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After William Friedkin’s Cruising spent the better part of the aughts as the subject of earnest, if guarded, revisionist critique, how does the film hold up in our current era of representational politics and trigger warnings? And why does it feel like how you answer that question will determine which side pocket you keep your handkerchief in?

The gay side of Film Twitter had previously treated Friedkin’s 1980 ode to fisting, frottage, and flash cuts with a level of curiosity nearly equal to the fury of the disco era’s gay community. What currency could an undercover police officer’s punk-disco battle with the monsters in his closet possibly have when held against the ironic sense that an avowed sexual assaulter with a fondness for golden showers will soon be the one to usher in a rollback of LGBT gains at every level? But in its day, Cruising was...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)

Parenthood, relationships, and the creative process: three key elements of the cinema of Mia Hansen-Løve casually combine in Bergman Island, a playfully self-aware meta-portrait of the filmmaker and, indeed, of filmmaking itself. Introspective, inventive, and effortlessly calm; it follows a couple, both screenwriters, on an idyllic work retreat to Fårö, an island in the Baltic Sea (population: 498) just off the South East of Sweden. It’s the place Ingmar Bergman called home for the majority of his life, where he made many films and eventually died. – Rory O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Dune (Denis Villeneuve)

Denis Villeneuve has surmounted this slew of bad omens, by arguably––in filmmaking terms––making the most impersonal adaptation possible. For all his skill and talent,...

The German festival opens tonight with the premiere of Oskar Roehler’s Enfant Terrible.

The international premiere of Enfant Terrible, Oskar Roehler’s tribute to the legendary New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicks off the mostly physical edition of the Filmfest Hamburg in Germany today, September 24.

Enfant Terrible was the only German film to be selected for this year’s Cannes 2020 label and Hamburg is the first time the film will screen in front of a live audience. Weltkino is releasing in German cinemas from October 1.

Roehler will be in town for the opening night of the mostly physical festival.

The German festival opens tonight with the premiere of Oskar Roehler’s Enfant Terrible.

The international premiere of Enfant Terrible, Oskar Roehler’s tribute to the legendary New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicks off the mostly physical edition of the Hamburg Filmfest in Germany today, September 24.

Enfant Terrible was the only German film to be selected for this year’s Cannes 2020 label and Hamburg is the first time the film will screen in front of a live audience. Weltkino is releasing in German cinemas from October 1.

Roehler will be in town for the opening night of the mostly physical festival.

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Filmmaker, libertine, and decadent visionary Rainer Werner Fassbinder went through more doomed romances in the 1970s, the peak of his epic career, than even the most tragic poet could fit into a lifetime. For one, there was his affair with Moroccan actor El Hedi ben Salem, the star of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” a time marked by alcohol and drug abuse, psychological torment by all parties involved, and which ended with Salem going on a stabbing spree and later killing himself. But then there was Armin Meier, an orphaned butcher whom Fassbinder cast in “Chinese Roulette,” “Satan’s Brew,” and “I Only Want You to Love Me.” After their eventual split, Meier downed four bottles of sleeping pills during the week of Fassbinder’s birthday,...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Filmmaker, libertine, and decadent visionary Rainer Werner Fassbinder went through more doomed romances in the 1970s, the peak of his epic career, than even the most tragic poet could fit into a lifetime. For one, there was his affair with Moroccan actor El Hedi ben Salem, the star of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” a time marked by alcohol and drug abuse, psychological torment by all parties involved, and which ended with Salem going on a stabbing spree and later killing himself. But then there was Armin Meier, an orphaned butcher whom Fassbinder cast in “Chinese Roulette,” “Satan’s Brew,” and “I Only Want You to Love Me.” After their eventual split, Meier downed four bottles of sleeping pills during the week of Fassbinder’s birthday,...

Hampton Fancher at the reflecting pool with Henry Moore's Reclining Figure (Lincoln Center) 1963–5 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Hampton Fancher, the beguiling subject of Michael Almereyda's Escapes and co-screenwriter of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Denis Villeneuve's upcoming Blade Runner 2049, shared some memories of Jerry Lewis, who died at the age of 91 this past Sunday, August 20, at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We started out with Michael Pfleghar's film Romeo Und Julia 70 where Hampton interviewed Jerry Lewis, went onto the connection to Joan Blackman and Hal B Wallis for Norman Taurog's Visit To A Small Planet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In A Year With 13 Moons (In Einem Jahr Mit 13 Monden) and You're Never Too Young with Dean Martin and Lewis, a gurney in Frank Tashlin's The Disorderly Orderly and a rabbit in Geisha Boy, meeting Jack Benny and Buddy Hackett,...

Kyle Molzan: "If you ever meet Jerry Lewis, send him our movie!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Georges Simenon, Charles Laughton in Burgess Meredith's The Man On The Eiffel Tower, Cédric Kahn's Red Lights (Feux Rouges) with Carole Bouquet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In A Year With 13 Moons (In Einem Jahr Mit 13 Monden), Christian Petzold's Phoenix, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence, Kurt Weill, Brian Wilson and Moonriders were unearthed in my For the Plasma conversation with co-director Kyle Molzan.

Helen (Rosalie Lowe) having a meal

Keiichi Suzuki's score informs how we meander through the landscapes filmed dream-like by Christopher Messina (Dear Renzo). Charlie (Anabelle LeMieux) arrives at a house in Maine where a pal from the past, Helen (Rosalie Lowe), has a job monitoring forest fires and where she also miraculously predicts shifts in global finance.

Tomboy, A Revenger’s Tale

Director: Walter Hill

Writers: Walter Hill, Denis Hamill

Following a remarkable year in cinematic transgender representation with films like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, and Gaby Dellal’s About Ray, not to mention prolific public figures such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox maintaining notable visibility, positive depictions of the transgender community have marked 2015 as a watershed year. But not unlike the first wave queer theory which bitterly criticized historically negative depictions of Lgbt characters prior to the early 90s New Queer Cinema movement, Trans representation is under increased scrutiny, which results in severe cultural policing. One of the reasons we fail to see queer characters utilized in contemporary genre film is due to an exploitative history we’ve been unable to divorce ourselves from, those unseemly memories of demeaning cinematic representation. Comedy and horror were once the only ‘low...

“We’re all pigs,” remarks a character late in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 classic The Merchant of Four Seasons, on observation one could apply to most of the desperate and disparate characters littered throughout the German New Wave master’s oeuvre. In this instance, the comment is made by the protagonist’s familial successor. Fassbinder’s flaccid fruit vendor shrinks into the shadows of his own periphery, a failed patriarch reduced to the general fate of mediocre men in times of societal resurgence, (here specifically in the 1950s, the post-war period of the German economic miracle) marked for replacement by a trusted friend, stepping in to pinch-hit. Regarded as one of Fassbinder’s best early titles, it is one of his most accessible Sirkian inspired melodramas earning notable critical applause during an impressively fruitful period, imbued with the director’s favorite themes concerning dwindling personas of those foolish enough to...

Back in May, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented the first part of the most complete retrospective of work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in New York in over a decade. Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist (Part 2) is now running through November 26 and we're collecting reviews and video related to Despair, In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden, Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Die dritte Generation, Lili Marleen, Lola, Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Querelle and many more. » - David Hudson...

Back in May, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented the first part of the most complete retrospective of work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in New York in over a decade. Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist (Part 2) is now running through November 26 and we're collecting reviews and video related to Despair, In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden, Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Die dritte Generation, Lili Marleen, Lola, Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Querelle and many more. » - David Hudson...

Reporting again from Tribeca, here's Jason on the Tiger-winning Something Must Break from Swedish director Ester Martin Bergsmark.

Xavier Dolan directing a remake of Fassbinder's In a Year of Thirteen Moons is what occurred to me about halfway into the Swedish transgender love-story-of-sorts Something Must Break, although I think I probably do director Ester Martin Bergsmark's film a disservice setting it up against the lofty cinema I excitedly imagine that project could be. (Somebody send Xavier a note, please.) As for what the film really is, while it's spiked with moments of aggression and punk (especially in the terrific final moments) it's more intent to drift on languid pauses, hushed tones, and Instagram filters - think Weekend on smack.

Something Must Break tells the tale of Sebastian turning into Ellie while simultaneously falling in love with Andreas, a boy whose outer Sid Vicious masks a more gooey James Dean trustafarian center.