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(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The following Daily Stream contains discussions of child sexual abuse and incest. Please proceed with caution.

The film: "The War Zone"

Where you can stream it: The Roku Channel, Tubi

The Pitch: For as long as the idea of "extreme cinema" has been a thing, there have been discussions over whether scenes of graphic sexual acts, especially non-consensual ones, are necessary to watch for either plot or audience enjoyment reasons. There certainly have been many instances where rape and assault scenes are not handled with the care they deserve, and these scenes are the ones that come up when people discuss the artistic importance of depicting such evils.

Then, there is "The War Zone." Released in 1999, the directorial debut of Tim Roth...

Jason Figgis new thriller ‘Winifred Meeks’ starring Lara Belmont and Julie Abbott is available now from Bayview Entertainment. Successful writer Anna James rents a remote farmhouse in England to begin work on the latest of a series of teen crime novels – The Emma Hart Mysteries. Initially, the setting seems perfect, but soon her idyll …

The post Winifred Meeks is a haunting new movie from Bayview Entertainment appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

Bayview Entertainment announced this past week that writer/director Jason Figgis’ haunted house horror tale, Winifred Meeks, will be making its domestic DVD debut on Apr. 27. Anna James is a popular teen-centric novelist, who has decided to rent a remote cottage, the Seaview …

The post Writer/Director Jason Figgis’ Winifred Meeks Makes Its Domestic DVD Debut From Bayview Entertainment On Apr. 27 appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

With a new film from Sally Potter arriving online and John Boorman and Peter Greenaway's latest work exclusively hitting DVD shelves, enjoying a night at the movies no longer necessarily means at your local theater (though we've got the lowdown of what's playing there as well). From August to October, one doesn't need to move from the couch to see a Val Kilmer double bill, a James Franco-Sienna Miller romantic comedy and the last performance from the late, great Natasha Richardson, not to mention Robert Pattinson and Jet Li imports and a host of foreign films and documentaries well worth your time on demand, online and on DVD.

More Fall Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]

[Repertory Calendar] [Breakout Performances]

On Demand The slow days of summer may be drawing to an end, but our sister company IFC Films is already ramping up for the fall with a slate heading straight from the festivals to the...

IFC Films has provided Film School Rejects with an exclusive first look at the trailer for first time director Col Spector's relationship comedy Someone Else. The film stars Stephen Mangan, Susan Lynch and Lara Belmont and is set to debut IFC's Festival Direct On-Demand service on August 5, 2010. When thirty-something David isn't working as a photographer at a high-street photo studio he is stressing over his love-life. Torn between his rather-too-agreeable girlfriend Lisa and the exciting but tricky Nina, he has serious decision to make. When he gets it all wrong and loses them both he has to start all over again. Check out the exclusive trailer below.

Actor Tim Roth

Tim Roth Is Telling No Lies

By

Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the March issue of Venice Magazine.

One of the film world’s great chameleons, Tim Roth was born in London May 14, 1961, the son of a journalist and a school teacher. After dropping out of art school, Roth was discovered by maverick British director Alan Clarke, and cast in his incendiary 1982 study of the skinhead movement in the UK, Made in Britain. Tim Roth hasn’t stopped working since, with over 70 feature and TV roles to his credit including such iconic titles as The Hit, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Vincent and Theo, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, and most recently, the lead in Francis Coppola’s first feature in ten years, Youth Without Youth.

Roth stepped behind the...

PARK CITY, UTAH--Actors often take up the director's mantel, but few show any particular visual or storytelling skills. Such is not the case with Tim Roth, whose "The War Zone" was greeted with admiration and applause during its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. A wrenching story about family incest, this film may prove daunting for casual viewers, but its hard-forged eloquence should guarantee favorable reaction as an art house release.

The gruesome subject matter -- a father continually violates his teenage daughter during and after his wife's pregnancy -- is also emblemized by the cruel, natural setting of the story line.

The denuded and barren hills of Devon, just outside London, are a forbidding site, especially in the late fall when life has been sapped to a dull gray. It's a depressing landscape and an overall depressing situation for a hard-knocked family of four forced to more from the city to start anew amid the hardscrabble times of this rural burg.

Still, there is great expectation when mum (Tilda Swinton) gives birth to a girl, but even this blessed event is marred by a serious car accident on the way to the hospital. All family members, though bloodied and more than a bit unnerved, are ultimately OK, but the baby, it seems, suffers from some inner malady.

And things are even worse below the surface: Weary Ray (Ray Winstone) has brutally begun a cruel sexual relationship with 18-year-old Jessie (Lara Belmont), his vulnerable and troubled daughter. It's been going on a while and clearly is not something that is soon going to stop.

Inevitably, 15-year-old Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) stumbles upon his father and sister's rutting, and it decimates his kinship with his sister and severs fully his respect for his father. It's through Tom's ruptured viewpoint that screenwriter Alexander Stuart tells this tale.

There are no easy answers, no pat psychological explanations or causal justification in this painful story. Told with flinty precision and stark shadowings, "War Zone" is a searing look at the dark underbelly of what appears to be a bland societal situation.

The strength of "War Zone" is gathered from the edgy, never softened performances. As the loutish father, Winstone is a credible combination of sheer strength, kindliness and mendacity; it's a very human performance, and Winstone, to his credit, does not make the character cosmetically palatable. Cunliffe is terrific as the shattered son who confronts the heinous relationship, and Belmont is remarkable as the daughter who endures and, to an extent, encourages the coupling. She shows a woman confounded by crosscurrent of urges and insecurities. Swinton is well cast as the stolid wife and mother who has, essentially, been discarded by her husband.

Although it's not surprising that Roth has gathered marvelous performances from a talented cast, his visual powers are just as sure-footed. From the film's denuded, color-drenched look and thorny compositions, we feel the hardship and cutting-bone edge of the characters' lives. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey has done a masterful job of framing and positioning his pictorial contribution. Similarly, Simon Boswell's sharp, assonant score clues us to the coldness and pain of this family "War Zone".

THE WAR ZONE

Credits: Producers: Sarah Radclyffe, Dixie Linder; Director: Tim Roth; Screenwriter: Alexander Stuart, based on his novel "The War Zone"; Executive producer: Eric Abraham; Director of photography: Seamus McGarvey; Production designer: Michael Carlin; Editor: Trevor Waite; Music: Simon Boswell; Costume designer: Mary Jane Reyner; Casting directors: Jina Jay, Sharon Howard-Field. Cast: Dad: Ray Winstone; Lucy: Kate Ashfield; Jessie: Lara Belmont; Tom: Freddie Cunliffe; Mum: Tilda Swinton. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 98 minutes.