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NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

A major highlight of any filmgoing year, To Save and Project returns.

IFC Center

A Donald Sutherland retrospective includes Klute, Fellini’s Casanova, Don’t Look Now, and Mash; Crash, Battle Royale, and The Lost Boys show late.

Anthology Film Archives

Blackout 1973 features films by Sembène, Bill Gunn, Mambéty and more; Essential Cinema runs the gamut from Laurel and Hardy to Jonas Mekas’ Walden.

Roxy Cinema

Emma Roberts has curated Thirteen on 35mm and Mysterious Skin; Amadeus shows on Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

AI: From Metropolis to Ex Machina continues, featuring Terminator 2, Blade Runner, Videodrome, and Ghost in the Shell; Wall-e screens on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

See It Big! Let It Snow brings The Gold Rush on 35mm, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Shining, and more.

Metrograph

Trash Humpers, The Bling Ring,...

Robert Eggers’ version of Nosferatu opens with a breathtaking sequence of dark psychosexual romance, as melancholy maiden Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) is beckoned by a mysterious figure out of her bedroom and onto the manicured lawn of a dignified manor home. Her white nightgown billows behind her under blue moonlight,...

A new batch of classic films have made their way into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry this week, including Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess!

The National Film Registry recognizes films that are of “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance which preserves the nation’s film heritage.”

Deadline reports that the new selections bring the number of feature titles in the registry to 900. The public submitted nominations of more than 6,700 titles for consideration this year for context.

The National Film Registry says of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, “Graphic, lurid and completely unapologetic in its brutality, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ has since its debut in drive-ins and grindhouse theaters, become a cultural, generational and filmmaking touchstone. Filmed for a pittance and supposedly as difficult of a production as a film can be (beset with record heat and filthy locations), ‘Texas...

An Eddie Murphy classic, a landmark horror flick, and a timeless Eighties romance are among the films joining the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for preservation.

Twenty-five films were added to the registry this year, including Beverly Hills Cop, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Dirty Dancing. Other major titles include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, David Fincher’s Facebook origin story The Social Network, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, and the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture-winner No Country for Old Men.

The Film Registry class of...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2013, they’ve now reached 900 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2024 list, which includes David Fincher’s The Social Network, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Coens’ No Country For Old Men, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and more.

“The National Film Registry is an essential American enterprise that officially recognizes the rich depth and variety, the eloquence and the real greatness of American cinema and the filmmakers who have created it, film by film,” said Scorsese.

Check out the list of this year’s additions below,...

Louis Gossett Jr., who won a supporting actor Oscar for playing the hard-as-nails drill instructor in 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” a few years after winning an Emmy for his role as the cunning Fiddler in “Roots,” died early Friday morning. He was 87.

Gossett’s family announced his death in a statement, writing: “It is with our heartfelt regret to confirm our beloved father passed away this morning. We would like to thank everyone for their condolences at this time. Please respect the family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

In Taylor Hackford’s “An Officer and a Gentleman,” Gossett’s Sgt. Emil Foley memorably drove Richard Gere’s character to the point of near collapse at a Navy flight school. Gossett was the first Black man to win the best supporting actor Oscar for that role.

In addition to “An Officer and a Gentleman,” Gossett is best known...

Actor Denzel Washington and director Spike Lee announced they are joining forces once more, the first time in 18 years, for a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller “High and Low.” The duo have collaborated four times previously, on “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Malcolm X,” “He Got Game,” and, most recently, “Inside Man.”

“High and Low” was originally based on the novel “King’s Ransom” by the prolific American author Ed McBain. McBain was a nom de plume for Evan Hunter, who also wrote “The Blackboard Jungle” (adapted to a popular film with a significant early turn by Sidney Poitier) and was a co-screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

The original “High and Low” starred Toshiro Mifune as an executive who faces a moral crisis during a pivotal moment of his career—just as he had intended to move a vast amount of his personal wealth for business reasons, his son...

Film geeks, rejoice. Leading indie label Kino Lorber is entering the world of streaming. The company has launched Kino Film Collection, a new subscription video service available in the U.S. via’s Amazon’s Prime Video Channels. The Collection will feature new Kino releases fresh from theaters, along with hundreds of films from its expansive library of more than 4,000 titles, many now streaming for the first time. It will cost users $5.99 per month.

Films available at launch include award-winning theatrical releases and critically acclaimed festival favorites and classics from around the globe, such as The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci), Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos), Taxi (Jafar Panahi), Poison (Todd Haynes), Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn), The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour), Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski), Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke), and A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke).

Joining them are entries...

Marlene Clark, best known for her portrayals of Lamont’s girlfriend Janet in the 1970s NBC sitcom Sanford & Son and as Ganja Meda in the 1973 horror film Ganja & Hess, has died.

Demond Wilson, who played Lamont on Sanford & Son, paid tribute to Clark on Twitter, writing “Rip beautiful actress Marlene Clark. . . It was a delight to work with you…,” noting she died on May 18. Wilson listed her age as 73, but that has not been confirmed.

Clark joined Sanford & Son in the comedy’s fifth season in 1976 as a recurring opposite Wilson, remaining through the series’ final season the following year.

Raised in the Harlem section of New York City, Clark was a fashion model before her transition to acting.

Her earliest work began in films in the 1960s including For Love of Ivy opposite Sidney Poitier and Putney Swope in 1969, directed by Robert Downey Sr. She went...

Marlene Clark, the statuesque actress who portrayed Lamont’s fiancée on Sanford and Son and stood out in such 1970s’ films as Ganja & Hess, Switchblade Sisters and Slaughter, has died. She was 85.

Clark died May 18 in her home in Los Angeles, her family announced. No cause of death was revealed.

Clark also starred as a reptilian seductress in Roger Corman’s Night of the Cobra Woman (1972) and as one of the suspected werewolves in the British horror film The Beast Must Die (1974), and she was an early victim in the Larry Hagman-directed Beware! The Blob (1972).

Clark played John Saxon‘s secretary in Enter the Dragon (1973), starring Bruce Lee, and her big-screen body of work also included Black Mamba (1974), Newman’s Law (1974), Lord Shango (1975) and The Baron (1977), where she appeared opposite her Beast Must Die onscreen husband, Calvin Lockhart.

In the surreal Ganja & Hess (1973), directed by Bill Gunn,...

Honest Trailer

Trace and I are recovering from our live show at Salem Horror Festival this past weekend, but in April we kept busy with episodes on Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Tony Scott’s The Hunger, and, most recently, queer Black writer/director Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess (which just celebrated its 50th anniversary!)

Last week we celebrated Alien Day 2023 with a look back at Ridley Scott‘s 2012 Alien prequel, Prometheus. In the film, scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) partner with the Weyland Corporation, run by its elderly benefactor (Guy Pearce) and supervised by his android “son” David (Michael Fassbender), to investigate the origins of mankind on a distant alien world.

There they discover a strange pyramid with remnants of a group of Engineers. But when Holloway and a few others get sick, the crew realizes that they may have...

Bathtub Teeth Brushing.

Trace and I are cruising through April en route to our live show at Salem Horror Festival this weekend, but we’ve been keeping busy with episodes on Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and, most recently, Tony Scott’s The Hunger.

This week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of trailblazing Black queer writer/director Bill Gunn‘s Ganja & Hess (1973). This gorgeous, surreal, and unconventional vampire film stars Duane Jones and Marlene Clark as the titular pair of lovers.

Hess (Jones) is a multi-hyphenate Doctor who is also secretly a vampire. He often preys on members of his community, though his wealth and education keeps him isolated. When suicidal assistant George Meda (Gunn) takes his own life at Hess’ home, the man’s wife (Clark) quickly comes calling.

What begins as an investigation quickly turns into a sexualized affair,...

You’re French, lady!

After finishing off March with a look at the body horror aspects incorporated into Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, we kicked off April with a journey into the weird and wild world of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer. This week, we’re revisiting Tony Scott‘s iconic 1983 vampire film The Hunger.

The Hunger sees John (David Bowie), the lover of the gorgeous immortal vampire Miriam (Catherine Deneuve), begin to quickly deteriorate into a horrible living death, so Miriam seeks a new companion. She soon sets her sights on Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a young gerontologist, who quickly falls under Miriam’s spell. However, Sarah doesn’t warm up to the concept of vampirism very easily, leading to conflict with Miriam.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSNo Bears.Jafar Panahi was released on bail last Friday, two days after starting a hunger strike to protest his seven-month imprisonment. “His next fight is to have the cancellation of his sentence officially recognized,” said Michèle Halberstadt, his French distributor. “He’s outside, he’s free, and this is already great.”Recommended VIEWINGPersonal Problems.Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive has chosen 28 films for the 28 days of Black History Month in the US and compiled online streaming links for each. The lineup includes films by Saundra Sharp, Bill Gunn, and many others.Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair)'s A Self-Induced Hallucination, their archival documentary about the Slenderman, is available for free on Vimeo. For more on the project,...

Owen Roizman, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer who helped shape the aesthetic of 1970s American cinema through his collaborations with William Friedkin and Sidney Lumet, has died at the age of 86. The news was announced by the American Society of Cinematographers on its official social media channels.

Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Roizman was drawn to cameras from a young age. His father was a camera operator for news broadcasts, and Roizman began working in a camera rental store as a teenager before making his feature film debut as a cinematographer on Bill Gunn’s “Stop!” in 1970.

His 1970s filmography included some of the most influential works in multiple genres. William Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” Roizman’s second feature film behind the camera, has long been heralded as one of the greatest car chase movies ever made. The way that Roizman and Friedkin were able to combine spectacle and realism during the...

(Welcome to Year of the Vampire, a series examining the greatest, strangest, and sometimes overlooked vampire movies of all time in honor of "Nosferatu," which turns 100 this year.)

One of the best vampire films I have ever seen actually never uses the term "vampire" at all. Very early in Bill Gunn's unsung masterpiece "Ganja & Hess," we learn that Dr. Hess Green is addicted to blood. It's hard to tell whether this statement, delivered casually by Hess's chauffeur, is a literal fact or one that's yet to come to pass. 

The bloodsuckers in "Ganja & Hess" are unlike any audiences in 1973...

The post Year Of The Vampire: Ganja & Hess Is About So Much More Than Bloodlust appeared first on /Film.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSZhang Yimou's One Second (2020)China has released a new five-year film plan. Spanning from 2021 to 2025, the plan includes goals such as the release of 10 "major" films a year, new cinemas in rural areas, a stronger presence at international film festivals like Cannes, and more. The Cinemateca Portuguesa has announced that the Cinemateca Brasileira will be reopening after a prolonged closure, in a first step towards a full recovery of the institution and its staff. Shooting has begun on Lisandro Alonso's long-awaited four-part film Eureka. The film is said to "examine the indigenous peoples of the Americas and how they’ve inhabited their specific environments across the centuries." The first part takes place on the US-Mexico border in 1870 and stars Viggo Mortensen and Maria de Medeiros. Chiara Mastroianni will also star in the film in a still undisclosed part.

In one of the first scenes of Arrebato (1979), ​​José (Eusebio Poncela), a B-movie director, argues with an editor over the final scene of what’s unmistakably a low-budget vampire flick—specifically, whether or not to include a shot of an actress making eye contact with the camera. “It’s the only interesting thing in the whole picture,” ​​he says, yawning. “She stares at the audience, and they’ll get it that she’s delighted to be a vampire.” What seems so obvious that it’s boring to José is likely an homage to Bill Gunn’s ignored–in–America but adored–in–Europe Ganja & Hess (1973), which ends exactly as he describes: with a freshly–christened Ganja, dreamily locking eyes with viewers. Ganja and Hess / ArrebatoDespite his pretensions, José refuses to continue working—“Fuck the movies,” he says not a minute later. On his way out, he smears a few...

Image of Parker Bright protesting Dana Schutz painting at the 78th Whitney Biennale“I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history, and neither did I. That I was a savage about whom the less said, the better.” —James Baldwin At the 78th Whitney Biennale, American artist Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket conjured up controversy within the art world. The piece abstractly depicted the mangled body of fourteen year old Emmit Till after he had been tortured and lynched by two white men. Black non-binary activist and artist Parker Bright served as the catalyst for some of the important commentary in response to the work. Adorning a shirt with the words “Black Death Spectacle” scrawled across its back, they stood in front of Schutz’s painting blocking it from view. This act of protest sent waves across the art world and forced onlookers to evaluate what...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers (2021). The lineup for the 2021 Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring the latest from Pedro Almodóvar, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Pablo Larraín, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, and more. Find the full lineup here. The New York Film Festival has announced that this year's Centerpiece Selection will be Jane Campion's Power of the Dog, an adaptation of Thomas Savage's novel starring Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, and Benedict Cumberbatch. New additions to the TIFF roster include Joachim Trier's The Worst Person In The World, Masaaki Yuasa's Inu-Oh, and Ho Wi Ding's Terrorizers. A24 has won the rights to Octavia E. Butler's science-fiction novel Parable of the Sower, and Time director Garrett Bradley is set to direct. The novel follows a girl with a unique gift who rises to...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFollowing the launch of the English-language podcast earlier this month, yesterday we revealed our upcoming original Spanish-language podcast! In the first season of the Mubi Podcast: Encuentros, co-produced by Mubi and La Corriente del Golfo Podcast, leading voices in Latin American film and culture come together to think about their own methods and processes for approaching the craft, talk about personal experiences, and reflect on films and filmmakers that have inspired their work. We begin with Gael García Bernal (Mexico) and Carolina Sanín (Colombia) as the guests of the first episode, entitled The Ritual of the Masks. The first season of Encuentros consists of in-depth conversations among colleagues, an encounter between two people who share their love for cinema. Check out the trailer above and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here.Andrea Arnold...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

’70s Horror

A horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, The Criterion Channel is spotlighting ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more. It’s an epic collection of essentials and the ideal way to kick off an unprecedented Halloween that should be spent in isolation. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)

Even though Faxon and Rash pay their respects to the original—sometimes mimicking specific scenes and capturing the claustrophobic...

It’s a great time to be a horror fan. Not only are Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Shudder awash with all kinds of horror movies old and new, but the Criterion Channel is getting in on the gruesome action with a month’s worth of horror titles from the 1970s.

The subscription service is the digital offshoot of the Criterion Collection, which for more than 35 years has been providing definitive archival home video versions of classic and contemporary films from around the world. Criterion launched its streaming service last year as a way to offer a curated cross-section of its library of films online.

Horror has always had a respectful home at Criterion, with the company publishing definitive editions of a number of the genre’s landmark films. The October rollout of horror movies for the Halloween season is similar to what other companies are doing, but the focus is the difference here.

The Criterion Channel’s stellar offerings are continuing next month with a selection of new releases, retrospective, series, and more. Leading the pack is, of course, a horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, featuring ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (pictured above), Tobe Hopper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more.

Also of note is a New Korean Cinema retrospective, featuring a new introduction by critic Grady Hendrix and a conversation between directors Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook, whose Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, Mother, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengeance are part of the lineup, as well as Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide, and more titles to be announced. Bong’s short Influenza will also arrive, paired with Michael Haneke’s Caché.

The New York Times put prestigious specialty home-video distributor The Criterion Collection under a microscope late last week, and the headline said it all: “How the Criterion Collection Crops Out African-American Directors.” The report looked at all 22 years and more than 1,000 titles in the Criterion’s revered selection of Blu-rays and DVDs of films, finding that only four African Americans are represented: Oscar Micheaux (“Body and Soul”); William Greaves; Charles Burnett (“To Sleep With Anger”); and Spike Lee (“Do the Right Thing” and “Bamboozled”).

It’s a glaring omission for a company that prides itself on licensing and releasing what it describes as “important classic and contemporary films,” but also reflective of an industry-wide practice of shutting out Black filmmakers.

Despite America’s changing demographics, the industry’s most powerful leaders have been slow to respond to a demand for films that reflect cultural and racial shifts that have long been underway.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNext year's Sundance Film Festival has received permission from the Park City Council to be seven days rather than 11. The festival will also have limited capacity in theatres to address public health concerns. Recommended VIEWINGEvery Thursday in August, MoMa is streaming selections of historic films from its collection in a series titled Film Vault Summer Camp. In episode 1, collection specialist Ashley Swinnerton introduces The Flying Train and Great Actresses of the Past.In a new video essay for Little White Lies, Luís Azevedo explores the role of kitchens in the films of Pedro Almodóvar.From Netflix, the official trailer for Charlie Kaufman's psychological thriller I'm Thinking of Ending Things, adapted from the bestselling novel by Iain Reid. Recommended READINGAbove: Ja'Tovia Gary by JerSean Golatt for the New York Times. For the New York Times,...

Mubi's series Double Bill: Bill Gunn is showing July - December, 2020 in the United States.How daring to make a Black picture without a race problem. So daring that the critics stateside assailed Ganja & Hess (1973), so befuddled were they by the vision of director Bill Gunn. He took them famously to task in a New York Times op-ed, which pointedly condemned the whiteness of film criticism. Gunn died in 1989, but his gripe remains unfortunately pertinent today, and at this moment, when much of mainstream media attention afforded to Black films has taken the shape of anti-racist watch lists. These are useful as educational fodder, but less so on the front of appreciating and valuing films from Black directors absent from conversations about art and cinema today—including Gunn’s.Gunn acted in Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground (1982) and rubbed elbows with James Dean and Marlon Brando. He wrote the...

If you’re looking to dive into the best of independent and foreign filmmaking, The Criterion Channel has announced their August 2020 lineup. The impressive slate includes retrospectives dedicated to Mia Hansen-Løve, Bill Gunn, Stephen Cone, Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, Alain Delon, Bill Plympton, Les Blank, and more.

In terms of new releases, they also have Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau, the fascinating documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, the Kenyan LGBTQ drama Rafiki, and more. There’s also a series on Australian New Wave with films by Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, David Gulpilil, and Peter Weir, as well as one on bad vacations with Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and more.

See the lineup below and explore more on their platform. One can also see our weekly streaming picks here.

25 Ways to Quit Smoking, Bill Plympton, 1989

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Roy Rowland,...

Black Americans saw very little representation of their lives and culture on TV during the 1950s. The only mainstay was Eddie Anderson, who played Jack Benny’s sardonic valet Rochester on CBS’ “The Jack Benny Program.” In 1937, he’d became the first Black performer to be a regular on the radio version of the beloved comedy series and played Rochester on television from 1950-65. Terry Carter played Pvt. Sugie Sugerman for 98 episodes of CBS’ Emmy Award-winning “The Phil Silvers Show.’ And Black singers and performers would occasionally appear on various musical-variety series.

Pianist Hazel Scott was given her own summer series “The Hazel Scott Show” on DuMont in 1950. But she was soon named as a Communist by “Red Channels”. Though she denied the charges, the series couldn’t attract a sponsor and was history after four episodes. Likewise, NBC’s 1957-58 “The Nat King Cole Show” couldn’t find a...

Normally, IndieWire’s Stream of the Day feature focuses on movies that you can watch at home. Today, we’re using this space to call out a few that should be available, but aren’t. At one time or another, we have all probably experienced this frustrating conundrum: You want to watch a movie or TV show that sneaks its way into your consciousness, or was recommended by a trusted source, and, like most people, you first try the streaming services — especially in the current environment — but none of them carry it, not even as a rental or purchase on Amazon or iTunes. That’s especially true for films from black filmmakers.

For example, none of the films from key L.A. Rebellion filmmaker, Haile Gerima are available to stream on any platform, nor is Ivan Dixon’s classic “The Spook Who Sat By the Door” (1973), or Jessie Maple’s 1981 film “Will,...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Barely released in 1982 and all but unseen for over three decades, Kathleen Collins’ “Losing Ground” was a rare instance where the matter of a middle-aged black woman intellectual’s interior life is generously examined — and illustrated in rich symbolistic terms. It brings to life the dreams and disappointments of talented, educated black women who in the shadow of patriarchy. It’s a challenging and unpredictable movie that deserves the enthusiastic reception that met its rediscovery five years ago.

More from IndieWireMarvel's Future: How the Cinematic Universe Could Pivot to TV Storytelling in Today's Uncertain WorldHulu Shuts Down Twitter Trolls Complaining About 'Parasite' Subtitles

Philosophy professor Sara Rogers (Seret Scott) and her bohemian artist husband Victor (Bill Gunn) rent a summer...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” is one of those forgotten “Joints” that confounded critics and audiences at the time of its initial release. Twenty years later, it’s enjoying a renaissance — thanks to a recently-released Criterion Collection DVD/Blu-ray edition of this long out-of-print title — and a much-deserved reassessment of this scathing and insightful satire. But it’s not the only one that deserves a second look. Four years before “Bamboozled,” Lee made another idiosyncratic movie filled with big ideas. Like “Bamboozled,” Lee’s 1996 dramedy “Girl 6” also baffled viewers at the time, but its insights into race and gender in Hollywood still resonate today.

More from IndieWireStream of the Day: 'The Spectacular Now' and the Brilliant Long Take That Deserves More PraiseStream...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Pioneering filmmaker Bill Gunn’s 1973 iconoclastic “Ganja & Hess” revolutionized the vampire genre and was effectively suppressed in the United States because it wasn’t the Hollywood horror movie that its producers had commissioned the artist to make. Gunn made a film unlike anything that came before it (and arguably even after), at a time when black films weren’t allowed to be much more than empty sensation. It comes with a mythical backstory that should inspire all filmmakers, but especially young black directors who would use the impulse to get creative.

The early ’70s...

What can one say about a comedy that just limps along, even when an attractive cast does fine work every step of the way? Even the bit parts are creatively cast in this odd romp infected with a really bad case of The Cutes. Natalie Wood is at her best, but in service of dumb gags: let’s blow bubble gum bubbles! The result so upset Natalie that she ditched her studio contract. The roster of engaging talent includes Peter Falk (in suave leading man mode!), Dick Shawn (less grating than usual), Lila Kedrova & Lou Jacobi (showing real style), Jonathan Winters (wasted) and, of all people, Ian Bannen as Natalie Wood’s uncomprehending husband. Bannen is so good, he drags a real laugh or two from the material. The show has been beautifully remastered.

Penelope

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date January 26, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Natalie Wood,...

It’s the brightest debut feature of 1970, and perhaps the warmest movie ever about the American race divide. Hal Ashby and Bill Gunn’s work is inspired: rich boy Beau Bridges buys a slum tenement and launches a wonderful ensemble comedy-drama in confrontation with the fantastic quartet of actresses — Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey and Marki Bey. The humanist picture doesn’t cheat on its subject matter. The cast list contains fresh debuts and and more best-of-career showings: Louis Gossett Jr., Melvin Stewart, Susan Anspach, Robert Klein.

The Landlord

Blu-ray

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date May 14, 2019 / 29.95

Starring: Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Walter Brooke, Louis Gossett Jr., Marki Bey, Mel Stewart, Susan Anspach, Robert Klein, Will Mackenzie, Trish Van Devere, Hector Elizondo, Marlene Clark, Gloria Hendry, Bobby V. Garvin.

Cinematography: Gordon Willis

Film Editor: William A. Sawyer, Edward Warschilka

Original Music: Al Kooper

Written by...

The force of nature born Elizabeth Ann Cole, and rechristened Elizabeth Ashley for stage and screen of the late 1950s, first drew the attention of critics and fans with her work in New York theater, garnering an early-career Tony Award for her portrayal of Mollie in the Broadway production of “Take Her, She’s Mine” in 1961.

Ashley’s big-screen debut in 1964, the hit film adaptation of Harold Robbins’ mega-best-seller “The Carpetbaggers,” earned her a Golden Globe supporting actress nomination and led to decades of work on screens big and small, including an Emmy Award-nominated turn in the Burt Reynolds ’90s comedy series “Evening Shade.”

More recently, Ashley appeared in the hit film comedy “Ocean’s 8” and has lit up the Netflix mind-twister “Russian Doll” as Natasha Lyonne’s unconventional therapist. Her first time in Variety was 60 years ago, when she appeared in a critically trounced 1959 summer stock production of noted...

Shudder is looking to warm the hearts of horror fans in the Us this February with a wide range of titles, including the new documentary Horror Noire, Eli Roth's History of Horror TV series (for those that missed it on its initial AMC run), 1981's Bloody Birthday, Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage, and Sean Byrne's The Loved Ones.

Below, check out the full list of titles coming to Shudder in the Us this February, and visit Shudder online to learn more about the streaming service.

"Horror’s past comes to life this month on Shudder, first in the new Shudder Original documentary Horror Noire: A History Of Black Horror, and then in the seven-part series Eli Roth’S History Of Horror. After that, step into horror’s future with the Shudder Exclusive films The Crucifixion, offering a new take on the demonic possession genre from the director of Frontier(s),...

For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2018. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled.

It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.

50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...

One of the best-curated year-end lists every year comes from the long-running Film Comment magazine and their poll featuring around 100 of their contributors. This year’s list is no different, topped by Lucrecia Martel’s astounding Zama (now on Amazon Prime!) and also featuring Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, Valeska Grisebach’s Western, Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In, Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, and more.

Along with their top 20, they also give a list of the best undistributed films of the year, from Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La Flor to Jodie Mack’s gorgeous feature debut The Grand Bizarre to new films from Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang, Lav Diaz, Roberto Minervini, and more. So, distributors take note, and check out both lists below.

Film Comment’s Top 20 Films Released in 2018:

1. Zama Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Brazil/Spain

2. Burning Lee Chang-dong, South Korea

3. First Reformed Paul Schrader,...

While George Romero rightfully gets the majority of the credit for the success of Night of the Living Dead, Duane Jones doesn’t get nearly enough praise for his performance as Ben. Whether or not, as Romero claimed, Jones’ casting was simply a matter of him giving the best audition, I find it hard to believe that Romero didn’t recognize the potency of a black male lead forced to navigate rural white America in addition to the impending zombie apocalypse.

It’s also important to note that the film would not have worked with just any black actor. Jones balances Ben’s flaws with a sympathetic portrayal that makes his brutal end all the more tragic. It’s a phenomenal performance that left me wondering why Jones didn’t have more opportunities in the genre, so I was delightfully surprised when I recognized him in Bill Gunn’s 1973 quasi-vampire flick Ganja & Hess.

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.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Films by Bonello, Rivette, Akerman, Carax, and more screen in “The Female Gaze,” a retrospective of female cinematographers. Read our piece on it here.

Metrograph

The rarely screened work of Yoshishige Yoshida gets a three-title outing, while a look at the films of actor and director Gérard Blain is underway.

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

The best retrospective of 2018 thus far is the Sylvia Chang series, which wraps up with Edward Yang, King Hu, Jia Zhangke, and the woman herself.

A few more Kubrick films screen this weekend.

What did Hitchock and Jarmusch have in common? Birds, it turns out.

Restorations of A Fistful of Dollars and The Changeling are now playing.

In today’s film news roundup, Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Olsen are set to be honored by the Environmental Media Association, David Ninh gets a new gig, and elephant documentary “Love & Bananas” gets a release.

Honors

The Environmental Media Association will honor Jane Fonda, Ray Halbritter, Mike Sullivan, and Elizabeth Olsen on June 9 at its Honors Benefit Gala in Los Angeles.

Fonda will receive the Female Ema Lifetime Achievement Award and Halbritter, CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises, will be given the Male Ema Lifetime Achievement Award. Olsen will receive the Ema Futures Award. Sullivan, owner of LAcarGuy, has been selected for the Ema Corporate Responsibility Award.

Past Ema Honors recipients include Michael Bloomberg, Sir Richard Branson, Matt Damon, Elon Musk, Natalie Portman, Jaden Smith, Justin Timberlake, and Shailene Woodley.

Fonda and Halbritter are both longtime champions of the Environmental Media Association and Halbritter is a member of its board of directors.

A married black couple in circa 1980 New York struggles to maintain domestic harmony in Personal Problems, a lost drama by Ganja & Hess director Bill Gunn being given its first proper release (after nearly four decades) by Kino Lorber. That one-sentence synopsis, however factually accurate, hardly suggests the scope of this experimental, challenging, nearly three-hour film shot on crude video gear with a surprising group of artistic polymaths. Coming a few years after Spike Lee's very strange G&H homage, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, the release should help draw attention to Gunn, the late writer-actor-director already hailed in some quarters...

Personal Problems. Image courtesy of Kino Lorber, Inc.In films, there are “Black people problems,” wherein one person’s moral flaws are taken to stand in for a moral flaw with the whole race. These are usually related to drug abuse, extreme violence and a general degeneration of the values that make up the social codes. In his editorial for The New York Times on the Oscar-nominated film Precious (2009) and its theme of incest, the poet Ishmael Reed writes, “This use of movies and books to cast collective shame upon an entire community doesn’t happen with works about white dysfunctional families. It wasn’t done, for instance, with Requiem for a Dream, or with The Kiss.” When scripting Bill Gunn’s Personal Problems (1980), Reed wrote about the daily life of the nurse aide, Johnnie Mae Brown, who is not a drug dealer or a coke-snorting bad mother or even...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe great French actor Stéphane Audran has died at the age of 85. David Hudson provides a thoughtful remembrance and career overview for The Daily.Following their producer-director collaboration on Amazon's underrated Red Oaks series, 90s contemporaries Gregg Araki and Steven Soderbergh are re-teaming for a most promising new Starz series entitled Now Apocalypse. Recommended VIEWINGFilm critic and Museum of Modern Art curator Dave Kehr investigates the many aspects that compose a western, and more largely, the genre's influence, origins, legacy, and future, in this wonderful video essay:The first trailer for Under the Silver Lake, David Robert Mitchell's long anticipated (and Thomas Pynchon inspired?) follow up to It Follows:Kino Lorber is re-releasing Personal Problems, a forgotten masterwork by Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess) and an early and essential experiment in video filmmaking. Here's...

Hal Ashby’s The Landlord, made in 1970, is probably the best movie of the 1970s not to be widely known by younger audiences, and even by some older audiences whose appreciation of the last great era of American moviemaking needs to be expanded beyond go-to classics like The Godfather and Chinatown and Taxi Driver. It’s Ashby’s first directorial effort, after work as assistant editor and chief film editor on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Cincinnati Kid and In the Heat of the Night, and it finds Ashby delighting in the freedom of fashioning experimental rules of editorial and visual expression in the process of translating a script from Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess), based on Kristin Hunter’s novel, into what stands today as one of the funniest, most honest, cogent and probing explorations of race and American race relations in movie history. We had it on...

In his new memoir, “Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City,” filmmaker, author, and professor Brandon Harris explores his unique coming-of-age in the city — and community — that he loves. Incidentally and not at all accidentally, the book includes a reflections on a number of essential films that shaped Harris’ journey, from Spike Lee joints to underappreciated indies and even Hal Ashby’s “The Landlord.”

In celebration of the book, Harris has also curated a series at Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse under the same title, featuring four films that speak directly to his novel and his experience, including tonight’s screening of “The Landlord.”

Read More: How Today’s ‘Nonsensical’ Blockbuster Filmmaking Can Learn a Lesson From American Movies of the ’70s

Check out our exclusive excerpt from “Making Rent in Bed-Stuy: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City...

Kathleen Collins' name made a big cultural rebound with a single review in The New Yorker -- of an independent movie she wrote and directed in 1982. It's a confluence of important black theater and filmmaking talent -- Collins, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, Billie Allen and, in the background, William Greaves and the history of film generated by African-Americans. Losing Ground Blu-ray The Milestone Cinematheque 1982 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 86 min. / Available at Milestone Films / Street Date April 5, 2016 / 39.99 Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, Billie Allen, Maritza Rivera, Noberto Kerner, Gary Bolling, Michelle Mais. Cinematography Ronald K. Gray Film Editor Ronald K. Gray, Kathleen Collins Original Music Michael Minard Produced by Kathleen Collins, Ronald K. Gray Written and Directed by Kathleen Collins

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Quick, name five film directors that are black women. Well, after seeing the glowing review for Losing Ground late last year in The New Yorker,...

Sexual Healing: Spike Lee’s New Joint Aims to Anoint

Provocateur Spike Lee continues to fling his ambition into surprising experimental formats and narratives. Following the box office failure of his 2008 war drama Miracle at St. Anna, Lee has branched out inventively, though his feature narrative products have not often received the same level of critical acclaim elicited by his early titles from the late 80s and early 90s when he was a lone representative of black independent cinema at the art house. After funding 2012’s Red Hook Summer out of pocket and controversially trawling Kickstarter for 2014’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (a remake of Bill Gunn’s 1973 classic Ganja & Hess), he’s back with his grandest platform in quite some time with Chi-raq, so named for the controversial moniker Chicago has earned due to the astronomical urban violence plaguing the metropolis’ South Side. Assembling an impressive cast, including...