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Wow! Fritz Lang's second western is a marvel -- a combo of matinee innocence and that old Germanic edict that character equals fate. It has a master's sense of color and design. Robert Young is an odd fit but Randolph Scott is nothing less than terrific. You'd think Lang was born on the Pecos. Western Union Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1941 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Virginia Gilmore, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Slim Summerville, Barton MacLane, Victor Kilian, George Chandler, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody, Jay Silverheels. Cinematography Edward Cronjager, Allen M. Davey Original Music David Buttolph Written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey Produced by Harry Joe Brown (associate) Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...

An Encore Edition brings back Fritz Lang's searing police corruption tale, with the great performances of Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvinaided by several pots of fresh, hot coffee. As is usual, Fritz Lang leads the way in modernizing a genre -- this one is a keeper. The Big Heat Blu-ray Encore Edition Twilight Time Limited Edition 1953 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Ship Date February 9, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Willis Bouchey, Robert Burton, Adam Williams, Howard Wendell, Dorothy Green, Carolyn Jones, Dan Seymour, Edith Evanson, John Crawford, John Doucette. Cinematography Charles Lang Film Editor Charles Nelson Original Music Henry Vars Written by Sydney Boehm from the book by William P. McGivern Produced by Robert Arthur Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Four years after Twilight Time's initial release, this Encore Edition...

Oscar-winning actor who played threatened heroines for Alfred Hitchcock in Rebecca and Suspicion

It was hard to cast the lead in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939. The female fans of the bestseller were very protective of the naive woman whom the widower Max de Winter marries and transports to his ancestral home of Manderley. None of the contenders – including Vivien Leigh, Anne Baxter and Loretta Young – felt right for the second Mrs de Winter, who was every lending-library reader's dream self.

To play opposite Laurence Olivier in the film, the producer David O Selznick suggested instead a 21-year-old actor with whom he was smitten: Joan Fontaine. The prolonged casting process made Fontaine anxious. Vulnerability was central to the part, and you can see that vulnerability, that inability to trust her own judgment, in every frame of the film. The performance brought Fontaine, who has died...

Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine has died, per the AP and multiple news reports. She was 97. Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland to British parents in Japan, Fontaine began her film career under contract with Rko in films like The Man Who Found Himself (1937), her official onscreen “introduction,” A Damsel in Distress (1937) opposite Fred Astaire, and George Cukor’s The Women (1939). A year after leaving Rko, Fontaine starred in the gothic thriller Rebecca as a woman haunted by her new husband’s (Laurence Olivier) dead wife. The film, Alfred Hitchcock‘s American debut, was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two including Best Picture. Fontaine earned her first Best Actress nod and reteamed with Hitch the following year for another domestic thriller, Suspicion, which won her the Academy Award over sister Olivia de Havilland, who was herself nominated for Hold Back The Dawn. Fontaine’s third Best Actress nomination was awarded for 1943′s The Constant Nymph.

Legendary actress Joan Fontaine has died. She was 96. No details are immediately available.

Born in Japan to British parents in 1917, she and her sister Olivia de Havilland moved to California as toddlers and began working for Rko Pictures by 1935. Early roles include the likes of "Quality Street" and "The Women," "Gunga Din," "The Man Who Found Himself," and "Damsel in Distress".

Fontaine achieved stardom in the early 1940s when she scored an Oscar nomination for Alfred Hitchcock's Best Picture winner "Rebecca" (underrated and one of my personal favorite Hitchcocks).

The following year she went on to win the Oscar for "Suspicion," her second team-up with Hitchcock and the only actress to ever win for a Hitchcock film. Fontaine beat her sister that year at the Oscars, and a rejected attempt to congratulate her added to an already frictional relationship - the pair having not spoken since the 1970s. De Havilland currently lives in Paris.

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Ministry of Fear is a film that wouldn't work if not for insanity. The arc of the drama would be too haphazard, the explanations too unsatisfying, and the actions of its villains (to say nothing of its hero) too wildly irrational. But this is Europe in 1944, and irrationality is the order of the day. It's in the drone of planes overhead, the casual talk of blackout time, and the suspicious glances on the street. Because the world waiting for Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) when he gets out of the mental hospital has gone just as mad as him.

A wartime thriller from Fritz Lang (let's call it a noir), Ministry of Fear is generally regarded as one of the German director's more obscure American films, a status that will hopefully shift now that it has been released, and thus quasi-canonized, by the Criterion Collection. On the face of it, this...

Cutting off his ties to Hollywood with the blade-bare sinistry of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), Fritz Lang returned to Germany in the late 1950s to make the final two features of his career, both resumptions, updates and evolutions on subjects and styles that forged Lang's name in Germany. His last film envisioned what German society's arch (fictional) supervillain, Dr. Mabuse, would be up to in 1960, producing the terrifying The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. Less internationally known but more extravagant than that film, whose taut black and white sparseness resembles Lang's late work in Hollywood, is the master's "Indian Epic," a two part, three plus hour revision of a Weimar-era superfilm directed by Joe May from a scenario by future Lang wife Thea von Harbou.

The epic, split into two features—The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (1959)—lacks the reputation of the director's known superfilms of the 1920s (the first Dr.

One of the downsides of going to the Rotterdam Film Festival (more on which next week) was having to miss a whole week of Film Forum’s essential “Fritz Lang in Hollywood” retrospective which continues through February 10th. To search through Lang’s American posters (and the foreign posters for his American films) is to skulk through a world of fisted revolvers, prison cell bars, street corner shadows, knives, nooses, and dames in various stages of manhandled distress; a world of heightened emotions and febrile desperation with barely a smile to be seen.

While the foreign posters are often the most striking (like the French poster, above, for one of my very favorite American Langs, You Only Live Once), what many of the original American posters have going for them are their lurid taglines which up the ante of Langian doom another notch or two. Rancho Notorious: “Where anything goes ...for a price!

0424 Look, Stranger (Arielle Javitch, USA/Serbia/Slovenia)

Audacity isn’t a term that comes to mind when thinking of contemporary American independent film, a culture that often seems adverse to the kind of maverick, idiosyncratic risk-taking cinema that made its name in the 1980s. As such, plunges into the abyss are well worth noting. For her feature film debut, American filmmaker Arielle Javitch has gone to Serbia to make a movie in English with a handful of lines of dialog, no clear setting, and very few plot points. Serbia is where it is shot but it takes place nowhere, a sketch of evacuated urban outskirts and craggy landscapes punctuated by mine fields, random roadblocks, and sniper traps. No war seems to be going on, but the film evokes a place somewhere between the ashen pastoral and the war torn—for me it immediately called to mind Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker...

Digitally Mia is a new Cinematical feature celebrating, remembering and drawing attention to all those orphan movies that are currently not available on DVD or Blu-Ray in the United States. Some of these movies may have once been available on VHS or Laserdisc, or available as an import or a bootleg, but an official U.S. release -- which would reach the widest audience -- remains elusive.

The movies I'm most jonesing to see this week are Fritz Lang's final two films in America, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Both were produced at Rko Pictures, in black-and-white, in widescreen (SuperScope) and released just about four months apart. Even if you can get your hands on one of the old videotapes, you probably won't get a chance to see them letterboxed/widescreen. Dana Andrews stars in both, and I believe that both were produced with a "B" movie budget.

You need to know the rooftop schedule for August in Portland.

Here it is.

Northwest Film Center Exhibitions

Continuing in August:

Top Down: Rooftop Cinema

Join the Northwest Film Center on the panoramic parking rooftop at the Hotel deLuxe, Sw 15th at Yamhill, for some warm starry nights filled with lovable films, culinary treats, a little live music, and spectacular city views. The evenings begin at 8 p.m. with music and refreshments. Gracie’s Restaurant will offer easy-to-juggle meals, snacks, and cocktails, and additional beverages will be available from Tazo Tea and MacTarnahan’s Brewing. The screenings start when the sun sets (9-9:30 p.m.). Bring your favorite portable chair or blanket, but please, no pets or outside food or drink. Top Down admission is $8.

Little Darlings

Thursday, August 5, 8 p.m.

Director: Ronald F. Maxwell | Us 1980

“Don’t let the title fool you.” In this coming-of-age summer camp film...

"The producers of the Saw franchise" have yet to deliver anything good besides the original Saw movie (Dead Silence anyone), and even that had a lot more to do with luck than anything else. So hopefully for their sake The Tortured delivers, because if not, slapping "from the producers of Saw" on a movie to help sell it, is going to start becoming unproductive. Taken from today’s news headlines (and Law & Order's tagline), The Tortured is about a young mother (Erika Christensen – Traffic, Flight Plan) and her husband (Jesse Metcalf – Desperate Housewives, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt) who decide that the criminal justice system hasn’t adequately punished the man who kidnapped their son.

While I wasn’t just the hugest fan of Broken Lizard’s latest movie, The Slammin’ Salmon (you can check out my SXSW review right here), I still have to give credit to the comedy troupe for the film. Even their weakest film, which I believe this to be, is still funnier than 90% of the comedies that typically come out. You can probably knocked that down to 75-80% for the last couple of years, but it still gets a passing grade.

Having said that, I am shocked it took this long, but the film has finally been picked up for distribution. According to Variety, Anchor Bay picked up all Us, UK, and Australian rights to the film, and they plan to release the film in the Us in December. Not only that, but Comedy Central has also acquired first-run rights for free TV.

With films like Spread and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt...

When it comes to reviewing movies, I've always found that one of the most difficult things is not deciding whether a movie is good or bad, but rather, deciding whether a movie is bad or downright terrible. Make no mistake, there are many different levels of bad movies, but does anyone really care to get down to the nitty gritty of debating which ones are slightly better than others? It just seems like a colossal waste of energy. Fortunately, the good folks over at Rotten Tomatoes [1] have recently decided to sift through their vast review archives to give us the definitive Worst of the Worst list [2] for the past 10 years in film. I don't think there are too many surprises here, although the good news is that I think quite a few of these are movies that no one has seen. Maybe now they'll finally find the audience they deserve!

Matt Damon's laugh trek.

Matt Damon in "The Informant!"

Photo: Warner Bros.

It's October of 1992, and Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a hotshot executive at Archer Daniels Midland, the giant agricultural conglomerate, is going about his job. He has a full plate at the moment — some mysterious virus is screwing up the company's corn-syrup operation. Did you know there's corn syrup in everything — orange juice, maple syrup? It's true.

So Mark has a lot on his mind. Or at least that part of his mind that's not buzzing with a whole other swarm of odd fixations. Like ... sushi. "I wonder who went first on that one?" Mark wonders. "The guy without the grill?" There's also the threat of poison-winged butterflies. And ... polar bears! Do you realize that polar bears would be impossible to spot in their snowy Arctic habitat if it weren't for their black noses? It's true. Do you...

Charlize Theron on the reassembly line.

Charlize Theron in "The Burning Plain"

Photo: Magnolia Pictures

I think everybody likes a good Wtf movie — remember "Memento"? But director Guillermo Arriaga, who specializes in this sort of thing as a screenwriter ("Babel," "21 Grams"), has scrambled the narrative of "The Burning Plain," his first feature, to no very interesting purpose. It's a beautifully made film, with a couple of arresting performances; but it's so solemn it almost puts itself to sleep, and so pointlessly disjointed you kind of wish it would take a nap.

There's a nice tingle of inscrutability right at the beginning, when we meet Sylvia (Charlize Theron), the manager of a sleek cliff-top restaurant on the Oregon coast. Sylvia is clearly dragging around a heavy burden of woe, which she attempts to lighten by sleeping with any man who comes within hailing distance, and occasionally by gouging her thigh with jagged stones.

Megan Fox vs. Amanda Seyfried in a biting new comedy.

Megan Fox in "Jennifer's Body"

Photo: 20th Century Fox

Just as he's about to rip the beautiful Jennifer's tightly bound body to shreds with a knife, hunky young Nikolai tries to tell her why. Nikolai is the lead singer of an indie band called Low Shoulder. They're desperate to make it big — to be the next Maroon 5! But the world is awash in indie bands, so it's hard. "There are so many of us," he says, "and we're all so cute. ... Satan is our only hope." In the group's quest for diabolic new management, Nikolai has downloaded a Satanic ritual off the Internet. All that's required is a virgin sacrifice. Unfortunately, he's picked the wrong girl: Jennifer's days of sexual innocence are far behind her. ("I'm not even a backdoor virgin," she later admits.) So the ritual goes seriously wrong.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is so overheated -- even outlandish -- at times that you can't help but laugh at its histrionics. An old pro like Peter Hyams knows how to crank up the suspense when he needs to - even the mechanical suspense this film contains. Which makes Beyond a Reasonable Doubt a movie that keeps you watching, in spite of yourself at times, to see what trashy gem might come next, right up to its misdirection-fueled conclusion. Based on a 1956 Fritz Lang film, Hyams' version has a modern gloss of corruption and violence. This film looks at the clash of two overly ambitious men: Martin Hunter (Michael Douglas) and C.J. Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe). Hunter is the district attorney in Shreveport, La. He's got an unbroken string of 17 death-penalty convictions and has plans to run for governor. Nicholas is...

As the super-serious prestige season begins to gear up in Telluride, Toronto and Venice, an odd blend of matters spiritual, ecological, supernatural, and extraterrestrial are coming to a theater near you this week.

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"9"

After his Oscar-nominated short turned the heads of producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, former Weta artist Shane Acker delivers a full-length version of his terrifying vision of the future with this dark, dystopic animated fantasy. Boasting an all-star line-up of voices including Elijah Wood, Martin Landau, Jennifer Connelly, and John C. Reilly, "9" follows a group of sentient dolls, created during the final days of a devastating war against machines, who lead a post-apocalyptic search for a mystical life-giving device that will restore the spark of humanity to our otherwise decimated world.

Opens wide.

"9.9.09"

After more than 25 years of lugging the...

Labor Day weekend is coming up, and it's a holiday that marks the end of the summer movie season along with summer itself. All the kids are heading back to the classroom for another dreaded year of school and (for those in L.A. like myself) the weather starts to cool... hopefully. While fall usually isn't seen as a cinematic hotbed, with the blockbuster summer season over, there are still plenty of quality films to check out at the box office. This year we have Megan Fox's possessed body, a sensational animated film and a new zombie adventure. There's a lot more that I'm looking forward to this fall, so here is a comphrehensive look at what you can expect from this fall movie season.

September

Gamer - September 4th

Starring: Gerard Butler, Kyra Sedgwick, Michael C. Hall, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Leguizamo, Amber Valletta, Terry Crews, Logan Lerman,...

Don't let the 9/11 release date and the slightly loaded title fool you. "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" has absolutely nothing to do with the World Trade Center. It's actually a remake of director Fritz Lang's 1956 film-noir of the same name. I'm not usually drawn in by remake fever, but this story sounds pretty compelling. A journalist frames himself for murder so he can investigate a seemingly corrupt District Attorney, and the journo's Assistant Da love interest is caught in the middle.

The below exclusive clip is our very first glimpse at the movie. It must be early in the tale, as reporter C.J. Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe) is clearly trying to woo Ada Ella Crystal (Amber Tamblyn). Can't say I blame him. I'm guessing that Ella's faith in Da bossman Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas) will start to waver shortly after this.

Director Peter Hyams turned out two of my favorite...

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jack Olsen’s psychological thriller spec script Within has been acquired by Screen Gems. Unique Features’ Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne (formerly of New Line Cinema) and Dylan Sellers will produce the movie.

The screenplay is a story of domestic madness in the Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Fatal Attraction mold, about a woman who’s hired by a married couple to be a surrogate mother, and then decides she wants both the baby and the husband for herself. No director or cast has yet been attached. Olsen has also worked on the screenplay for a remake of Fritz Lang’s 1956 noir film Beyond A Reasonable Doubt for Rko and The Relic/End Of Days director Peter Hyams.

Upcoming Film Scores lists the ten most exciting, promising and anticipated film scores of 2009, according to its editor Mikael Carlsson who can't wait to hear what will come out musically of these projects:

1. Avatar (James Horner)

Director James Cameron and composer James Horner are of course best known for the multi-zillion-whatever-megahit Titanic, but they also gave us Aliens in 1986 which stands out as one of the most exciting nailbiter scores in sci-fi history. On that film, Cameron gave Horner a pretty hard time as judging from the composer interview on the special edition DVD, and basically what you hear in the film is the result of a composer writing under enormous pressure. On Avatar, the situation is the complete opposite. A luxury in film scoring today, the total time given to the scoring process on this film will probably exceed one year! Horner is currently working exclusively on this film,...

Franc. Reyes has been hired to write and direct the remake of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt for Regency Enterprises. The original film was one of the last English-language films from writer-director Fritz Lang. It starred Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Arthur Franz, Philip Bourneuf and Ed Binns. The story centers on a newsman who intentionally frames himself for a murder he didn't commit in order to point out the dangers of circumstantial evidence and to expose an overzealous district attorney who has manipulated evidence in the past to gain convictions. Everything is going as planned until his friend, the one person who can exonerate him, is killed.

Regency Enterprises -- which along with Fox 2000 produced this past weekend's top-grossing movie, Man on Fire -- has found the truth in David Collard's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Collard's spec script is a remake of the 1956 RKO film of the same name. The original Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was one of the last English-language films from writer-director Fritz Lang. It starred Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Arthur Franz, Philip Bourneuf and Ed Binns. The story centers on a newsman who intentionally frames himself for a murder he didn't commit to point out the dangers of circumstantial evidence and to expose an overzealous district attorney who has manipulated evidence in the past to gain convictions. Everything is going as planned until his friend, the one person who can exonerate him, is killed. The Collard script, developed internally at RKO, will be produced by Regency topper Arnon Milchan along with RKO's Ted Hartley. Nine Yards Entertainment's Aaron Ray, who repped the project and sold it to Regency's Sanford Panitch and Peter Cramer, will receive executive producer credit. Collard is repped by Endeavor.