News

Our decision to declare Miami Vice this century’s greatest action film some eight years ago was neither made lightly nor received unanimously, but fortune favors the bold. Part and parcel of its canonization, Michael Mann’s classic streams on Criterion this July as part of Miami Neonoir, a set boasting Larry Clark’s Bully, the recently departed George Armitage’s Miami Blues, Out of Sight, Body Heat, and John Bailey’s lesser-seen China Moon. Series-wise, films about David Lynch, Picasso, and Basquiat fill out Portraits of Artists, while Summer Romances arrives just in time for you to imagine a better life than watching movies on your laptop.

July is a retrospective-heavy month: the recently restored, totally essential films of Jacques Rozier, works directed and shot by D.A. Pennebaker, shorts by Suzan Pitt, and Lino Brocka, Moustapha Alassane, Michael Haneke, and Hou Hsiao-hsien programs are complemented by an exposition of the Rolling Stones on film.

By Lee Pfeiffer

When it was announced that producer Elliott Kastner had succeeded in signing both Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson for the 1976 Western, "The Missouri Breaks", the project was viewed as a "can't miss" at the international box-office. This would be Brando's first film since his back-to-back triumphs in "The Godfather" and "Last Tango in Paris" and Nicholson had just won the Best Actor Oscar for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The two Hollywood icons were actually neighbors who lived next door to each other, but they had never previously teamed for a film project. Kastner, whose prowess as a street-wise guy who used unorthodox methods to get films off the ground, had used a clever tactic to sign up both superstars: he told each man that the other had already committed to the project, when, in fact, neither had. With Brando and Nicholson aboard, Kastner hired a respected director,...

Another unexpected comic treasure from the mid ’70s! Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston make an irresistible pair of would-be outlaws in a tale of the modern West — high-country Montana, actually — where a gentleman rancher from New Jersey owns all the land and making an honest living is just too boring. Thomas McGuane’s hilariously laid-back dialogue pits our slacker cattle rustlers against society — but only in the pursuit of having a good time. Frank Perry’s beautifully directed show gives choice roles to a fistful of actors: Clifton James, Elizabeth Ashley, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickens, Charlene Dallas, Richard Bright, Joe Spinell, Patti D’Arbanville. Call it ‘literate’ country comedy, with musical accompaniment by Jimmy Buffett. The extras include a great new interview with star Jeff Bridges.

Rancho Deluxe

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1975 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 19, 2021 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome /

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley,...

Tony Sokol Jun 12, 2019

Sylvia Miles was the original Sally on the Dick van Dyke Show, and a fixture of New York's entertainment world.

Iconic New York stage and screen scene-stealer Sylvia Miles died at age 94, according to Variety. Miles created a string of incredibly memorable, very New York characters, often with very little screen time. She was on the screen for six minutes in Midnight Cowboy (1969), about five and a half minutes in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for both. She only sold two apartments in Wall Street and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Miles had three short scenes selling Amy Irving to the pickle guy in Crossing Delancey.

Her starring role in Andy Warhol's Heat, is no less memorable, though criminally under-watched. A take on the classic Sunset Boulevard, as if any of Warhol's movies weren't, Miles played the Gloria Swanson...

Margot Kidder, who is probably best known for portraying Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the 1970s and ’80s Superman movies and starred in many other films including The Amityville Horror while struggling with mental illness, has died. She was 69. The Franzen-Davis Funeral Home in Livingston, Mt, said she died Sunday but did not reveal a cause of death.

Kidder appeared with many of Hollywood’s leading men during her 50-year career, including Robert Redford and James Garner, it was her role as the plucky Daily Planet reporter with a penchant for finding trouble in Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983) and Superman IV (1987) that shot her to fame.

Born on October 17, 1948, in Yellowknife, Canada, Kidder started her career in TV in the late 1960s, guesting on such shows as McQueen and The Mod Squad. She starred opposite Gene Wilder in the 1970 film Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx...