News

It's no secret that Western movies are defined by their action scenes and explosive violence. It's a mainstay of the genre since shootouts and saloon brawls make their way into almost every project that can be considered a Western. However, just as there are many great Westerns where the hero isn't a gunslinger, there are movies that include little to no violence at all. Finding a Western with no violence is difficult, and many have at least the threat of implied violence. However, these films successfully prove that stakes and conflict can be just as compelling without physical force.

Many of these films fall into the category of the best musical Westerns since there are a surprisingly high number of movie musicals set in the Old West. Additionally, comedies and light-hearted projects are all typically non-violent, with moments of action being played for laughs and characterized as low stakes. However,...

The Irish-American icon Maureen OHara carved a place for herself among the greatest actresses Hollywood had ever seen and starred in countless classic movies. Born and raised in Dublin, OHara started to pursue acting from a very young age and, before long, became a major star in comedies, romances, and Western movies. With acclaimed collaborations with the likes of John Wayne and James Stewart, throughout her career, she worked with some of the biggest names in show business.

As the star of some of legendary director John Fords best movies, OHara was a movie star in the truest sense of the word, as she gave her all to every role she played. With an ethereal, timeless beauty, OHara portrayed some of the most effective and iconic love interests the big screen has ever seen. Although OHara took a 20-year break from acting, it was a testament to her incredible appeal...

It’s one of the year’s most awaited discs: the recent restored and remastered The War of the Worlds ’53 in a glorious 4K Ultra HD edition. A second Blu-ray disc of When Worlds Collide ’51 is too good to be called a bonus extra: this edition looks better than anything seen since original Technicolor prints. In one show we endure scurvy invaders from The Red Planet; in the other a rogue Astral Body threatens Earth with obliteration, necessitating escape on a space ship. Don’t bother checking online for tickets, the flight is sold out. CineSavant has the lowdown for collectors: how good does the new release look?

The War of the Worlds on 4K Ultra-hd

When Worlds Collide on Blu-ray

Digital HD Access for both titles.

Paramount Presents

George Pal Sci-fi Double Feature

Color / 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2022 / 167 minutes / Available from Amazon / 39.99

Starring: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, John Hoyt; Gene Barry,...

Writer-director Billy Wilder’s favorite and perhaps best movie takes the leap to 4K, revealing even more beauty in the images of Joseph Lashelle and the designs of Alexandre Trauner . . . we all feel like we’ve lived in C.C. Baxter’s New York flat. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s ‘dirty fairy tale’ best expresses the difficulty of keeping both a job and one’s self-respect — fitting in a love life seems altogether too much to ask. It all comes down to Shirley MacLaine’s sweet smile and Jack Lemmon’s eagerness to be a ‘mensch’ — when he’s discovering that a moral compromise is like selling one’s soul.

The Apartment 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1960 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Street Date March 15, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens,...

Some movies, performances and moviemakers are so iconic that it’s easy to assume the Academy recognized them at some point, and it can be astounding to find out that some of them failed to take home a statue. Such is the case with the 33rd annual Academy Awards ceremony, helmed by iconic host Bob Hope on April 17, 1961. Whereas a deserving picture did win, a few equally memorable movies and performances were left out, a legendary director would lose his last chance at the statue and it was both the first and last year for some Oscar traditions.

Prolific writer and director Billy Wilder was no stranger to the Academy – in fact, he already had 17 nominations and three wins prior to 1960. However, this would prove to be an historic year for him, as he became the first individual to win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Original) all in the same year,...

Two-fisted Hong Kong racketeer Clark Gable goes out on a limb to recover Susan Hayward’s husband, held prisoner in Red China. In a literal pirate vessel armed with a stolen cannon, Gable literally goes to war, risking his smuggling empire by half-kidnapping Michael Rennie’s Hong Kong cop. This lush CinemaScope action-travelogue-romance now comes off as comfort food movie viewing: familiar stars doing what they do best. It’s a German import from a Hollywood Studio whose library titles may no longer be licensed to hard media home video.

Soldier of Fortune

Region-Free Blu-ray

Explosive Media GmbH

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date September 26, 2019 / Treffpunkt Hongkong / Available at Amazon.de

15.99 Euros Starring: Clark Gable, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Gene Barry, Alexander D’Arcy, Tom Tully, Anna Sten, Russell Collins, Richard Loo, Frank Tang, Jack Kruschen, Leo Gordon, Mel Welles, Robert Quarry.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music:...

“Before #Metoo There Was…The Apartment”

By Raymond Benson

One wonders if Billy Wilder’s magnificent comedy-drama, The Apartment, could be made today in the age of #MeToo. Probably not, despite its brilliant script, exceptional cast and performances, perfect direction, and its positive message against sexual harassment in the workplace.

Even so, in some circles The Apartment was considered controversial upon its release in 1960. Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review called it a “dirty fairy tale.” Then again, The Apartment was coming off the heels of the hugely successful and popular Some Like it Hot, which the more-Puritan side of America may have called illicit and tawdry, too. Or perhaps co-writer and director Wilder was simply good at telling grown-up tales for adults within the context of a rapidly-maturing culture that was on the verge of a decade known for its freedom of expression. The 1960s was an explosion in...

“The Shape of Water” is one of two Best Picture Oscar nominees with three acting nominations — the other being “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” — but star Sally Hawkins and supporting players Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are not predicted to win any of them. If they indeed go 0-3 on Sunday and “The Shape of Water” takes the top prize, the fantasy drama will join eight other Best Picture champs that did not convert any of its three-plus acting nominations into wins.

“Birdman” (2014) was the most recent Best Picture winner not to carry an acting award from at least three nominations, as Michael Keaton, Emma Stone and Edward Norton fell to Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”), Patricia Arquette (“Boyhood”) and J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”), respectively. Arquette and Simmons were the supporting frontrunners all season, but Keaton was locked in a tight Best Actor race with Redmayne until the SAG Awards...

“The Shape of Water” numbers three acting bids among its leading 13 Academy Awards nominations for lead Sally Hawkins and supporting players Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer. According to our exclusive Oscar odds none of them is predicted to win on March 4. Should that scenario play out, does that mean that their film won’t win Best Picture?

Not so fast.

While 53 of the 89 Best Picture champs to date include an Oscar-winning performance, 36 of them (40%) did not win any acting awards. And among those three dozen winners are four of the eight films — “The Hurt Locker” (2009), “Argo” (2012), “Birdman” (2015) and “Spotlight” (2016) — decided by preferential ballot under the newly expanded slate of Best Picture nominees.

Surprisingly, an even dozen of the Best Picture winners did not even reap any acting nominations. That is welcome news for “Arrival,” which does not number an acting bid among its eight nominations. However, four of those films...

Savant’s vote for the best romantic comedy ever goes to a sordid fable about problems in the big city Rat Race: keeping both a job and one’s self-respect. Picking up where 1930s pre-Code movies left off, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s ‘how to succeed’ thesis divides people into two groups, Takers and those that Get Took. And yet the message it delivers is life & love- affirming.

The Apartment

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1960 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Limited Edition / Street Date December 12 (29?) (?), 2017 / Available from Arrow Video

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Edie Adams, Johnny Seven, Joyce Jameson, Willard Waterman, David White.

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Film Editor: Daniel Mandell

Original Music: Adolph Deutsch

Written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder

Produced and Directed by Billy Wilder

… and it’s also the all-time champion New Years’ movie.

Here’s how one pushed the limits of good taste in 1974. James Caan and Alan Arkin run the gamut of racist, raunchy, sexist & homophobic jokes as bad boy cops breaking the rules, and director Richard Rush delivers some impressive, expensive action stunts on location in San Francisco. Does it get a pass because it’s ‘outrageous?’ The public surely thought so. If the star chemistry works the excess won’t matter. With Valerie Harper, Loretta Swit and Jack Kruschen.

Freebie and the Bean

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1974 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date August 8, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Alan Arkin, James Caan, Valerie Harper, Loretta Swit, Jack Kruschen, Mike Kellin, Paul Koslo, Linda Marsh, Alex Rocco.

Cinematography: Laszlo Kovacs

Film Editors: Michael MacLean, Fredric Steinkamp

Original Music: Dominic Frontiere

Written by Robert Kaufman, Floyd Mutrux

Produced and Directed by Richard Rush

‘Buddy’ pictures have been around forever, but I...

Heading for Spring Break somewhere? Long before Girls Gone Wild, kids of the Kennedy years found their own paths to the desired fun in the sun, and most of them came back alive. MGM’s comedic look at the Ft. Lauderdale exodus is a half-corny but fully endearing show, featuring the great Dolores Hart and the debuts of Connie Francis, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton.

Where the Boys Are

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, Jim Hutton

Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton, Frank Gorshin, Barbara Nichols, Chill Wills.

Cinematography: Robert Bronner

Art Direction: Preston Ames, George W. Davis

Film Editor: Fredric Steinkamp

Original Music: Pete Rugolo, Neil Sedaka, George Stoll, Victor Young

Written by George Wells from a novel by Glendon Swarthout

Produced by Joe Pasternak

Directed by Henry Levin

Ah yes, in 1960 first-wave Rock...

Hey, Ib Melchoir’s Opus Mars-us is back, in a not-bad new scan and color-grading job. If the nostalgia bug has bitten you deep enough to appreciate a fairly maladroit but frequently arresting space exploration melodrama, this may be the disc for you. Let’s be honest: Nobody can resist the allure of the fabulous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crab, and in glorious Cinemagic, no less.

The Angry Red Planet

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1960 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date June 27, 2017 / 17.28

Starring: Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen.

Cinematography: Stanley Cortez

Film Editor: Ivan J. Hoffman

Original Music: Paul Dunlap

Written by Ib Melchior from a story by Sid Pink

Produced by Norman Maurer & Sid Pink

Directed by Ib Melchior

Unjust though it may be, not all Savant reviews make the national news feed, but my old 2001 coverage of the pretty miserable MGM DVD of The Angry Red Planet got quoted all over the place,...

The NoHo 7, the Playhouse 7, and the Royal in Los Angeles will all be showing a double feature of two of Doris Day’s best-known films on Monday, August 29, 2016. At 7:00 pm The Man Who Knew Too Much, the classic 1956 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, will be screened as part of its 60th anniversary. At 4:30 pm and again at 9:30 pm, 1961’s Lover Come Back, directed by Delbert Mann, will be screened as part of its 55th anniversary.

From the press release:

Doris Day Double Feature

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.

Click here to buy tickets to the 4:30Pm Lover Come Back (includes admission to the 7Pm The Man Who Knew Too Much).

Click here to buy tickets to the 7Pm The Man Who Knew Too Much (includes admission to the 9:30Pm Lover Come Back).

Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics presents a tribute to Doris Day,...

What horrors will we find on the planet Yoo-rah-nuss? A cyclopean dinosaur? Nasty spider monsters? A megalomaniac cerebellum that can turn our X-rated sex fantasies into flesh and blood people? Let's go! Sid Pink's flashy and slightly idiotic adventure stars space cadet John Agar as an average guy willing to have sex with a phantom from his own imagination. Say, doesn't Woody Allen make dirty jokes about that? Journey to the Seventh Planet Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1962 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date April 5, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring John Agar, Carl Ottosen, Ann Smyrner, Greta Thyssen, Peter Monch, Ove Sprogoe, Louis Miehe-Renard, Ulla Moritz, Mimi Heinrich, Annie Birgit Garde. Cinematography Aage Wiltrup Visual Effects Krogh, Wah Chang, Jim Danforth, Ronny Scheemmel. Art Director Otto Lund Editor Tove Palsbo Original Music Jerry Capeheart, Ib Glindemann, Mitchell Tableporte Written by Ib Melchior & Sid Pink Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff & Sid Pink...

We could have called the Veronica Mars movie. We could have guessed that Twin Peaks would get a reprieve from cancellation. And it made sense that The X-Files would get a follow-up series. But Full House? All these years later? This is one we didn't see coming. We got eight seasons and 192 episodes detailing the life lessons learned by Danny Tanner (Bob Saget), his three daughters and all the other people who came through the beautiful San Francisco Victorian they called home. And yet we're getting more in the form of Fuller House - this Friday, in fact, in true Tgif style.

We could have called the Veronica Mars movie. We could have guessed that Twin Peaks would get a reprieve from cancellation. And it made sense that The X-Files would get a follow-up series. But Full House? All these years later? This is one we didn't see coming.

We got eight seasons and 192 episodes detailing the life lessons learned by Danny Tanner (Bob Saget), his three daughters and all the other people who came through the beautiful San Francisco Victorian they called home. And yet we're getting more in the form of Fuller House – this Friday, in fact, in true Tgif style.

Debbie Reynolds ca. early 1950s. Debbie Reynolds movies: Oscar nominee for 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown,' sweetness and light in phony 'The Singing Nun' Debbie Reynolds is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 23, '15. An MGM contract player from 1950 to 1959, Reynolds' movies can be seen just about every week on TCM. The only premiere on Debbie Reynolds Day is Jerry Paris' lively marital comedy How Sweet It Is (1968), costarring James Garner. This evening, TCM is showing Divorce American Style, The Catered Affair, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and The Singing Nun. 'Divorce American Style,' 'The Catered Affair' Directed by the recently deceased Bud Yorkin, Divorce American Style (1967) is notable for its cast – Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Jean Simmons, Jason Robards, Van Johnson, Lee Grant – and for the fact that it earned Norman Lear (screenplay) and Robert Kaufman (story) a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

Chicago – There is not quite any entertainment like a great John Wayne picture, and “McLintock!” certainly fulfills that expectation. But in adapting Shakepeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” they forgot that the womenfolk had progressed a bit since the spankings that were liberally doled out against the wives and daughters.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Produced in 1963, this is an old fashioned comedy western, with old fashioned John Wayne values. The Duke gives screen time to the plight of the Indians, but obviously can’t tolerate Eastern educational elites, certain politicians and women outside there roles as housekeepers. Wayne portrays a wealthy cattle driving man, and he works for “the people who buy the T-bone steak.” That rugged individualism sums up “McLintock!.” but along the way there is some true fun, and a nice vehicle for some Silver Era character actors, including the great Jerry Van Dyke.

G.W.(John Wayne) and Katharine (Maureen...

It was a magical evening at the New York Times Center last night for those lucky enough to be in attendance, for at long last, Jason Reitman brought his “Live Read” Series to NYC. The series began about six months ago when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) asked Reitman if he had any ideas for programs. His idea was a simple one: to stage readings of classic screenplays live on stage, one time only for an audience of a few hundred people. As he told the NY Times recently, “I’d done table reads for my own screenplays, and I always thought they were so much fun. [So I thought], ‘Why couldn’t we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life?’ You can experience live theater, where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts, but there’s really nothing like that for movie scripts.

Tonight, Jason Reitman will direct a live table-read of Billy Wilder’s classic 1960 film, The Apartment, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to benefit Film Independent. Last month, Reitman kicked off his series with a celeb-studded performance of The Breakfast Club. Reitman had been announcing tonight’s cast via his Twitter feed — yesterday, he revealed that Natalie Portman will read the Shirley MacLaine role — but the role of C.C. Baxter, originated by Jack Lemmon, remained a secret. Until now. I’ll give you a hint: He once ate a big red candle. Your Baxter for a night is…...