Tahar Rahim is So Alpha

This week has been wild with excellent movie news and today's getting off to another excellent start with the word that Raw and Titane director Julia Ducournau has lined up her next movie and it will star our boyfriend Tahar Rahim! It's to be called Alpha and it's described as the director's "most personal, profound work yet" but that's it, that's all they're giving us. Oh and it will co-star actress Golshifteh Farahani, who was in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson with Adam Driver and the Extraction movies with Chris Hemsworth and most importantly of all she was in Asghar Farhadi's fantastic 2009 film About Elly -- if you've never seen that one seek it out immediately. Farahani and Rahim have that in common -- he starred in Farhadi's film The Past, which was also wonderful. If you're gonna cast your movie casting it with Farhadi alumni ain't a bad way to go!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Raw (2016)

Justine: I wanted a female roommate.

Adrien: You got a fag; same thing to them.

A happy birthday to the director Julia Ducournau, turning 39 today -- it only seems apt to celebrate the director of the art-house queer cannibal coming-of-age flick Raw here on the day when Luca Guadagnino's art-house queer cannibal coming-of-age film Bones and All is hitting some theaters. (Sidenote: click here for some lovely photos of Raw hottie Rabah Nait Oufella, who plays the "fag" quoted above.) I'd love to know how influenced Bones was by Raw -- there's got to be some overlap. Somebody needs to ask Luca or screenwriter Dave Kajganich about that, please!

Anyway we're dying here waiting for Ducournau's next project after Titane blew our brains out last year -- IMDb tells me she's directing some TV right now, namely The New Look, aka the "Christian Dior versus Coco Chanel" limited series for Apple that stars Ben Mendelsohn as the former and Juliette Binoche as the latter. Also co-starring Emily Mortimer, John Malkovich, and Claes Bang. And if that's not blowing your brains out already they weren't there to begin with. 

Metal Heads

I am playing some catch-up right now, with about five thousand juggling balls flying at my face all at once (there goes my social life), so apologies if I don't rap rhapsodic too much and just get to the damned point with some things -- some people have been waiting for me to just get to the point for decades so this is a boon for those bitches. Anyway I have two NYFF reviews that went up at The Film Experience yesterday that I have yet to link to here on this site -- you can read my thoughts on Titane, Julia Ducournau's follow-up to Raw, right here. This is out in some theaters today too, so maybe y'all will have opinions if you're in one of the cities where it's playing. I mean anybody who watches this movie will have an opinion -- it coerces opinions. It is coercive! And I also reviewed Drive My Car from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, right here, which is at at the total opposite end of the spectrum -- Drive My Car is slow and thoughtful and sweet to every aggressive impulse from Ducournau's film. I suppose both movies are about people who love their cars, though! In very, very different ways! But they're both excellent, seek them out. Now onto the next thing...

Happy NYFF, Almost!

Tomorrow marks the Opening Day of this year's New York Film Fest with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand starring in Joel Coen's adaptation of Macbeth -- that photo above is obviously not from Macbeth but I'm not reviewing Macbeth yet, so let me have this one. I'm seeing it in the morning tomorrow and will be off all day, so I'm just giving you something to look at for now. I'll be reviewing movies for NYFF soon enough over at The Film Experience -- if you want to keep up with what I've been seeing in real time follow me on Letterboxd, or on Twitter of course, where I never shut the hell up. Oh and I previewed the NYFF's Main Slate back in August, if you missed it. I've already seen 3 of my 5 Most Anticipated films, and I was right to be excited about all of them! Do stay tuned...

After Raw

Back in April I told ye about a few films that the terrific studio known as Neon had on their plate for 2021, as it appeared then that they were about to have a terrific year ahead -- such sentiment continues now that they've shared with us the trailer for one of those movies I mentioned, the new one from Raw director Julia Ducournau, called Titane. It stars Vincent Lindon (star of La Moustache, one of my faves) and is about a long missing son returning home, blah blah blah violence (although you wouldn't get any of that, except the "blah blah blah violence" part, from the trailer). 

But Lindon's giving off some hardcore Daddy vibes in this thing, that much is for certain. This is premiering at Cannes soon, hence the first look, but we don't have a release date or anything -- I would imagine it won't be released until the end of the year at best. But here's to hoping word out of Cannes is good because this trailer kicks unholy ass. Watch:

Art Movie Apocalypse

Actually being on reputable movie press lists now makes me feel all grown up and semi-respectable! It is weird! But a good weird, like when the taxi hits a pothole just right. There, phew, I am no longer burdened with feelings of respectability. That was a close one. Aaaaanyway to get to my point I got the 2021 slate for the studio known as Neon this afternoon -- they're the fine people behind gems like Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite and other movies not about lesbians on the water (here is that joke, but better) and there were several bits that caught my eye -- like the above photo, the first I've seen of Tilda Swinton in director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new movie called Memoria! It's described succinctly as being about "a Scottish woman who beings to notices strange sounds while traveling through the jungles of Colombia." Oh look, another photo:

That one's off of IMDb, although they don't have much more information than that tagline. We do know the film co-stars the great Spanish actor Daniel Giménez Cacho, so wonderful in Zama and We Are What We Are (the original one) and Blancanieves and Bad Education. Also bit of trivia -- he was the narrator of Y Tu Mama Tambien. Anyway no word on when Memoria is coming out other than "in 2021" but we'll surely stay tuned. Also of note on Neon's list of 2021 films... 

... is Titane, the new one from Raw director Julia Ducournau! After Raw we'd follow Ducournau anywhere, and this one's also got a killer cast with French actors Natalie Boyer and Vincent Lindon -- sidenote, I can't see Vincent Lindon without immediately thinking happy thoughts of the terrific film La Moustache, which I've posted about previously and always recommend. Anyway Titane is described thus:

"A young man with a bruised face is picked up by airport customs officers. He claims to be Adriane Legrand, who disappeared as a child ten years ago. For Adriene's father Vincent, a long nightmare has finally come to its end, and he takes the young man home. At the same time, a series of gruesome murders is ravaging the area..."

That ellipsis at the end of that description is doing a lot of heavy lifting! Still, knowing Raw, I feel like things might not work out in this father's favor. But I do love Ducournau's angle on plopping horror down among a family full of secrets -- it's a great space. No word on Titane's specific release date yet either, but I will surely let y'all know. Other films of note on Neon's slate -- speaking of Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma's new one Petite Maman is set for "Fall 2021," while Spencer, director Pablo Larrain's Princess Di bio-pic with Kristen Stewart, is set for "Winter"... oh, and the great and animated gay refugee movie Flee, which I saw at Sundance a couple months back, is also hitting in the fall.

5 Off My Head: French Kisses For Everybody

.

Did that photograph of Raphaël Personnaz grab your attention? I feel as if that photograph of Raphaël Personnaz might've grabbed your attention. It grabs mine! And now that we're all good and grabbed, here's the good word - the ever wonderful Film Society of Lincoln Center here in NYC has just announced the full line-up for the annual awesomeness that is their "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series, and it's a doozy. You can see the entire line-up right here - it runs for the first two weeks of March - but I'm gonna highlight five titles that are grabbing me the hardest.

Frantz (Francois Ozon) - It's Ozon, period. I'm there. But I've been wanting to see Frantz for several months even besides, thanks to the trailer full of a shirtless mustachioed Pierre Niney running around. Watch the trailer here, with bonus gifs. 

And bonus: Niney also co-stars in the Closing Night film The Odyssey, which stars Lambert Wilson as Jacques Cousteau...

... Niney plays Lambert's son and Audrey Tatou plays his wife. The funny thing that made me laugh about this movie is I looked up its writer-director, a man named Jérôme Salle, to see what else he'd done and wham, even the director is hot:

I love the French. Anyway Salle will be there for a Q&A with The Odyssey, and Francios Ozon will be there for a Q&A with Frantz too.

Raw (Julia Ducournau) - This is the last title I expected to see popping up here in this series and I let out an audible gasp when it saw it was - this cannibal comedy has been making people literally pass out and get sick at film festivals for months now, so naturally I've been clamoring for it and clamoring for it. 

Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello) - I know a lot of people think that Bonello's last movie, 2014's fashion biopic Saint Laurent, is too long and self-indulgent, but I hate your dumb face if you think so - it's glorious. I saw it three times in the theater and I could've gone every night for a month. So whatever he did next I was gonna be excited about, but FSLC's write-up of this movie has got me literally goose-bumping. Let me just cut and paste because HELL YES:

"The audacious new film from Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent) unfolds in two mesmerizing segments. The first is a precision-crafted thriller, following a multi-ethnic group of millennial radicals as they carry out a mass-scale terrorist attack on Paris. The second—in which the perpetrators hide out in the consumerist mecca of a luxury department store—is the director’s coup, raising provocative questions about everything that came before. Bonello stages his apocalyptic vision with stylishly roving camerawork, blasts of hip-hop, and a lip-synced performance to Shirley Bassey’s “My Way.” This is edgy, risk-taking filmmaking that is sure to ignite debate. "

In the Forest of Siberia (Safy Nebbou) - And we get to Raphaël Personnaz, as promised! Raphaël, who we've been crushing on ever since we first saw him in a movie at the 2015 edition of Rendezvous (you'll really want to click on this link here because we have been thorough with our love), stars as a young dude who isolates himself in the wilderness... aka an excuse to stare at a man as gorgeous as Raphaël Personnaz framed against white snow while staring plaintively. I'm there. Oh and I should mention he also walks around the snow buck naked, as captured by us already in this post from October. Seeing that on the big screen? I'm REALLY there.

It's a shame I'm limiting myself to just five titles because there are even more I want to see -- Gaspard Ulliel in The Dancer! Marion Cotillard and Louis Garrel in From the Land of the Moon! Natalie Portman as a 1930s spiritualist in Planetarium!!! Basically just say goodbye to me for the first two weeks of March, is what I am saying.

.