The Criterions Around the Corner

Happy that the Criterion announcements for December 2026 are landing this afternoon before I am whisked away for the next few weeks of New York Film Festival screenings starting tonight -- fortuitous timing for us all. And fortune ahoy because there are a couple of real thrillers here, including as seen above the 4K premiere of Anthony Minghella's Best Picture winner The English Patient! I know opinions are all over the place on this movie but I love every old-fashioned inch of it -- Ralph Fiennes at his most beautiful and romantic, Juliette Binoche winning an Oscar... how can you not love it? This one lands on December 8th so there will be plenty of time to stuff it in deserving stockings. Speaking of...

... I don't know that Werner Herzog's documentary masterpiece Grizzly Man is exactly "happy holiday" material given what a horror show it is, but I personally am extremely thankful. This doc the true story of the nature-lover Timothy Treadwell, who lived amongst the Alaskan brown bears until they gobbled him up, lands on the same day as The English Patient -- it's only a blu-ray, not 4K, but that's probably as good as we'll get given the source material is mostly old video. If you've never seen this movie good god do you have something in store. (Also that cover is gorg.)

Also ahead is Pietro Germi's 1961 black comedy Divorce Italian Style, which stars Marcello Mastroianni (who else) as a married man who falls in love with his much younger cousin -- oh 1961. Never stop 1961-ing. I've never seen this movie somehow? Those deeply hetero sex-comedies of this time period have never really been my bag but I'm sure it's worth seeing. Then there is December's new entry in Criterion's revived "Eclipse" series of box-sets -- this one tackles Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez who made a series of short films (and one feature) in 1960s and 70s Cuba. Anybody familair with her work? Criterion's final two releases of December are two 4K upgrades -- there's Ernt Lubitsch's classic comedy The Shop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, and there's a little something called Nashville by Robert Altman. Now that's a movie.

Quote of the Day

"It’s so standardized that AI can step in because there’s not real storytelling,... It’s mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome AI to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it’s ad nauseam. When it’s ad nauseam, please, please, please let AI step in and do the job.”

We've seen so many exceptional talents, from Paul Schrader to Darren Aronofsky to Steven Soderbergh (ugh), expose their shittiness to embrace A.I. slop -- so when I first saw the words "Herzog" and "A.I." in the same title I winced for a moment, expecting horror. But no per usual Herzog's The Man. Thank goodness. Read about it here.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Kaspar: Nothing lives less in me than my life.

Werner Herzog's new movie titled Bucking Fastard is premiering at the Venice Film Festival today and if you go looking you can find the first critics reviews dropping for it in the usual places. I've read no further than the headlines because I'm seeing it in just a couple of weeks at NYFF but the general vibe seems positive, and given what little I've allowed myself to know about the film -- it stars Rooney & Kate Mara as sisters who constantly speak and behave in eerie unison -- I couldn't be more excited for it. This is shit right up my alley yo. Like that scene where Luke Skywalker fires his laser into that tiny hole and blows up the Death Star? That's how this movie's coming at me. Anyway it's also Werner's 84th birthday on Saturday so taking a moment to celebrate one of the most staggeringly important and unique and talented filmmakers of our age seems, you know, the least we can do. Unlike some people: 

I don't know that there is a more disgusting factoid around

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 3, 2026 at 11:14 AM

Ask Werner

This video is making the rounds on social media and somehow 

I'd never seen it and it's the most Werner Herzog thing

I have ever seen in all my days. Incredible. 

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2008

Now that the festival rush of Fall 2025 is behind me I've been feeling the nagging sensation to check back into our long long too-long running series of "Siri Says" posts -- the last one I did was back in January! These posts have gotten increasingly sporadic as the remaining years have dwindled -- when I checked what's left this morning I saw there were only five years out of one hundred left for us to do. Do what, you ask since it's been so long since I've done one? Well the idea is that I had my phone choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then I picked my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Once we got down to the teens the process changed a little because it took too long for Siri to get to a number I hadn't already done, so I wrote the remaining years on slips of paper and picked one with my eyes shut. And that's how we ended up with the year 2008 today.

It's the last year of the Aughts we had left to do -- another decade crossed off! And this is another year when I was actively blogging here at MNPP so there's documentation of my thoughts on 2008's movies already -- click here to see what my favorite movies were at that moment. My list now, seventeen years later, has changed a little! Not entirely, but some. So let's get to it. I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2008

Synecdoche, New York

(dir. Charlie Kaufman)

-- released on October 24th 2008 --

Let the Right One In 

(dir. Tomas Alfredson)

-- released on December 12th 2008 --

In Bruges

(dir. Martin McDonagh) 

-- released on February 29th 2008 --

The Fall 

(dir. Tarsem Singh) 

-- released on May 30th 2008

Lake Mungo 

(dir. Joel Anderson) 

-- released on June 18th 2008 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: Wall*E (dir. Andrew Snanton), The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Wendy & Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Mister Lonely (dir. Harmony Korine), Funny Games U.S. (dir. Michael Haneke), The Chaser (dir. Na Hong-jin), Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalondo), Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh), [REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)...

...  Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein), Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog), The House Bunny (dir. Fred Wolf), The Ruins (dir. Carter Smith), Doomsday (dir. Neil Marshall), Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves), Hunger (dir. Steve McQueen), Reprise (dir. Joachim Trier)

What are your favorite movies of 2008?

Kubrick Knew All About the Burden of Dreams

The October slate of Criterion releases is always my favorite bunch of the year because they always drop lots of horror for Halloween-time -- we discussed those a month ago right here -- but the November batch is always great too because they're gearing up for holiday shopping and wanna entice those of us who're still smartly on the physical media train. And so you get a wham-bam drop like this first one here -- Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut from 1999 hitting 4K huzzah! Correct me if I'm wrong (it happens often) but I don't think EWS even got much of a blu-ray release, so this is a huge step forward for a movie that was woefully misunderstood and under-appreciated at the time of its release but which I think most sane folks have come around on. I've always loved it even if my ability to take Tom Cruise has vacillated wildly over the years -- he's used perfectly by Kubrick, and Kidman is per usual brilliant, and I fucking love this movie. One of 1999's many many many masterpieces. And yeah okay Kubrick died before it was finished so calling it "his" movie always has an asterisk beside it, but it sure as hell feels like a Kubrick movie to me so I allow it. As an aside I finally got the soundtrack on vinyl recently with a re-release as well and I really recommend that shit too. Brilliance. 

Next on the list of November Must Haves are Luis Buñuel’s 1963 romantic thriller Él, which is a Buñuel I don't believe I've ever seen? My Buñuel viewings have been all over the place over the years -- we watched a lot of him in film school and obviously I've seen lots since, but there are still plenty of titles I've missed and this is one of them. Which is wild because it sounds right up my alley since Criterion calls it "perverse and unsettling" aka "my alley." And then there's Les Blank's brilliant doc Burden of Dreams, which follows Werner Herzog's deranged quest to make a movie about a deranged quest, Fitzcarraldo. One of the greatest docs about movie-making -- if not the greatest. Not to be missed.

At the absolute opposite end of the cinematic spectrum they're dropping the 1990 Kid 'n Play comedy House Party, which is delightful -- meaning the comedy itself and the fact that House Party is now in the Criterion Collection. To be honest I haven't seen this since the 90s but I look forward to a revisit -- I remember digging it back in the day. 1990 was a pretty formative year in my movie obsession and I probably saw this a dozen times on video. Oh and my favorite John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club is  getting a 4K upgrade as well. No it maybe doesn't have the magnificence of JAKE RYAN to stare at, but it also doesn't have Sixteen Candles' horrific racism and sexism either so you work with what you can!

Gazillionaire turned moviemaker turned reclusive pee-hoarding maniac Howard Hughes' legendary 1930 WWI fighter-pilot epic Hell's Angels is getting a 4K drop on November 18th (love the cover art) -- I have never seen it (save some of the flying sequences that are rightly acclaimed for their place in action filmmaking) so all I really know about this movie I learned from Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator. It'll be good to finally check it off. And then finally to finish November off we've got the reawakening of Criterion's wonderful "Eclipse" series of box-sets, which gather together collections of more obscure works by world-class filmmakers -- this time out it's the genius Abbas Kiarostami's "Early Shorts and Features" which really appears to be absolutely stacked with content I cannot wait to dig into. I admit Kiarostami is a filmmaker I've got a lot of catching up to do with but I've deeply loved everything I have seen to date. In summation, "Fuck."

Tonight We Feast!

I never ever do this because I am always woefully running behind but my review of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was burning a hole in my brain so I have it for you, today, at the exact second the review embargo has broken! The movie isn't out until Christmas Day but I just wanted to get the word out as soon as my purpled fingers could muster -- click here to read my thoughts on the film at Pajiba. To say I loved it would be uhhh fair, I would wager. (I've already seen it three times!) Go buy your tickets!

Bill Skarsgård Fourteen Times

I'll be seeing most of my most anticipated movies of the rest of 2024 over the next few weeks at NYFF starts up -- namely Queer and Almodovar's The Room Next Door -- but my Most Most Anticipated isn't hitting until Christmas and it doesn't appear to be hitting any festivals and of course I speak of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. So it was nice to get a long chat between Eggers and Bill Skarsgard over the weekend in Another Magazine where they talk in depth about their process creating their monster...

... but if you want to avoid knowing how the film ends, maybe avoid reading it. I mean the film ends like every other adaptation of Nosferatu, because Eggers is smart enough to know that's the only ending worth ending it with. But still -- you could say it's a spoiler, especially if you've never seen Muranu or Herzog's versions. Anyway besides the chat I am also extremely thankful for this photoshoot of Bill that the magazine included, and I think you will be as well. Hit the jump for them all...

Ye Ancient Vampyr Approacheth

It's here! The first teaser trailer for Roberts Eggers' Nosferatu has arrived -- I know it screened alongside The Bikeriders in theaters this past weekend and I was pretty tempted to go just for the trailer and then leave but I'm not that much of a crazy person. Not when it's over 90 degrees outside anyway. But this is my number one most anticipated movie of the rest of the year obviously -- I've been following Eggers' attempts at getting this made ever since I saw The Witch and learned who Robert Eggers was back in 2015 -- and this looks perfect, absolutely perfect. There's a mix of the Muranu's original film, there's some of Herzog going on, and a hefty dash of Francis Ford Coppola I'd say too! 

But I think Eggers is a strong enough filmmaker to make this his own -- it's been his dream project since even before I knew who he was, after all. And he's got a maniacally sexy cast on hand with Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily Rose-Depp, and Willem Dafoe. This teaser is just under two minutes long and doesn't give much away save our first proper looks at many of the characters in movement -- except notably there is no direct look at Skarsgård's titular vamp. They be saving him! Anyway I won't be watching or posting any more trailers after this so enjoy this while you got it:

Nosferatu us out, hilariously, on Christmas Day! How merry!

ETA they also just dropped this new image of Nichols Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson looking goddamned spiffy (click to embiggen)

Pic of the Day

Insert a kajillion exclamation points here -- how have I never seen this photo of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski on the set of Nosferatu the Vampyre before? (click to embiggen) It is my new favorite thing -- I want it on t-shirts and greeting cards and chiseled onto my tombstone. Thanks to Mubi for sharing it on their Insta, where they've also got a couple other set photos included.

5 Off My Head: Top Vamps

With André Øvredal's Dracula film The Last Voyage of the Demeter hitting theaters this weekend (which I wasn't able to see a screening of so no, I have no idea if it's any good or not) I've got Vampire Movies on the brain. Which is exactly where they should be, at all times. And so I made a list! Well I made it first on Twitter, but I figured this is the kind of thing that needed to be immortalized here on the site, and y'all could then tell me in the comments your picks. Anyway these were my picks today -- tomorrow I might choose differently, but today is not tomorrow. So without further ado...

My 5 Favorite Vampire Movies

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola

Thirst (2009) by Park Chan-wook

Near Dark (1987) by Kathryn Bigelow

Let the Right One In (2008) by Tomas Alfredson

Daughters of Darkness (1971) by Harry Kumel

Runners-up: From Dusk Til Dawn, Blade and Blade II, Vampyr, Nosferatu 1922 and Nosferatu 1979, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Let Me In, What We Do in the Shadows, Once Bitten...

... The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil, Byzantium, Shadow of the Vampire... and I am sure there are a million more that I'm forgetting. 

------------------------------------------

What are your favorite vampire movies?

The New Creatures of the Night

Robert Eggers has been trying to make a new version of Nosferatu for basically his entire career -- we've been documenting the teases we've gotten on that front since The Witch came out 2015 and we immediately began caring about what Robert Eggers made. Then came The Lighthouse and The Northman and now we really, really, really care. Like, really. Nosferatu was supposed to happen several times but things kept falling apart at the last minute, and the main problem as of late has been the actress he wanted to star in it -- Anya Taylor-Joy, who worked with him on The Witch and The Northman, has just become too damned busy. 

And so, the inevitable -- it sounds like he's moving on with the project without his muse. Deadline is reporting that Bill Skarsgard is going to play the lead bloodsucker, which is wonderful casting (and I guess Robert liked working with brother Alex and wanted to keep it in the family, a notion we deeply understand) while actress Lily-Rose Depp is in talks to play the "haunted young woman" at the heart of the tale. You know, the Isabelle Adjani role. I'll admit that the nepotism of Depp got on my nerves at first but I don't think she's actually a bad actress -- I liked her in the first thing I saw her in, which was Louis Garrel's film A Faithful Man, and she was good in Wolf with George Mackay last year as well. I wanna be clear -- she's never blown me away like ATJ has, and I mourn the loss of ATJ deeply. But Lily-Rose does have a face that will look good for the goth purposes required by this role, so we'll see. I trust in Eggers.

13 Rats of Halloween #13

Where else could my "13 Rats of Halloween" series of posts for this here Plague Year of the Rat ultimately take me besides right to the infernal king of the scuttling befanged beasts himself, the nightmare turned flesh Nosferatu. Twas always eventual! Whether it's Klaus Kinski for Herzog or...

 

... Max Schreck for Murnau, the scariest of all the vampires has always been associated with rats. It's been ages since I actually sat down and read Bram Stoker's book of Dracula (which of course Nosferatu ripped off and almost got erased out of existence because of) so perhaps one of you more literate types can remind me if rats play much of a factor in the original text? I assume so, I just don't feel like googling it. I do know that Stephen King, when he wrote Salem's Lot...

... he removed a truly disgusting sounding scene from its earliest draft where a character is eaten alive by rats. King's (and Tobe Hooper's) Mr. Barlow of course being a direct descendant of the horrifying Nosferatu lineage of vampire.

Of course as classic as Murnau's plague scenes are I think the best plague sequence belongs to Herzog -- I consider the fancy people eating their fancy final meal together at that table in the public square that's literally swarming with pestilence to be one of the singular images of Horror Cinema. And you can tell I'm being very serious, because I busted out the word "cinema"! That means I mean it! Art! Hey... did you ever notice if you rearrange the letters in "Art" you get "Rat"? Just sayin...

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Come and Get Me, Meteors

Werner Herzog making documentaries for Apple makes so much sense it feels like something right fitting into something righter -- it's like all those Tab A's and Tab's B's come home. Just perfect. The only thing perfecter would be if he hosted a weekly travelogue for Apple+ and excuse me while I get my people* and their people on a phone together. For now we've got Herzog's latest called Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, which is about "how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future." Imagine those words in Herzog's voice, and now watch the trailer:

Apple will be releasing Fireball on November 13th!

* my people are my Golden Girls action figures

and they drive a real hard bargain

Take a Bite Outta Count

.

Okay so sure here in 2020 we've seen the Carpathian Count more times than we can, you know, count, but I'm forcing myself to shrug off my shrugs about a new movie version of Dracula this morning because of who's been hired -- The Invitation and Jennifer's Body director Karyn "fuckin'" Kusama, that's who. She's a big who! We love her! Maybe we didn't love her last movie so much -- that'd be Destroyer with Nicole Kidman -- but everybody's allowed a whiff now and then, and it's not like Destroyer's not an interesting experiment with structure and tone even if I don't think it ultimately worked. 

.

Okay but hear me out what if Karyn Kusama made a Lesbian Vampire Movie instead

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 11, 2020

Anyway back to the bloody business at hand -- this is the studio called Blumhouse doing this, who just let Leigh Whannell reimagine The Invisible Man in a way that really worked and made that nearly hundred year old franchise feel fresh, so let's keep hope alive. (Also props to Jason Blum for hiring another female filmmaker after his jackass comments from a couple of years back.) And I mean after all it's not like Plague Times aren't the exact right time for a Dracula resurgence...

Oh I seriously might have to watch Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre tonight, I might. That sounds perfect. (And it's on Amazon Prime to boot!) Anyway the conversation now of course turns towards the casting department. I personally think they need to stay far far away from the Count being played by a white man with black hair, as that's been done to literal death at this point -- there's one on Netflix right now, and Claes Bang is pretty damn good at it too. That said I don't know what ideas Kusama & Co. have got in mind for their take -- they could go the route of The Invisible Man and make Dracula a supporting character in his own story, focus on Mina or Lucy, who knows. Thoughts from y'all?