Out on: | VOD 2nd June 2023 |
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ARROW PLAYS A DANGEROUS GAME
IN JUNE, ARROW PRESENTS A CLASSIC JAPANESE THRILLER TRILOGY, A STAR-STUDDED MURDER MYSTERY, ELI ROTH'S ARROW FAVES, AND MORE!
Key highlights this June on the essential, alternative streaming service ARROW includes Yûsaku Matsuda as an ice cold hitman in the Game Trilogy, James Franco, Timothée Chalamet and Christian Slater in the thrilling crime drama True Deception, the Cairo-set award-winning nailbiter Clash, horror director Eli Roth’s film picks and much more…
In June, ARROW are proud to present Tôru Murakawa's action-packed triptych from the late 1970s, Game Trilogy - The Most Dangerous Game, The Killing Game, and The Execution Game. In a career-defining role, Yûsaku Matsuda is Shohei Narumi, an ice cool hitman of few words, a steely trigger finger, and a heart of stone. The trilogy launched Matsuda as the Toei tough guy for a new generation. In The Most Dangerous Game he’s hired by a company bidding for a lucrative government air defence contract to take out the competition; in The Killing Game, he finds himself caught in the midst of violent yakuza gang warfare; while in The Execution Game he falls for a mysterious saloon bar chanteuse who may or may not be part of the same, shadowy underworld organisation. Make sure you don’t miss these outstanding thrillers on ARROW.
Also showing in June, True Deception, a gripping crime drama about a writer investigating the case of missing woman, with a stellar cast including James Franco (The Disaster Artist), Ed Harris (Top Gun: Maverick), Christian Slater (Heathers), Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), and Oscar-nominated Dune star Timothée Chalamet.
On no account should you miss ARROW’s June presentation of the festival smash (and winner of the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes in 2016) Clash, an intense and staggeringly important portrait of Egypt, set in Cairo in 2013, two years after the Egyptian revolution, where demonstrators of divergent political and religious backgrounds are forcibly detained together in a claustrophobic police truck. Don’t take our word for it, here’s what Tom Hanks had to say about the film: "If there’s any way you can see Clash… you must. You simply must.”
Seasons in June include ELI ROTH SELECTS, where the Cabin Fever and Hostel director, and Arrow fan, chooses his favourite films from the label, including Basket Case, Madhouse and The Mutilator; ERO GURO, celebrating the Japanese sub-genre of horror and pink films, combining the erotic (ero) and the grotesque (guro) to deviant, decadent and unforgettable effect, with the likes of Shogun's Joy of Torture, Blind Beast, and Irezumi on offer; MARTIAL ARTS MAYHEM, with titles including House of Flying Daggers, Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash and Dragon Inn; and SCI-FI STUNNERS, which features No Escape starring Ray Liotta, cult classic Donnie Darko, and David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future.
ALSO SHOWING: Louche French road movie Fill 'Er Up With Super, Paul Joyce documentaries on influential directors Monte Hellman and John Cassavetes; Oz dog attack thriller The Pack, Ray Winstone in Reckless, and more…
JUNE RELEASE CALENDAR
New Titles – From June 2
Out of the Shadows: The Films of John Cassavetes
Plunging on Alone: Monte Hellman’s Life in a Day
From June 16
Anguish
True Deception
The Sunday Woman
Fill 'Er Up With Super
From June 19
The Most Dangerous Game
The Killing Game
The Execution Game
From June 23
Clash
The Pack
From June 30
Reckless
The Scribe
New Seasons this June
June 2: Ero Guro
The Japanese sub-genre of horror and pink films Ero Guro combines the erotic (ero) and the grotesque (guro) to deviant, decadent and unforgettable effect. ARROW’s Ero Guro collection features the unholy trinity of core Ero Guro films, Teruo Ishii's Shogun's Joy of Torture and Horrors of Malformed Men and Yasuzo Masumura's Blind Beast, plus plenty more exciting, explicit and enticingly depraved delights to delve into.
Titles Include: Shogun's Joy of Torture, Blind Beast, Irezumi
June 9: Martial Arts Mayhem
If you like highly-trained kung-fu masters with hands that should be registered as lethal weapons beating the heck out of each other in the coolest and most incredibly choreographed ways then you are going to love Martial Arts Mayhem.
Titles Include: House of Flying Daggers, Dragon Inn, Vengeance is Mine - All Others Pay Cash
June 16: Eli Roth Selects
“I absolutely love Arrow and have been a collector of their editions for years, and Arrow Player is the most streamed channel in my house. I’ve seen a lot of Select lists, and while I agree with them, I wanted to highlight some that people might have otherwise overlooked.”
Audition:
“Miike’s masterpiece on the pursuit of perfection. A huge influence on Hostel.”
Basket Case:
“It still manages to shock all these years later. A work of art that showcases the forgotten era of sleazy times square. You think you can handle the movie and then the last ten minutes happen…”
Contamination:
“I love Luigi Cozzi. He does fantastic low-budget films and they’re always entertaining. Argento’s former assistant director, when he’s on, he’s on.”
Creepshow 2:
“It’s all about ‘The Raft’. Huge influence on Cabin Fever.”
Donnie Darko (Theatrical):
“Don’t tell Rich Kelly I prefer the Theatrical Cut. Please. Not that I don’t love his cut, but I fell in love with the movie I saw in the theaters.”
Madhouse:
“You can’t beat Olivia Assonidis for all-out bonkers in movies. And what’s that score I hear in the middle of it? Sounds a lot like Ortolani’s Cannibal Holocaust music, doesn’t it…?”
Society:
“One of the best horror movies of all time for use of makeup effects is also one of the most overlooked. A mix of Akira, Reanimator, and an 80s California high school movie.”
The Addiction:
“One of my favourite Lily Taylor performances ever. Vampirism as a metaphor for drug addiction. Walken of course steals the show but this is one of Ferrara’s best from his incredible 90s New York City run.”
The Mutilator:
“I love this movie so much I had to rip myself in half in Cabin Fever to homage it. I love that they don’t even hide who the killer is. He’s just a mutilator. Check out the great doc Arrow had about the making of.”
The Suspicious Death of a Minor:
“Very cool Sergio Martino movie with an incredible car chase through Rome. I still have no idea how they did that bicycle.”
Titles Include: Basket Case, Contamination, Madhouse
June 19: Game Trilogy
Made at the end of the 1970s, Toru Murakawa's Game Trilogy launched actor Yûsaku Matsuda as the Toei tough guy for a new generation. Matsuda was the definitive screen icon of 1980s until his career was tragically cut short by cancer at the age of 40, following his Hollywood debut in Ridley Scott’s Black Rain.
Titles Include: The Most Dangerous Game, The Killing Game, The Execution Game
June 23: Sci-fi Stunners
There are other worlds than these. Come and explore them in this collection of cybernetic, planet-probing, time-travelling, cosmos-trotting, aliens-zapping, virtual and far-too-real adventures in Sci-fi Stunners - ARROW's home world for the coolest Cult science-fiction films in the galaxy.
Titles Include: No Escape, Donnie Darko, Crimes of the Future
June 30: Cosa-Nostra Collection
The most American of directors according to celebrated critic Paolo Mereghetti, Damiano Damiani (A Bullet for the General) nevertheless surveyed his own country’s mafia history unlike anyone before him, to critical and box office success. Three such classic films are collected in this 'Cosa Nostra' collection, presented from new restorations.
The Day of the Owl stars Franco Nero as a police chief who, while investigating the death of a construction worker, goes up against corrupt officials and a ruthless mafia boss (Lee J. Cobb). Adapted from the celebrated novel by Leonardo Sciascia (Illustrious Corpses, Todo Modo), The Day of the Owl was the first book to openly deal with organised crime in Sicily. A prestigious production, it was in the running for best film at the Berlin Film Festival and found wins at home in the David di Donatello Awards for Claudia Cardinale, Nero, Damiani, and Best Production.
Nero portrays a simple man thrown in jail for a misdemeanour in The Case Is Closed: Forget It. Inside, he sees the grim reality of life behind bars, where the mafia controls everything. A powerful production with Nero on top form and supported by a strong cast including Riccardo Cucciolla (Rabid Dogs) and John Steiner (Tenebrae), the intensity of Damiani’s film places it among the finest prison dramas.
In How to Kill a Judge, Nero plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film features a judge corrupted by the mafia and who is later found murdered. The real judge the character is based on seizes the footage, but is later killed in the same way. Feeling a degree of responsibility, Solaris investigates, but as the assassinations increase around him, will he reach the source of the conspiracy? Full of twists and a fascinating meta-commentary on cinema, Damiani points the camera at himself and the genre as he investigates the social impact of mafia violence, a fitting end to this survey of Damiani’s Cosa Nostra.
Titles Include: How to Kill a Judge, The Day of the Owl, The Case Is Closed: Forget It
JUNE TITLES - IN DEPTH
FROM JUNE 2: OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE FILMS OF JOHN CASSAVETES
Get the scoop on the legendary actor-director-New Yorker John Cassavetes straight from the mouth of his friend, peer and co-star Peter Falk (Columbo) in Paul Joyce’s documentary, Out of the Shadows: The Films of John Cassavetes.
PLUNGING ON ALONE: MONTE HELLMAN’S LIFE IN A DAY
Monte Hellman was born in 1932. By 1986 he made eight features, but had not directed for six years. Paul Joyce decided to break the silence by spending a day with him. Nine rolls were loaded into the camera. Joyce talked until either they or the camera ran out.
FROM JUNE 16: ANGUISH
Sixteen-year-old Tess (Ryan Simpkins, Fear Street Part Two, 1978) has suffered a pained past. She’s been diagnosed with an assortment of mental ailments since her mother discovered her at a young age gruesomely banging her head against a wall. Now Tess’s new medication seems to be working as she and her mother move to a new town seeking a fresh start.
But as Tess adjusts to her new life, horrific visions begin appearing of a deceased local girl, Lucy, recently killed in a grisly car accident. Hallucinations and physical manifestations intensify as Lucy’s haunted spirit inhabits Tess’s mind, body and soul.
Doctors, sedatives, and priests (suspecting possession from beyond the grave) fail to help, leading Tess to be institutionalised after attempting to take her own life. While she is under observation, a local priest fears that it is Lucy attempting to return by taking control of the troubled Tess, and suggests exorcism as the only way to drive the dead girl out and bring peace to both of these tortured young souls…
TRUE DECEPTION
Trying to deal with his past success, writer’s block, substance abuse, and childhood trauma, author Stephen Elliot (James Franco, The Disaster Artist) takes on a project to write about the bizarre murder trial of Hans Reiser (Christian Slater, Heathers), who is accused of murdering his wife.
But as the case takes an unexpected turn, Elliot’s father Neil (Ed Harris, Top Gun: Maverick) resurfaces to challenge his son’s claims about their history, beginning an introspective obsession with truth, deception, and sins of the past.
THE SUNDAY WOMAN
An odious architect is beaten to death and a high society wife (Jacqueline Bisset, Day for Night) and her gay friend (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist) are the key suspects with a discarded letter implicating them in the crime. Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini’s 8 ½) is assigned to the case and tries to uncover the murder suspect in upper-class Turin. With a murder mystery narrative worthy of Agatha Christie, The Sunday Woman is also a sharp critique of Turin’s upper crust. The screenplay, by the celebrated duo Age & Scarpelli, famed for their masterpieces in the Commedia all’Italiana boom including Big Deal on Madonna Street and The Organizer, is a whip-smart adaptation of the best-selling novels by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini with the lead character of Santamaria inspired by the real-life head of the Flying Squad. The much-heralded director Luigi Comencini (Misunderstood) often worked in a combination of comedy and drama, finding humour in tragedy, and is only waiting to be rediscovered as a master of post-war Italian cinema.
FILL ‘ER UP WITH SUPER
Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is a car salesman who has to miss a family holiday to deliver a luxury Chevrolet station wagon to his boss' wealthy client. He decides to take his friend Philippe (Xavier Saint-Macary) along with him for the ride across the length of France from Lille to the Cote d'Azur. On the way they give a lift to hitchhiker Charles (Etienne Chicot) who also brings along his friend Daniel (Patrick Bouchitey). A buddy road movie that came together from genuine friendship developed throughout the months-long script workshop giving the film a casual and naturalistic quality that pre-dates Richard Linklater's similar approaches by some decades. A meditation on friendship and masculinity, this was one of the last films Alain Cavalier made before approaching more experimental forms of filmmaking but prefigures his later breaking down of fiction and documentary barriers with the freewheeling approach of Fill ‘er up with Super.
FROM JUNE 19: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
In this career-defining triptych, Matsuda is Shohei Narumi, an ice cool hitman of few words, a steely trigger finger, and a heart of stone, hired in The Most Dangerous Game by a company bidding for a lucrative government air defence contract to take out the competition.
THE KILLING GAME
In The Killing Game, Narumi finds himself caught in the midst of violent yakuza gang warfare, while his own brutal past catches up with him in the form of two beautiful women still bearing the emotional scars of his past assignments.
THE EXECUTION GAME
In The Execution Game, Narumi falls for a mysterious saloon bar chanteuse who may or may not be part of the same, shadowy underworld organisation as the rival hitmen he is employed to rub out.
FROM JUNE 23: CLASH
A festival smash, Clash has wowed audiences worldwide and prompted Tom Hanks to write director Mohamed Diab a personal letter congratulating him for his striking film, telling the world at the same time "If there’s any way you can see Clash…, you must. You simply must. The film will break your heart, but enlighten all."
Cairo - 2013, two years after the Egyptian revolution, demonstrators of divergent political and religious backgrounds are forcibly detained together in a claustrophobic police truck during the turmoil that erupts following the ousting of former president Morsi from power. The factions quickly divide between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and those backing the military, alongside a pair of neutral journalists and a mother determined to be detained with her son. With all sense of national unity in tatters and the violence on the outside ever-escalating can the prisoners find common ground and stand a chance of survival?
An intense and staggeringly important portrait of Egypt, Clash is all the more powerful for the incredible spectacle captured as the crew faced genuine protestors and riots.
THE PACK
A farming family on a remote sheep station are under siege by a pack of wild dogs
On a remote farm in Southern Australia, hardened farmer Adam Wilson, discovers the last of his livestock have been mauled to death by a pack of wild dogs. His dreams of keeping the family business going are shattered, but nothing can prepare him for what will happen next.
As night falls the feral pack of dogs begin to circle the farmhouse. With a taste for fresh blood, they launch their attack, stopping at nothing to get inside the house. Will Adam and his family make it out alive? Or will they fall victim to...THE PACK!
FROM JUNE 30: RECKLESS
Sam Ellis (Patrick Wilson, The Conjuring, Fargo) is a man on the rise - a hotshot federal prosecutor on the cusp of a bright political future with a beautiful and ambitious wife (Lena Heady, Game of Thrones). But what was meant to be a one-time experience with a high-end escort instead turns into a growing addiction. His moral compass unravelling, his new demon threatens to destroy his life, family and career, especially as Coaker (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast), a seasoned hack and old family acquaintance, suspects his extra-marital exploits and plans to expose him.
SCRIBE
Duval is the perfect employee. But after a drink-fuelled breakdown he finds jobs hard to come by. When a mysterious businessman offers him a well-paid position Duval can’t refuse. He transcribes a series of taped private telephone calls. But when one of them results in murder, Duval can no longer stay quiet, unaware that his mundane existence is about to be turned upside down.
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About ARROW
From Arrow Films, a recognised world-leader in curation and creation, ARROW is a premium platform giving you an unparalleled viewing experience across multiple devices, so you can explore the films and TV shows that the Arrow brand is famous for.
Specially curated by members of the ARROW team, ARROW will be home to premium film and TV entertainment, exclusive new premieres, cutting edge cinema, international classics and cult favourites - such as the works of Lars Von Trier, Brian De Palma, Dario Argento, David Cronenberg and Park Chan-wook - plus the very best in acclaimed TV series, including The Bridge and Italian crime series Gomorrah, and brand-new short films from both new and established filmmakers. In the coming months, ARROW will be adding Oscar-winning hits, European classics, Asian cinema masterworks, rediscovered Westerns, offbeat gems and much more, along with such festival favourites The Sacred Spirit and Dinner in America as part of ARROW’s international strategy to support and celebrate the medium of film.
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