Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage, and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Every column has felt overloaded as of late, as if home video distributors know we’re all planning on finally leaving the house soon, and want to sell us a few more things while they can.

Continue reading The 14 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘News Of The World,’ ‘Collective,’ ‘World Of Wong Kar-Wai’ & More at The Playlist.

Maybe the fall of 2017 wasn’t the right time for a 4K restoration of “La Belle Noiseuse,”  Jacques Rivette’s four hour ode to the creative process; headlines today are dominated by reports of predatory or simply lascivious men leveraging power to exploit women’s bodies, power being multifaceted by its very definition. Maybe they take advantage through force. Maybe they take advantage using coercion. Either way, this year remains an unflattering lens for revisiting the film, though it’s a comfort to know that it caused a bit of a commotion when it premiered at Cannes back in 1991.

Continue reading ‘La Belle Noiseuse’ Is Jacques Rivette’s Epic Ode To The Creative Process [Review] at The Playlist.

While filmmaking legend Jacques Rivette is perhaps best known for his 13-hour opus “Out 1,” the director’s latter-day career had its own share of masterpieces. And none were as epic as 1991’s “La Belle Noiseuse,” which is now returning to the big screening for its 25th anniversary, with a new 4K restoration, and in its full, uncut 238-minute runtime.

Starring Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, and Emmanuelle Béart, the film is about an artist becoming creatively reborn, as well as a dramatic documentation of the creative process.

Continue reading ‘La Belle Noiseuse’ Trailer: Jacques Rivette’s Classic Returns For 25th Anniversary In 4K Restoration [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

While The Criterion Collection and Janus Films tend to have the market cornered on repping arthouse auteurs and legendary filmmakers both on the big screen and on home video in North America, the folks at Cohen Media Group are starting to carve out their own strong niche. The company has been quietly building up a strong catalog of titles, including the recent restoration of James Ivory‘s “Howard’s End,” plus films by Claude Chabrol, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Douglas Sirk, and more.

Continue reading Newly Restored Late-Era Jacques Rivette Films Returning To The Big Screen In 2017 at The Playlist.

The incomparable Jacques Rivette passed away in January at the age of 87 – it has been a truly heartbreaking year and we’ve lost some of the most profound people in the arts – but he left behind a tremendous oeuvre and an undying impact through the French New Wave and his other, later films. Rivette was an impulsive director in that he combined his schizophrenic tendencies to create the best of both worlds; he had his straightforward, Hitchcockian side, and he had a side like Renoir, which would encourage him to let things go.

Continue reading Walk The Streets With Jacques Rivette’s Greatest Scene In ‘Out 1’ at The Playlist.

R.I.P. Jacques Rivette (1928 – 2016)

Continue reading R.I.P. Jacques Rivette (1928 – 2016) at The Playlist.

Edward Yang's 'A Brighter Summer Day,' Plus Films By John Frankenheimer & Jacques Rivette Hit Criterion In March

Continue reading Edward Yang’s ‘A Brighter Summer Day,’ Plus Films By John Frankenheimer & Jacques Rivette Hit Criterion In March at The Playlist.

Review: Jacques Rivette's Newly Restored Masterpiece 'Out 1'

Continue reading Review: Jacques Rivette’s Newly Restored Masterpiece ‘Out 1’ at The Playlist.

Anyhow, the online/print mag spoke to the director of the polarizing surrealist noir, “The Limits of Control” (many hate it, eggheads like us fully enjoyed its hypnotically woozy qualities and European art film sensibilities) and his atypical approach this time out.

Continue reading Does Jim Jarmusch Have Another Free-Form Project Like ‘Limits Of Control’ In The Works? at The Playlist.

This is how Jarmusch says he pictured the film and if you’re a cinephile, this should probably give you an erection too.

Continue reading Jim Jarmusch Talks The Key Cinematic Influences Of ‘The Limits Of Control’ at The Playlist.

As many, many have noted before us, Jacques Rivette’s magically fanciful and wantonly elliptical 3 1/2 hour 1974 classic, “Céline And Julie Go Boating” is many different things to many different people and often all at once.

Part Alice In Wonderland like fantasy, part absurdist comedy, part feminist manifesto and part post-psychedelic escapade, ‘Boating’ is bizarre, sometimes tedious, nonsensical and masterfully oblique; a hypnotically surreal experience to be sure.

Continue reading ‘Céline and Julie Go Boating’ – Going Down The Rabbit Hole With Rivette’s 1974 Surrealist Classic at The Playlist.