Welcome to the dog days of summer, passing through another independence day, and a new batch of hot releases via the Criterion Collection. The only film is a re-release, a French New Wave staple, while Martin Scorsese gets another film of his on the C shelf and two independent 90s flicks get their due. On top of that, a collection of B-Westerns in the 1950s come out that were as cinematic as any John Ford-John Wayne film made in the same era and remain a hidden part of the genre. Here are the films coming out this July.
The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher (1957-1960)
A series of low-budget westerns from Boetticher would finally be his breakthrough in a long career going back to the 1930s. Collaborating on films with actor Randolph Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, the Ranown Cycle is actually a total of seven films, but only these five are part of the collection. The Tall T, Decision At Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station are all connected through storylines of greed, allegiance, quiet motives, and the thin line of morality. Other notables that took part include Maureen O’Sullivan, Lee Van Cleef, and James Coburn, who made his film debut in Ride Lonesome.
Breathless (1960)
Jean-Luc Godard joined his friend, Francois Truffaut, in establishing the phenomenon that was the New Wave on screen with this frolicking crime story of a wanna be gangster (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who kills a police officer and goes into hiding with his lover (Jean Seberg). The jump cuts, the jazz score, the radical film techniques to make this film; it wasn’t a wave, but a tsunami of change that permanently put Godard’s name in film history and built up a new sea of French directorial talent that would follow after.
After Hours (1985)
A film in the middle of Scorsese’s resume is this dark comedy starring Griffin Dunne who goes on a whim to hook up with a woman (Rosanna Arquette) and travels New York City’s bizarre underworld. Wanting to get home, he finds himself trapped from escaping due to mistaken identity and finds SoHo as rooms of unique characters. Comic duo Tommy Chong & Cheech Marin, plus Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, and Catherine O’Hara also star in a modern Scorsese story of New York’s business life and a move from conformism to surrealism.
One False Move (1992)
Carl Franklin’s noir follows two drug runners who scramble away from a killing scene in LA and drive eastward to Arkansas where a police chief is aware of their activities because of a woman that is connected between the two. Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton (who co-wrote it), Cynda Williams, and Michael Beach star in this cross-country drive that has no boundaries and delivers a shocking secret that wraps all of them together. It came close to going straight-to-video, but enough acclaim from film festivals got it a theatrical release, and now, it is here.
The Watermelon Woman (1996)
An important point in the unwrapping of queer cinema, Cheryl Dunne wrote, directed, and starred in this comedy of identity and discovery. An aspiring filmmaker works on a documentary about an unknown Black actress whose life parallels hers as a lesbian who begins dating a white girl (Guinevere Turner). Learning more about the titular character also means delving into Hollywood’s history with Black women in the racist stereotypical mammy roles and representing gay characters. With only $300,000 to make this film, Dunne’s exploration into a subject that had never been told before is an incredible discovery and one that needs to be portrayed more.
Follow me on Twitter: @brian_cine (Cine-A-Man)
