After the extraordinary and accomplished Hereditary, writer/director Ari Aster returns quite quickly to the screen with a new feature from A24, Midsommar. Based on this trailer, visually, at least, this film, which stars Jack Reynor, Will Poulter and Florence Pugh, is quite different, moving from the dark interiors and woodsy exteriors of Utah to the sunlit Swedish countryside. That said, a similar menace can be felt, as well as a similar vibe to that A-frame house at trailer’s end. Here’s plot info from the press release: “Pugh and Reynor will play a couple that travels to Sweden to visit their […]

With a sea of short films washing up on the shores of YouTube and Vimeo each day, how can filmmakers make their work stand out? One team with a solution is Jake & Will — Will Blank and Jake Bradbury — for whom their 16-episode online short film series Twentieth Century Faux is both a smartly packaged exploration of millennial anxieties as well as a kind of personal filmmaking challenge that connects these two filmmakers back to the essential pleasures of making movies. The shorts run from one to three minutes each, are released weekly, are titled after well-known movies, […]

25 New Face filmmaker and Spirit Award-winning director Mark Jackson’s latest film, This Teacher, is tonight’s closing night film at this 25th anniversary of the Slamdance Film Festival. Previously, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s final edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival. From the Slamdance guide: This Teacher follows a French Muslim woman (Cesar-winner Hafsia Herzi) as she travels to New York City to visit her childhood best friend from the rough neighborhoods outside of Paris. When the reunion proves disastrous, Hafsia steals her friend’s credit card and identity, and disappears to a remote cabin […]

Isabelle Huppert may well be the hardest working person in movies, with six films released in the past year. Next on the docket is Neil Jordan’s Greta, which premiered a couple months back at TIFF, and looks to lean heavy on the camp. Huppert stars as the titular Manhattanite who lures a younger woman, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, into an insidious game of cat and mouse. Focus Features will release the film stateside in March.

The Oscar short lists were announced earlier this week and one of the ten titles to make the cut in the Live-Action Short category was Caroline. Written and directed by Celine Held and Logan George — two of 2017’s 25 New Faces — the film follows a frenetic afternoon in the life of single mother who leaves her three children behind to go on a job interview. Watch it above.

The trailer for Jean-Luc Godard’s latest cine-essay, The Image Book, has arrived. Winner of a special Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film revisits, reworks and reflects upon excerpts from cinema history. Blake Williams, in his dispatch from Cannes, described it as a “densely layered work of montage,” in line with much of Godard’s late period. Kino Lorber will release The Image Book in New York on January 26, and in Los Angeles on February 15.