CS Score Reviews Casper and Chats with Emmy Nominee Amanda Jones

Welcome back, film score lovers! We’ve got an amazing batch of goodies for you to check out this week. First up, we take a deep dive into La La Land’s terrific 2-CD release of Casper and chat with Emmy nominated composer Amanda Jones, who produced terrific work for the Apple original TV series, Home.

The Tax Collector
Michael Yezerski

First up, Filmtrax (via BFD/The Orchard) has just released the original motion picture soundtrack to David Ayer’s hit crime drama The Tax Collector. Composed by Michael Yezerski, the music features a unique blend of acoustic folk, hip hop, and Latin influences. Order your digital copy by clicking here.

Purchase The Tax Collector by clicking here!

Track List: 
1. Love Honor Loyalty Family
2. The Tax Collector
3. The Dream
4. A David in Life
5. O Hey Conejo
6. Making It Rain
7. The Nephew
8. In the Bedroom
9. Conejo Collects
10. One Point Six
11. Alexis
12. Reunion
13. Sneaking into the Compound
14. For My Family
15. The Wizard
16. David on Ends

DC’s Stargirl: Season 1
Pinar Toprak

WaterTower Music released the soundtrack to DC’s Stargirl: Season 1 as well, which features epic music from Emmy-nominated composer Pinar Toprak. The composer wanted the score to sound similar to those old-school 1980s Amblin productions and opted to record each episode’s music with a live 60-piece orchestra. The results are quite fantastic!

Purchase the Stargirl: Season 1 Original Television Soundtrack by clicking here!

Track List:
1. The Justice League of America
2. Pat Was Right
3. Rescuing Starman
4. Friendly Folks
5. JSA Files
6. The Cosmic Staff
7. Brainwave Calls Icicle
8. Pat Reviews Files
9. Brainwave Threatens Courtney
10. Leave Blue Valley
11. Elegy for Joey/JSA Hall
12. Rex & Wendi Leave
13. Rick Wears the Hourglass
14. Beth Meets chuck
15. JSA vs. ISA
16. I’m Not Stargirl
17. Henry vs. Henry
18. Fighting Sportsmaster & Tigress
19. ISA Manifesto
20. Justin Needs Help
21. The Christmas Gift
22. Stargirl Destroy the Transmitter

Casper: 25th Anniversary Remastered Limited Edition (2-CD Set)
James Horner

Purchase the score at La La Land Records.

Purchase the digital edition of Casper by clicking here!

We’ve received a number of reissues of James Horner’s music over the last several years, including the brilliant 4-CD 20th Anniversary Titanic set, the 2-CD complete score for Legends of the Fall, and the fantastic 2-CD release of The Rocketeer. This month, La La Land Records saw fit to deliver an expanded version of one of the late composer’s vastly underappreciated works, 1995’s Casper.

First off, this new CD set is fantastic. The sound quality pops and the additional cues make for a terrific listening experience. The entire score clocks in at roughly 72 minutes making for a briskly paced album that blends Horner’s trademark emotional underscore with the same type of wild adventure music he achieved in other family films such as Willow, An American Tale: Fievel Goes West, and We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story.

The film itself is a slog — a bizarre mixture of adult themes and kid-friendly hijinks that, like its main protagonist, never fully materializes despite some exception VFX work. Directed by Brad Silberling, executive produced by Steven Spielberg (who brought along many of his usual collaborators), and starring Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, Cathy Moriarty, and Eric Idle, the film opened to mixed critical reception but nonetheless made $287 million against a $55 million budget and continues to be a mainstay Halloween tradition.

Horner had long been Amblin Entertainment’s go-to man with a total of 17 scores recorded for the studio, including An American Tale, The Land Before Time, *batteries not included, Balto and the two big-screen Zorro flicks. Casper is perfectly suited for the composer’s instincts as the story spends a good chunk of its running time exploring the tragic backstories of not only its titular ghostly hero but also its main two protagonists, James and Kat Harvey. Horner composed a lovely melody, often referred to as “Casper’s Lullaby,” to accompany these emotional beats; and uses both piano and choral music to deliver the goods. It’s not hyperbole to say Casper’s theme ranks among the composer’s best.

The new album starts off with bouncy melodies — heard in “Carrigan & Dibs” and “March of the Exorcist” — and a playful family theme before introducing the aforementioned Lullaby roughly midway through the lengthy “No Sign of Ghosts.”

“First Haunting/The Swordfight” is presented as heard in the film and consists of the wacky sounds Horner employed in other family adventures like Jumanji and The Grinch, but swiftly segues into some wild — and fun! — swashbuckling music as the Harveys battle the ghosts. “Casper Makes Breakfast” (and many of the tracks for Casper’s three foul-mouthed uncles) leans on Horner’s swing-style saxophones for its energy; and while these bits are entertaining, the overuse in Horner’s work simultaneously make them less prominent than they did when he first utilized them in Cocoon and *batteries not included.

“Fatso As Amelia” is the first to introduce choral over the Lullaby theme, though the track stops short as Dr. Harvey realizes he’s been duped by the three ghosts.

One of the albums best tracks, “The Lighthouse – Casper & Kat,” is pure Horner. It begins with a light music box melody before the orchestra offers a beautiful rendition of the main theme that gives way to another swashbuckling bit of score as Casper flies Kat to a lighthouse and the two engage in a conversation about the people they’ve lost in their lives. The “Lullaby” is played prominently on piano with soft choral elements reminiscent of Danny Elfman’s superb work on Edward Scissorhands. The track closes on one of Horner’s oft-used sad motifs.

Another great track is “Decent To Lazarus,” a 10-minute cue that begins with another statement of the family and Lullaby themes before the more exciting music takes over during Casper and Kat’s escapades in a secret laboratory.

“Carrigan Crosses Over” features darker underscore with choral elements that, quite frankly, remind one of John Debney’s Hocus Pocus, while “Dad Returns” begins as another rambunctious track but leans on the emotional melodies as Kat tries to bring her father back from the dead. In fact, from here on out, the music shifts into more dramatic fare with tracks such as the exquisite “Casper Gets His Wish” and “One Last Wish.” The Lullaby theme is given a powerful rendition in the former and used more solemnly in the latter, although both tracks lean heavily on choral elements (and familiar music from Cocoon) to really sell the emotion. “One Last Wish” builds towards a powerful climax comprised of rising choir and Horner’s patented piano that truly enchants.

The first CD also features the opening track, “Kids With a Camera,” as presented in the film complete with the classic Casper theme — which too, gets various renditions in its own track “Casper The Friendly Ghost [Score Segments]” that were sprinkled throughout the film. The disc closes with music heard in the teaser trailer — more of the wacky elements heard throughout the album — while the second disc features a remastered copy of the original soundtrack album.

All told, Casper remains one of Horner’s better family scores. Sure, some of the wackier elements grow tiresome but otherwise, Horner knocked it out of the park with this one and delivered a soundtrack that stands with some of his best work during his astonishing mid-90s run.

Interview with Emmy-Nominee Amanda Jones
Composer of Apple TV’s Home

ComingSoon.net: Congratulations on receiving your first Emmy nomination!

Amanda Jones: Thank you so much.

CS: What was your reaction to that news?

Jones: You know, I was excited and definitely shocked. It was a very like, surreal moment. I had entered into four different categories and I’m really happy that one of them worked out, in a sense. So yeah, it was exciting. So it was my first time submitting for an Emmy and I’m really happy. It’s incredible.

CS: So where were you when you heard the news? Were you watching it live, the announcement live or anything like that?

Jones: You know, I wasn’t. It was 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time, and my mom was actually watching, but I kind of didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself to feel that anticipation, so I just kind of was having like a leisure morning. And then, let’s see, about 8:30 a.m. someone called me and it was my publicist and she was like, you’ve been nominated. I was like, that’s crazy.

CS: And was it just business as usual after that?

Jones: [laughs] It was an exciting day for sure! And you know, my phone was blowing up with tons of phone calls and lots of congratulatory well wishes and Apple sent like a floral arrangement.

CS: What was your immediate feeling as soon as you saw that announcement?

Jones: Yeah, I think the feeling was like, I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to describe it. It was almost like getting into college, like the college of your choice, where it’s like, oh my gosh, I did it, like after all this hard work of putting together an application and you have this body of work that you’re really proud of. And then you submit it and it gets accepted. But it’s like a different sort of feeling because it’s like a career achievement. So it’s like, yeah, it’s a unique feeling.

CS: So, now that you’re an Emmy nominated composer, does that change your approach to any of your work at this point? 

Jones: No, I just want to continue doing this great work, making everyone happy, but you know, taking on work and projects that I’m like, passionate about. And I’ve been that way in the beginning, so just kind of continuing onward. And I think I’ve found a formula that works and just kind of sticking to it and adapting if I need to. But you know, just kind of staying busy and just keep moving forward.

CS: I listened to the soundtrack and I thought it was great.

Jones: Oh thank you so much. Yeah, there’s a lot of like, cool pads and synths. And I’m using my voice and like, kind of doubling some of those textures, so there’s like a human quality and like, meshed with these synths, and then yeah, I’m playing guitar, bass, piano and then we have drums on there and a lot of fun percussion-like sleigh bells. And yeah, it kind of runs the gamut of just a lot of different ideas and feelings. And yeah, it was a lot of fun to work on.

CS: So what is your process in developing a score for something like Home?

Jones: Yeah so first it starts with like, in-depth creative conversations with the studio, for Apple TV Music team. And then, involves the creative producers. And I’m interfacing most with Doug and Collin. And yeah, we just talked about it for a bit and they were like, we really want you to lean into a songwriter sensibility. Have fun with it. Go big with it. And the way it’s shot, it’s like very cinematic, very slow. I don’t know if panning is the correct word, shots, but it’s very similar to Chef’s Table in the way that every motion is very epic, like opening a door is the most epic thing. It’s like, you know, looking around the room is the most beautiful thing. So they just kind of wanted like a grandiosity for the music that kind of complimented those shots. And so, there was a lot to work with and it was just really well done and I had a lot to play around with and be inspired by.

CS: What was the first track that you would say you worked on? 

Jones: So there’s like, two distinctive settings for this episode. We have like, Maine, which is like this wind tree setting. It’s where the sit house is set. And we have this like, cool wintry setting and this warm and beautiful home. And then, separately, there is like a Japan segment. So at the onset, Apple really wanted to make sure there was a clear, sonic distinction between Maine and that setting and then Japan and that setting. And so, what we settled on was Maine being kind of like this cold, folky, wintry space and then the Japan-like, instrumentation is very like, angular and sharper tones and we have like, really cool synths that are just like, probably more treble-y. And they just stand out more in the mix. And the drumming is a lot more, with more attack and it’s a little more aggressive, whereas a folky setting with the drums are kind of doing folk drums, which is kind of more of like, swung and just really chill and like, kick drums. So yeah, it was like, nice to create a distinction between the two. But then there’s a reprise that we hear of the first cue that you hear in Japan. So there’s kind of like a through-line between those spaces. But yeah, it was really important to create distinctive sounds for those two different settings first. And then kind of fill it in and color it in, depending on what setting you were in.

CS: When you’re putting together a score, is there ever a point where you’re like, this is it, this is working? Or is it tense from the moment you start until all the way until the moment you end?

Jones: I guess it’s a mixture of both. I definitely have that feeling of expectations and wanting to make sure everyone’s happy with what I’m creating, but at the same time, I’m also happy with what I’m creating, too. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work on projects where I’ve been able to strike that balance. So I feel like I’ve created something that serves my artistic soul, but also supports what’s happening and a lot of people have signed off on it and they’re like, happy with it. So yeah, there’s an internal pressure to create something beautiful, but then also the expectation of the studio for sure.

CS: My favorite tracks on the album are The House Being Built because I think that one incorporates all the ideas perfectly and the track Pregnant. I just thought that was a really beautiful bit of music. What was the inspiration behind that particular piece?

Jones: Yeah, so this is when — so our subjects are Anthony and Julie. They are the owners and the builders of the house. And so, during this segment, Julie’s pregnant and they are wanting to birth their first childlike, in that home. And they birth like, two of their kids like, in that home. So there was like a time crunch for them to like, finish creating the bathroom and finish creating the rest of the house and creating a space for their children that were coming pretty soon. And so, it was just a beautiful segment that focused on Julie and her experience being pregnant and just kind of like, realizations when you’re pregnant when you’re building a home. And when you’re pregnant, there’s all sorts of restrictions that you have, where you’re not supposed to like, eat certain things or be around certain chemicals. So they were very mindful about what materials they were using with the house. So it was like a very holistic like, delicate process of them finishing their home, but with materials that would be safe for a pregnant woman to be around.

And it was also just this beautiful — they showed photos of her giving birth, so it was just like this really beautiful like, motherly moment that I felt like just needed to have that sort of soundscape to kind of illuminate what her story and her process and her experience having a child at home.

CS: Different composers have different ideas of how they see their role. In your opinion, how would you define your role as the composer?

Jones: I guess I don’t know, maybe just as a collaborator. You know, I just want to create something that the team is just on board with. Like yes, there is an agency I have about myself and the decisions that I’m making, certain creative decisions and seeing if people are receptive to them, but you know, every project I take on, it feels very much like, this like, kind of going back to the DIY days of just like, being very hands-on and collaborative with the entire team. So I just like, welcome any feedback and I’m excited just to have these in-depth musical conversations. And I’m excited to create something new for each project and really explore ideas that haven’t been explored in a sonic sense for that certain medium, so for docs or for TV or for films. I just want to like, explore different sonic spaces that you don’t typically hear with film scores. And I try to get everyone on board at the beginning just to see if we can go down that path. But yeah, just like a fun collaborator is kind of how I see myself.

CS: What would you consider the most challenging aspect of composing music?

Jones: Let me see. The most challenging aspect? You know, I think it might just be getting the gig. I think once you have it, it’s kind of just like, fun. So I think convincing people that you’re the one they should have and include on this collaboration. I think once you get over that hump, I think it’s kind of smooth sailing from there.

CS: What got you into film music?

Jones: Yeah, let’s see. I mean I’ve always been very passionate about music. I started playing piano when I was three and clarinet when I was 10. And then, you know, I came to guitar around 14, 15. And you know my family was very conservative, so they wanted me to go down a more conservative career path. So initially I was going to become a chemist, but then once I went to college, I went to Vassar College, I took some music composition classes, fell in love with it and completely switched my major to music. And so, from there, kind of dedicated myself to doing music as like, a life pursuit. And familial expectation was pretty intense, so whatever I was going to do, I had to do it extremely well. And so, convincing my family that a career in the arts and being successful at doing that was very tricky and unprecedented in our family. You know, I had to do it. It was just, my heart was just drawn to doing music. I can’t stop thinking about it every single day. I hear music in my head. I love it. And so, once I graduated, I moved to Los Angeles. My initial focus was live performance, touring with my band. And it wasn’t until 2014, 2015, where I decided to kind of incorporate film scoring into my like, musical practice.

And I just wanted to do more. I loved writing music with my band. I loved touring, but I just wanted to just do more and have just more aspects to myself as a musician. And so then I kind of like, really did a deep dive into like, what does it take to become a great composer? I probably should learn and study from the best. So I did a couple of internships/music production assistantships with Hans Zimmer, Henry Jackson, John Powell … And so, that was from 2014 to 2016, just being with on-call music production assistants. And let’s see. And then, after that I had the opportunity to work at Lionsgate, which was like a totally out of left field sort of opportunity that presented itself, and as a music coordinator/creative executive.

And that role was like, in their television department hiring composers, like music supervisors, music editors. And they really wanted a musical person to kind of listen through the submissions that were coming in. And I was like, this sounds amazing. I did that for two years. And then, that kind of really helped align my focus into how to approach being a composer. Like having worked on the musical studio side and then experiencing the production studio side, I felt like I kind of gathered this comprehensive 360 view of like, what it takes to write beautiful music, but also what it takes to get the gig and understand the expectations of a studio and managing them.

And so, yeah, 2018, I’ve kind of popped out of the system and just went out on my own. I had the opportunity to do my first feature film, it’s called One Angry Black Man. And this is very timely now. And then so yeah, that was like my first project that was like a feature film. It was like, oh my god, this is my first feature. I can do this. And so, I kept doing a ton of short films. And then, later that year in 2018 I did the pilot for Twenties and that was like, the little hook that I needed to kind of get into the industry.

And so, Lena Waithe was like, the first person to be like, yes, yeah, you can work on my pilot for my TV series I have been developing for 10 plus years. No problem. And I was like, wow, thank you so much. She took a chance. And she does that with a lot of people and it’s really beautiful, like editors and directors, cinematographers. She’s like, so good about bringing on new talent and fresh faces. It’s very inspiring. And so, she was the one that kind of like, ushered me in to that space. And then, from there it was like, no more friction. Now it’s like, I had three television series and almost four, actually, and just a ton of other projects and ads. And it’s been an incredible, wild ride. It’s like episodes for “Home” and an Emmy nomination. It’s been a crazy two years, you know? And all of it is coming out this year.

CS: You went from almost being a chemist to a film composer and now you’re the first African American woman nominated in the Score category.

Jones: Yeah, exactly, for Primetime Emmy.

CS: Yeah, so what’s that like?

Jones: I mean, it’s a lot of feelings at once. It’s bittersweet for sure. On the one hand, absolutely, I’m elated and ecstatic and I can’t believe I’ve been nominated. It’s beyond bizarre that I’m the first one. And so, that’s what makes it bittersweet on the other side of it. I want to kind of make room and space for more women of color to be able to have the opportunity to submit their work and experience the same thing I’ve experienced. So you know, I feel like activism is really important and alongside our work. And I just want to help usher in another generation of people that can experience this. More Emmy nominations, I hope I’m not the last. And I don’t think I will be. So yeah, I’m a co-founder of this group called the Composer’s Diversity Collective, and it’s an amazing group of individuals, where we kind of like, offer mentorship and job opportunities. We have direct communication with studios. And it’s just like a pipeline to help studio staff more diverse voices on their projects.

And so yeah, and when I staff my own projects with additional writers, music editors or any musicians, my team is very diverse. And I think that is kind of like, trickles up, I guess. So ultimately people are working on my projects and then they work on their own projects that are great. And then eventually they can submit their work for consideration, you know, and their own Emmy’s, yeah. So it’s all about just like, leaving the door wide open for the next generation.

CS: After everything that you’ve accomplished, what is the next big thing that you want to tackle? What’s the next big project that you want to tackle?

Jones: Yeah, so I’ve done television series and TV movies, independent features, ads, but I’ve yet to do a studio feature film. So that’s the next kind of echelon I’m excited to enter that space and be considered for those projects, because I know the leap from television to film, even though I’ve done a bunch of independent features, I know that’s something, that’s like, another hurdle studio executives need to wrap their mind around. It’s like, oh, can you handle this medium? So I’m excited to enter into that space and be considered a talent that should be considered.

CS: Congratulations on your nomination. It’s well deserved!

Jones: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for noticing.

The post CS Score Reviews Casper and Chats with Emmy Nominee Amanda Jones appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

New to Stream: The Criterion Channel’s September 2020 lineup

The Criterion Channel, a streaming service from the niche home video distributor for film aficionados, has unveiled its lineup of programming for the month of September, which will include Richard Linklater’s groundbreaking drama Boyhood, along with a large roster of contemporary and classic films and double features!

RELATED: New to Stream: Arrow Video Channel’s September 2020 Lineup

Tuesday, September 1
Sátántangó

One of the towering achievements of modern cinema, Béla Tarr’s newly restored magnum opus, based on the novel by László Krasznahorkai, follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective who set out to leave their village on the heels of a financial windfall. As a few of the townspeople secretly conspire to abscond with all of the earnings themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone’s lives. Shot in exquisite monochrome and composed in arresting long takes, Sátántangó unfolds in twelve distinct movements, alternating forward and backward in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Tarr’s monumental vision, aided by longtime partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, is enthralling, and his immersive evocation of rural Hungary as a postapocalyptic world of boozy dance parties, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall is both transfixing and uncompromising.

Tuesday, September 1
Short + Feature: Super Bowles
You Are Not I and The Sheltering Sky

The writings of modernist literary legend Paul Bowles, an American expatriate who spent the majority of his life in Tangier, inspire two psychologically charged adaptations by singular film artists. Based on a Bowles short story, Sara Driver’s long-lost No Wave touchstone You Are Not I evokes a woman’s fractured mental state through a trancelike procession of haunting, uncanny images. Then, we’re whisked away to the sunbaked landscapes of the Sahara Desert for Bernardo Bertolucci’s sensuous take on Bowles’s celebrated novel The Sheltering Sky, starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich as an American couple whose sojourn to North Africa turns into a soul-shaking existential exploration.

Wednesday, September 2
Two by Dorothy Arzner

Featuring a documentary on Arzner by Katja Raganelli
The only woman to work as a director within the studio system of 1930s Hollywood, Dorothy Arzner was a trailblazer whose fascinating, often subversive films were the product of a sophisticated, queer, protofeminist sensibility that managed to assert itself in spite of the limitations of commercial moviemaking. Both made during the early 1930s at Paramount, where Arzner worked first as an editor before establishing herself as a director during the silent era, these pre-Code gems are two of her finest and most neglected films: Working Girls, a witty and complex tale of female ambition set in a women’s boarding house, and Merrily We Go to Hell, an alcohol-soaked portrait of an open marriage on a downward spiral.

Working Girls, 1931
Merrily We Go to Hell, 1932

Thursday, September 3
The Heiress: Criterion Collection Edition #974

Directed with a keen sense of ambiguity by William Wyler, this film based on a hit stage adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square pivots on a question of motive. When shy, emotionally fragile Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland, in a heartbreaking, Oscar-winning turn), the daughter of a wealthy New York doctor, begins to receive calls from the handsome spendthrift Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), she becomes possessed by the promise of romance. Are his smoldering professions of love sincere, as she believes they are? Or is Catherine’s calculating father (Ralph Richardson) correct in judging Morris a venal fortune seeker? A graceful drawing-room drama boasting Academy Award–winning costume design by Edith Head, The Heiress is also a piercing character study riven by emotional uncertainty and lacerating cruelty, in a triumph of classic Hollywood filmmaking at its most psychologically nuanced. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An appearance by de Havilland on a 1986 episode of The Paul Ryan Show; a conversation between screenwriter Jay Cocks and film critic Farran Smith Nehme; a program about the film’s costumes featuring costume collector and historian Larry McQueen; The Costume Designer, a restored 1950 short film featuring costume designer Edith Head; and more.

Friday, September 4
Double Feature: Spaghetti alla Samurai
Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars

A Japanese chanbara classic inspires a landmark Spaghetti western—and, in turn, a transnational lawsuit—in this one-two punch of visually spectacular action mayhem. Akira Kurosawa’s darkly comic Yojimbo stars the incomparable Toshiro Mifune as a wily masterless samurai who turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Mifune’s character served as a template for the Man with No Name played by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s pulp-operatic A Fistful of Dollars, an international sensation that launched Eastwood to superstardom and prompted Kurosawa and his studio to sue successfully for copyright infringement.

Saturday, September 5
Saturday Matinee: Duck Soup

The marvelous Marx Brothers are at their anarchic best in this wildly hilarious tour de force of comic invention. When Groucho’s Rufus T. Firefly, president of the bankrupt nation of Freedonia, picks a fight with the ambassador of a neighboring country, absurdist militaristic mayhem ensues in what may the finest and funniest of the brothers’ films, directed by irreverent Hollywood craftsman Leo McCarey. Along the way there are outlandish musical numbers, some of Groucho’s most priceless one-liners, and the pure genius of the classic mirror scene, a wordless, three-minute slice of slapstick perfection.

Sunday, September 6
Pre-Code Joan Blondell
Featuring a new introduction by critic Imogen Sara Smith

Classic Hollywood’s consummate scene-stealing sidekick, Joan Blondell enjoyed a successful screen career for nearly five decades, but it was during the anything-goes pre-Code era of the early 1930s—when dames, gold diggers, and good-time girls were cinematic staples—that she reached her zenith. Her vivacious energy and wisecracking persona were perfectly suited to the punchy, fast-paced style of her home studio, Warner Bros., where she was often paired with the similarly brash, dynamic James Cagney in popular hits like the mob film He Was Her Man, the delightfully risqué romantic comedy Blonde Crazy, and the kaleidoscopic Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza Footlight Parade. Whether lending snappy comedic support to a dramatic heavy hitter like Barbara Stanwyck in Night Nurse or showing her range playing a mob boss in the all-too-rare starring vehicle Blondie Johnson, Blondell exuded an irresistible, naughty-but-nice irreverence that was pure pre-Code.

Blonde Crazy, Roy Del Ruth, 1931
Millie, John Francis Dillon, 1931
Night Nurse, William A. Wellman, 1931
The Public Enemy, William A. Wellman, 1931
Big City Blues, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932
The Crowd Roars, Howard Hawks, 1932
Lawyer Man, William Dieterle, 1932
Three on a Match, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932
Union Depot, Alfred E. Green, 1932
Blondie Johnson, Ray Enright, 1933
Footlight Parade, Lloyd Bacon, 1933
Gold Diggers of 1933, Mervyn LeRoy, 1933
Dames, Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley, 1934
He Was Her Man, Lloyd Bacon, 1934

RELATED: Sundance Now Unveils September TV & Movie Slate

Monday, September 7
Three by Robert Greene

The line between performance and reality is scrambled to provocative effect in the adventurous nonfiction psychodramas of Robert Greene. While the bravura hybrid works Actress and Kate Plays Christine are slippery, multilayered investigations of the craft of acting, Greene’s latest film, Bisbee ’17, uses historical reenactment to connect a shameful chapter of American history to the country’s present. Opening up complex questions about the very meaning of “truth” in documentary, Greene’s fascinating films are alchemical collaborations between director and subject in which artifice is a means to reach authentic human insight.

Actress, 2014
Kate Plays Christine, 2016
Bisbee ’17, 2018

Tuesday, September 8
Short + Feature: Through Her Eyes
Nettles and It Felt Like Love
Featuring a new interview with Nettles director Raven Jackson

Two powerfully intimate films explore the incidents, large and small, that shape women’s lives. With hushed immediacy, Raven Jackson’s award-winning short Nettles poetically evokes a series of “stinging moments” in the lives of young women, many centered around moments of sexual vulnerability. Eliza Hittman mines similar territory in her revelatory debut feature It Felt Like Love, a bracing portrait of a Brooklyn teenager whose rush to grow up leads her down a potentially dangerous path.

Wednesday, September 9
Four Films by Janicza Bravo
A conversation between Bravo and Sam Fragoso, host of the podcast Talk Easy

The director of the audacious festival hit Lemon and the highly anticipated Zola, Janicza Bravo cultivates the unsettling, the absurd, and the hilariously warped. This selection of four of her brilliantly outré shorts—including the award-winning dark comedy Gregory Go Boom, starring Michael Cera—showcases the singular, gonzo sensibility that has made her one of American independent cinema’s most exciting voices. Centered around terminally awkward misfits so cringe-inducing that you can’t look away, Bravo’s surreal, stylistically brash films are by turns bleak and bitingly funny commentaries on loneliness, privilege, and the search for human connection.

Gregory Go Boom, 2013
Pauline Alone, 2014
Woman in Deep, 2016
Man Rots from the Head, 2016

Thursday, September 10
Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Environmental-art superstar Christo, who passed away in May this year, and his longtime collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, transformed the world’s landscapes into epic canvases for their awe-inspiring site-specific installations. Though their staggering achievements—including an enormous curtain hung between two Colorado mountains and a floating fabric walkway built on an Italian lake—were designed to be ephemeral, they frequently inspired filmmakers, particularly documentary masters Albert and David Maysles, to preserve their creations on celluloid. Films like Running Fence, which depicts the artists’ struggle to build a twenty-four-mile fence out of white nylon fabric, and The Gates, about their decades-in-the-making dream to construct a “golden river” of portals in New York’s Central Park, capture the monumental vision, superhuman determination, and unique relationship that drove an extraordinary artistic partnership.

Features
Running Fence, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1977
Islands, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1987
Christo in Paris, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Deborah Dickson, and Susan Froemke, 1990
Umbrellas, Albert Maysles, Henry Corra, and Grahame Weinbren, 1994
The Gates, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Antonio Ferrera, and Matthew Prinzing, 2008
Walking on Water, Andrey Paounov, 2019

Shorts
Christo’s Valley Curtain, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Giffard, 1974

Friday, September 11
Double Feature: Tears of a Clown
Lenny and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling

It’s no laughing matter: these two unflinching films delve into the self-destructive dark sides of a pair of comedy legends. In Lenny, director Bob Fosse and star Dustin Hoffman bring a live-wire energy to their jagged portrait of controversial, envelope-pushing stand-up Lenny Bruce that cuts between his electrifying prime and burned-out later years. Then, Richard Pryor draws on his own personal demons in the autobiographical Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, a lacerating rise-and-fall showbiz saga and the only narrative feature written and directed by the comedy great.

Saturday, September 12
Saturday Matinee: The Phantom Tollbooth

What could possibly be inside that gigantic, wrapped-and-ribboned box? A tollbooth, a toy car, and adventure! Ride with young Milo (Butch Patrick) through the phantom tollbooth that takes him from the streets of San Francisco into a wondrous world that combines the enchantment of Norton Juster’s beloved children’s book with the sheer visual joy of legendary Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones (codirecting his sole feature film). Bookended by live-action sequences and featuring a stellar voice cast led by the great Mel Blanc, The Phantom Tollbooth brings to life a magical, musical tale of warring kingdoms (one favors words, the other numbers), demons, princesses, and fabulously fantastical creatures—including a tick-tick-ticking “watch” dog!

Sunday, September 13
Directed by Albert Brooks

It’s apt that director, writer, and actor Albert Brooks should have been born Albert Einstein, since his cutting, cerebral, and brutally honest comedies are works of self-deprecating genius. Unafraid of playing unlikable, self-absorbed characters and of putting his own neuroses and obsessions under the microscope, Brooks has directed only a handful of films since the late 1970s, but each is a brilliant, unsparingly funny dissection of the frustrations of the contemporary everyman. Whether satirizing the complexities of dating in Modern Romance, Reagan-era yuppie excess in Lost in America, or the pitfalls of family ties in Mother, Brooks probes the foibles and fallibility of the human condition with a sharp observational eye and sardonic wit that’s as painful as it is hilarious.

Real Life, 1979
Modern Romance, 1981
Lost in America, 1985
Defending Your Life, 1991
Mother, 1996

Monday, September 14
Art and Craft

Mark Landis has been called one of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history. His impressive body of work spans thirty years and a wide range of styles, from fifteenth-century masters to Picasso to Walt Disney. And while the copies could fetch impressive sums on the open market, Landis isn’t in it for the money. Posing as a philanthropic donor, a grieving executor of a family member’s will, and even a Jesuit priest, Landis has given away hundreds of works over the years to a staggering array of institutions. But when a tenacious investigator threatens to expose his ruse, Landis must confront his controversial legacy and a growing chorus of art-world professionals calling for him to stop. What begins as a gripping cat-and-mouse art caper, rooted in questions of authorship and authenticity, gradually develops into an intimate story of obsession and the universal need for community, appreciation, and purpose.

Tuesday, September 15
Short + Feature: The Dakar Connection
A Thousand Suns and Touki Bouki

Life imitates art as a rising auteur pays homage to a landmark work by her uncle in this snapshot of Senegalese cinema past and present. In 1973, Djibril Diop Mambéty made a splash with Touki bouki, a brash, stylistically freewheeling tale of two young lovers attempting to scheme their way from Dakar to France. Forty years later, Mambéty’s niece Mati Diop revisits the film’s towering legacy in A Thousand Suns, in which she reconnects with Magaye Niang and Mareme Niang, the stars of Touki bouki, and finds that their fates have followed paths curiously similar to those of the fictional characters they played.

Wednesday, September 16
Three by Lucrecia Martel

You can feel the heat in the swelteringly sensorial films of Argentine iconoclast Lucrecia Martel, who, working in a cinematic vocabulary all her own, creates tantalizingly elliptical, shrewdly incisive commentaries on class, religion, and social hierarchy that have established her as one of the twenty-first century’s major filmmakers. In her early critical triumphs La Ciénaga and The Headless Woman, Martel introduced a startlingly original, fully formed sensibility, marked by off-kilter compositions, a tactile sense of atmosphere, and a caustic perspective on the hypocrisies of Argentina’s bourgeoisie. With her latest feature, the hallucinatory literary adaptation Zama, Martel translates her singular vision to the eighteenth century, losing none of her eccentric edge and acerbic bite.

La Ciénaga, 2001
The Headless Woman, 2008
Zama, 2017

Wednesday, September 16
Observations on Film Art #38: Visual Strategies in La Ciénaga

From the very first shot of her very first feature, La Ciénaga, Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel laid claim to a distinctive, defiantly strange cinematic syntax unlike any other. In this edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor Kristin Thompson examines the surprising choices—uncomfortably tight framing, unusual camera positions, and soft- and out-of-focus lensing—that Martel uses to keep the identities of and relationships between her characters intriguingly opaque and to heighten the film’s stinging critique of bourgeois torpor.

Thursday, September 17
Boyhood: Criterion Collection Edition #839

There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater. An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director’s native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A making-of documentary spanning the film’s twelve years of production; a discussion featuring Linklater and actors Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane, moderated by producer John Pierson; a video essay by critic Michael Koresky about time in Linklater’s films; and more.

Friday, September 18
Double Feature: Paradises Lost
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) and Tabu (2012)

The shadow of a silent-cinema masterpiece looms large over a twenty-first-century marvel in two visually stunning sagas of doomed passion and colonial tragedy. In the early 1930s, German-expressionist giant F. W. Murnau joined forces with documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty for the landmark docufiction hybrid Tabu, a ravishing vision of flowering love amid the encroaching, destructive forces of Western civilization, strikingly filmed on location in Tahiti. Eight decades later, Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes took the title and bifurcated narrative structure of Murnau’s film as the starting point from which to spin a sumptuous, exhilaratingly eccentric tale of ill-fated romance in 1960s colonial Africa in his own acclaimed Tabu.

Saturday, September 19
Saturday Matinee: Charlotte’s Web

The most popular children’s book of all time made it to the screen with E. B. White’s heartwarming vision fully intact courtesy of animation powerhouse Hanna-Barbera and the vocal talent of Debbie Reynolds. She plays the beloved spider whose bond with a runt pig yields timeless truths about friendship, cycles of life, and growing up. With handsome hand-drawn animation, songs by Disney mainstays the Sherman Brothers, and a vocal cast that also includes Paul Lynde and Agnes Moorehead, that’s some pig, indeed!

RELATED: Shudder September 2020 Schedule Starts Off Halloween Lineup

Sunday, September 20
The Films of Agnès Varda
Featuring extensive supplemental features from Criterion’s The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set

A founder of the French New Wave who became an international art-house icon, Agnès Varda was a fiercely independent, restlessly curious visionary whose work was at once personal and passionately committed to the world around her. In an abundant career in which she never stopped expanding the notion of what a movie can be, Varda forged a unique cinematic vocabulary that frequently blurs the boundaries between narrative and documentary, and entwines loving portraits of her friends, her family, and her own inner world with a social consciousness that was closely attuned to the 1960s counterculture, the women’s liberation movement, the plight of the poor and socially marginalized, and the ecology of our planet. This comprehensive collection is a testament to the radical vision, boundless imagination, and radiant spirit of a true original for whom every act of creation was a vital expression of her very being.

Shorts
Du coté de la côte, 1958
L’opera-mouffe, 1958
O saisons, o chateaux, 1958
Les fiancés du Pont Macdonald, 1962
Salut les cubains!, 1964
Elsa la rose, 1966
Uncle Yanco, 1968
Black Panthers, 1970
Réponse de femmes, 1975
Plaisir d’amour en Iran, 1977
Ulysse, 1982
Les dites cariatides, 1984
7 p., cuis., s. de b. . . . (à saisir), 1985
T’as des beaux escaliers, tu sais, 1986
bl, 2003
Ydessa, les ours, et etc. . . ., 2004
Les 3 boutons, 2015

Features
La Pointe Courte, 1955
Cléo from 5 to 7, 1962
Le bonheur, 1965
Les créatures, 1966
Lions Love (. . . and Lies), 1969
Daguerréotypes, 1975
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, 1977
Mur Murs, 1981
Documenteur, 1981
Vagabond, 1985
Jane B. par Agnès V., 1988
Kung-Fu Master!, 1988
Jacquot de Nantes, 1991
The Young Girls Turn 25, 1993
One Hundred and One Nights, 1995
The World of Jacques Demy, 1995
The Gleaners and I, 2000
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later, 2002
The Beaches of Agnes, 2008
Agnès de ci de là Varda, 2011
Varda by Agnès, 2019

Monday, September 21
Streetwise and Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell
Featuring a new introduction with director Martin Bell

In 1983, filmmaker Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of those society had left behind: homeless and runaway teenagers living on the margins of Seattle. The resulting film, the Academy Award–nominated documentary landmark Streetwise, follows an unforgettable group of children who, driven from their broken homes, survive by hustling, panhandling, and dumpster diving. Among the project’s most haunting and enduring faces was Tiny, an iron-willed fourteen-year-old who the filmmakers would continue to track for the next thirty years. Tracing her journey from lost youth to mother of ten children of her own, the long awaited follow-up documentary Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell is a heartrending, deeply empathetic portrait of a woman and a family struggling to break free from a cycle of trauma.

Tuesday, September 22
Short + Feature: All by Myself
The Amateurist + Je tu il elle

Two fearless filmmakers turn the camera on themselves to explore loneliness, solitude, identity, sexuality, and the gaze within self-engineered confines of their own making. In The Amateurist, Miranda July sets up an unsettling relationship between viewer and subject via an increasingly disturbing portrait of a woman whose obsessive, solitary video surveillance of another woman (also played by July) pushes her to the brink of madness. Then, Chantal Akerman plays a woman who ventures out of self-imposed isolation in her uncompromising first feature, which features one of the most daring sex scenes in cinema history.

Wednesday, September 23
Thank You and Good Night
Featuring two short films and a new introduction by director Jan Oxenberg

A lost-and-found revelation from indie film and TV maverick Jan Oxenberg is a docu-fantasy narrative focused on the filmmaker’s hilarious, messy, Jewish family as they prepare to say goodbye to someone they love. Narrated by a cardboard cutout of Oxenberg’s scowling child self, Thank You and Good Night takes us on a journey through the proceedings, attempting to defeat death and never say goodbye. An early Sundance hit but virtually unseen for decades, the film reemerges as a singular, uncategorizable exploration of the meaning of life, death, and the tangled stuff that is a family. In this poignant, hilarious, and complex reflection on letting go, Oxenberg innovatively transforms personal tragedy into universally resonant art that is now claiming its rightful place as a classic of independent cinema. This key touchstone in the evolution of the autobiographical documentary has reemerged thanks to a new restoration and is presented alongside two early short works by Oxenberg that offer a wittily satirical perspective on her experiences growing up as a lesbian.

Restoration by IndieCollect.

Shorts
Home Movie, 1973
A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts, 1975

Features
Thank You and Good Night, 1992

Thursday, September 24
Corpus Christi

Streaming premiere

Anchored by a stunning performance from newcomer Bartosz Bielenia, this moral tinderbox is an emotionally gripping, darkly humorous portrait of a man on a most curious road to redemption. Following his release from a Warsaw prison for a violent crime, twenty-year-old Daniel (Bielenia) is sent to a remote village to work as a manual laborer. The job is designed to keep the ex-con busy, but Daniel has a higher calling. When one quick lie allows him to be mistaken for the town’s new priest, Daniel sets about leading his newfound flock, inspiring the congregation through his passion and charisma even as he edges toward a dark secret that the community hasn’t revealed in the confessional booth.

Thursday, September 24
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Though he would find himself at the forefront of the radical New German Cinema movement, Volker Schlöndorff got his training in France. Apprenticed to such trailblazers as Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Louis Malle, he became fascinated by the possibilities of filmmaking as a political tool early in his career. His 1966 debut, Young Törless, based on Robert Musil’s acclaimed novel, was not only the first of his many ambitious literary adaptations (often of challenging, supposedly “unfilmable” works), it was also something of a New German Cinema call to arms, a political allegory about Germany’s social history set in a boys’ boarding school at the turn of the twentieth century. More stinging commentaries on the state of Germany-then-and-now followed in the seventies: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (codirected with Margarethe von Trotta, Schlöndorff’s wife at the time), Coup de grâce, and his grandest success, the Oscar- and Palme d’or–winning The Tin Drum, a brilliant adaptation of Günter Grass’s metaphorical novel about the horrors of World War II. Continuing to delve into the traumas of the mid-twentieth century in late-career triumphs like The Ogre and Diplomacy, Schlöndorff looks unflinchingly to the past in order to illuminate the present.

Young Törless, Volker Schlöndorff, 1966
Baal, Volker Schlöndorff, 1970
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975
Coup de grâce, Volker Schlöndorff, 1976
The Tin Drum, Volker Schlöndorff, 1979
Circle of Deceit, Volker Schlöndorff, 1981
Swann in Love, Volker Schlöndorff, 1984
Death of a Salesman, Volker Schlöndorff, 1985
The Handmaid’s Tale, Volker Schlöndorff, 1990
Voyager, Volker Schlöndorff, 1991
The Ogre, Volker Schlöndorff, 1996
The Legend of Rita, Volker Schlöndorff, 2000
Diplomacy, Volker Schlöndorff, 2014

Friday, September 25
Double Feature: Mall Wonders
Golden Eighties and Nocturama
Featuring a new interview with Nocturama director Bertrand Bonello, whose film Zombi Child is also now playing on the Channel

Don’t look for retail therapy in this pair of super-stylized, shopping-mall-set genre-exploders that balance sleek pop pleasures with a subversive anticapitalist critique. First, Chantal Akerman filters the singing, dancing charms of the MGM dream factory through her singular feminist, formalist sensibility in her fascinatingly offbeat, disarmingly affecting New Wave musical Golden Eighties. Then, Bertrand Bonello choreographs a mesmerizing tale of teenage terrorism in his audacious thriller Nocturama, which features some of the most cunning deployments of pop music in recent cinematic memory.

Saturday, September 26
Saturday Matinee: Pygmalion

Cranky Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) takes a bet that he can turn Cockney guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) into a “proper lady” in a mere six months in this delightful comedy of bad manners, based on the play by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by both Anthony Asquith and star Howard and edited by future British cinema giant David Lean, Pygmalion was co-scripted by Shaw himself, who won an Academy Award for his work and whose screenplay would later be adapted into the classic Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady.

Sunday, September 27
By the Book

You’ve read—or at least meant to read—the book. Now see the movie. Just in time for the start of school, we’ve collected some of the all-time great page-to-screen adaptations, encompassing English 101 classics like Great Expectations and Lord of the Flies, world-literature masterpieces like War and Peace and Pather Panchali, modern best sellers like The Virgin Suicides and The Hours, and more. While faithful transpositions abound, there are plenty of surprising spins on canonical titles, such as Akira Kurosawa’s Japan-set retelling of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, John Huston’s hallucinatory take on Malcolm Lowry’s “unfilmable” Under the Volcano, and Chantal Akerman’s fascinating postcolonialist reimagining of Joseph Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly. Each is a distinguished work of art in its own right, as worthy of appreciation as its celebrated source.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Rowland V. Lee, 1934
The 39 Steps, Alfred Hitchcock, 1935
La bête humaine, Jean Renoir, 1938
Of Mice and Men, Lewis Milestone, 1939
Great Expectations, David Lean, 1946
The Killers, Robert Siodmak, 1946
Anna Karenina, Julien Duvivier, 1948
Oliver Twist, David Lean, 1948
The Heiress, William Wyler, 1949
The Passionate Friends, David Lean, 1949
The Idiot, Akira Kurosawa, 1951
The Life of Oharu, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952
Robinson Crusoe, Luis Buñuel, 1954
Senso, Luchino Visconti, 1954
Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray, 1955
Aparajito, Satyajit Ray, 1956
The Burmese Harp, Kon Ichikawa, 1956
Apur Sansar, Satyajit Ray, 1959
The Cloud-Capped Star, Ritwik Ghatak, 1960
Purple Noon, René Clément, 1960
Zazie dans le métro, Louis Malle, 1960
Divorce Italian Style, Pietro Germi, 1961
Lord of the Flies, Peter Brook, 1963
Tom Jones, Tony Richardson, 1963
Charulata, Satyajit Ray, 1964
Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964
Closely Watched Trains, Jirí Menzel, 1966
War and Peace, Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966
Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968
The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970
Dodes’ka-den, Akira Kurosawa, 1970
The Phantom Tollbooth, Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, and Dave Monahan, 1970
The Little Prince, Stanley Donen, 1974<
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975
The American Friend, Wim Wenders, 1977
The Ascent, Larisa Shepitko, 1977
The Getting Of Wisdom, Bruce Beresford, 1977
Empire of Passion, Nagisa Oshima, 1978
Watership Down, Martin Rosen, 1978
My Brilliant Career, Gillian Armstrong, 1979
Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979
The Tin Drum, Volker Schlöndorff, 1979
Wise Blood, John Huston, 1979
You Are Not I, Sara Driver, 1981
Under the Volcano, John Huston, 1984
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader, 1985
My Life as a Dog, Lasse Hallström, 1985
Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986
An Angel at My Table, Jane Campion, 1990
The Comfort of Strangers, Paul Schrader, 1990
Europa Europa, Agnieszka Holland, 1990
The Handmaid’s Tale, Volker Schlöndorff, 1990
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Peter Kosminsky, 1992
The Castle, Michael Haneke, 1997
The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan, 1997
The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola, 1999
The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke, 2001
The Hours, Stephen Daldry, 2002
Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone, 2008
Almayer’s Folly, Chantal Akerman, 2011
45 Years, Andrew Haigh, 2015
Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt, 2016
Zama, Lucrecia Martel, 2017

RELATED: New to Stream: HBO Max September 2020 Highlights

Monday, September 28
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

The contemporary American police state shapes almost every aspect of society—whether we’re aware of it or not. Without ever venturing inside a penitentiary, director Brett Story excavates the insidious, often-unseen influence that prisons—and the American system of mass incarceration—has on communities and industries all around us. From a blazing California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires to a Bronx warehouse that specializes in prison-approved care packages to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of new prison jobs to the street where Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, this remarkably clear-eyed documentary sheds new light on how a system built on exploitation and racial injustice became woven into the fabric of everyday American life.

Tuesday, September 29
Short + Feature: All This Jazz
When It Rains and Ornette: Made in America

Two jazz-inflected riffs by legendary American independent filmmakers make sweet music together in this double feature in double time. Charles Burnett’s charming short When It Rains follows a trumpeter on a New Year’s Eve odyssey through Los Angeles as he attempts to save a mother from eviction, his quest punctuated by musical interludes that have the rhythmic, improvisational quality of jazz itself. Shirley Clarke brings a similar freewheeling energy to her appropriately idiosyncratic Ornette: Made in America, which blends documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music-video-style segments ever created into a kaleidoscopic portrait of free-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.

Wednesday, September 30
The Loveless

The first feature by both acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow and future David Lynch producer Monty Montgomery, as well as the screen debut of star Willem Dafoe, this edgy, should-be cult classic puts a furiously subversive spin on the rebel biker films of the 1950s. Dafoe is the pomade-slicked, leather-clad Vance, whose outlaw motorcycle gang roars into a small Southern town en route to the Daytona races, igniting simmering tensions with the locals and setting the stage for a violent standoff. The air of all-American menace is heightened by the jukebox soundtrack courtesy of costar and neo-rockabilly legend Robert Gordon.

The post New to Stream: The Criterion Channel’s September 2020 Lineup appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

The Argument Trailer Starring Dan Fogler, Maggie Q & Danny Pudi

Gravitas Ventures has released the official trailer for The Argument, starring Dan Fogler (The Walking Dead), Maggie Q (Divergent franchise), and Danny Pudi (Mythic Quest) in the upcoming comedy. You can check out the trailer now in the player below!

RELATED: Gamemaster Trailer Plus Exclusive Clip From Board Game Documentary!

The Argument is an indie comedy that follows Jack (Fogler) and his girlfriend, Lisa (Emma Bell) as they get into an argument during a get together with some friends in their apartment. As the argument escalates, the party comes to an end and all their friends leave — but the party isn’t really over. Jack and Lisa recreate the party over and over again — with all their guests — in order to figure out who was right.

The movie also stars Emma Bell (The Walking Dead), Cleopatra Coleman (In the Shadow of the Moon, The Last Man on Earth), Tyler James Williams (Dear White People, Detroit), Charlotte McKinney (Fantasy Island, Flatliners, Baywatch), Karan Brar (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Marielle Scott (Lady Bird), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Mope) and Mark Ryder (Borgia).

RELATED: Skyman Trailer: The Blair Witch Project’s Daniel Myrick Returns

The Argument is directed by Robert Schwartzman (The Unicorn, Dreamland) and written by Zac Stanford (Take Me to the River, Sleepwalking). The movie will release in virtual theaters and On Demand on September 4.

The post The Argument Trailer Starring Dan Fogler, Maggie Q & Danny Pudi appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

I Am Woman Trailer Starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Danielle Macdonald & Evan Peters

Quiver Distribution has released the official trailer for I Am Woman, the upcoming docudrama starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai), Danielle Macdonald (Unbelievable), and Evan Peters (American Horror Story). You can check out the trailer now in the player below!

RELATED: Endless Trailer & Poster Starring Alexandra Shipp & Nicholas Hamilton

In 1966, single-mother Helen Reddy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) leaves her old life in Australia for New York and stardom, only to find that the industry’s male gatekeepers don’t take her seriously. Helen finds an encouraging friend in legendary rock journalist Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald), who becomes her closest confidant. When ambitious aspiring talent manager Jeff Wald (Evan Peters) sweeps Helen off her feet, everything changes as he becomes both her husband and manager and relocates the family to California. With a strong push from Helen, Jeff secures her a recording contract and subsequent string of hit singles, including the iconic megahit “I Am Woman.” Increased fame leads to added pressures on themselves and their relationship, forcing Helen to find the strength to take control of her own destiny.

I Am Woman is the inspiring story of singer Helen Reddy, who wrote and sang the song “I Am Woman” that became the anthem for the women’s movement in the 1970s. The film is a story of fearless ambition and passion, of a woman who smashed through the patriarchal norms of her time to become an international singing superstar.

RELATED: Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies Documentary Trailer

I Am Woman, a Toronto International Film Festival 2019 Official Selection, was directed by Unjoo Moon (The Zen of Bennett) from a script by Emma Jensen (Mary Shelley). The movie is produced by Rosemary Blight and Moon and will release in theaters and On Demand on September 11.

The post I Am Woman Trailer Starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Danielle Macdonald & Evan Peters appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Tomb Raider’s Roar Uthaug to Helm Troll at Netflix

After breaking out with American audiences in the box office hit Tomb Raider reboot in 2018, director Roar Uthaug is returning to his home country of Norway for the monster movie Troll, which has just been greenlit by Netflix, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

RELATED: The Haunting of Bly Manor Poster & Photos Preview Netflix Horror Drama

Inspired by Scandinavian legend and based on an original idea from Uthaug, the film will center on the titular gigantic creature awakening from within the Norwegian mountains, where it has been trapped for 1,000 years and goes on a rampage through the countryside towards the country’s capital of Oslo.

“Troll is an idea that has been developing in the back of my mind for over 20 years,” said Uthaug. “To finally be able to realize it with the enthusiastic and ambitious people at Netflix and Motion Blur is truly a dream come true. I can’t wait to unleash this Norwegian monster on the world.”

The film will be produced by Espen Horn and Kristian Strand Sinkerud of Norwegian production banner Motion Blur, who previously worked with the streaming platform on Cadaver, which is set to premiere on Netflix in Norway this October.

RELATED: Netflix Unveils Star-Studded Ensemble for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

“We are incredibly proud to bring a Norwegian project of this scale to the world together with Roar Uthaug and Motion Blur,” David Kosse, VP of International Original Film at Netflix, said in a statement. “Roar is an extremely skilled filmmaker and I’m excited for him to go back to his Norwegian roots with this ambitious, fun film.”

Though no production start date or cast has been confirmed, Troll is slated to hit Netflix worldwide sometime in 2022.

(Photo Credit: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage)

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Exclusive Centigrade Clip From IFC Midnight’s New Survival Thriller

ComingSoon.net has an exclusive clip from IFC Midnight’s new survival thriller Centrigrade, starring Genesis Rodriguez (The Fugitive) and Vincent Piazza (Boardwalk Empire). Inspired by actual events, you can check out the clip for the upcoming movie in the player below!

RELATED: Relic Teaser: Emily Mortimer Leads Horror Sundance Darling

In 2002, a young American couple, Matthew and Naomi, travel to the arctic mountains of Norway. After pulling over during a snowstorm, they wake up trapped in their SUV, buried underneath layers of snow and Ice. As if the stakes aren’t high enough, Naomi is eight months pregnant in their frozen prison. With few resources, a dwindling food supply, and nothing but time, tension, blame, and personal secrets bubble to the surface. Matthew and Naomi realize they must work together to survive in a crippling battle against the elements, hypothermia, disturbing hallucinations, and plunging temperatures reaching as low as -30C.

Centigrade was directed by Brendan Walsh (Nurse Jackie) who co-wrote the screenplay along with Daley Nixon (Stationary). Walsh shot the entire film in sequence, with the stars spending 24 shooting days in a car attached to a 20-degree working ice cream freezer.

RELATED: IFC Midnight Debuts First-Look Photos At Emily Mortimer-Led Relic

The movie will open August 28 on VOD, all Digital platforms, and in drive-in theaters.

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New Mulan featurette explores the search for its hero

As the time quickly approaches for its Disney+ debut, the House of Mouse has debuted a new featurette for the live-action Mulan that highlights director Niki Caro’s search for the right star to portray the titular hero. The featurette can be viewed in the player below!

RELATED: New Mulan TV Spot: There is No Courage Without Fear

When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Army to defend the country from Northern invaders, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. Masquerading as a man, Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her inner-strength and embrace her true potential. It is an epic journey that will transform her into an honored warrior and earn her the respect of a grateful nation…and a proud father.

Mulan features a celebrated international cast led by Liu Yifei (The Forbidden Kingdom, Once Upon a Time) was cast as Hua Mulan following a year-long global casting search. Joining her are Donnie Yen (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as Commander Tung; Jason Scott Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny) as Böri Khan; Yoson An (The Meg) as Cheng Honghui; with Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha, Raise the Red Lantern) as Xianniang and Jet Li (Shaolin Temple, Lethal Weapon 4) as the Emperor.

RELATED: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet Scores a China Release Date

The film is directed by Niki Caro from a screenplay by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Elizabeth Martin & Lauren Hynek based on the narrative poem “The Ballad of Mulan.”

Mulan will still be having its theatrical release in selected Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and China, while it is set to premiere in the US on September 4 on Disney+!

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New to Stream: Arrow Video Channel’s September 2020 lineup

Acclaimed British indie film distributor Arrow Video has unveiled its lineup of programs set to debut on their streaming platform, Arrow Video Channel, in September which includes the cult classic horror parody Return of the Killer Tomatoes and new seasons of curated titles! The full list of titles set to premiere can be viewed below!

RELATED: Sundance Now Unveils September TV & Movie Slate

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CS Interview: Pat Healy on weird Western The Pale Door

ComingSoon.net got the chance to chat with indie genre vet Pat Healy (The Innkeepers, Tales of Halloween) to discuss the weird Western horror pic The Pale Door, which is now available in select theaters and on digital platforms! Click here to rent or purchase The Pale Door!

RELATED: CS Interview: Co-Writer/Director Aaron B. Koontz on The Pale Door

Much like co-star Noah Segan (Knives Out) and co-writer/director Aaron B. Koontz (Scare Package), Healy finds the world of Westerns to be “probably my favorite genre, if I were hard pressed to answer” and given that it’s rare “to do those these days” and his past starring in one film and one TV pilot, it was “very exciting” to get to go back to them.

“One of the things that I like about Westerns is it being about the mythology of America, and there is another mythology of America which is these witches and Salem and all of that stuff, and this was a very clever combination of those two things,” Healy explained. “I’m also a real skeptic when it comes to supernatural, so it was an interesting role in that he is a very logic-based person. He figures out all of these jobs and all of these things are basically based on facts and figures and logic and distance from here to there, and certainly presented with something that is unexplainable and goes into this kind of shock about it all. That was a cool arc. That was a cool journey and a cool thing to play, because with any role, you kind of say, okay, every part is me, but how would I react in this situation? And that’s probably how I would react, because I don’t believe in anything like that and I’ve never seen anything like that. So where I see it, I think I’d be pretty flummoxed and hard pressed to explain and know what to do with myself. So all those things were really interesting for me, plus there’s some actors that I knew and were friendly with and some that I didn’t know that I was fans of, like Bill Sage and Stan Shaw.”

In looking at the production, Healy found that one of the biggest challenges for him in getting into character was simply the speed of a low-budget production, in which he “didn’t really have a whole lot of prep time,” but that because he’s used to it from his career of “having done a lot of guest spots on episodic television” and ensure that he’s “really prepared when you show up on the set.”

“Since you’re dealing with period wardrobe and period detail and accents and effects and shooting at night, which is just difficult on its own, but shooting at night in Oklahoma in the summertime is just brutally oppressively hot and humid,” Healy recalled. “Because all of those things that I just mentioned, not to mention your blood and you’ve got to be here for this effect that they’re going to do in post, to work later and all that stuff, it’s going to interfere. It’s going to impact, sometimes in a good way, being on location is always good, because it affects you in ways you can’t expect. But you’re not doing this kind of work on all the things in a vacuum. You’ve got all this other stuff coming at you, and on top of that, you’ve got to be standing in a certain place and say it in a certain amount of time for just the technical reasons of filmmaking. So it’s always the more homework I can do and the more sort of secure I can feel in those choices, then the more freedom I have on the set and the less those things. Plus, there’s unknowable things. I mean, we were in tornado season, so we would stop shooting sometimes if there was a tornado coming, or, it would just start thundering and pouring or hail, and you’d just stop. So you just have to be always ready for that kind of thing. I’d like to think that there’s always challenges and there’s always things that don’t work exactly the way that you wanted them to or planned them to, and sometimes, they turn out better for that. It is sort of an allegory compared to the character, which is that you have this plan that’s written out and figured out, but then all these other things come in and intervene that you weren’t expecting and you have to figure out how to deal with them. I obviously couldn’t, as an actor, be in shock like the character is, but at least that character is in some sort of weird stage of shock that I felt probably worked well for the character.”

Despite this speedy production, Healy praised Koontz for allowing him to play with his character a little bit from scene to scene while also pointing out how playful the rest of his co-stars were, namely Bill Sage, and brightly noting that “we had a lot of fun.”

“I got to come up with my own voice and accent, which I wanted to be different from what the other people were doing, because he’s coming from probably a different education level and a different place than they are,” Healy expressed. “They were happy with that, and I think that there’s certain words that don’t sound great coming out of my mouth, or maybe I can’t sell as well as perhaps maybe saying it this way. There’s a certain scene in the movie where something really traumatic has happened and there’s a line that’s like, somebody says, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ which I think is the most said line in the history of movies. It’s in almost every movie that’s been out here. And I said something like, that’s a good idea or something. I thought, well, you know, that seems a little like he comes up with a clever line or something there. So it’d be better if he just sort of like, is just out of it. I saw the movie the other night and it’s really funny, actually. He says like, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And I’d just done this really crazy thing, and I react to it in a way that I think I would. ‘What the hell was that?’ It’s just almost like nothing to say and just be like, have a look on my face like, ‘Wow, did that really just happen?’ I think it works really well. I assumed since they used it in the movie, that they think so, too.”

With his past in having worked with a few of his co-stars as well as sharing similar life experiences with other, the 48-year-old actor found that building the rapport with his castmates prior to cameras rolling was “pretty instantaneous.”

“I think that the producers are smart to have gotten us together and we’re all living in the same place and we’re all guys around close to similar age, within a similar age range,” Healy stated. “We were just together all the time and we were there a few days early and it just worked. I mean, I think that good directors and producers cast not only who’s right for the role, but who would make a good group of people to hang out. And they were all right with that. We all got together famously and it worked really well. We’re still friends, most of us.”

RELATED: The Pale Door Review: Slow Start Followed by Thrilling Genre Blend

The Dalton gang finds shelter in a seemingly uninhabited ghost town after a train robbery goes south. Seeking help for their wounded leader, they are surprised to stumble upon a welcoming brothel in the town’s square. But the beautiful women who greet them are actually a coven of witches with very sinister plans for the unsuspecting outlaws-and the battle between good and evil is just beginning.

The horror western pic features an ensemble cast that includes Devin Druid (13 Reasons Why, Greyhound), Zachary Knighton (Happy Endings, Magnum P.I.), Melora Walters (Big Love, Venom), Bill Sage (Power, Hap and Leonard), Noah Segan (Knives Out, Scare Package), Pat Healy (The Innkeepers, Bad Education), Stan Shaw (The Monster Squad, Jeepers Creepers 3), Natasha Bassett (Hail, Caesar!) and Tina Parker (To The Stars, Better Call Saul).

The film is co-written by Koontz, Burns, and Keith Lansdale and directed by Koontz. The Pale Door is now in select theaters and on digital platforms and VOD!

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Sundance Now Unveils September TV & Movie Slate

Sundance Now has revealed their September slate, including the exclusive premieres of the darkly comedic conspiracy drama We Got This, the follow-up to the 2015 Emmy Award winner When I Walk from Jason DaSilva When We Walk, and the New Zealand supernatural crime drama One Lane Bridge. Additionally, next month will also feature the riveting finale to The Suspect on Tuesday, September 8.

RELATED: Sundance Now Unveils August TV & Movie Slate

The Sundance Now September slate includes:

Tuesday, September 1

Away

Ria (Juno Temple, Atonement) and Joseph (Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner) are kindred spirits, both looking for a way out: Ria wants out of town and is trying to scrape enough money together to get to the coast, while Joseph wants out of this life as he struggles to come to terms with the death of his wife. Their chance encounter leads to an unlikely friendship as both start to see in the other something that’s been missing from their live: Ria starts to get a sense of what it might have been like to have a father figure and, for the first time in a long time, Joseph starts to get a sense of optimism. This is a story of love, of loss and of hope played out against the magical backdrop of Blackpool. (2016)

Thursday, September 3

We Got This, Ep 1 (Sundance Now Exclusive)

Grieving from the recent death of his father, the sudden collapse of his career and the arrival of an unsurmountable tax bill, George English, an American living in Sweden, stumbles onto an unlikely solution – a 50 million Swedish Crown reward for solving the 30-year-old murder of the former prime minister Olof Palme. Naturally, he begins to imagine that cracking the Palme case could be the answer to all of his problems. But after a major discovery, George finds himself on a head-on collision course with history, as their investigation goes from a laughing stock to a very real and closely watched operation by the media, politicians, and industry titans that, for a variety of reasons, would rather this case remain forever unsolved. Created, written by and starring Schiaffino Musarra (The Man with the Red Horn).

The Suspect, Ep 3 (Sundance Now Exclusive)

Another episode of the riveting true crime docuseries. Cell phone evidence raises questions about the Crown’s theory of the crime, and materials found on Richard’s computer suggests he may have had some unfinished personal business. The defence team loses a veteran and gains a new legal mind as both applications to the court are lost—Dennis’ police statement will stay in evidence and he will face a jury in the second trial. It’s a devastating blow. But, after 5000 people are summonsed and a jury of 16 is selected, a shocking case of alleged police misconduct changes everything.

Monday, September 7

When I Walk

Winner of the 2015 News and Documentary Emmy Award. In 2006, 25-year-old Jason DaSilva was on vacation at the beach with family when, suddenly, he fell down. He couldn’t get back up. His legs had stopped working; his disease could no longer be ignored. Just a few months earlier doctors had told him that he had multiple sclerosis, which could lead to loss of vision and muscle control, as well as a myriad of other complications. Jason tried exercise to help cope, but the problem only worsened. After his dispiriting fall on the beach, he turned to his Mom, who reminded him that, despite his disease, he was still a fortunate kid who had the opportunity to pursue the things he loved most: art and filmmaking. Jason picked up the camera, turned it on his declining body, and set out on a worldwide journey in search of healing, self-discovery, and love. (2013)

When We Walk (Sundance Now Exclusive)

The second part of a documentary trilogy from filmmaker Jason DaSilva, who has been living with a severe form of multiple sclerosis for over 10 years. In his wheelchair, Jason begins to realize just how many places he is unable to experience with his son. To solve that, he works on a nonprofit AXS Map to help him determine the places he could go. When his son moves 1700 miles away to Austin, Texas he is unable to cope with this loss. He attempts to relocate to Austin which reveals to him the extent of the broken Medicaid system, & ultimately discovers that the Medicaid system would require him to live in a nursing home. When We Walk documents a devoted father and filmmaker with an indestructible drive to keep the cameras rolling no matter what and to show his son what it means to never give up. (2019)

Tuesday, September 8

The Suspect, Ep 4 – FINALE

After a mistrial is declared and the jury is dismissed, the new trial begins with Justice Morrison adjudicating alone. Police officers are called to the stand to recount their movements in the crime scene raising concerns about the forensic evidence gathered at the scene. A new witness recounts seeing a mysterious man leaving the building the night of the murder. It is revealed that Richard Oland did not touch his computer after Dennis leaves his office and a toxicology report raises questions about the possibility that Richard went out for a drink before he was murdered. When the verdict is finally given, will justice be served?

Thursday, September 10

River

John River (Stellan Skarsgård, Good Will Hunting) is a brilliant police inspector whose genius lies side-by-side with the fragility of his mind. He is a man haunted by the murder victims whose cases he must lay to rest. Also starring Nicola Walker (The Split) and Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread). (2015, 6 EPS)

We Got This, Ep 2

Between taking a job as a substitute teacher and attempting to keep his tax debt and his new obsession a secret from Sofia, George drags a reluctant Alex deeper into his private investigation, which leads to them to local conspiracy theorist Björn Söderqvist and his theory of how everything is connected to everything. After finally agreeing to meet Sture Norberg, the unofficial godfather of the private Palme detectives, a closer look at the cat lady’s phone leads back to the mysterious librarian Eva Person. But the same mysterious figure who appears to be responsible for the demise of the cat lady, is now following George, attempting to derail his effort to pick up where the cat lady left off.

Monday, September 14

Blindsight

Six blind Tibetan teenagers climb the Lhakpa-Ri peak of Mount Everest, led by seven-summit blind mountain-climber Erik Weihenmayer. (Documentary, 2006)

The Vicious Kind

Caleb Sinclaire (Adam Scott, Step Brothers) has just been through a particularly difficult breakup. Isolated, yet strangely contented with his newly single status, Caleb wears his distain toward women as a macho badge of honor. However, when Thanksgiving weekend arrives and Caleb meets his younger brother Peter’s (Alex Frost, Elephant) new girlfriend, Emma (Brittany Snow, Pitch Perfect), he tries to warn his brother away from her, but ends up becoming infatuated with her in the process. Also starring J.K. Simmons (Whiplash). (2009)

Encounters At the End of the World

Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog travels to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, looking to capture the continent’s beauty and investigate the characters living there. (Documentary, 2007)

National Bird

This documentary follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret U.S. drone war. At the center of the film are three U.S. military veterans. Plagued by guilt over participating in the killing of faceless people in foreign countries, they decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible consequences. (2016)

Tuesday, September 15

Fight for Justice: David and Me 

When troubled Canadian teen Ray Klonsky began writing letters to prison inmate David McCallum, both of their lives changed forever. Hundreds of letters later, Ray graduated from university determined to set his wrongly convicted friend free. (Documentary, 2014)

Thursday, September 17

One Lane Bridge, Ep 1 (Sundance Now Exclusive)

During a murder investigation at Queenstown’s infamous One Lane Bridge, ambitious young Maori Detective, Ariki Davis (Dominic Ona-Ariki, The Commons), inadvertently reawakens a spiritual gift that endangers the case, his career and his life. Also starring Joel Tobeck (Ash vs Evil Dead) and Sara Wiseman (A Place to Call Home).

We Got This, Ep 3

Convinced that solving the cat lady’s murder could be a shortcut to the finish line of the Palme case, George manages to convince Eva, Björn, and Alex to officially join forces. With George getting in trouble after teaching his student about the Palme murder, as well as the reveal of his tax problem, Sofia becomes genuinely concerned about his mental wellbeing. But when Bosse uses his connections to ramp up the pressure on George’s tax debt situation, Sofia realizes that they have far more immediate problems. The reveal of Eva’s relationship to the cat lady’s investigation leads to a major discovery that could crack the Palme case wide open.

Monday, September 21

War of Art

Artists from across the Western world visit North Korea to take part in a “cultural exchange” – with varying degrees of success and failure. (Documentary, 2019)

The Departure

A profile of Buddhist monk Ittetsu Nemoto, a counselor for suicidal patients, as he approaches middle age and faces the possibility of his own mortality. (Documentary, 2017)

Cosmopolis

Unfolding in a single cataclysmic day, the story follows Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) – a 28-year-old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager – as he heads out in his tricked-out stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber, while remotely wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. He started the day with everything, believing he is the future, but Packer’s perfectly ordered, doubt-free world is about to implode. Directed by David Cronenberg (The Fly). Also starring Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Kevin Durand (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Juliette Binoche (The English Patient), Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon) and Mathieu Amalric (The Bureau). (2012)

Thursday, September 24

Slings and Arrows, Season 2

In its second season, the award-winning Canadian comedy about a struggling Shakespearean theatre troupe explores the conflicts of middle age and rebranding: am I who I want to be or not to be? Starring Paul Gross (Tales of the City), Martha Burnes (Remedy), Stephen Ouimette (Mentors), and Mark McKinney (Superstore). (2005, 6 EPS)

One Lane Bridge, Ep 2

Ariki is in complete denial about the terrifying presence that is invading his life. Meanwhile, the Ryder family implodes under the strain of mourning their loved one and unsettling truths come to light.

We Got This, Ep 4

Coming to terms with their historic discovery, the arrival of a legendary figure thought to have had a hand in the Palme assassination not only raises the stakes, but it also has George, Alex, Björn, and Eva debating what to do next. The mounting pressure of his tax debt which leads to the sudden collapse of his family’s living situation, has Sofia seriously questioning if she chose the right person to spend the rest of her life with. With the options of continuing to go it alone, reaching out to the Palme Group or cutting a deal with a legendary international mercenary who may or may not shoot him the second he walks in the door, George stumbles onto an idea that turns the Palme case completely upside down.

Monday, September 28

People You May Know

In the opening days of 2018, Alabama-native journalist Charles Kriel walked into the UK Parliament to give evidence that Cambridge Analytica has harvested data on millions of people across America and Britain, using it to manipulate the election of Donald Trump and the British referendum on leaving the EU. The Committee appointed him Special Advisor, beginning an 18-month investigation. (2020)

One Million American Dreams

What happens if you fall so far short of success in the world’s most iconic city that you can’t even afford to be buried properly? Less than 16 miles from central Manhattan lies Hart Island, a 101-acre cemetery and the final resting place of over 1 million New Yorkers. But this is no ordinary cemetery. This is the last stop on the journey of the city’s unclaimed dead. (Documentary, 2018)

Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans

The story of how one of the most volatile, charismatic stars of his generation, who seemingly lost so much, nevertheless followed his dream to the end. (Documentary, 2015)

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