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NEWS
It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025).
- It Was Just an Accident (2025) cowriter Mehdi Mahmoudian was arrested by Iranian authorities for signing a letter condemning the government’s violent crackdown on protestors. Seventeen people signed the letter, including Accident cowriter and director Jafar Panahi, who is currently promoting the film outside Iran. Both Panahi and Mahmoudian are nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
- Weeks before the Writers Guild of America West prepares to enter contract negotiations with the major studios, the organization’s own staff union has authorized a strike. The union-within-the-union claims that they’re still fighting for basic protections while management has engaged in bad-faith bargaining. The WGA has denied these claims and insists that they “respect the staff’s right to engage in collective activity.”
- Alamo Drafthouse faces growing customer backlash after implementing a mobile ordering system, contradicting their strict, decades-old no-phones policy. While CEO Michael Kustermann argues that mobile ordering is “a smoother, more responsive experience” than pen and paper, audiences and industry insiders alike overwhelmingly disagree. The Austin Film Critics Association denounced the policy in a statement, arguing that it “puts staff in an impossible position of policing the right and wrong kind of phone usage, opening the system to abuse, and the potential of piracy.”
- Kristen Stewart has purchased Los Angeles’s Highland Theatre, a 1925 “movie palace and former vaudeville performance space” that closed its doors in 2024 after being unable to economically recover from the pandemic. Stewart plans to restore the building and resurrect the historic locale as a film community hub, seeing it as “an opportunity to make a space to gather and scheme and dream together.”
DEVELOPING
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997).
- Wagner Moura is set to star in Lisandro Alonso’s Portuguese-language remake of Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (1997), which will begin shooting later this year.
- Justine Triet is set to direct the psychological thriller Fonda, her full English-language debut, starring Mia Goth and Andrew Scott.
- A contemporary remake of the controversial cult mondo horror film Faces of Death (1978) will be released theatrically on April 10 from IFC and Shudder. Directed and cowritten by Daniel Goldhaber, alongside regular collaborator Isa Mazzei, the film stars Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, and Charli XCX.
REMEMBERING
After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985).
- Catherine O’Hara has died at 71. The Canadian actress and comedienne began her career as a touring cast member of The Second City troupe in her hometown of Toronto. She later went on to star in the sketch series offshoot SCTV (1976–84) alongside future screen partners Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and John Candy. Her film career took off with a key supporting turn in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), which led to early defining performances as eccentric sculptor Deelia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988)—a role she reprised in the film’s sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)—and matriarch Kate McCallister in Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). She was also a frequent collaborator of Christopher Guest and costarred in the satirical mockumentary films Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006). More recently, O’Hara garnered recognition for her role as Moira Rose in the comedy series Schitt’s Creek (2015–20), for which she won her first acting Emmy, and as Amy Pascal analogue Patty Leigh in Seth Rogen’s industry satire The Studio (2025–). “She showed that you can be an utter genius and also the nicest person in the entire world,” said Rogen at the DGA Awards.
RECOMMENDED READING
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942).
- “The [Magnificent] Ambersons (1942) fiasco was the start of [Orson] Welles’s downfall. That summer, his Mercury unit was expelled from R.K.O., and [George] Schaefer, his corporate protector, was ousted. The incoming regime dropped Welles and adopted a new slogan for the studio: ‘Showmanship in place of genius.’” For TheNew Yorker, Michael Schulman examines the contentious history of The Magnificent Ambersons, specifically how tech mogul Edward Saatchi attempted to restore Welles’s original vision by means of generative AI.
- “To watch KPop Demon Hunters (2025) is to recognize that the corporate entertainment industries and the fandoms that they solicit and serve have now entered into a sort of closed loop. In a sense, the true subject of mass entertainment products is now the creation of mass entertainment products and the drama of their possible fates in the marketplace.” For The New York Review of Books, Kevin Power explores the KPop Demon Hunters phenomenon and how it embodies the “dream of perfect neoliberal order” by collapsing the divide between fans and pop idols.
- “All of this might seem sort of funny, in that Room-like, so-bad-it’s-good way, were it not for the more imminent realities of the administration being inaugurated on-screen…It is impossible to swallow Melania’s comments about the immigrant experience and the pursuit of the American dream—’No matter where we come from, we are bound by our same humanity’ (!!!)—at a time when federal agents are snatching people off the streets on the mere suspicion that they may be foreign-born.” For The New Republic, John Semley reviews Melania (2026) and examines its unusual political and financial origins.
- “Most of all, however, I remember arguing with Redford sometime in the mid-’90s after I had been on a panel with him. He had been disturbed when I had said, like a grad student enamored of Althusser, that we are ‘fixed in ideology.’ He could not accept that we had no conscious choice in the matter. I tried to explain that I was bothered by the way that Sundance believed in ‘story’ as an absolute. He disagreed, but he never held my position against me.” For Film Comment, Amy Taubin reports from the final Sundance in Park City, Utah, where she highlights standout nonfiction films alongside memories of attending the festival through the years.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969).
- New York, through February 24: L’Alliance New York presents Chabrol! Suspense! Restored!, a series of seven newly restored films from the French New Wave auteur’s middle-career golden era, including The Unfaithful Wife (1969) and The Butcher (1970).
- London, through February 26: The Barbican presents Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave, their second exploration of 1960s and ’70s works from a country undergoing immense social change, including Dariush Mehrjui’s The Postman (1972), Masoud Kimiai’s The Deer (1974), and Bahram Beyzaie’s The Ballad of Tara (1979).
- Amsterdam, through March 15: Eye Filmmuseum presents an ongoing exhibition dedicated to the films of Tilda Swinton, the first time the museum has dedicated “such extensive attention to the creative influence of a performer.” Alongside an extensive film program that chronicles her career, the exhibition includes new installations from collaborators like Joanna Hogg and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well a live revival of Derek Jarman’s performance Bliss, the source for his final film Blue (1993).
- New York, through February 26: The Museum of Modern Art presents Seoul After Dark: Personal Memories of Korean Cinema, a retrospective celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Korean Film Archive. The program includes archival restorations alongside contemporary works, offering insight into the persistent use of genre frameworks to explore political and economic transformations within the country.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Le Cinéma Club presents Alexander Horwath’s essay film Henry Fonda for President (2024), a survey of the eponymous actor and his place in American history that incorporates archival footage and personal recollections. The film is available to stream through February 12.
- Neon presents a trailer for Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2026), a time-travel buddy comedy starring Johnson and Jay McCarrol, based on their web series Nirvana the Band the Show (2007–2009) and its sequel television series Nirvanna the Band the Show (2017–2018). The film will be released in American and Canadian theaters on February 13.
- A24 presents a trailer for Kristoffer Borgli’s romantic dramedy The Drama (2026), starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a soon-to-be-wed couple shaken by a secret. The film will enter limited release April 3.
- Chicago-based filmmaker Michael Glover Smith presents a trailer for his new film Hekla (2026), a portrait of a determined Chicago actress over the course of one chaotic day, ahead of its world premiere at the George Lindsey UNA Film Festival in Florence, Alabama, on March 6.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- For the latest episode of the Team Deakins podcast, Roger and James Deakins sit down with director Kelly Reichardt and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt to discuss their longstanding collaboration, including their most recent film The Mastermind (2025).
- Moirée presents a roundtable conversation from the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam with critics Blake Williams, Vadim Rizov, Beatrice Loayza, Forrest Cardamenis, and Jordan Cronk to discuss highlights from the festival.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
A Poet (Simón Mesa Soto, 2025).
- “I knew I wanted to have this character who, while he often makes mistakes, is also a fragile and humble guy I could really relate to. I wanted the audience to connect with him so that we wouldn’t just laugh at him; we’d also engage with him emotionally.” Elena Lazic interviews Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto about his new film A Poet (2025), including its formal inspirations, its personal origins, and the value of comedy during a highly judgmental time.
- “In The Shadow’s Edge, Fu’s weapon, a switchblade, forms a striking visual throughline. Kept crisply and almost continuously in view—close-ups of the weapon abound, and, even in long shots, precise lighting ensures that the glinting blade catches the eye—the knife and its palpable metallic sharpness make the action feel more tactile and dangerous.” Jonah Jeng rounds up his fifteen favorite action set pieces of 2025, including works by Hong Kong legends Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan as well as the latest from Chad Stahleski and his action design company 87Eleven Entertainment.
- “He exclaimed, ‘Enough of this Hollywood bullshit!’ Words which still ring in my ears to this day. I had wanted to bond with Tarr over a shared love of Miklós Jancsó and Andrei Tarkovsky, and instead I was becoming Joe Hollywood.” In his Movie Poster of the Week column, Adrian Curry pays tribute to the late Béla Tarr through personal reflections and a tour of his “stark, utilitarian, no-nonsense” posters.
- “Soderbergh’s concerns point to a deeper, darker truth: It’s not just that smart films like Black Bag are struggling to get mainstream traction—it’s that more broadly, and notwithstanding a few outliers like Sinners, Marty Supreme, or One Battle After Another, movies don’t seem to imprint themselves on culture in the way they once did, and are now driving the conversation less and less.” For The Current Debate, Leonardo Goi surveys the films of 2025 and the importance of championing bold, unconventional voices going forward.
WISH LIST
- Jane Schoenbrun’s debut speculative fiction novel, Public Access Afterworld, is available to preorder ahead of a September 1 shelf date. The book centers on a surreal pirate TV network that emerges from TV's analog-to-digital transition.
EXTRAS
- Jennifer Lynch revealed that she and her siblings will eventually publish the script for David Lynch’s unrealized project Unrecorded Night, which was set to star Toby Jones, the son of longtime Lynch collaborator Freddie Jones.