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Goodbye February, hello March! Prime Video! This month, the Amazon streamer will add dozens of film titles to its library on the first of the month, including 1989’s “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” for those with spring training fever.

For the rest of the month, Prime Video will premiere several of this year’s most anticipated features, including the new “Road House” remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor on March 21. (The original starring Patrick Swayze will also come to the streamer on March 1). John Cena will play make-believe for real in the long-awaited comedy “Ricky Stanicky” opposite Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, Jermaine Fowler. March also brings the second half “Invincible” Season 2, which returned after more than two years this past November.

From a new comedy special from Tig Notaro to live National Women’s Soccer League matchups and more, find out everything coming to Prime Video in March,...

It’s a fairly big month on Prime Video in March, at least compared to the other streaming service offerings! There are are two major films arriving on Amazon’s streamer. The first is a remake of the Patrick Swayze action classic Road House. Stepping into the late Swayze’s shoes? A crazy-jacked Jake Gyllenhaal, who really seemed to want to go the extra mile for this project.

The other big film coming to Prime Video is Ricky Stanicky, and the plot sounds really fun! It follows three friends who have always blamed their mistakes on an imaginary guy called Ricky Stanicky. When they have to finally introduce people to Stanicky, they decide to hire a washed-up actor (John Cena) to impersonate him. Hilarity ensues, maybe? But if neither of those make your watchlist, there’s also the return of the animated hit series Invincible.

Here’s everything coming to...

Many Hollywood stars have sat tall in the saddle to make the Western movie genre better over the years. While casual fans will know names like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, two titans with very different methods of playing the Western hero archetype, there were other actors who put their unique stamp on one of Hollywood's longest-running movie genres. There were real cowboys who remembered their grandfathers recounting the Civil War who performed as stuntmen in some of Hollywood's earliest silent films, and when the Western genre really took off during its Golden Age, it sought to capture their brave frontier spirit.

The sort of actors who shaped Westerns changed over the years, and after the Golden Age of Hollywood in the '40s and '50s, and Westerns became slightly more inclusive, there were more opportunities for every performer to make their mark. As audience tastes changed and America...

There’s a lot of ways to describe Jordan Peele’s Nope: an update on “Watch the Skies!” sci-fi from the 1950s; a tribute to Steven Spielberg’s 1970s blockbuster building blocks (what if those Close Encounter of the Third Kind UFOs were just hungry, extraterrestrial great white sharks?); a 21st century meta-text about what we watch and why we keep watching it. All 100-percent accurate.

But read the reviews and explainers and numerous think pieces on Peele’s latest blend of horror and commentary, and there’s one word that keeps popping up,...

Plenty of media stories about Jeymes Samuel’s “The Harder They Fall” have played up the Western’s all-Black cast, with many describing the Netflix film as a “corrective” to the popular Hollywood image of an all-white Old West. But a cursory Google search will offer that this credit has been attributed to a number of other titles that came long before Samuel and even the oldest members of his all-star cast were even born.

The Western film genre is unique to a specific period and place and is, as such, instantly recognizable. The cinema helped immortalize the cowboy, rendering him, in many ways, inseparable from its cultural tradition. The cinema has also immortalized the cowboy as a white man, erasing the Black Americans who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and riders of the American frontier.

While some are quick to groan at every instance of colorblind casting, those...

“While the events of this story are fictional…These. People. Existed.” Thus begins Jeymes Samuel’s western “The Harder They Fall,” currently streaming on Netflix. The period picture is populated with 19th century Black icons including Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), a former enslaved cowboy, Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz), the first Black star-route mail carrier in the U.S., and Rufus Black (Idris Elba), the head of the ruthless multi-racial gang of bank robbers.

“The Harder They Fall” is the first major Western led by a Black cast since Mario Van Peebles 1993 “Posse.” The director, though, told the L.A. Times that “The Harder They Fall” shouldn’t be described as simply a “Black” Western. “It’s just a story about these people in their own world, just like ‘Rio Bravo” is a story about John Wayne and Dean Martin in their own world,” Samuel said. “These aren’t white Westerns or white movies,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Black Westerns

An often overlooked aspect of the western genre is the emergence of the Black-led films born around the Civil Rights era and continuing throughout the century. With essential context from guest programmer and film scholar Mia Mask, The Criterion Channel is now presenting a series of these works, including Rutledge (1960), Duel at Diablo (1966), The Learning Tree (1969), El Condor (1970), Skin Game (1971), Black Rodeo (1972), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Legend of Black Charley (1972), Thomasine and Bushrod (1974), Posse (1993), Buffalo Soldiers (1997), and Rosewood (1997).

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)

Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas,...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their March 2021 lineup, which includes no shortage of remarkable programming. Highlights from the slate include eight gems from Preston Sturges, Elaine May’s brilliant A New Leaf, a series featuring Black Westerns, Ann Hui’s Boat People, the new restoration of Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi.

They will also add films from their Essential Fellini boxset, series on Dirk Bogarde and Nelly Kaplan, and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned and Death in Venice, and more. In terms of recent releases, there’s also Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century and Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In.

Check out the lineup below, along with the teaser for the Black Westerns series. For weekly streaming updates across all services, bookmark this page.

The Adventurer, Charles Chaplin, 1917

Bandini, Bimal Roy, 1963

Behind the Screen, Charles Chaplin, 1916

Black Jack, Ken Loach, 1979

Black Rodeo, Jeff Kanew, 1972

Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen,...

Unbridled Passion by Howard Hughes

Following the release in March of ‘A Man Called Gannon’ (1968), Simply Media in the UK continue to release more Universal-International westerns, this time of 1940s and ‘50s vintage. The new releases, out on 18 April, are ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949), ‘Cattle Drive’ (1951) and ‘Black Horse Canyon’ (1954). This trio of films are literally ‘Horse Operas’, with the accent on thoroughbred steeds and their importance and role in the working west. Be they cattle drovers, stock breeders or outlaws, where would any of them be without the horse? The answer, of course, is walking.

I’ll review the DVDs in the order I watched them. First up is ‘Cattle Drive’, a 1951 western directed by Kurt Neumann. Chester Graham Jnr (Dean Stockwell), the spoilt, arrogant son of railroad magnet Chester Graham Snr (Leon Ames), is accidentally left behind when the train he is travelling on makes a water stop.

Herzog: The Collection I've been reviewing Werner Herzog movies for the last 13 weeks or whatever it is and all in anticipation of this new 16-film collection from Shout Factory, which finally releases today and includes Even Dwarfs Started Small, Land of Silence and Darkness, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Stroszek, Woyzeck, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Ballad of the Little Soldier, Where the Green Ants Dream, Cobra Verde, Lessons of Darkness, Little Dieter Needs to Fly and My Best Fiend. Of the bunch I can tell you flat out Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo are great films and that's without the special features this set contains, which are: English Audio Commentaries: Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass,...

Actor James Garner, who starred in hit TV shows such as Maverick and The Rockford Files, passed away on Saturday at the age of 86 in his Brentwood area Los Angeles home.

Born James Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, James Garner became a merchant seaman before moving to Los Angeles to work at his father's carpeting business, before serving in the Korean War, where he earned the Purple Heart before his discharge in 1952. After studying business administration at the University of Oklahoma for a semester, he returned to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting.

After landing small roles in the TV series Cheyenne, James Garner landed a contract at Warner Bros. at $200 a week, where he had a number of supporting roles before his breakout performance in Sayonara alongside Marlon Brando. That lead to his first starring role in Darby's Rangers after Charlton Heston walked off of the production.

In...

©2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Oscar-nominated actor James Garner has passed away at the age of 86.

From AP:

Garner, whose whimsical style in the 1950s TV Western “Maverick” led to a stellar career in TV and films such as “The Rockford Files” and his Oscar-nominated “Murphy’s Romance,” was found dead of natural causes at his home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles Saturday evening, Los Angeles police officer Alonzo Iniquez said early Sunday.

Police responded to a call around 8 p.m. Pdt and confirmed Garner’s identity from family members, Iniquez told The Associated Press.

There was no immediate word on a more specific cause of death. Garner had suffered a stroke in May 2008, just weeks after his 80th birthday.

Although he was adept at drama and action, Garner was best known for his low-key, wisecracking style, especially with his hit TV series, “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files.

Highbrow distributor Kino Lorber is well-known for its DVD collection of art house films, especially those of historic and international significance--think Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." Now, the distributor is launching a new 'Studio Classics' label, releasing eight high-profile titles on Blu-ray this July--all of which will be making their Blu-ray debut, and one of which, "Paris Blues," will be released for the very first time on Blu-ray or DVD.  The new collection includes the Best Picture Oscar-winner "Marty," as well as films by giants such as Billy Wilder, Sydney Pollack and Delbert Mann. Here's a list of all eight releases--no doubt there will be more to come as Kino Lorber's new label grows. "Witness for the Prosecution" "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" "Sabata" "The Scalphunters" "Marty" "Separate Tables" "Duel at Diablo" "Paris Blues"...

Below is a brief behind-the-scenes short for the making of the 1966 western Duel at Diablo with Sidney Poitier and James Garner. The short shows Poitier learning how to ride a horse, and how to draw and shoot a six-shooter, just like a real rootin’ tootin’ cowboy.

The film is actually really good, solid western (back in the good old days when westerns were popular… alas…), and Poitier plays a rather interesting character in the film. He’s a fancy duds-wearing former U.S. Cavalry man (he burned his old army clothes when he resigned), who reluctantly joins a wagon train to make money, so he can open a gambling joint. Tons of action and lots of bravery.

The film was actually somewhat controversial when it first came out because of its violence (remember this is still a few years before the ratings system was established), but looking it at today,...

I recently posted an item on S & A about the controversial film Serbian Film which was screened recently at the SXSW in Austin to stunned reactions from the sickening violence and depravity in the film. The fact that films have been always controversial over violent content is definitely not a new thing and I was reminded by that when I recently came across an article about the now forgotten 1970 western Soldier Blue. A massive hit in the U.K. and overseas but far less so in the U.S. (for reasons that will be obvious in a moment) the film was produced by Avco Embassy, a major film production company back then, and directed by Ralph Nelson.

Nelson, who died in 1987, made several films with Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, Duel at Diablo, The Wilby Conspiracy) and many other films that dealt, as well, with social issues such as 1969’s …tick.