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I'm far from the first person to point out that trains are inherently cinematic. There's built-in narrative momentum to any story that takes place on a train: A giant vehicle is in motion, zooming from one location to another, and unlike planes, A) a train travels close enough to the ground that people can jump or be thrown off (a huge plot point in Steve McQueen's recent "Blitz"), and B) there's still just enough room for dozens of passengers to get up, walk around, interact, and even brawl if the situation calls for it. Video essayist Patrick H. Willems has a great recent video about this that I recommend checking out, but today, I want to talk about one particular train movie -- one of the best I've ever seen.

The film, which came out in 1952, is called "The Narrow Margin." Here's the premise: A couple of cops are...

Taylor Dearden, Patrick Marron Ball, and Noah Wyle in ‘The Pitt’ (Photograph by Max/Warrick Page)

Max is kicking off the new year with the series premiere of The Pitt, a medical drama that puts ER star Noah Wyle back in scrubs and playing the chief attendant in Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital’s emergency room. Max’s January 2025 lineup also includes the season five premiere of the critically acclaimed, comic book-inspired animated series Harley Quinn, and the series debut of Isadora Moon, based on the bestselling book series.

Season 23 of Real Time with Bill Maher and the premieres of A24’s The Front Room, Look Into My Eyes, and A Different Man stream on Max in January.

Max January 2025 Lineup

January 1

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A Star is Born (1937)

Act of Valor (2012)

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On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: Film Noir Gets so Many Studio Notes it Achieves Sentience

I’m not the most important person in the world today who loves Venn Diagrams, but “His Kind of Woman” might be best explained as something that rests at the center of a series of overlapping circles. Almost all of those circles are “Howard Hughes wanted reshoots,” to be fair, but there are a number of factors that make this tropical fever dream a fun film noir b-side, best watched with a rowdy group of friends late at night. Alcohol is optional,...

Early evening viewing of this one. It was sort of a time trip, or I thought it was. The eighties horror comes back to haunt us not necessarily the material that made some of that time interesting. Ashburn Waters (2019) is an Australian film that takes the ‘teenage camping’ film idea and forgets how to write in favour of either being funny, thinking the audience wouldn’t notice and it’s ok or woefully ignorant to what is implied.

Ashburn Waters (2019 is a low-budget slasher film that features some appalling moments in the script. These are appalling in a good way for a film of this nature making one think how a recent script can allow these moments. This film is what I call ‘frat boy’ style with guys drinking beer and scantily clad females around them to have sex with even if it’s so-called illicit.

The first moment occurs...

This picture looks as modern and radical as anything from Italy in the 1960s, yet it’s a tough-talking take on hardboiled crime caper fiction. In three pictures Stanley Kubrick went from amateur to contender: now he has a like-minded producer, a top-flight cast, and the help of the legendary pulp author Jim Thompson. Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards peg the cynical film noir style, and Kubrick maintains the source book’s splintered chronology for the tense racetrack heist. All Hollywood took notice — at least that part of the industry looking out for daring, progressive storytelling. Now in 4K, Kubrick’s superb B&w images look better than ever.

The Killing

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen,...

Richard Fleischer’s thriller achieves classic noir status thanks to Earl Felton’s Oscar nominated script—the dialog is so hard boiled it sizzles. The terrific Charles McGraw plays a cop protecting a gangster’s girlfriend train-bound for the grand jury—assorted assassins and gangsters have other ideas. As the unmanageable mobster’s moll, the great Marie Windsor is one of the most duplicitous dames in noir history. Rko boss Howard Hughes liked this quickie so much that he kept it on the shelf for two years while pondering whether to to remake it with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. Luckily he decided against it.

The post The Narrow Margin appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Sunshine and noir are antithetical, as probably anyone who knows even a word of French could tell you. Sunshine and film noir, nearly as much so. Yet summer’s here and the time is right for skulking in the murderously foggy streets, thanks to a three-day festival of vintage ’40s and ’50s crime dramas being presented this weekend at the newly reopened Hollywood Legion Theater by the Film Noir Foundation.

In a year that hadn’t started off with a pandemic in full force, or wasn’t continuing with Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre being closed for renovations, noir fans would have already something close to their fill with the annual Noir City festival that’s usually co-sponsored by the American Cinematheque every March or April. But with the absence of that 22-year-old standby leaving a doom-shaped hole in L.A. repertory moviegoers’ hearts, the Noir Foundation has stepped in with a shorter,...

BET is keeping the fireworks going this summer, bringing Tyler Perry’s The Oval back for the second half of Season 2 on Tuesday, July 20 (9/8c), TVLine has learned exclusively. The midseason premiere will air on BET and BET Her.

The return episode, ominously titled “The Target,” continues Barry’s hunt for his daughter, puts Hunter and Victoria in a “power struggle concerning a terrorist,” and finds Lilly laying down ground rules with Donald as they “discuss the terms of their marriage,” according to BET’s official synopsis.

More from TVLineThe Oval's Kron Moore Reveals the Scene That Caused Her to...

Every year or so, Korean cinema tries to find a new bonafide action hero but, bar a few names, has yet to establish one successfully. Director Lee Soo-sung attempts to make one out of Kim Sung-soo (“Black Hand”) in his latest film “Rules of the Game: Human Hunting”.

Synopsis

Jeong-hwan who has a secret past, faces another group of tourists on a remote island he visited to clean up his past.

In the guest house where everyone stays together, Jeong-hwan feels a strange atmosphere alone and is wary of the guest house’s owner and finds himself as their target.

The moment he managed to escape from a dangerous situation, he struggles against another mysterious existence…

As soon as he dig up the dangerous secrets of the island, the pursuit of madness begins!

Lee Soo-sung has previously directed the action franchises “Bullies” and “The Dominator”, both of which have failed...

Rko polished Robert Mitchum’s post- pot bust image with this swell-guy romantic Christmas tale, placing him opposite the drop-dead desirable Janet Leigh. All the penniless Mitchum must do is win over Leigh’s son, get around her fiance Wendell Corey, and then make her forget her dead soldier husband. Plus keep up the Christmas spirit. Director Don Hartman pulls off a minor yuletide miracle with the most down-to-earth, pragmatic Christmas romance on record. Co-starring the 1949 line of super Lionel streamline electric trains!

Holiday Affair

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 87 min. / Street Date December 15, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey, Gordon Gebert, Griff Barnett, Esther Dale, Henry O’Neill, Harry Morgan, James Griffith, Jimmy Hunt, Jack Kelly, Paula Raymond, .

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editor: Harry Marker

Original Music: Roy Webb

Written by Isobel Lennart from a story by John D. Weaver

Produced and Directed by Don Hartman

“Baby,...

This year, the motion picture academy achieved its five-year goal of doubling the number of women among its membership. In all, 819 film professionals were invited to become part of the organization that hands out the Oscars. Compare this intake to the totals of the previous five years: 842 in 2019; a record 928 in 2018; 774 in 2017; 683 in 2016; 322 in 2015; and 271 in 2014.

While Academy Awards nominees are automatically eligible for consideration, the rest of the candidates must go through a fairly cumbersome process. A candidate must meet certain branch specific requirements before even being eligible.

For example, actors must “have a minimum of three theatrical feature film credits, in all of which the roles played were scripted roles, one of which was released in the past five years, and all of which are of a caliber that reflect the high standards of the Academy.” For writers, directors and producers they need have just two of these credits.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is extending invitations to join the organization to 819 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures.

The 2020 class is 45% women, 36% underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 49% international from 68 countries. There are 75 Oscar® nominees, including 15 winners, and five recipients of Scientific and Technical Awards. Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership in 2020.

“The Academy is delighted to welcome these distinguished fellow travelers in the motion picture arts and sciences. We have always embraced extraordinary talent that reflects the rich variety of our global film community, and never more so than now,” said Academy President David Rubin.

In 2016, the Academy set specific inclusion goals as part of its A2020 initiative to double the number of women and underrepresented ethnic/racial communities by 2020. Through dedicated and intentional work by the Board of...

Awkwafina, Kaitlyn Dever, Cynthia Erivo, Beanie Feldstein, Brian Tyree Henry, Niecy Nash, Florence Pugh, Lakeith Stanfield, Olivia Wilde and John David Washington are among the 819 film professionals who have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy announced on Tuesday.

Additional invitations went to directors Ari Aster, Mati Diop, Robert Eggers, Ladj Ly and Lulu Wang; to documentary filmmakers David France and Jeff Reichert; to executives Jennifer Salke and Teddy Schwarzman; to musicians and composers Larry Mullen Jr., Max Richter, Arturo Sandoval and Bernie Taupin; to producers Ryan Murphy and Rosalie Swedlin; and to writers Lucy Alibar, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth.

A dozen different people from the Best Picture winner “Parasite” were invited to join: actors Choi Woo-Shik, Jang Hye-Jin, Jo Yeo-Jeong. Lee Jung-Eun and Park So-Dam, costume designer Choi Seyeon, editor Yang Jinmo, composer Jung Jae-Il, producer Kwak Sin-Ae, production designer Lee Ha Jun,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited 819 artists and executives to join the organization in 2020.

In doing so, the Academy continues its work on diversifying its ranks. If all 819 invitees accept their invitations, 45% of the new members will be women and 36% are from underrepresented ethnic/racial communities. International make-up is 49% from 68 countries.

“The Academy is delighted to welcome these distinguished fellow travelers in the motion picture arts and sciences. We have always embraced extraordinary talent that reflects the rich variety of our global film community, and never more so than now,” said Academy president David Rubin said in a statement.

In 2016, as part of its A2020 initiative, the Academy promised to at least double the number of women and underrepresented ethnic/racial communities by this year. “Through dedicated and intentional work by the Board of Governors and members on the branch executive committees, the Academy has surpassed both these goals,...

Today’s noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket! Kino’s third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs filmed before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir stalwarts Richard Conte and Dennis O’Keefe anchor the other two dramas, with dynamic showings by Coleen Gray, Edith Barrett, Peggy Dow, Jeanette Nolan, Meg Randall and especially Gale Storm.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema III

Abandoned, The Lady Gambles, The Sleeping City

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1949-50 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 79,99,86 min. / Street Date June 9, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Meg Randall, Raymond Burr, Marjorie Rambeau, Jeanette Nolan, Mike Mazurki, Will Kuluva, David Clarke; Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Stephen McNally, Edith Barrett, John Hoyt,...

There are so many categories for the Emmy Awards that the Television Academy hands out the statuettes during three very long ceremonies. But that wasn’t the case with the first Emmy Awards on Jan. 25, 1949. In fact, there were less than a million TV sets in the U.S. at the time.

The Emmys took place at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Rudy Vallee was slated to host the event but had to leave town. So, radio star Walter O’Keefe emceed the proceedings. Tickets were $5. Six awards were handed out including a special award for Louis McManus who designed the Emmy. The ceremony was broadcast on the local L.A. station Ktsl, which is now Kcbs. -TV.

Back in 1998 I talked to three of the winners of the 1st Emmy Awards for the L.A. Times.

Then 22-year-old ventriloquist Shirley Dinsdale — who appeared on Ktla with her puppet Judy Splinters-she...

Noir Nirvana isn’t found amid literary swells and hoity-toity art connoisseurs — but in the trenches of humble Eagle-Lion Films, where Richard Fleischer, Lloyd Bridges and a hotter-than-hot Barbara Payton steamed up the streets of Los Angeles circa 1949. The Film Noir Foundation experts give us an expertly curated slice of hardboiled crime — Eddie Muller dubs it ‘To Live and Die in L.A.,’ but in the year that the Reds took over mainland China, and the Ussr exploded its first Atom bomb.

Trapped

Blu-ray + DVD

Flicker Alley

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date December 17, 2019 / 39.98

Starring: Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Payton, John Hoyt, James Todd, Russ Conway, Robert Karnes, Stephen Chase, Tommy Noonan, Douglas Spencer.

Cinematography: Guy Roe

Film Editor: Alfred DeGaetano

Original Music: Sol Kaplan

Written by Earl Felton, George Zuckerman

Produced by Bryan Foy

Directed by Richard Fleischer

The Film Noir Foundation has done it again — the non-profit has...

Is this any way to treat a lady? Lovely Nina Foch just wanted a job, but she instead becomes the fall-gal in a psychologically perverse plan to deny her very identity. Cult director Joseph H. Lewis makes deft use of cinematic suspense techniques to compel our involvement in a bizarre conspiracy: not just convincing a woman that she’s insane, but that she’s literally not herself.

My Name is Julia Ross

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 65 min. / Street Date February 19, 2019 / Available from Arrow Films (UK) / 39.95

Starring: Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Leonard Mudie, Anita Bolster, Doris Lloyd, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Henry Batista

Visual Effects: Lawrence Butler, Donald Glouner

Musical director: Mischa Bakaleinikoff

Written by Muriel Roy Bolton, from the novel by Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson)

Produced by Wallace MacDonald

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

2019 is shaping up just fine for Blu-ray releases of small-scale,...

Now that October is officially underway, that means we have a big week of Blu-ray and DVD releases to get excited for, and there are some great genre-related titles coming out on Tuesday. Universal Studios Home Entertainment is unleashing both Tales from the Hood 2 and The First Purge on multiple formats, and for fans of action cinema, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy races home this week, too. Kino Lorber is giving both The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler the limited edition treatment, and for those who enjoy indie horror, Feral, Housewife,and Blood Fest are certainly all worth your time.

Other notable releases for October 2nd include Extremity, Molly, The Legend of Halloween Jack, The Evil Dead in 4K, Sleep No More, and West of Hell, with Rob Zombie’s Halloween getting a Steelbook release as well.

The First Purge

Blumhouse Productions welcomes you to the movement that began as...

Before the influential Kolchak: The Night Stalker series aired on ABC in the mid-’70s, Darren McGavin brought the titular investigative reporter to life for the first time in the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker, which is getting a 4K restoration Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber this October, along with its 1973 sequel, The Night Strangler.

Announced on Facebook and Twitter, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler Blu-rays will be released on October 2nd in the Us. Each release will come with a new 4K restoration, a new audio commentary with film historian Tim Lucas, and other new special features.

Below, we have the announcements from Kino Lorber, as well as a look at the new cover art by Sean Phillips. Let us know if you'll be adding these releases to your home media collection, and in case you missed it, read Scott Drebit's It Came From the Tube column...

Don’t look to this noir for hardboiled cynicism – for his first feature Nicholas Ray instead gives us a dose of fatalist romance. Transposed from the previous decade, a pair of fugitives takes what happiness they can find, always aware that a grim fate waits ahead. The show is a career-making triumph and a real classic from Rko — which shelved it for more than a year.

They Live by Night

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 880

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 13, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig, Will Wright, William Phipps, Ian Wolfe, Harry Harvey, Marie Bryant, Byron Foulger, Erskine Sanford .

Cinematography: George E. Diskant

Film Editor: Sherman Todd

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Charles Schnee, Nicholas Ray from the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson

Produced by John Houseman

Directed by Nicholas Ray...

Warners knocks us out with a beautifully remastered Rko noir. Nicholas Ray's crime tale is like no other, a meditation on human need and loneliness. It's a noir with a cautiously positive, hopeful twist. On Dangerous Ground Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 11, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Sumner Williams. Cinematography George E. Diskant Art Direction Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino Film Editor Roland Gross Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by A.I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray from the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler Produced by John Houseman, Sid Rogell Directed by Nicholas Ray

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.

Richard Brooks' exciting Humphrey Bogart picture is one of the best newspaper sagas ever. An editor deals with a gangster threat and a domestic crisis even as greedy heirs are selling his paper out from under him. Commentator Eddie Muller drives home the film's essential civics lesson about what we've lost -- a functioning free press. Deadline - U.S.A. Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 87 min. / Street Date July 26, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, Warren Stevens, Paul Stewart, Martin Gabel, Joe De Santis, Audrey Christie, Jim Backus, Willis Bouchey, Joseph Crehan, Lawrence Dobkin, John Doucette, Paul Dubov, William Forrest, Dabbs Greer, Thomas Browne Henry, Paul Maxey, Ann McCrea, Kasia Orzazewski, Tom Powers, Joe Sawyer, William Self, Phillip Terry, Carleton Young. Cinematography Milton Krasner Film Editor William B.Murphy Original Music Cyril J. Mockridge Produced by Sol C. Siegel...

Do you like your noir heroes bitter and bruised, and your noir dames daring and resourceful? Phil Karlson's gem of a thriller pits two-fisted John Payne against murderous hood Brad Dexter, with Peggie Castle the unfaithful, unlucky wife who decides to run off with the wrong guy. And star Evelyn Keys is a pulp noir adventuress to admire, with a roving eye of her own. 99 River Street Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1953 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring John Payne, Evelyn Keyes, Brad Dexter, Frank Faylen, Peggie Castle, Jay Adler, Jack Lambert, Glenn Langan. Cinematography Franz Planer Film Editor Buddy Small Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Robert Smith, George Zuckerman Produced by Edward Small Directed by Phil Karlson

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

99 River Street is a top noir title in all respects -- a great cast, a literally hard-hitting...

John Flynn's The Outfit (1974), a brutally efficient bit of business based glancingly on Richard Stark’s procedurally inquisitive and poetic crime novel of the same name, is a movie that feels like it’s never heard of a rounded corner; it’s blunt like a 1970 Dodge Monaco pinning a couple of killers against a Dumpster and a brick wall. I say “glancingly” because the movie, as Glenn Kenny observed upon The Outfit’s DVD release from the Warner Archives, is based less on the chronologically unconcerned novel than an idea taken from it. On the page Stark's protagonist, the unflappable Parker, his face altered by plastic surgery to the degree that past associates often take a fatal beat too long to realize to whom it is they are speaking, assumes the detached perspective of a bruised deity, undertaking the orchestration of a series of robberies administered to Mob-run businesses...

I guess Howard Hughes wanted to go easy on Minnesota Nazis. William Cameron Menzies directs a Cold War thriller about an insidious germ warfare conspiracy -- it's an early paranoid suspense tale with apocalyptic consequences. But the story behind the movie's making -- and then remaking -- is even more fantastic. The Whip Hand DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1951 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date February 16, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 18.59 Starring Elliott Reid, Raymond Burr, Carla Balenda, Edgar Barrier, Otto Waldis, Michael Steele, Lurene Tuttle, Peter Brocco, Lewis Martin, Frank Darien, Olive Carey, George Chandler, Gregory Gaye. Cinematography Nicholas Musuraca Film Editor Robert Golden Original Music Music by Paul Sawtell Written by George Bricker, Frank L. Moss, Ray Hamilton Produced by Louis J. Rachmil Directed by William Cameron Menzies

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Film writers Bill Warren and Tom Weaver have reported extensively on the unusual production story...

Two guys, some guns, a suitcase full of cash and the open road: what could go wrong? Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen meet their match in Joanne Whalley Kilmer, a neo-noir bad news dame if there ever was one. The murderous melodrama stretches the length of Nevada; director John Dahl adds the cops and the Mob to his annihilating cocktail. Kill Me Again Blu-ray Olive Films 1989 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date March 22, 2016 / Starring Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Jon Gries. Cinematography Jaques Steyn Film Editors Eric Beason, Frank Jiminez, Jonathan Shaw Original Music William Olvis Written by John Dahl, David W. Warfield Produced by Steve Golin, Sigurjon Sighvatsson, David W. Warfield Directed by John Dahl

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

One of the best of the neo-noirs, Kill Me Again put director John Dahl on the map as a man to watch, much like Carl Franklin and the nervous mini-classic One False Move.

After falling into the public domain, Phil Karlson’s 1952 film noir Kansas City Confidential became unfairly lumped into B-grade bracket, a disservice considering the title’s odd narrative and eventual influence on contemporary filmmakers. Karlson, who would eventually turn to mainstream efforts starring the likes of Dean Martin and Elvis Presley in the 1960s and 1970s, contributed several enjoyable minor noir efforts in the 1950s. These would include 1952’s Scandal Sheet with Donna Reed and Broderick Crawford, Kim Novak casino heist effort 5 Against the House, and that same year’s Tight Spot with a peculiar role for Ginger Rogers. But none have enjoyed the staying power of this particular heist drama, now restored with its most accomplished transfer yet.

Kansas City delivery man Joe Rolfe (John Payne) is at the wrong place at the wrong time when he’s nabbed by the cops as the driver of a heist involving...

Rko's final in-house production is a good end-of-an-era film, a spirited and well-made musical comedy. Bright-eyed Jane Powell can't stop accepting marriage proposals, from nerdy Tommy Noonan, dreamboat kisser Cliff Robertson and zillionare Keith Andes. She imagines her future with each man in musical terms, through production numbers staged by Gower Champion. The Girl Most Likely DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1956 / Color / 1:78 enhanced widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson, Keith Andes, Kaye Ballard, Tommy Noonan, Una Merkel, Kelly Brown, Judy Nugent, Frank Cady, Joseph Kearns, Marjorie Stapp, Robert Banas. Cinematography Robert H. Planck Film Editor Doane Harrison Original Music Nelson Riddle Choreographer Gower Champion Written by Devery Freeman, Paul Jarrico (uncredited) Produced by Stanley Rubin Directed by Mitchell Leisen

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

From roughly 1925 to 1957, the powerful men in charge of the big studios controlled most aspects of production. That...

Shall we sing the praises of actress Marie Windsor? A self--assessed Queen of the Cheapies, she was anything but cheap, gracing some of the better films noirs and delivering some of the most deliciously acidic dialogue ever heard on screen. The woman doesn't just have bedroom eyes, she has bedroom everything, and a wicked smile to go with it.

No Man's Woman Blu-ray Olive Films 1955 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring Marie Windsor, John Archer, Patric Knowles, Nancy Gates, Jil Jarmyn, Richard Crane, Louis Jean Heydt, Percy Helton, Morris Ankrum. Cinematography Bud Thackery Film Editor Howard A. Smith Original Music R. Dale Butts Written by John K. Butler story by Don Martin Produced by Rudy Ralston Directed by Franklin Adreon

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Marie Windsor is really something in Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil, lounging around in an effort to seduce John Garfield.

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

Howard Hughes movies (photo: Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator') Turner Classic Movies will be showing the Howard Hughes-produced, John Farrow-directed, Baja California-set gangster drama His Kind of Woman, starring Robert Mitchum, Hughes discovery Jane Russell, and Vincent Price, at 3 a.m. Pt / 6 a.m. Et on Saturday, November 8, 2014. Hughes produced a couple of dozen movies. (More on that below.) But what about "Howard Hughes movies"? Or rather, movies -- whether big-screen or made-for-television efforts -- featuring the visionary, eccentric, hypochondriac, compulsive-obsessive, all-American billionaire as a character? Besides Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a dashing if somewhat unbalanced Hughes in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Best Picture Academy Award-nominated The Aviator, other actors who have played Howard Hughes on film include the following: Tommy Lee Jones in William A. Graham's television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), with Lee Purcell as silent film star Billie Dove, Tovah Feldshuh as Katharine Hepburn,...

One of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, it's already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).

Graf's work includes pieces from the seventies to the present day. By working in TV he has been able to work regularly, something denied most feature directors, and seems to thrive on the tight schedules and budgets. Nightwatch, a 1993 episode of the long-running series "Der Fahnder", comes on like Fleischer's The Narrow Margin, with a cop guarding a gangster's moll who doesn't...

The Narrow Margin

Written by Earl Felton

Directed by Richard Fleischer

USA, 1952

Single-location films can be a tough sell for some. In some instances, the location might seem too preposterous to be the setting for an entire story, thus creating a sense that the project is based on a gimmick. It requires some considerable storytelling prowess to properly convey the reasons why characters would remain in said location if dangers lurk around every corner, and to create new, plausible threats to keep the interest level high. Trains as single-location settings present some interesting challenges. They offer its passengers the opportunity to peruse its in and outs in many ways, not all of which offer a lot of breathing room. Richard Fleischer turned out to be one such director capable of taking full advantage of the setting with 1952’s The Narrow Margin.

Detective Sergeants Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and Gus Forbes...

News.

Starting this week, filmmaker, editor, critic and Notebook contributor Gina Telaroli will be seeing the premiere of her exquisite short feature Traveling Light, "a small-scale silent (aesthetically “silent”, but with a dense sound mix) charting a trip among friends from New York to Pittsburgh carefully constructed as a string of tiny moments" (Christopher Small), around the world in a variety of venues. The most ambitious on the ground presentation will be at New York's Anthology Film Archives, in whose series "Closely Watched Trains" Traveling Light is showing alongside such other brilliant train cinema as Shanghai Express, Emperor of the North, and The Narrow Margin. For those not in New York, stay tuned for news of the film's online premiere.

As Dave Kehr prepares to take on his new position as Adjunct Curator at MoMA, it has been announced that J. Hoberman will be taking over his video column in...

Breathe In

After an excellent start to the tenure of new artistic director Chris Fujiwara in 2012, the Edinburgh International Film Festival returns this June with a similarly promising, extremely eclectic line-up. Last summer I provided Sound on Sight’s first ever coverage of the event, the world’s longest continuously running film festival, and shall be continuing to do so in a few weeks time; the festival runs from June 19th to 30th.

Things kick off with the European premiere of Breathe In, following its debut at Sundance earlier this year. Drake Doremus’ follow-up to Like Crazy stars Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Amy Ryan and Kyle MacLachlan, and concerns the change in a family’s relationship dynamics when a foreign exchange student comes to stay. The closing gala film is romantic comedy Not Another Happy Ending, which receives its world premiere at the festival. The Glasgow-set film stars Doctor Who...

The 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival is just over two months away, and is slowly unveiling its usual packed slate of classic stars set to make appearances. Included in this year's in-person lineup are Max von Sydow, Ann Blyth and Eva Marie Saint. These three will each appear with landmark films in their careers; Von Sydow will be on hand for Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist"; Blyth for Michael Curtiz' "Mildred Pierce" (pictured above with Joan Crawford) and Vincente Minelli's "Kismet"; and Saint for Elia Kazan's Best-Picture-winner "On the Waterfront." Actors Mitzi Gaynor and France Nuyen ("South Pacific") and Jacqueline White ("The Narrow Margin"), along with filmmakers Kevin Brownlow (introducing newly restored silent classic "The Big Parade"), and Jerry Zucker, David Zucker and Jim Abrahams ("Airplane!") are also scheduled...

The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the venues in which some version of this article previously appeared: Cinema Scope 24 (Fall, 2005), Trafic 62 (Summer, 2006), and the late and twice-lamented The New-York Ghost (Dec. 26, 2006).

In the Place of No Place

Every movie contains its alternates, phantom films conjured variously by excess or dearth: textures and movements that carry on their own play apart from the main line of the narrative, an obtruding performance or scene, an unexplained ellipsis or sudden character reversal, the chunk life of an object seizing the frame in an insert whose plastic beauty transcends its context.

Though the extremes of pure narrative economy (in which each detail exists purely for transmission of plot) or utter dispersal (in which no piece connects to any other) can never exist, we can tentatively use the concepts as limit-cases to differentiate films which make room for their phantoms (or, in the worst case,...

Fast Times At Ridgemont High

This week Universal is releasing a selection of teen movies on Blu-ray, including American Grafitti, Dazed And Confused and Animal House.

Hidden among them is 1982's Fast Times, one of the most authentic and painfully funny accounts of those difficult teenage years. Directed by Amy Heckerling, it's perhaps more notable for Cameron Crowe's script. In the late-70s, having already lived the Rolling Stone-writing adventures that formed the movie Almost Famous, the young-looking, 22-year-old Crowe went undercover at a San Diego high school, and the resulting book also yielded his first screenplay. The movie is great for spotting actors in before-they-were-famous roles: while Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judge Reinhold take the leads, talented newcomers like Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nicolas Coppola (later Cage) show up in the background. But the movie is stolen by a young Sean Penn, delivering perhaps the...

Martin Scorsese's Paradiso Outdoor Cinema, St Germans

Scorsese isn't the first person you picture paddling in a Cornish estuary, but Port Eliot Festival has persuaded him to curate a season of evening double bills. His selection is defiantly old school – 1974's Murder On The Orient Express is the most recent. There are sumptuous epics such as The Leopard and The Red Shoes, and classic noirs Human Desire and The Narrow Margin. For more up-to-date fare (and more shelter), the parallel Paradiso Piccolo indoor event has newer documentaries and features including Project Nim, Velvet Goldmine and author Kevin Sampson introducing his rock'n'roll saga Powder.

Port Eliot, Thu to 24 Jul

The Flipside With Jenny Agutter, London

From The Railway Children to Walkabout, Logan's Run to An American Werewolf In London, Jenny Agutter has long occupied a special place in the hearts (and fantasies) of a certain demographic. Those foragers of the...

"It's not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest," begins Ryan Gilbey in the Guardian. "Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan (Jane Asher), his co-worker at the public baths. What's unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. The New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt called it 'a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts.' If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema?"

Some, at least. After all, Jerzy Skolimowski's film, kept off screens for decades due to rights issues, has been restored and will screen tomorrow night at London's BFI Southbank,...

Director to curate four night season at Cornish festival with Brunel viaduct providing backdrop to outdoor screenings

Even legendary Hollywood director Martin Scorsese has never had a set like this to play with – a giant screen by a river under the stars, with a backdrop of trains rumbling across a towering viaduct designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Scorsese, who is curating The Director's Cut, a unique four-night film season at the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall this June, clearly agonised over an opening film that would live up to the grandeur of the setting in 4,000 acres of Humphry Repton-designed parkland.

Trains and clouds of steam were obviously essential ingredients, and he considered both Shanghai Express (1932), with the luminous Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong, or Hitchcock's thriller The Lady Vanishes (1938).

His final choice may surprise devotees of Raging Bull or Gangs of New York: his opener is Murder on the Orient Express...

Director Richard Fleischer, a prolific filmmaker who helmed such movies as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, and Soylent Green, died Saturday of natural causes in Los Angeles; he was 89. The son of pioneering animator Max Fleischer (one of the men behind famed characters Betty Boop and Popeye), Richard joined RKO's New York branch in the early 40s as a writer and producer for the studio's Flicker Flashbacks series and won an Oscar for the documentary Design for Death. By the end of the decade was ensconced in Hollywood, directing a number of low-budget noir thrillers, one of his most famous being the train-set The Narrow Margin, one of the first films to use a handheld camera and filmed in only 13 days; it was later remade in the 90s. In 1954, Fleischer got his big break courtesy of Walt Disney (his father's rival), who tapped him to direct the big-screen adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason. Disney's first entire live-action movie made in the United States, it became one of the studio's most famous and well-known films, inspiring attractions at Disney's theme parks that utilized versions of the Nautilus submarine and the famed battle with a giant squid. Fleischer's career was marked by forays into numerous genres, with some of his more notable movies being The Vikings (1958), Fantastic Voyage (1966), The Boston Strangler (1968), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), Soylent Green (1973), and the Neil Diamond version of The Jazz Singer (1980). He also directed some of Hollywood's most well-known flops, including the Oscar-nominated musical Doctor Dolittle, the biopic Che! and the slave drama Mandingo. Throughout the 80s, Fleischer worked on a number of modern-day B movies, including cult faves Conan the Destroyer (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Grace Jones) and Red Sonja. He is survived by his wife, Mary, three children and five grandchildren. --Prepared by IMDb staff...