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Lee Grant, the Oscar-winning actress (“Shampoo”) says she decided after her win to try to direct since good roles for older women were limited. It turns out that was about the halfway point of her 98 year (so far) life. What followed was a narrative feature (“Tell Me a Riddle”) and several documentaries, including “Down and Out in America,” which won an Oscar.

When we last ran our list of the oldest living feature film directors in late 2022, where Grant stood was a mystery. Since her breakout in William Wyler’s “The Detective Story” (1951), her first nomination, her year of birth was unclear. But recently she has clarified that that she was born in 1925. That makes her, to the best of our knowledge, older than any of her peers.

Below are listed the 25 oldest. Since our most recent list, Norman Lear, Robert M. Young (both of who briefly were the oldest...

With one foot planted firmly in the Kiss Me Deadly era of film noir and the other closer to The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, writer-director Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence begins with a brutal, uncompromising invocation of birth and ends with an almost mystically sensitive death. The story of socially isolated hit man Frankie (Baron) who comes to terms with his deferred need for human connection just in time for, one, Christmas and, two, a job that will require him to be especially cold-hearted, Blast of Silence is less a manifestation of the labyrinthine plot trajectories of great noir than an early harbinger of the DIY moxie of the American independent movement.

Baron’s blunt, almost perfunctory story doesn’t reveal much about the inner workings of its central character, instead taking advantage of the downright dull aspects of New York City, a city that films (especially noir...

The Criterion Channel is closing the year out with a bang––they’ve announced their December lineup. Among the highlights are retrospectives on Yasujiro Ozu (featuring nearly 40 films!), Ousmane Sembène, Alfred Hitchcock (along with Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Parker Posey. Well-timed for the season is a holiday noir series that includes They Live By Night, Blast of Silence, Lady in the Lake, and more.

Other highlights are the recent restoration of Abel Gance’s La roue, an MGM Musicals series with introduction by Michael Koresky, Helena Wittmann’s riveting second feature Human Flowers of Flesh, the recent Sundance highlight The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me, the new restoration of The Cassandra Cat, Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, and more.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam, 1988

An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli,...

And with that, Criterion’s year closes out. They’ve ended 2023 with a small set of additions, on the 4K front rescuing Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson’s Pinocchio from the always-more-fragile-than-you-think streaming clutches of Netflix. Meanwhile, The Red Balloon––arguably the greatest children’s film ever made––is getting the box set treatment with four additional films by Albert Lamorisse, and Allen Baron’s New York noir Blast of Silence comes to Blu-ray. That black-and-white’s surely looking fantastic in hi-def.

Find artwork below and more details at Criterion:

The post The Criterion Collection’s December Lineup Includes Guillermo del Toro, The Red Balloon Box Set, and Blast of Silence first appeared on The Film Stage.

Antonio Campos, creator of the new HBO Max miniseries The Staircase, walks hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante through his favorite films noir.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Afterschool (2008)

The Devil All The Time (2020)

Rashomon (1950) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera (1996)

Raw Deal (1948) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

T-Men (1947) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)

House of Bamboo (1955) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Pickup On South Street (1953) – Sam Hamm’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Reign of Terror (1949)

Detour (1945) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Scarlet Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Killing (1956) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary

Kiss of Death (1947) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Kiss of Death...

Allen Baron, who helmed episodes of such TV series as Charlie’s Angels The Love Boat and The Brady Bunch, is being sued by his former personal assistant, who alleges a laundry list of misconduct ranging from sexual harassment and religious discrimination to retaliation and wrongful termination.

Among other things, Anna Dey accuses Barn, now 91, of becoming sexually aroused after taking erectile-dysfunction medication on multiple occasions and then asking her to “touch his penis.” She said it would happen “anytime that he was undressed and alone with Dey. Her suit also claims Baron once “masturbated and ejaculated into a towel and threw the towel on [her] in a belittling and disrespectful manner.”

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court (read it here) also claims Baron regularly bragged about his sexual exploits, which purportedly included sleeping with then-Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett. “Baron also claimed to have forced numerous...

Allen Baron, a director on ’70s shows such as “The Love Boat” and “Charlie’s Angels,” was sued for sexual harassment on Friday by an assistant who accused him of asking her to touch his penis after he took erectile dysfunction pills.

Anna Victoria Dey said she was hired in September 2017 to work as Baron’s assistant, which involved doing errands and preparing meals. She said that Baron, 91, became aroused after taking Cialis and would ask her to touch him. She said that she repeatedly refused and told him to put his penis away. He also asked her to dry him off after he got out of the shower, the suit states, taking advantage of her kindness to get him to rub his legs and buttocks. Dey said she was fired in January.

Reached for comment, Baron denied the allegations.

“She’s scamming me,” he said. “There’s not a scintilla truth of anything.

In their feature films, directors Josh and Ben Safdie have always walked a fine line between fact and fiction. Not quite documentaries and not quite traditional narratives, their work takes on an air of alarming spontaneity, threatening to jump off the screen at you. Between Daddy Longlegs and Heaven Knows What, the Safdies captured a gorgeously grainy snapshot of their home city of New York, both painfully truthful and deeply impacting.

Their latest, Good Time, returns to New York City, this time bringing a pulp edge to their naturalistic aesthetic. After a botched bank robbery lands his brother Nick (Ben Safdie) in jail, Constantine (Robert Pattinson) is forced out of Queens into the city to bring his brother home, at any cost.

Our review describes Good Time as “in parts a heist movie (iconic masks included) and a chase movie, but not an homage in any sense — more an evolution,...