Shudder has quite the lineup of content coming in March including new original films The Seed and Spine of Night, as well as a host of France's most brutal horror flicks.
Sign up for Sight & Soundâs Weekly Film Bulletin and more
News, reviews and archive features every Friday, and information about our latest magazine once a month.
Email
Sign up
Are the films of Claire Denis French cinemaâs best kept secret? It certainly seems so in the UK. While her work is regularly praised at film festivals around the world, her last film to be distributed here was her Cameroon-set debut Chocolat in 1988. None of her subsequent films has made more than a festival appearance until now, yet she remains highly regarded.
This interview was originally published in our July 2000 issue
6. Thief (1981)
Director Michael Mann, probably best known for his work on the 1980’s police series Miami Vice and the 1995 bank robbery film Heat made his name much earlier with the now beloved James Caan vehicle Thief.
Frank, an ex-con who lost his twenties to a stint in prison emerges with a mind set on making up for lost time as a used car salesman by day and thief by night, chasing an American dream all his own for a house, a wife, and child. A product of inhuman institutions, from the impersonal rearing of an orphanage to the kill or be killed world of prison, Frank is an antisocial man in a world reduced to the barest rules of survival and animal competition. He is a thief because there is nothing else left for him – he has no personality outside work and there is no work fit for him but taking.