Cross-posted from Row Three

A gaggle of excited children chase a van into the center of a tiny Spanish village – a movie has come to town, a rare occasion that brings nearly everyone in town to check it out. It’s 1940, World War II is going on elsewhere in Europe, the country is in recovery from their own civil war, but the movie is 1931′s Frankenstein, and the village’s attention is riveted. Based on this opening, it seems as if The Spirit of the Beehive is going to be a movie about the movies and the effect of movies on small-town populations – like a Cinema Paradiso or Shadow Magic. And though the rest of the film unfolds based on the catalyst of two little girls, sisters Isabel and Ana, seeing Frankenstein, it quickly transcends cinema and becomes about something far more primal – imagination itself.

Young Ana has two questions for her older sister Isabel: Why did the monster kill the little girl, and why did the villagers kill the monster? The fact that she doesn’t wholly connect the two events together perhaps makes it less surprising that she soon identifies much more with the monster than the villagers (the lack of perceived causal connection between the two also indicates to the audience that we shouldn’t look for exact 1:1 correlations between Frankenstein and the events of The Spirit of the Beehive). Isabel’s answer is that neither the girl nor the monster died, firstly because it’s a movie and the movies aren’t real, but also because the monster is still alive – she’s seen him at night in an abandoned house nearby. This response is very telling. Isabel’s imagination is good at creating stories, especially ones with a cruel edge that mislead others for her amusement, but she herself knows what’s real and what’s made up. She doesn’t get lost in her own imaginings the way that Ana soon will.

Please continue reading this entry at Row Three.

A Hard Day’s Night, playing at 7:25am on Friday, September 4th, on IFC

Monday, August 31

6:15pm – IFC – Before Sunrise
Though some people think Richard Linklater’s 2004 follow-up Before Sunset is better than this 1995 original, I’m going to disagree, at least until I get the chance to see both together again. Before Sunrise may be little more than an extended conversation between two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend all night talking and walking the streets of Vienna, I fell in love with it at first sight. Linklater has a way of making movies where nothing happens seem vibrant and fascinating, and call me a romantic if you wish, but this is my favorite of everything he’s done.
1995 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
Must See
(repeats at 5:05am on the 1st)

8:00pm – TCM – The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Based on John LeCarre’s bleak novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is the anti-James Bond spy story, full of world-weary cynicism and spies who just want to get out, but can’t. It’s hard, and cold, and its edge of sadness and grief won’t let you go.
1965 UK. Director: Martin Ritt. Starring: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner.
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10:00pm – TCM – The Haunting (1963)
No worries, this is the good, 1963 version of The Haunting, not the overblown 1999 remake. The story’s the same, but Robert Wise’s original is creepy, disturbing, and, like, good.
1963 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn.

12:00M – IFC – The Proposition
Australia’s answer to the western; Guy Pearce must hunt down and capture his brothers for the law in order to save his own skin. Gritty and violent almost to a fault, and it definitely brought new life to the Western genre.
2005 Australia. Director: John Hillcoat. Starring: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone.

Tuesday, September 1

7:30am – TCM – The Window
Young boy Bobby Driscoll is a chronic liar, which makes it very difficult to make his family and other adults believe him when he claims he saw a murder being committed. But when the murderer finds out what he knows… A solid little thriller told from a child’s point of view.
1949 USA. Director: Ted Tetzlaff. Starring: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman.
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2:00pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce
In quite probably Joan Crawford’s best role (only perhaps excepting her catty “other woman” in The Women), she plays a woman trying to work her way up in the world from lowly waitress to entrepreneur, all the while dealing with her shrew of a daughter. Melodrama isn’t a particularly prized genre these days, but films like Mildred Pierce show how good melodramas can be with the right confluence of studio style, director, and star.
1945 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden.
Must See

8:30pm – IFC – Office Space
Anyone who’s ever worked in an office will identify with Office Space immediately – with the paper-jamming printers, the piles of beaurocratic paperwork, and the difficulty of keeping up with staplers if not the plot to make off with boatloads of money due to an accounting loophole. In fact, if you do or have worked an office job, I’m gonna call this required viewing.
1999 USA. Director: Mike Judge. Starring: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston.

11:30pm – TCM – Citizen Kane
Widely considered the greatest American film ever made, I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t seen it. The quest for what makes publisher/politician Charles Foster Kane tick takes a journalist through a fractured narrative that never seems to give any definitive answers. Personally, I respect and recommend Kane for its innovations in narrative, cinematography, and cinema language, but I find it a difficult film to love (yet even that is fitting, as the difficulty of loving or being loved by Kane himself is a central theme).
1941 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead.
Must See

1:45am (2nd) – TCM – The Magnificent Ambersons
Welles followed up Citizen Kane with this film about a wealthy but decaying American family, but wasn’t given nearly as much creative freedom. But even with studio interference, it’s well worth seeing.
1942 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Tim Holt, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead.

Wednesday, September 2

8:00pm – TCM – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra puts on his idealist hat to tell the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an inexperienced young man appointed as a junior senator because the corrupt senior senator thinks he’ll be easy to control. But Smith doesn’t toe the party line, instead launching a filibuster for what he believes in. Wonderful comedienne Jean Arthur is the journalist who initially encourages Smith so she can get a great story from his seemingly inevitable downfall, but soon joins his cause.
1939 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Thomas Mitchell.

8:00pm – IFC – Gangs of New York
I found this film a difficult one to like when I watched it, but I haven’t seen it for five years – perhaps a rewatch is in order. It certainly is hard to argue with the concept of a Scorsese/diCaprio/Day-Lewis trifecta in a story about Irish gangs at the dawn of New York’s existence.
2003 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo diCaprio, Cameron Diaz.
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(repeats at 2:30am on the 3rd)

10:15pm – TCM – Casablanca
Against all odds, one of the best films Hollywood has ever produced, focusing on Bogart’s sad-eyed and world-weary expatriot Rick Blaine, his former lover Ingrid Bergman, and her current husband Paul Henreid, who needs safe passage to America to escape the Nazis and continue his work with the Resistance. It’s the crackling script that carries the day here, and the wealth of memorable characters that fill WWII Casablanca with life and energy.
1943 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains.
Must See

2:45am (3rd) – TCM – Notorious
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films, and one of the greatest spy films ever. Spy Cary Grant recruits Ingrid Bergman because of her relationship with suspected enemy spy Claude Rains – but how far is she willing to go? Simply fantastic on every level.
1946 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains.
Must See

4:30am (3rd) – TCM – Four Daughters
Something of a high-B-level programmer, Four Daughters tells the fairly routine story of four sisters and their love interests; there’s more to it than meets the eye, though, and starlet Priscilla Lane (notably of Arsenic and Old Lace) carries it well with her two sisters Lola and Rosemary. It’s interesting to contrast with its 1954 musical remake Young at Heart, which boasts the greater star power of Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. They’re virtually identical in script, but this one strikes a more sincere note with me. It also spawned three sequels (Daughters Courageous, Four Wives, and Four Mothers), which TCM is playing in a row, but this is the only one that’s more than half-way decent.
1938 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Priscilla Lane, Claude Rains, John Garfield.
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Thursday, September 3

4:00pm – TCM – Shane
Alan Ladd plays the titular cowboy, idolized by the young son of the family he takes refuge with as he tries to escape Jack Palance.
1953 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Jack Palance.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Magnificent Seven
Homage comes full circle as American John Sturges remakes Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai as a western – Kurosawa’s film itself was a western transposed into a Japanese setting. Sturges ain’t no Kurosawa, but the story of a group of outcast cowboys banding together to protect an oppressed village is still a good one, plus there’s a young Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson in the cast.
1960 USA. Director: John Sturges. Starring: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson.

Friday, September 4

7:25am – IFC – A Hard Day’s Night
Richard Lester’s 1964 Beatles-starring film straddles several genres – musical, concert film, documentary, comedy. The good news is that it’s an excellent film in any genre. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any film an exuberant as this one, and with the Beatles right on the cusp of becoming the greatest band of all time.
1964 UK. Director: Richard Lester. Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr.
Must See
(repeats at 12:35pm)

8:00pm – TCM – The War of the Worlds (1953)
The post-H.G. Wells, post-Orson Welles, pre-Steven Spielberg version. Mysterious ships land, disintegrate people with their laser beams, and generally wreak havok. The special effects are hokey now, of course, but still pretty cool-looking in a retro way; the really interesting thing is the way Haskin cut in actual newsreel war footage to lend an air of realism in with all of George Pal’s science fiction effects.
1953 USA. Director: Byron Haskin. Starring: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson.
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Saturday, September 5

1:30pm – IFC – Waking Life
Richard Linklater’s first foray into overlaid animation is a philosophical dreamscape that’ll either leave you cold or inhabit your thoughts for weeks. It’s the latter for me. Like most of Linklater’s films, it’s largely made up of people talking, but with the added interest of the unique ever-shifting, never-solid animation style (which he’d reuse with a slightly more standard sci-fi story in A Scanner Darkly).
2001 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.

8:00pm – IFC – Garden State
First-time director Braff brings his quirky personality and taste in indie music to this story of a young man who returns to his home town for the first time in years for his mother’s funeral. While there, he meets a girl who teaches him how to feel for the first time since his father started prescribing meds to him as a child. It’s become a popular pastime to hate on Garden State and its self-conscious quirk, but I refuse. I loved it when I first saw it, and I love it now.
2004 USA. Director: Zach Braff. Starring: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard.
(repeats at 2:00am and 8:15am on the 6th)

Sunday, September 6

8:00am – TCM – Gilda
Gilda was the last person Johnny ever expected to meet again, much less as the wife of his boss, a sleazy casino operator in South America. Glenn Ford plays a quintessential defeated noir narrator in Johnny, while Rita Hayworth imbues Gilda with all her available mystique to make Gilda one of the more memorable films of the 1940s.
1946 USA. Director: Charles Vidor. Starring: Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth, George Macready

4:15pm – IFC – Bride and Prejudice
Laugh at me if you must for recommending Chadha’s Bollywood-infused version of Pride and Prejudice, but I love it. It’s silly, it’s beautiful, it’s a fun exercise in adaptation of literary classics, and it’s only slightly weighed down by Martin Henderson’s woodenness.
2005 UK. Director: Gurinder Chadha. Starring: Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews, Alexis Bledel.
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6:30pm – TCM – The Purple Rose of Cairo
A love letter to cinema, The Purple Rose of Cairo has Woody Allen at his most romantic. Unhappy housewife Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes to the cinema to see The Purple Rose of Cairo again and again, where she fantasizes over hunky character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). Much to her surprise (and the other characters’ consternation), Baxter steps off the screen to join her. It makes it even more complicated when Gil, the actor who played Baxter, turns up as well.
1985 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello.

2:00am – TCM – La Ronde
A dazzling cyclical story following an interconnected series of lovers from encounter to encounter in turn of the century Vienna. Sounds lascivious, but in the hands of Ophüls, it’s charmingly sophisticated and beautifully realized. See also Ophüls’ The Earrings of Madade de…, which has a similar structure, but centered on the travels of the titular earrings.
1950 France. Director: Max Ophüls. Starring: Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux.
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Thanks to Marina and Andrew over at Row Three for finding this video, from the TV competition Ukraine’s Got Talent. Once in a while something truly brilliant comes to light from these shows, and Kseniya Simonova’s incredible sand-painting certainly qualifies. Simonova uses sand, light, and music to convey stories from Ukraine’s history – constantly shifting the images from one thing into another as she goes along. Marina pointed out that we’re seeing it “created and destroyed with every movement,” and that, I think, is a huge part of what makes it so amazing – we’re witnessing both the creative and destructive nature of art played out before our eyes, and each creation requires the destruction of the previous to exist. And yet, many times the destruction isn’t entire; rather, it’s a morphing from one thing to another – some things changing due to the changed context rather than in their own essence. Even without being intimately familiar with the Ukrainian history portrayed, this video moved me to tears. Another short is in two parts on YouTube, here and here.

Some Came Running, playing Friday, August 28th, at 8pm EST on TCM.

Monday, August 24

7:30am – TCM – A Star is Born (1937)
This is not the better-known Judy Garland version, but the non-musical version featuring Janet Gaynor in one of her last roles. Gaynor’s not well remembered now, but she won the very first Academy Award for Best Actress back in 1928, and she holds this story of a hopeful ingenue married to a has-been actor together. I still love Judy’s version better (because I can’t get enough of her singing “The Man That Got Away”), but this one is well worth watching as well.
1937 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou

8:30am – IFC – Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
French writer/actor/director Jacques Tati specialized in nearly-silent physical comedy that reminds one at times of Chaplin or Keaton, but with a slightly more ironic French flair about it. In Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, a trip to the seashore turns out to be anything but relaxing.
1953 France. Director: Jacques Tati. Starring: Jacques Tati
(repeats at 1:30pm and 5:00am on the 25th)

6:45pm – TCM – Nothing Sacred
A newspaper offers to give terminally-ill Carole Lombard her dream trip to New York City in exchange for publishing her experiences. Only problem is, she’s lying about being terminally ill. One of the zaniest of all 1930s zany comedies – that said, it can be a little on the shrill side.
1937 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly.
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10:00pm – TCM – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
Fredric March won his first Oscar for his role as the meek doctor and his violent alter ego, but honestly, the make-up department deserves most of those accolades. Well-done, posh version of the story.
1931 USA. Director: Rouben Mamoulian. Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, August 25

6:15pm – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Luis Buñuel made a career out of making surrealist anti-bourgeois films, and this is one of the most surreal, most anti-bourgeois, and best films he ever made, about a dinner party that just can’t quite get started due to completely absurd interruptions.
1972 France. Director: Luis Buñuel. Starring: Fernando Rey, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Stephane Audran.
(repeats at 10:15am on the 26th)

8:00pm – IFC – Blue Velvet
I’ll be honest, this is not one of my favorite David Lynch films. There are a lot of things I like about it. The unsettling take on suburbia, the gorgeously disturbing photography, the kids playing detective, the severed ear, you know, the normal Lynch stuff. But then it just gets to be too cruel for me. Still, it’s a Lynch classic, and you oughta see it. And I oughta see it again, see if my opinion has changed.
1986 USA. Director: David Lynch. Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper.
(repeats at 3:45am on the 26th)

2:30am (26th) – TCM – Wuthering Heights
William Wyler’s moody 1939 version of Emily Bronte’s moody gothic novel, with Laurence Olivier as the moody Heathcliff. It’s moody. Get it? Interestingly, I’m more impressed generally with Geraldine Fitzgerald’s Isabella than Merle Oberon’s Catherine/Cathy, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
1939 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Geraldine Fitzgerald, David Niven, Flora Robson.

Wednesday, August 26

8:00pm – TCM – The King and I
Oklahoma! is my unabashed favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, but I have a lot of admiration for The King and I, if only because it addresses far more serious topics with far less happy outcomes than most musicals ever do.
1956 USA. Director: Walter Lang. Starring: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno.
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10:30pm – TCM – The Magnificent Seven
Homage comes full circle as American John Sturges remakes Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai as a western – Kurosawa’s film itself was a western transposed into a Japanese setting. Sturges ain’t no Kurosawa, but the story of a group of outcast cowboys banding together to protect an oppressed village is still a good one, plus there’s a young Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson in the cast.
1960 USA. Director: John Sturges. Starring: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, James Coburn.

11:00pm – Sundance – Black Book
Paul Verhoeven invests Black Book with just enough of his signature over-the-top brashness to give the WWII story of a Dutch Jewish woman infiltrating the Gestapo for the Resistance a healthy dose of panache. Every time you think it won’t go the next step, it does, and it’s ravishingly entertaining the whole time.
2006 Netherlands. Director: Paul Verhoeven. Starring: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman.
Newly Featured!

12:00M – IFC – Pulp Fiction
With Quentin Tarantino’s newest film Inglourious Basterds out in cinemas this week, what better time to revisit his most iconic, game-changing film of all? Must See
1994 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Bruce Willis, Eric Stoltz, Ving Rhames.
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4:30am (27th) – Sundance – Hannah Takes the Stairs
One of the first Mumblecore films to get a decent release, Hannah shows the rather mundane existence of a girl trying to decide which relationship to pursue. It’s talky, it’s low-fi, it’s simultaneously naturalistic and affected, but there’s something raw about it that’s compelling. I didn’t love it, but I’m glad there’s a place for films like this in our cinematic landscape.
2007 USA. Director: Joe Swanberg. Starring: Greta Gerwig, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osborne, Mark Duplass.
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Thursday, August 27

4:00pm – TCM – The Big Knife
Clifford Odets’ searing play about his hatred of Hollywood comes to the screen, with Jack Palance mugging as a frustrated actor who wants out of his contract, but can’t get out because the studio is blackmailing him. Between Odets’ overly poetic dialogue, director Robert Aldrich’s melodramatic style, and Palance’s scenery-chewing, this is a camptastic good time.
1955 USA. Director: Robert Aldrich. Starring: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters.
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6:00pm – TCM – While the City Sleeps
The head of a New York newspaper dies, leaving it in his son Vincent Price’s hands to choose someone to promote: managing editor Thomas Mitchell, lead reporter Dana Andrews, or a couple of other people. The way to get the job? Get the scoop on the serial killer taking out women around the city. It gets a little plot-heavy at times, but it’s so full of classic character actors and the noirish feel that director Fritz Lang does so well that it’s still very worthwhile.
1956 USA. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino.

6:15pm – IFC – Wassup Rockers
Small, intimate little film about a group of teenage Latino skateboarders from South Central LA. They go up to Beverly Hills to skateboard, get caught by cops, escape, meet up with some girls, get in fights with preppy 90210 guys, and try to get home. But the moments that’ll get you are when they’re just talking, to the camera, or to the girls, about their life and what it’s like to live in South Central. It doesn’t go anywhere, really, but it’s a wonderful slice of life.
2005 USA. Director: Larry Clark. Starring: Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez, Iris Zelaya.

2:00am (28th) – TCM – High Sierra
Bogart’s breakout role as an on-the-run con man who gets involved with the lame Joan Leslie. (No, I mean actually crippled.) He’d been bumming around for a few years as a Warner second lead or villain, but with 1941’s double punch of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, he unequivocally arrived.
1941 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino.

Friday, August 28

11:30am – TCM – Anchors Aweigh
What’s that you say? Your life won’t be complete until you see Gene Kelly dance with an animated Jerry the Mouse from the Tom & Jerry cartoons? Well, you’re in luck with this film. Oh, right, there’s also a story-type thing with Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors and Kathryn Grayson as the love interest, but really, it’s all about Gene and Jerry.
1945 USA. Director: George Sidney. Starring: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, José Iturbi, Dean Stockwell.

2:00pm – TCM – On the Town
Sailors on leave Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin hit New York City, spending the day sightseeing and searching for Kelly’s dream girl Vera-Ellen, meanwhile picking up Betty Garrett and Ann Miller for the other boys. Not much plot here, but enough to precipitate some of the best song and dance numbers on film. Also one of the first musicals shot on location.
1949 USA. Directors: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. Starring: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, Vera-Ellen, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett.

8:00pm – TCM – Some Came Running
Frank Sinatra gets to prove his acting chops again as a cynical soldier returning to his small-town home. Shirley MacLaine is a revelation, and Dean Martin gets probably his best role, as well. Meanders a bit in the middle, but ends up more memorable than it seems at first, thanks to Vincente Minnelli’s subtle but effective direction. Also, right up there with Douglas Sirk’s best work in terms of widescreen mise-en-scène and use of cinematic space.
1958 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy.

10:30pm – TCM – High Society
This is not one of the best music-centric films ever made, but it is the musical version of The Philadelphia Story, with both Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra crooning it up with songs by Cole Porter. Oh, and one of Grace Kelly’s last roles before she retired to become a princess and stuff. Still, you wish with that pedigree that it were better than it is. Ah, well.
1956 USA. Director: Charles Walters. Starring: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Celeste Holm, John Lund, Louis Calhern.

Saturday, August 29

8:00am – IFC – Yojimbo
One of oh-so-many Akira Kurosawa films I have not yet scene, despite everyone from respected film critics to the clerk I used to work with at the video store singing its praises. Toshirô Mifune is a samurai who plays the two violent factions controlling a village against each other. Maybe I’ll rectify my non-watching of it this time around. (But I also keep saying that, and all these films keep piling up on my DVR.)
1961 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai.
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12:00M – IFC – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The combination of mysticism and martial arts on wires turned magical in this film, spawning a mess of imitators in the subsequent years, though none have quite equaled Crouching Tiger‘s success. Must See
2000 Taiwan. Director: Ang Lee. Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Chang, Cheng Pei-Pei.
(repeats at 12:15pm on the 30th)

Sunday, August 30

2:00pm – TCM – Shane
Alan Ladd plays the titular cowboy, idolized by the young son of the family he takes refuge with as he tries to escape Jack Palance.
1953 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Jack Palance.

5:45pm – TCM – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra puts on his idealist hat to tell the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an inexperienced young man appointed as a junior senator because the corrupt senior senator thinks he’ll be easy to control. But Smith doesn’t toe the party line, instead launching a filibuster for what he believes in. Wonderful comedienne Jean Arthur is the journalist who initially encourages Smith so she can get a great story from his seemingly inevitable downfall, but soon joins his cause. Must See
1939 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Eugene Pallette.

8:00pm – TCM – You Can’t Take It With You
Capra won his third directing Oscar for this film (the others were for It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), but to me it’s not one of his more interesting pieces. Young couple James Stewart and Jean Arthur invite chaos when his staid, wealthy family meets her wacky, irreverent one.
1938 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Spring Byington, Ann Miller.

The Conversation, playing at 10pm on the 21st on TCM

Sorry about completely missing last week! I have been Tweeting reminders about the films over on Row Three’s Twitter account (Row Three being the group film blog I write for and crosspost these entries to), so if you’re on Twitter and want daily reminders about what’s coming to your TV, make sure you’re subscribed to the Row Three account.

Monday, August 17

8:30am – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Luis Buñuel made a career out of making surrealist anti-bourgeois films, and this is one of the most surreal, most anti-bourgeois, and best films he ever made, about a dinner party that just can’t quite get started due to completely absurd interruptions.

6:25pm – IFC – Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Laurence Sterne’s 1769 proto-postmodern novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy has long been considered unfilmable. So what does director Michael Winterbottom do? He makes a film about the difficulty of filming Tristram Shandy. Winterbottom’s film is something of an experiment, but it’s a delightful one, showing the behind-the-scenes antics of production as well as highlighting the circularity and self-defeating narrative of Sterne’s novel in the film-within-the-film.
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Tuesday, August 18

10:15pm – TCM – True Grit
John Wayne won an Oscar for this film, one of his last. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say whether it was deserved or not, but hey. There it is.
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4:30am (19th) – TCM – Baby Face
This film often comes up as a prime example of a pre-Code film, as Barbara Stanwyck very explicitly (and fairly literally) sleeps her way to the top of a corporation, using her body and manipulative skills to get what she wants every step of the way. Also look for a young John Wayne as an office assistant – he looks extremely uncomfortable in his suit!
Newly Featured!

Wednesday, August 19

8:35am – IFC – I Heart Huckabees
Not too many films take philosophy as their base, but this one basically does, following a man (Jason Schwartzman) plagued by coincidence who hires a couple of existentialists to figure out what’s going on.
(repeats at 2:30pm)

9:35pm – IFC – Secretary
Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader – making sado-masochism fun since 2002! But seriously, this was Maggie’s breakout role, and it’s still probably her best, as a damaged young woman whose only outlet is pain. And despite the subject, Secretary is somehow one of the sweetest and most tender romances of recent years.
(repeats at 3:15am on the 20th)

12:00M – IFC – Raising Arizona
This relatively early Coen Brothers comedy has Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a childless ex-con couple who decide to rectify that situation by stealing one of a set of quintuplets. They’ll never miss him, right? Wrong. Zany complications ensue
(repeats at 5:15am and 11:15am on the 20th)

Thursday, August 20

9:45pm – TCM – Trouble in Paradise
This film and the next one, Design for Living, both date from the early 1930s, both star Miriam Hopkins, and were both directed by Ernest Lubitsch. Consequently, I cannot keep them straight in my head. I’m not even sure I’ve seen both. In any case, you can’t get much better than Lubitsch’s early ’30s comedies (the height of sophistication), so check them both out.
Newly Featured!

11:15pm – TCM – Design for Living
See above.
Newly Featured!

Friday, August 21

8:00pm – TCM – Bonnie & Clyde
This is a perfect film. If you have not seen it, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. In either case, rather than write again how much I love it, I will just refer you here.
Newly Featured!

10:00pm – TCM – The Conversation
Gene Hackman is a surveillance expert who eavesdrops on people for hire. When he overhears something that may lead to a murder, he has to decide what to do with his (possible) knowledge. I honestly prefer this Francis Ford Coppola film to The Godfather, and its exploration of the ethics of surveillance is certainly still very timely today. Must See
Newly Featured!

Saturday, August 22

8:00am – IFC – Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa takes on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, transposing it into feudal Japan, much as he did with King Lear in Ran. Kurosawa has a knack for getting the spirit of Shakespeare perfectly, while also staying true to his own country’s traditions.
Newly Featured!

10:05am – IFC – Mon Oncle
Jacques Tati’s Chaplin-esque character, Mr. Hulot, this time takes on modern life in the form of his sister’s house that has been mechanized with all the most modern electronic aids – think Disney’s 1950s House of Tomorrow. Of course, everything goes wrong. Must See
(repeats at 3:30pm)

12:30pm – TCM – Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Trust Stanley Kubrick to find the funny side of the Cold War. Peter Sellers plays multiple parts, including the President, an insane general who wants to nuke Russia, and the limb-control-impaired doctor of the title. It’s zany, it’s over-the-top, it’s bitingly satirical, and it remains one of Kubrick’s best films in a career full of amazing work. Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Asphalt Jungle
The Asphalt Jungle was really MGM’s first foray into noirish crime films. Being MGM, it’s more polished and, to me, less interesting than the crime dramas that Warner Bros. and the smaller studios were putting out, but hey. It’s still pretty good. And has a really young Marilyn Monroe.

12:00M – Sundance – Talk to Her
Talk to Her is one of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s finest and most moving works, drawing heavily on the passion of bullfighting and dancing. Marco and Benigno develop a friendship as they care two women in comas – Marco’s girlfriend Lydia, a bullfighter gored in the ring, and nurse Benigno’s patient Alicia, whom he has fallen in love with. There’s a touch of the bizarre, as there always is in Almodóvar, but the film is richly rewarding in mood and vision. Must See

Sunday, August 23

1:00pm – TCM – The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The original 1962 version, not the pale comparison of a 2004 remake. Former soldier Frank Sinatra starts having nightmares about his war experience, then finds that he and his unit were part of a brainwashing experiment – the result of which was to turn his colleague Laurence Harvey into a sleeper agent assassin. A classic of the Cold War era, full of well-honed suspense and paranoia. Must See

Gilda, playing on TCM at 8pm on Friday, August 7th

There aren’t a whole lot of must-see films this week, but there are a number of Newly Featured films – I’ve tried to highlight some hidden gems this week.

Monday, August 3

8:10am – IFC – Primer
Welcome to sci-fi at its most cerebral. You know how most science-dependent films include a non-science-type character so there’s an excuse to explain all the science to audience? Yeah, this film doesn’t have that character, so no one ever explains quite how the time travel device at the center of the film works. Or even that it is, actually, a time-travel device. This is the sci-fi version of getting thrown into the deep end when you can’t swim. Without floaties.
(repeats at 1:30pm)

9:35am – IFC – I Heart Huckabees
Not too many films take philosophy as their base, but this one basically does, following a man (Jason Schwartzman) plagued by coincidence who hires a couple of existentialists to figure out what’s going on. I remember being a bit underwhelmed when I initially saw the film, but now that some time has gone by, I’m a bit curious to revisit it.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 2:55pm)

Tuesday, August 4

CATCH-UP DAY! :)

Wednesday, August 5

10:30am – TCM – Safety Last
Everyone knows Charlie Chaplin, and most know Buster Keaton – Harold Lloyd is generally considered the third in the triumverate of great silent comedians, and this is his best film. He plays a schmoe working in a department store trying to convince his country girlfriend that he’s really more important than he is, culminating in a brash attempt to scale the outside of a skyscraper. The stunts are magnificent, making the film still a joy to watch. TCM’s playing Lloyd films all day today, and I’m sure many of them are worth checking out; I just haven’t seen many of them myself to know which ones to pick out. Must See
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – Sundance – Talk to Her
Talk to Her is one of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s finest and most moving works, drawing heavily on the passion of bullfighting and dancing. Marco and Benigno develop a friendship as they care two women in comas – Marco’s girlfriend Lydia, a bullfighter gored in the ring, and nurse Benigno’s patient Alicia, whom he has fallen in love with. There’s a touch of the bizarre, as there always is in Almodóvar, but the film is richly rewarding in mood and vision.
(repeats at 3:00am on the 6th)

8:00pm – IFC – With a Friend Like Harry
Harry seems like a nice guy when our main character meets him, but there’s something a little off about him – and that little something off keeps growing and growing until, well, who needs enemies? Quirky little suspense film that earns all of its payoff.
Newly Featured!
(repeats 1:30am on the 6th)

Thursday, August 6

6:15am – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Luis Buñuel made a career out of making surrealist anti-bourgeois films, and this is one of the most surreal, most anti-bourgeois, and best films he ever made, about a dinner party that just can’t quite get started due to completely absurd interruptions.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 1:00pm)

6:45pm – IFC – Raising Arizona
This relatively early Coen Brothers comedy has Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a childless ex-con couple who decide to rectify that situation by stealing one of a set of quintuplets. They’ll never miss him, right? Wrong. Zany complications ensue.
(repeats 9:30am and 2:05pm on the 7th)

10:00pm – TCM – The Clock
This was Judy Garland’s first real purely dramatic role, directed by her then-husband Vincente Minnelli in 1945. It’s a wartime story of a soldier on leave (Robert Walker) who meets a girl (Garland) and their attempts to get married before he has to return to his unit. It’s a sweet, unassuming little film that showcases Garland’s charm quite well, and has a nice supporting role for comedian Keenan Wynn.
Newly Featured!

12:00M – TCM – Meet Me In St. Louis
The ultimate nostalgia film, harking back to the turn of the century and the year leading up to the 1903 St. Louis World’s Fair. Judy Garland holds the film and the family in it together as the girl who only wants to love the boy next door, but it’s Margaret O’Brien as the little willful sister who adds the extra bit of oomph, especially in the manic Halloween scene and the violent Christmas scene that carries the film from an exercise in sentimentality into a deeper territory of loss and distress. Must See

2:00am (7th) – TCM – The Pirate
A flop when first released, The Pirate looks more and more like a potential cult classic all the time. Gene Kelly is an entertainer who impersonates the dread pirate Mack the Black Mococo to get close to Spanish heiress Judy Garland in a period Caribbean seaport. It’s over-the-top, has some of Cole Porter’s most outlandish songs, and is somehow immensely, compulsively watchable.
Newly Featured!

Friday, August 7

8:00pm – TCM – Gilda
Gilda was the last person Johnny ever expected to meet again, much less as the wife of his boss, a sleazy casino operator in South America. Glenn Ford plays a quintessential defeated noir narrator in Johnny, while Rita Hayworth imbues Gilda with all her available mystique to make Gilda one of the more memorable films of the 1940s.
Newly Featured!

11:30pm – TCM – 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
The original version of 2007′s highly successful Christian Bale-Russell Crowe western is well worth watching in its own right – a little less actiony, a little more thoughtful, though its story of a peaceful farmer shuffled into the role of law enforcement to get a criminal to the train for his trial without having him rescued by his gang remains largely identical.
Newly Featured!

Saturday, August 8

8:00pm – TCM – The Man Who Came to Dinner
A rare comedic film for Bette Davis, though the film mainly focuses on Monty Woolley as an acerbic newspaper critic forced to take up residence with a midwestern family when he breaks his hip outside their house. Woolley was a great character actor here given the spotlight, and he takes it and runs with it. A great script by Julius and Philip Epstein (of Casablanca) doesn’t hurt, either.
Newly Featured!

8:30pm – IFC – Office Space
Anyone who’s ever worked in an office will identify with Office Space immediately – with the paper-jamming printers, the piles of beaurocratic paperwork, and the difficulty of keeping up with staplers if not the plot to make off with boatloads of money due to an accounting loophole.
(repeats at 2:00am on the 9th)

11:05pm – IFC – Secretary
Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader – making sado-masochism fun since 2002! But seriously, this was Maggie’s breakout role, and it’s still probably her best, as a damaged young woman whose only outlet is pain. And despite the subject, Secretary is somehow one of the sweetest and most tender romances of recent years.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 3:30am on the 9th)

12:00M – TCM – The Letter
In this cut-above-average melodrama, Bette Davis shoots a man in self-defense. Or was it self-defense? Director William Wyler lays the twists and the gothic style on heavy in this one.

Sunday, August 9

9:00am – TCM – My Favorite Wife
After being shipwrecked and believed dead for seven years, Irene Dunne returns home to her husband Cary Grant on the eve of his marriage to another woman. Oh, and she brought Randolph Scott, her fellow shipwreckee, with her. Hijinks ensue. Not quite as strong a screwball comedy as the earlier Grant-Dunne opus The Awful Truth, but still fun for fans of the genre.
Newly Featured!

10:45am – TCM – The Awful Truth
This is one of the definitive screwball comedies, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a married couple who constantly fight and decide to divorce, only to wind up meddling in each other’s lives (and screw up other relationship attempts) because they just can’t quit each other. Dunne’s impersonation of a Southern belle showgirl is a highlight. Must See

5:15pm – IFC – The Proposition
Australia’s answer to the western; Guy Pearce must hunt down and capture his brothers for the law in order to save his own skin. Gritty and violent almost to a fault, but it definitely brought new life to the Western genre.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 12:15am on the 10th)

6:00pm – TCM – To Catch a Thief
Not one of my personal favorite Hitchcock films, but certainly one of his classiest, most sophisticated entries. Cary Grant is a notorious cat burglar, Grace Kelly the Monte Carlo socialite he woos. It’s one of Kelly’s last films, and she’s already looking like the princess she was about to become.

8:00pm – TCM – Notorious
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films, and one of the greatest spy films ever. Spy Cary Grant recruits Ingrid Bergman because of her relationship with suspected enemy spy Claude Rains – but how far is she willing to go? Simply fantastic on every level. Must See