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What's this? John Ford's last silent western is as exciting and entertaining as his later classics. A trio of horse thieves turn noble when given the responsibility of a young woman lost on the prairie; Ford gives the show comedy, drama and spectacle. 3 Bad Men Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1926 / B&W / 1:33 Silent Ap. / 92 min. / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 29.95 Starring George O'Brien, Olive Borden, Lou Tellegen, Tom Santschi, J. Farrell MacDonald, Frank Campeau, Priscilla Bonner, Otis Harlan, Phyllis Haver, Georgie Harris, Alec Francis, Jay Hunt . Cinematography George Schneiderman Original Music Dana Kaproff (2007) Written by John Stone, Ralph Spence, Malcolm Stuart Boylan from a novel by Herman Whittaker Produced and Directed by John Ford

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

What a great discovery! Last year Kino brought us a good-looking disc of John Ford's Hurricane and now they take the bold step of issuing one of the director's oldest intact features,...

At Reverse Shot, Fernando F. Croce previews "The Essential John Ford," a series at New York's Museum of the Moving Image that's "an invaluable overview of the artist’s often paradoxical moods, ranging from the spacious buoyancy of Young Mr. Lincoln/tag> to the claustrophobic bleakness of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance/tag>. The canon classics are there (including Stagecoach/tag>, The Grapes of Wrath/tag>, and The Searchers/tag>), and so are lesser-known titles (the thorny maternal journey of Pilgrimage/tag>, the travelogue surrealism of Mogambo/tag>, the rowdy theatrics of Upstream/tag>) ready to be rediscovered." Writing for Artforum, Nick Pinkerton argues that "Ford is one of the mightiest figures in international cinema, and one of the greatest American artists in any medium, full stop." » - David Hudson...

At Reverse Shot, Fernando F. Croce previews "The Essential John Ford," a series at New York's Museum of the Moving Image that's "an invaluable overview of the artist’s often paradoxical moods, ranging from the spacious buoyancy of Young Mr. Lincoln/tag> to the claustrophobic bleakness of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance/tag>. The canon classics are there (including Stagecoach/tag>, The Grapes of Wrath/tag>, and The Searchers/tag>), and so are lesser-known titles (the thorny maternal journey of Pilgrimage/tag>, the travelogue surrealism of Mogambo/tag>, the rowdy theatrics of Upstream/tag>) ready to be rediscovered." Writing for Artforum, Nick Pinkerton argues that "Ford is one of the mightiest figures in international cinema, and one of the greatest American artists in any medium, full stop." » - David Hudson...

Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas opens with a series of disguises, image overlays revealing to us Fantomas’ various personas.Often used by silent filmmakers attempting to conjure the supernatural, they conjure the abstract instead:“It’s a visual medium”–John Ford“[Erich von] Stroheim asked me personally to take on the assignment (after the studio removed him from the film), and I did so without any protest on his part…”– Josef von Sternberg***We move from dissolves to hard cuts:Later in The Wedding March:Counterpoints:And beyond:We call for help, mere seconds later our cries our answered: “We’ve got a trial ahead of us.”Time is meaningless: there is no difference between past and present.Impressionism becomes Expressionism:But we keep being reborn:Love exists:Love unites us all, re-engages us with the world:We cease being individuals:And become a collective--We become a crowd:None of us are alone:*** Sources:Fantômas (Louis Feuillade, 1913)India Matri Bhumi (Roberto Rossellini,...

The best part of the DVD-on-demand business (or Mod, as the studios call it) is that Warner Bros., Sony, and 20th Century Fox are unearthing rare titles from their vaults. Many have never been on home video in any form, and some haven’t ever had television exposure. My latest “discovery” is a 1934 Columbia title called Among the Missing, directed by Albert S. Rogell and written by Herbert Asbury and Fred Niblo, Jr., from a story by Florence Wagner. It stars Henrietta Crosman, Richard Cromwell, Billie Seward, and Arthur Hohl—not exactly an all-star lineup, unless you’ve seen Crosman’s memorable performance in John Ford’s Pilgrimage. Crosman was a veteran stage actress who made a...

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The 2014 Viennale gets underway on October 23rd and runs to November 6th. The festival has published a preview of their lineup:

Features

Frank (Lenny Abrahamson)

Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

Two Day, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

Li'l Quinguin (Bruno Demont)

Hard to Be a God (Aeksej German)

Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

Mambo Cool (Chris Gude)

Amour fou (Jessica Hausner)

The Last Summer of the Rich (Peter Kern)

Time Lapse (Bradley King)

The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid)

Sorrow and Joy (Nils Malmros)

Suddarth (Richie Mehta)

Macondo (Sudabeh Mortezai)

Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund)

I'm Not Him (Tayfun Pirselimoglu)

Favula (Raúl Perrone)

Buzzard (Joel Potrykus)

A Proletarian Winter's Tale (Julian Radlmaier)

Two Shots Fired (Martín Rejtman)

Mauro (Hernán Rosselli)

The Sad Smell of Flesh (Cristóbal Arteaga Rozas)

Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

Why Don't You Play in Hell?...

The Moon, the opposite of the sun, hovers over us by night, the opposite of day. 

In F.W. Murnau’s Tabu (1931), Reri, the sacred maiden of the small island of Bora Bora, writes this to her lover Matahi: 

And indeed, when Matahi chases after her, the moon spreads its path on the sea.

He runs and swims after her, moving faster than a normal human being, defying the laws of gravity. 

Miraculously, he catches up to the boat. 

Thus, he must die, sinking back into a void…

…while ghost ships linger on in the distance…

…carrying another hopeless romantic, and a moving corpse—A second Nosferatu.

The moon is absent in Murnau’s earlier film, made nearly ten years before Tabu, but it is in the one he made nearly five years after Nosferatu, when George O’Brien leaves his wife for a midnight rendezvous with another woman. 

And indeed,...

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is probably the best time traveling/heavy-metal rocking/Socrates-mispronouncing high school comedy ever made. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is definitely the best movie ever made about the Grim Reaper playing Battleship. Two decades have passed since those brave films made their way to the theaters. The world is different, but the same. Things are more moderner than before. Bigger, and yet smaller. The time has come… for Bill & Ted’s Heinous Odyssey. Or Bill & Ted’s Radical Pilgrimage. Or whatever you want to call it: a third Bill & Ted’s movie! So says Keanu Reeves,...