of empty hallway into the world's longest walk or effortlessly blast through quarter-miles, split-screen showboating. In Passion, De Palma parties like it's 1984 and he's making Body Double again: there's a seemingly familiar scene of villainess Christine (Rachel McAdams) lounging in her pad at night in a yellow nightgown and frilly lingerie, pouting while Pino Donaggio's shamelessly retro score pours on bongos and soft sax solos. It's a remake of the late Alain Corneau's last film, 2010's Love Crime, a studiously sexless drama which depicted its past-plausibility events with straight-faced chilliness. De Palma keeps many scenes, changes the shots and...

Since earliest stages of Brian De Palma's career, his thrillers have constantly walked a line between self-parody and earnest pastiche. "Passion," a reworking of the late Alain Corneau's final film "Love Crimes," reassuringly falls into this camp, signaling a return to form for the director despite its many flaws. Much more than a simple revamp of existing material, "Passion" is a veritable De Palma remix, at once a classy suspense movie and an unquestionably silly affair. Regardless of its glaring flaws, "Passion" is reassuringly old school.   Borrowing only the fundamental plot of the original, "Passion" follows Berlin-based advertising honcho Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her meek assistant Isabel (Noomi Rapace), whose attempts to forward her career are constantly hampered by her boss' power-hungry antics. As Isabel grows desperate to wrestle some modicum of control when Christine takes credit for one of...

One of the original 70s movie brats and a populist with a sneaky subversive streak responsible for a string of classics like Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables, Brian De Palma is one of those directors who never seems to get his due. Particularly when working in his personal brand of self-conscious thrillers, the filmmaker is almost destined to be equally revered and criticized for making tongue-in-cheek odes to stylized entertainment. Movies like Body Double, Raising Cain, or Femme Fatale are practically dark comedies when viewed in a certain way, while also being designed to operate as straightforward thrillers for audiences not interested in film-literate in-jokes. His latest thriller Passion stars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace as a pair of manipulative advertising executives whose competitive work relationship escalates into a war of public humiliation. This being a De Palma movie, sexual mind games and violence are of course not far off.