In a Lonely Place, playing on TCM on Thursday, July 23rd, at 10:45am.

I started looking at the Fox Movie Channel as well this week – only one addition this time, but there may well be more in the future. Things on it keep catching my eye as I’m setting my DVR, so I figured I might as well add it to my list, especially this month as the other channels seem to be doing a lot of repeats. I also added a “Newly Featured!” tag at the bottom of entries that are NOT repeats. I still think the repeats are worth posting, though, in case someone wasn’t able to see them the first time and for new readers – that’s why I leave them on.

All times are Eastern.

Monday, July 20

6:05am – IFC – Umberto D
Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic about an aging man struggling to live on his meager pension in post-war Rome. Doesn’t sound like a lot, and granted, not a lot happens. But by the end, you’ll have extraordinary sympathy for gentle Umberto and his dog. Oh, and a fantastic performance by non-actress Maria Pia Casillio – she offered to take acting lessons for the part but De Sica forbade her. Good choice.
(repeats at 10:45am and 3:20pm)

8:55am – IFC – Picnic at Hanging Rock
I have a love-hate relationship with Aussie director Peter Weir. His films are almost always slow and methodical, which works for me sometimes and not others. It works in Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of his earlier films, in which a group of schoolgirls goes into the wilderness for a picnic and mysteriously disappear.
Newly Featured!

1:35pm – IFC – Maria Full of Grace
Once in a while a film comes out of nowhere and floors me – this quiet little film about a group of South American women who agree to smuggle drugs into the United States by swallowing packets of cocaine did just that. Everything in the film is perfectly balanced, no element overwhelms anything else, and it all comes together with great empathy, but without sentimentality.

6:05pm – IFC – Chasing Amy
Kevin Smith’s third film, not as low-fi indie as Clerks, as goofy as Mallrats, as irreverently genius as Dogma, as self-referential as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, or as racy as Zach and Miri Make a Porno, but perhaps sweeter than all of them – Ben Affleck falls for Joey Lauren Adams, with the only slight obstacle being that she’s a lesbian.

8:00pm – TCM – A Trip to the Moon
Georges Méliès’ 1903 sci-fi film is the best example of his innovations in trick photography and special effects. He figured out that if you stopped the camera, changed the scene, and then restarted it, you could create illusions of appearances and disappearances, which he used to great effect in his story of scientists traveling to the moon and meeting fantastic creatures there. It’s a piece of film history that every film buff should see at least once.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – 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.
(repeats at 4:00am on the 21st)

1:05am (21st) – Sundance – Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s inspired transposition of King Lear into medieval Japan, mixing Shakespeare and Japanese Noh theatre tradition like nobody’s business. Must See
(repeats 11:30am on the 21st, and 8:20am and 3:50pm on the 23rd)

Tuesday, July 21

4:15pm – TCM – The Night of the Hunter
If there’s ever a film that defined “Southern gothic,” it’s this one. Underhanded “preacher” Robert Mitchum weasels his way into a young widowed family to try to gain the money the late father hid before he died. But what starts off as a well-done but fairly standard crime thriller turns into a surreal fable somewhere in the middle, and at that moment, jumps from “good film” to “film you will be able to get out of your head NEVER.” In a good way. Must See

Wednesday, July 22

5:45pm – Sundance – Le doulos
Jean-Paul Belmondo brings his signature style to Jean-Pierre Meville’s excellent crime film as a possible police informant working with another criminal on a jewel heist. These two men are played off each other in a sort of doubling motif – it’s often even difficult to tell which is which, due to careful cinematography and lighting work by Melville.
(repeats at 2:30am on the 23rd)

7:30pm – Sundance – The Lives of Others
This German film beat out Pan’s Labyrinth for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but The Lives of Others is good enough that I managed to get over it. Mostly. Anyway, in the film, a surveillance operator working for the Nazis assigned is to eavesdrop on a famous writer who may be working for the Resistance – he’s torn in both directions when he starts sympathizing with his subject. It’s really well done in tone and narrative, with a great performance by the late Ulrich Mühe.
Newly Featured!

10:00pm – TCM – The Bridge on the River Kwai
British prisoners of war are commanded to build a bridge over the River Kwai for their Japanese captors – a task which becomes a source of pride for old-school British commander Alec Guinness. But American William Holden is having none of that and makes it his mission to blow the bridge up. One of the great war films.

1:00am (23rd) – TCM – The Adventures of Robin Hood
I will state almost categorically that this is the greatest adventure film ever made. Maybe it’s a dead heat between this one and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Errol Flynn is Robin Hood, Olivia de Havilland is Maid Marion, a whole raft of fantastic character actors fill out the rest of the cast, and it’s all done in gorgeous Technicolor (it’s one of the earliest Technicolor films). Must See

Thursday, July 23

8:45am – TCM – Shadow of a Doubt
Somewhat lesser-known Hitchcock film that ought to be top-tier. Small-town girl Teresa Wright idolizes her uncle Charlie, but we know that he’s an infamous murderer on the run. Hitchcock once made a distinction between mystery and suspense: mystery is when there’s tension because the audience doesn’t know whodunit, suspense is when there’s tension because the audience does. This film is a perfect example of suspense, and Hitchcock’s preference for telling the audience whodunit very early in the film and letting them squirm.
Newly Featured!

10:05am – IFC – Cléo from 5 to 7
Almost all New Wave films were directed by men, and there’s a definite undercurrent of misogyny in most of them – or at least a clear lack of understanding of women. Enter Agnes Varda, who took New Wave sensibilities, added in her own painterly touches, and a strong feminine perspective – and you get incredible films like this one, a spare story of a woman who discovers she has cancer. The mix of New Wave detachment and the evocation of the woman’s flittering emotions just under the surface combine perfectly to skyrocket the film onto my all-time favorites list. Must See
(repeats at 3:05pm)

10:45am – TCM – In a Lonely Place
Simply a brilliant film from director Nicholas Ray – Humphrey Bogart gives probably his best performance as washed-up screenwriter Dixon Steele, who’s trying to make a comeback with a new adaptation. When a coatcheck girl gets murdered after he was the last to see her, he naturally comes under suspicion, but his neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi and soon the two begin a relationship which just might save Dix from more than a murder charge – or might not. There’s a raw intensity here that few films have ever matched. Must See
Newly Featured!

12:30pm – TCM – Double Indemnity
Quite probably the most definitive film noir film in existence (vying only with The Big Sleep in my head, anyway) has insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) being seduced by bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and convinced by her to help murder her husband for the insurance money. Wilder’s crackling dialogue and Stanwyck’s perfectly tuned mixture of calculation and innocence can hardly be beat. Must See

2:00am (24th) – 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.

Friday, July 24

10:30am – IFC – American Splendor
Harvey Pekar is one of the more idiosyncratic graphic novelists there is (”comic book” doesn’t quite cover his very adult, neurotic art), and Paul Giamatti brings him to life perfectly. This is a favorite among Row Three writers, so check it out.
(repeats at 3:45pm)

12:00N – TCM – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Charles Laughton plays the put-upon hunchback Quasimodo, a young Maureen O’Hara the lovely Esmerelda in one of the best film versions of Victor Hugo’s classic of gothic romanticism.
Newly Featured!

Saturday, July 25

6:15am – IFC – Millions
In this Danny Boyle film, a young British boy finds a bag with millions of pounds in it; the catch is that Britain is days away from switching to the euro, so the money will soon be worthless. The shifting ethical questions combined with a sometimes almost Pulp Fiction-esque style and a fascinating religious backdrop (I’m still not sure where he was going with that) at the very least means an intriguing couple of hours.
(repeats at 11:45am and 5:15pm)

10:00am – IFC – My Life as a Dog
Lasse Hallstrom gives us this simple but effective coming-of-age story, focusing on the every day life of a young boy as he’s sent to live in a provincial village after acting out at home (his behavior is both caused by and threatens his mother’s poor health).
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 3:30pm)

8:00pm – TCM – A Night at the Opera
One of the best of the Marx Brothers’ zany comedies finds them running awry through the world of opera. This is the one that contains the famous “how much stuff can we stuff into a stateroom” scene. And subplot with Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle, but that’s best ignored as much as possible. Must See
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – Fox Movie Channel – Young Frankenstein
My pick for best Mel Brooks movie of all time, yes, over Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs. Gene Wilder is the title character, a relative of the original Dr. Frankenstein who derides the research into the animation of dead tissue as poppycock. Until he inherits the Frankenstein castle and starts doing some experimenting of his own. And hilarity ensues. Pretty much right up there with the most quotable movies ever for me. Must See
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 10:00pm and 12:00M)

10:00pm – Sundance – Paris, je t’aime
I have a huge soft spot for Paris – basically any movie set there I will like to at least some degree. So an anthology film with eighteen internationally-renowned directors giving their take on Paris with eighteen short films all mashed together? Yeah, instant love. Obviously some sections are far stronger than others – the Coens, Gus van Sant, Alexander Payne, Isabel Coixet, Tom Tykwer, and Wes Craven turn in my favorites.
(repeats at 4:30am on the 26th)

4:15am (26th) – TCM – A Day at the Races
The Marx Brothers take over the racetrack in what is probably the last of their really great comedies. As with A Night at the Opera you do have to put up with the silly romantic subplot, but it’s not too big a strain.

Sunday, July 26

8:00am – IFC – Miller’s Crossing
The Coen brothers take on 1930s gangland with this film, and do so admirably well. As they do most things. I have to admit I wasn’t quite as enamored of it as I usually am of Coen films, but it definitely has its moments and I think a rewatch would jump it up in my estimation greatly.
(repeats at 3:15pm)

10:30am – TCM – Topper
Cary Grant and Constance Bennett are hard-living young couple who crash their fancy car after a night of drinking and end up as ghosts. They choose to spend their afterlife haunting Grant’s uptight boss Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and teaching him to enjoy life again. Something of a screwball comedy without the battle of the sexes part; slight but a lot of fun.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – TCM – High Noon
An Oscar-winning performance by Gary Cooper and an early role for Grace Kelly in Fred Zinnemann’s classic cowboy showdown drama. Follow it up with Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, something of a response to High Noon, which Hawks disliked.

10:00pm – Sundance – Volver
Pedro Almodóvar deftly straddles the line between drama and comedy in one of his more accessible films. Two sisters return to their home at the death of their aunt, only to find their mother’s ghost – or is it a ghost? And as always in Almodóvar’s films, there are related subplots aplenty. Penélope Cruz is incredible as the younger, fierier sister – she’s never been more moving than in her passionate rendition of the title song, nor funnier than when calmly cleaning up a murder scene. Must See

10:45pm – TCM – Rope
Hitchcock is well-known for his formal experimentation. In Rope, he shoots everything from a single camera position – on top of the chest containing the body of the boy that John Dall and Farley Granger killed before inviting several people over for a party. It’s also meant to appear as one take, though the ten-minute max reel length of the time forced him to fudge a bit on that. The story is based on the real-life Leopold-Loeb murder case, where two young men killed an acquaintance just to see if they could pull it off.

3:30am (27th) – Sundance – 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
This unflinching Romanian film remains one of the most powerful things I’ve seen in the last several years. Set in the mid-1980s, it builds a thriller-like story of a woman trying to help her friend obtain a dangerous illegal abortion – yet it’s a thriller so deliberate that its very slowness and lack of movement becomes a major source of tension. When the camera does move, it has an almost physical force. I can hardly describe how blown away I am by this film…tough to watch, but incredibly worth it. Must See

Double Indemnity, playing on Thursday the 16th on TCM at 9:00am

A lot of repeats this week, which admittedly makes writing this faster for me, which was nice this week. I’ll try to save enough time to pick out some more varied stuff next week. The films I’d most like to point out are the three Jean-Pierre Melville films Sundance is playing on Tuesday. If you’re interested in French film, crime film, film noir, or the New Wave, these are all three must-see’s.

Monday, July 13

6:15pm – IFC – American Splendor
Harvey Pekar is one of the more idiosyncratic graphic novelists there is (”comic book” doesn’t quite cover his very adult, neurotic art), and Paul Giamatti brings him to life perfectly. This is a favorite among Row Three writers, so check it out.
(repeats at 9:15am on the 14th)

9:30pm – TCM – White Heat
James Cagney in one of his most powerful roles as the slightly (okay, make that more-than-slightly) unbalanced criminal Cody Jarrett. Probably counts as one of the last truly great Warner crime films, too.

Tuesday, July 14

6:00am – IFC – Au revoir, les enfants
A new boy arrives at a French school and becomes close friends with one of the French boys. But it’s the early 1940s and the new boy turns out to be Jewish, and hiding from the Nazis. Louis Malle directs this achingly lovely portrait of schoolboy friendship in an uncertain time.
(repeats at 1:30pm and 6:05pm)

2:00pm – Sundance – Bob le flambeur
Sundance is running a three-film set of Jean-Pierre Melville films, starting with this noirish crime film about an aging gambler/thief who takes on one last job – knocking over a casino. Melville was the master of French crime films, and an important figure leading up to the New Wave – Godard name-checks this film in Breathless, mentioning Bob le flambeur (Bob the Gambler) as an associate of Michel’s.
(repeats at 12:30am on the 15th)

3:45pm – Sundance – Le doulos
I saw this Melville film a couple of months ago with it was first released on Criterion DVD, and pretty much loved it to death. Jean-Paul Belmondo brings his signature style to the film as a possible police informant working with another criminal on a jewel heist. These two men are played off each other in a sort of doubling motif – it’s often even difficult to tell which is which, due to careful cinematography and lighting work by Melville.
(repeats at 1:00pm on the 15th)

6:45pm – Sundance – Army of Shadows
This Melville film about the French Resistance during WWII wasn’t actually released in the US until 2006 (it was made in 1969), so getting to see it at all is something of a treat. I haven’t had the opportunity yet, but hoping to take it this time around.
(repeats at 4:15am on the 15th)

4:15am (15th) – IFC – Millions
Danny Boyle has a way of making very simple stories into something special, and this is no exception. A young British boy finds a bag with millions of pounds in it; the catch is that Britain is days away from switching to the euro, so the money will soon be worthless. The shifting ethical questions combined with a sometimes almost Pulp Fiction-esque style and a fascinating religious backdrop at the very least means an intriguing couple of hours.
(repeats at 8:30am and 1:05 on the 15th))

Wednesday, July 15

5:45pm – IFC – Moulin Rouge
Baz Lurhmann admittedly has a love-it-or-hate-it flamboyantly trippy aesthetic, especially in the informal Red Curtain trilogy which Moulin Rogue! closes. And sure, it’s over the top; sure, the story is fairly routine; sure, the acting is so-so. I love it to pieces anyway.
(repeats 12:40pm on the 16th)

8:00pm – Sundance – Volver
Pedro Almodovar deftly straddles the line between drama and comedy in one of his more accessible films. Two sisters return to their home at the death of their aunt, only to find their mother’s ghost – or is it a ghost? And as always in Almodovar’s films, there are related subplots aplenty. Penelope Cruz is incredible as the younger, fierier sister – she’s never been more moving than in her passionate rendition of the title song, nor funnier than when calmly cleaning up a murder scene. Must See

8:00pm – IFC – Fargo
Still one of the Coen Brothers’ best films, despite over a decade of mostly good films in the intervening years. Dark comedy is not an easy genre, and Fargo is the gold standard, blending shocking violence and a noir-ish crime story with comical inept criminals and a perfectly rendered performance from Frances McDormand. Must See
(repeats at 1:35am on the 16th)

9:45pm – IFC – Trainspotting
Days in the lives of Scottish heroin addicts. Sounds like a downer, and I won’t say it’s not, but it’s also brilliant and searing. Danny Boyle seems to always be able to take stories that could be routine and make them into something special.
(repeats at 3:15am on the 16th)

Thursday, July 16

9:00am – TCM – Double Indemnity
Quite probably the most definitive film noir film in existence (vying only with The Big Sleep in my head, anyway) has insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) being seduced by bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and convinced by her to help murder her husband for the insurance money. Wilder’s crackling dialogue and Stanwyck’s perfectly tuned mixture of calculation and innocence can hardly be beat. Must See

8:00pm – Sundance – Paris, je t’aime
I have a huge soft spot for Paris – basically any movie set there I will like to at least some degree. So an anthology film with eighteen internationally-renowned directors giving their take on Paris with eighteen short films all mashed together? Yeah, instant love. Obviously some sections are far stronger than others – the Coens, Gus van Sant, Alexander Payne, Isabel Coixet, Tom Tykwer, and Wes Craven turn in my favorites.

Friday, July 17

8:00am – Sundance – Ran
Sundance is confusing me with their listings right here. I’m pretty sure this is going to be Akira Kurosawa’s inspired transposition of King Lear into medieval Japan, mixing Shakespeare and Japanese Noh theatre tradition like nobody’s business. Their description on their website site is for a completely other film, though. So let’s just call this a hearty recommendation if it turns out to be Kurosawa’s film.

4:45pm – TCM – Love Me or Leave Me
One of Doris Day’s better roles places her as a singer in an abusive relationship with gangster/career supporter James Cagney. She’s tough yet vulnerable, and her rendition of the title song is suberb.

3:30am (18th) – Sundance – The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
One of the major films in Romania’s current cinematic resurgence – emphasis on realism, slow pacing, and in this case, the failures of the Romanian health care system, which shunts poor Mr. Lazarescu around from hospital to hospital as he gets sicker and sicker. I wasn’t as captivated by this as I was by 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days by a longshot, but if you’re interested in Romanian film, you oughta see it. If you didn’t like 4 Months, though, you almost certainly won’t like this. ;)

3:45am (18th) – TCM – Blow-Up
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s first (only?) English-language film, a photographer captures an image in the background of a shot that may or may not be a murder. Sounds like a detective film, but it’s far more abstract and distancing than detective stories can usually afford to be. Full of sixties-ness. Must See

Saturday, July 18

8:00pm – IFC – Mad Max
The first entry in the post-apocalyptic punk-action series that made Mel Gibson a star.

8:00pm – TCM – Tom Jones
The book Tom Jones, written in the late 1700s by Henry Fielding, is usually considered one of the earliest novels, and part of its charm is the way it pastiches earlier literary forms as it tells its story of a rakish young English nobleman and his adventures with women. Though the film version can’t really claim the same place in cinematic history that the novel does in literary history, it’s still quite enjoyable, and manages to convey a similar playfulness by pastiching earlier filmmaking styles – which never fails to earn it a spot in texts on adaptation.

5:00am (19th) – TCM – Fanny and Alexander
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve DVR’d this Bergman film and never managed to watch it before my DVR deleted it for space. :/ Maybe this will be the time I break that cycle?

Sunday, July 19

4:15pm – TCM – Lassie Come Home
Family classic that has every kid wanting a collie at some point in their lives. Hint: Get a border collie. Regular collies are quite high-strung.

6:15pm – IFC – Maria Full of Grace
Once in a while a film comes out of nowhere and floors me – this quiet little film about a group of South American women who agree to smuggle drugs into the United States by swallowing packets of cocaine did just that. Everything in the film is perfectly balanced, no element overwhelms anything else, and it all comes together with great empathy, but without sentimentality.

8:00pm – TCM – An American in Paris
Expat artist Gene Kelly in Paris, meets Leslie Caron, woos her away from rival Georges Guetarey, all set to Gershwin music and directed with panache by Vincente Minnelli. All that plus Kelly’s ground-breaking fifteen-plus-minute ballet to the title piece. Must See

12:00M – IFC – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Yes, this is still the only Wes Anderson film I haven’t seen. Because though I did record it last week when it was on, I haven’t had time to watch it yet.

12:15am (20th) – TCM – Broken Blossoms
A few years after D.W. Griffith’s controversial Birth of a Nation and epic Intolerance, he made this much smaller, much quieter film about a Chinese man (the non-Chinese Richard Barthelmess – and no, Griffith has not quite got over the racism that plagued Birth of a Nation) who becomes enamored with a young girl (Lillian Gish) whose father abuses her. It’s a really simple yet beautiful story, and shows Griffith at his sentimental best.

Singin’ in the Rain, playing Tuesday, June 9th at 12:30am on TCM

This week, TCM continues their celebration of great directors with Stanley Donen, Fred Zinnemann, Preston Sturges, Akira Kurosawa, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks. They also seem to be doing director mini-marathons for John Huston, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, and Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur, though they aren’t officially in the Great Director series. Whether they should be or not is definitely arguable. And IFC and Sundance have a few gems to throw in, as well.

Monday, June 8

12:45pm – IFC – Howl’s Moving Castle
Hayao Miyazaki has been a leader in the world of kid-friendly anime films for several years now, and while many would point to Spirited Away as his best film, I actually enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle the most of all his films. Japanese animation takes some getting used to, but Miyazaki’s films are well worth it, and serve as a wonderful antidote to the current stagnation going on in American animation (always excepting Pixar).

6:15pm – TCM – The Big Heat
Director Fritz Lang came out of the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, so it’s not surprising that he ended up making some of the better noir films, given film noir’s borrowing of Expressionist style. Glenn Ford is a cop working against his corrupt department, but the parts you’ll remember from the film all belong to Gloria Grahame in a supporting role as a beaten-up gangster’s moll. Her performance and Lang’s attention to detail raise the otherwise average story to a new level.

Great Directors on TCM: Stanley Donen
Stanley Donen shone at directing flashy musicals and mod comedies throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The films he co-directed with Gene Kelly (On the Town and Singin’ in the Rain, see below) stand among the best musicals ever made, and his later films like Charade and Arabesque merged Hitchcockian thrills with 1960s comic panache in a way that no-one else really matched.

9:00pm – 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. Must See

9:45pm – IFC – Far From Heaven
Director Todd Haynes homages 1950s melodrama king Douglas Sirk with this film, loosely based on Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. I don’t think he succeeded as well as he might’ve (Sirk’s sort of in a class by himself), but he and lead Julianne Moore make a darn good attempt. Moore plays a 1950s housewife, trapped in her marriage to a man struggling with his own sexual identity (Dennis Quaid), and slowly falling into an affair with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert).
(repeats at 3:30am)

10:45pm – TCM – Royal Wedding
This isn’t one of the all-time great Fred Astaire musicals, but it’s quite charming in its small way, and has the distinction of including the Fred’s “dancing on the ceiling” extravaganza, as well as a few surprisingly competent dance numbers from Fred and not-dancer Jane Powell. Oh, and Fred’s love interest is Sarah Churchill, Winston Churchill’s daughter, which is interesting (Powell plays his sister).

12:30am (9th) – TCM – Singin’ in the Rain
After On the Town, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly teamed up for what is now usually considered one of the greatest musicals of all time. Inspired by songs written by MGM producer Arthur Freed at the beginning the sound era, Singin’ in the Rain takes that seismic shift in film history for its setting, focusing on heartthrob screen couple Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (the hilarious Jean Hagen) as the transition into sound – problem being that Lamont’s voice, like many actual silent screen stars, doesn’t fit her onscreen persona. Hollywood’s often best when it turns on its own foibles, and this is no exception. Must See

2:30am (9th) – TCM – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
What do you do when you’re seven brothers in the backwoods and need wives? Why, go kidnap them of course! Patriarchal values aside, Seven Brides is one of the most entertaining movie musicals ever made, and I defy anyone to outdo the barn dance/raising scene.

Tuesday, June 9

6:00am – TCM – I Know Where I’m Going!
This is one of those little films that doesn’t get much press and is very quiet and unassuming, but once you watch it you won’t easily forget it. Wendy Hiller is a confident young woman who knows exactly what she wants and where she’s going – that is, to meet her wealthy fiance and marry him on one of the Scottish Hebrides. But when a storm strands her on the way, she finds herself thrown off-course in more ways than one. There’s nothing wasted here, and I Know Where I’m Going! stands as one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s crowning achievements, even if it’s not as well-known as Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes.

1:00pm – TCM – A Matter of Life and Death
An RAP pilot bails out of his crashing plane and survives, even though he was meant to die, due to a mix-up in heaven. He’s granted the chance to plead his case for life in a heavenly trial in Powell & Pressburger’s fantasy drama. I haven’t seen this one, but I have friends who place it among their all-time favorites, so I’m looking forward to it.

5:15pm – TCM – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Another Powell & Pressburger film I haven’t seen, this one follows an idealistic army colonel from the Boer War through WWII, focusing on his romantic pursuits as well as the changes in military strategy and notions of honor. I find WWI films interesting for the juxtaposition of modern warfare with 19th century nobility, and looks like this will draw on that. Plus, really young Deborah Kerr.

6:05pm – IFC – Stage Beauty
Sometime around Shakespeare’s time, theatrical convention changed from having all female parts played by males on stage to allowing women to perform female roles themselves. Caught in this shift were the effeminate men who had made their careers and indeed, their identities, out of playing women. Stage Beauty is about one such man and his crisis of self when he no longer had a professional or personal identity. It’s a fascinating film in many ways.

Great Directors on TCM: Fred Zinnemann
I don’t tend to think of Fred Zinnemann when I think of great directors, and I’m sure that’s influenced by my auteurist outlook. Yet I do quite like several of the films he’s directed, such as the ones below.

8:00pm – TCM – High Noon
An Oscar-winning performance by Gary Cooper and an early role for Grace Kelly in Fred Zinnemann’s classic cowboy showdown drama. Follow it up with Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, something of a response to High Noon, which Hawks disliked.

9:30pm – TCM – Oklahoma!
I can’t begin to guess how many times I watched Oklahoma! growing up, but it’s well into double-digits. It’s a nothing story, about minor conflicts between farmers and cowboys, a couple of young lovers, and the obsessive farmhand who wants the girl for himself. It’s the way the music and dancing is integrated that’s wonderful (and groundbreaking in the 1943 play the film is based on). It’s worthwhile just for the surreal dream ballet in the middle.

12:00M – TCM – From Here to Eternity
There’s the famous part, yes, where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr make love on the beach among the crashing waves. But there’s also a solid ensemble war tale, involving young officer Montgomery Clift and his naive wife Donna Reed, and embittered soldiers Frank Sinatra and Lee J. Cobb.

Wednesday, June 10

6:00am – TCM – Kiss Me Kate
It’s hard to improve Shakespeare, but it usually works best to place his stories and words in a new context. Kiss Me Kate does just that by coupling a musical version of Taming of the Shrew with a backstage story that mirrors Shrew‘s fighting protagonists. Great supporting work from Ann Miller, James Whitmore, Keenan Wynn, etc. helps out leads Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson considerably, as do Cole Porter’s songs.

7:00am – Sundance – Nights of Cabiria
Nights of Cabiria and La Strada, two films that Federico Fellini made during his sorta-neo-realist phase in the mid-1950s with Giulietta Masina, always stand out to me almost even more than his more famous, more flamboyant 1960s films like 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita. Nights of Cabiria casts Masina as a woman of the night, following her around almost non-committally, yet with a lot of care and heart. And Masina is simply amazing in everything she does – not classically beautiful, but somehow incredibly engaging for every second she’s onscreen. Must See
(repeats at 6:00pm, and 1:00pm on the 13th, and 5:00am on the 14th)

Great Directors on TCM: Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges is responsible, as writer and director, for many of the most insane, provocative, and lasting comedies of the early 1940s. He consistently pushed envelopes, and while some of his films may come across a little shrill today, I still love them to pieces.

8:00pm – TCM – The Lady Eve
Barbara Stanwyck and her father Charles Coburn are cardplayers, cheating cruise ship denizens of their wealth. Millionaire (and snake afficianado) Henry Fonda is a good mark, especially since he’s a bit dense and spacey. Stanwyck’s plot is hugely elaborate, only a little muddled by her falling in love with Fonda as well, and she’s a delight from start to finish. As she usually is. Must See

10:00pm – TCM – Sullivan’s Travels
Sullivan’s Travels is a slightly more serious turn for Preston Sturges, but ultimately upholds his comedic tendencies. Joel McCrea is a filmmaker known for his comedies who decides he wants to make a serious film about the depression; but as a successful Hollywood director, he doesn’t know anything about poverty and the working class, so he embarks on an odyssey to learn about them, picking up waifish Veronica Lake as a traveling companion. Must See

12:00M – TCM – The Palm Beach Story
Similar in tone but less consistent than The Lady Eve, this film follows bickering couple Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert as she leaves him to gold dig for a richer man. He follows her, pretending to be her brother, and they get all entangled with a wealthy brother and sister. The ending is a weak bit of trickery, but there are enough moments of hilarity to make it worth watching.

2:00am (11th) – The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Preston Sturges’ zaniest and most irreverent comedy gives Betty Hutton her best role as Trudy Kockenlocker, who goes out for a night on the town with a group of soldiers about to ship out. A few months later, she finds out she’s pregnant and can only vaguely remember an impromptu wedding ceremony with a soldier who may or may not be named Ratskiwatski. I’m always impressed that Sturges got away with as much as he did in this film in 1944.

Thursday, June 11

7:45am – 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.

2:00pm – TCM – The Maltese Falcon
Humphrey Bogart inhabits the role of Dashiell Hammett’s private eye Sam Spade, creating one of the definitive on-screen hard-boiled detective (vying only with Bogart’s Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, really). Not mention setting the early benchmark for noir films. Must See

3:45pm – TCM – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
One of Bogart’s best films casts him as greedy prospector Fred C. Dobbs, who teams up with old-timer Walter Huston and youngster Tim Holt to find a horde of gold. Along the way, they uncover instead the darker sides of human nature. One of director John Huston’s most impressive films.

6:00pm – TCM – The African Queen
Yet another team up of John Huston and Humphrey Bogart pits Bogart against the Amazon river – and straight-laced missionary Katharine Hepburn, who is forced to travel with him to escape Germany enemies. Well, boats are small, and one things leads to another, you know.

Great Directors on TCM : Akira Kurosawa
Between his flawless translations of American genre films (especially crime films and westerns) to Japanese settings both contemporary and medieval, his groundbreaking experiments with cinematic point of view and narrative reliability, and his brilliant juxtapositions of Shakespeare with Japanese tradition, Akira Kurosawa can easily claim to be one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time.

8:00pm – TCM – The Seven Samurai
Probably Kurosawa’s best-known film, The Seven Samurai is an eastern version of a Western, with down-on-their-luck samurai (led by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune) working together to help a ravaged village hold off bandit invaders. Completing the cycle of cinematic borrowing, the film was remade in the US as The Magnificent Seven. Must See

10:00pm – 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.

Friday, June 12

12:30pm – TCM – Out of the Past
Out of the Past comes up in most conversations about film noir. It’s got all the elements: low-key lighting (due in this case to budgetary concerns), an existential anti-hero (Robert Mitchum), a femme fatale (Jane Greer), etc. It’s honestly not my favorite noir, but it’s a good one to see once.

2:00pm – Sundance – A Woman Under the Influence
Gena Rowlands gives a tour-de-force performance as Mabel, a woman whose teetering madness threatens her marriage to Nick (Peter Falk). Their relationship edges back and forth between love, frustration, and anger with amazing quickness, yet it’s not clear whether Mabel’s instability is causing the problems, or the other way around. John Cassavetes directs with an unwavering camera, refusing to look away.

5:15pm – TCM – I Walked With a Zombie
Or, Jane Eyre in the West Indies. In Val Lewton’s moody little fantastic horror flick, mousy nurse Betsy goes to the Caribbean to care for afflicted Jessica, the wife of an important plantation owner. Turns out her affliction is due to zombification, a curse of the voodoo-practicing natives. Certainly the acting and script are nothing special here, but the noirish cinematography and direction by Jacques Tourneur as well as producer Lewton’s peculiarly literary sensibility certainly are.

6:30pm – TCM – Cat People
Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur team up for this suggestive horror film, tapping into Eastern European legends of women who turn into cats to protect themselves against oppressive male attention. Highly creepy while showing almost nothing – and I happen to quite like that in a film.

Great Directors on TCM: Woody Allen
Woody Allen is one of the most prolific writer/directors currently working, having turned out a new film nearly every year since the early 1970s. He’s gone through several creative phases, gained and lost popularity, been in and out of the tabloids, etc etc ad nauseum. But when he’s on, he manages to create films that are by turn watchably philosophical, absurdly hilarious, movingly emotional, cinematically and personally nostalgic, and caustically witty. TCM’s hitting almost every base with the films they’ve chosen – throw in Crimes and Misdemeanors and it’d be perfect.

9:45pm – TCM – Broadway Danny Rose
In this lesser Woody Allen film, Danny Rose (Woody) is a theatrical agent whose clients always leave him when they start becoming successful. His current client, a has-been tenor trying to make a comeback, gives him further grief by having an affair with a young woman (Mia Farrow) with gangster connections. Not only does Danny worry about the tenor’s wife, he also gets himself in trouble with the woman’s family.

11:15pm – TCM – Hannah and Her Sisters
Say what you want about Annie Hall and even Manhattan, both of which I love, I throw my vote for best Woody Allen movie ever to Hannah and Her Sisters. It has all the elements Allen is known for – neurotic characters, infidelity, a tendency to philosophize randomly, New York City, dysfunctional family dynamics, acerbic wit – and blends them together much more cogently and evenly than most of his films do. Must See

1:15am (13th) – 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.

2:45am (13th) – TCM – Interiors
In case anyone doubted Woody Allen’s admiration for Ingmar Bergman, he made this film to prove it. Interiors is about the best imitation of a Bergman chamber drama you could ask for, down to the spare set design, strained family relations, and a climax involving an angry sea. Still, it is also very much Allen’s film – his first straight drama – focusing on deeply neurotic, introspective characters unable to get outside their own heads for long enough to form really true relationships.

4:30am (13th) – TCM – Take the Money and Run
An early Woody Allen movie, when he was mostly focused on being funny and absurd, and this film about a set of totally inept bank robbers is both. It’s actually my favorite of the pre-Annie Hall Allen films.

Saturday, June 13

Great Directors on TCM: Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder had an incredible ability to make definitive films in most genres – screwball comedy, film noir, socially conscious drama, bittersweet comedy-drama. Rarely are his films bad; most of the time they’re brilliant.

8:30am – TCM – The Apartment
Wilder had a knack for combining comedy and drama into bittersweet goodness, and that’s exactly what he does here, garnering Oscars for Picture, Director, and Screenplay in the process. Jack Lemmon lends his apartment to his boss Fred MacMurray for romantic trysts – a situation that gets even more complicated when MacMurray trysts with Shirley MacLaine, who Lemmon happens to love from afar. Everything comes together perfectly in this film, one of Wilder’s best. MUST SEE

3:30pm – TCM – Some Like It Hot
After musicians Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon unwittingly witness the St. Valentines Day Massacre, they have to escape the mob by impersonating women and joining an all-girls band. The fact that Marilyn Monroe is the band’s lead singer doesn’t help them stay undercover. Easily one of the greatest comedies ever put on film. Must See

8:00pm – 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 1:00am on the 14th)

10:15pm – TCM – Double Indemnity
Quite probably the most definitive film noir film in existence (vying only with The Big Sleep in my head, anyway) has insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) being seduced by bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and convinced by her to help murder her husband for the insurance money. Wilder’s crackling dialogue and Stanwyck’s perfectly tuned mixture of calculation and innocence can hardly be beat. Must See

12:15am (14th) – TCM – Sunset Boulevard
Billy Wilder’s classic noir explores the dark side of the rich and formerly famous, as a struggling screenwriter (William Holden) gets involved with a silent screen star seeking to make a comeback in the sound era. In one of the most brilliant cast films ever, actual silent screen star Gloria Swanson returned to the movies to play the delusional Norma Desmond and actual silent star/director Erich von Stroheim (who worked with Swanson on the never-finished Queen Kelly, portions of which appear in Sunset Boulevard) plays her former director/current butler. The film is a bit on the campy side now, but that doesn’t diminish its enjoyability one bit. Must See

Sunday, June 14

Great Directors on TCM: Howard Hawks
Even more so than Wilder, Howard Hawks genre-shifted with ease, including westerns and musicals along with comedies, action films, noir and drama. Yet they all somehow bore his stamp, making him one of the first directors given auteur status by the French film critics who coined the term. (I tend to have more difficulty finding his stamp than I do with, say, Hitchcock – someday I’m going to a specifically auterist study of Hawks so I can write about him more knowledgably. For now I only know that I usually like most everything he did.)

9:30am – TCM – Sergeant York
Gary Cooper won his first Oscar for this film, portraying pacifist-turned-WWI hero Alvin C. York. Unfortunately, I’ve never actually seen it all the way through, so I don’t have much more to offer about it.

12:00N – TCM – Bringing Up Baby
Poor Cary Grant just can’t get away from delightfully ditzy Katharine Hepburn, especially after her dog steals his museum’s priceless dinosaur bone. Oh, and after her pet leopard escapes (and a dangerous zoo leopard escapes at the same time). Incredible situation follows incredible situation in this screwiest of all screwball comedies. Must See

2:00pm – TCM – Twentieth Century
In one of the films that defines “screwball comedy” (along with The Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby), John Barrymore plays a histrionic theatre producer trying to convince his star Carole Lombard to come back to him – both professionally and personally. Lombard is luminous as usual, and Barrymore can chew scenery with the best of them, which is precisely what his role calls for.

4:00pm – TCM – His Girl Friday
This is a remake of a 1931 film called The Front Page about newspaper buddies who go after a major story – Hawks took it to a whole new level by turning one of the men into a woman, and setting reporters Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant as a former couple, now divorced who can’t seem to stay apart, either personally or professionally. The dialogue is a stroke of genius, as well, overlapping in a maelstrom of words that’s overwhelming and delightful all at the same time. I call this one of the greatest American films ever made. Must See

6:00pm – TCM – Ball of Fire
Hawks tries to recapture a little bit of Bringing Up Baby in this tale of a showgirl (Barbara Stanwyck, who’s trying to recapture a bit of The Lady Eve) who ends up among a bunch of stuffy professors, including Gary Cooper. Ball of Fire isn’t as memorable as either of those other films, but it has its own charm, and it’s certainly worth a watch.

8:00pm – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. It’s honestly mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.

10:00pm – TCM – The Big Sleep
Only one of the greatest detective/mysteries/films noir ever made. Humphrey Bogart is the definite hard-boiled detective, Lauren Bacall is the potential love interest/femme fatale. Don’t try to follow the story; whodunit is far less important than crackling dialogue and dry humor. Watch out for future Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind) in the small but extremely memorable part of the bookshop girl. Must See

12:00M – TCM – Only Angels Have Wings
I’ve never gotten into Only Angels Have Wings as much as I have into other Hawks’ films – why I don’t know. It has elements I like – Cary Grant as a daring pilot making dangerous cargo runs in exotic locales, Jean Arthur in an uncharacteristically dramatic turn, and a sighting of a young Rita Hayworth. Just doesn’t seem to come together in a memorable whole for me.

The Third Man, playing on TCM, May 15th at 10:45am

As always, if I didn’t write anything for a film, it’s usually because I’ve pitched it in earlier posts. Use the tags at the bottom to find earlier posts regarding the same film if you so desire.

Monday, May 11th

4:15am (12th) – TCM – Network
Newscaster Peter Finch is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. To see why, watch this incendiary unmasking of the ruthless world of network television. And this was 1976. Think what it’s like now!

Tuesday, May 12th

6:30am – TCM – Little Women (1933)
Katharine Hepburn is Jo March in this early adaptation of Alcott’s classic novel. There’s a bit of creak to this one, but Hepburn is luminous. I grew up with this one, so I have a special place in my heart for it, as well.

9:45am – TCM – Holiday
Kate Hepburn teams up with Cary Grant for their second film (TCM is playing all their pairings except the first, Sylvia Scarlet, for some reason) – this is the same year as Bringing Up Baby and has been overshadowed by it, but Holiday is also well worth a look.

11:30am – TCM – Bringing Up Baby
Must See

1:15pm – TCM – The Philadelphia Story
Hepburn here is Tracy Lord, a spoiled socialite about to marry Ralph Bellamy when ex-husband Cary Grant turns up. Throw in newspaper columnist James Stewart and his photographer Ruth Hussey, along with a bunch of great character actors filling out the cast, and you have both rollicking wedding preparations and one of the best films ever made.
Must See

5:30pm – TCM – The Lion in Winter

Wednesday, May 13th

10:45am – TCM – I Know Where I’m Going!
This is one of those films you probably haven’t heard of, doesn’t get much press, is very quiet and unassuming, but once you watch it you won’t easily forget it. Wendy Hiller is a confident young woman who knows exactly what she wants and where she’s going – that is, to meet her wealthy fiance and marry him on one of the Scottish Hebrides. But when a storm strands her on the way, she finds herself thrown off-course in more ways than one. There’s nothing wasted here, and I Know Where I’m Going! stands as one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s crowning achievements, even if it’s not as well-known as Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes.

5:45pm – TCM – I Could Go On Singing
I haven’t actually seen this one, but it’s Judy Garland’s final film. So there’s that. Also, TCM is apparently doing a series of films today that start with “I” – which is just an interesting approach to programming. :)

Thursday, May 14th

5:00am – TCM – Dinner At Eight

7:00am – TCM – Remember the Night
Not a great film, this one, but it has Barbara Stanwyck, who always managed to transcend her material and make whatever she was in worth watching. This is no exception.

8:45am – TCM – The Letter
Bette Davis shoots a man on her front porch. But…is it self-defense? Murder? Something else? Classic melodrama on display here.

12:45pm – TCM – Anna Christie
Garbo Talks. And thus, silent screen superstar Greta Garbo leapt into the sound era. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen this one, either. But it has the tagline Garbo Talks. I have to work that in.)

5:45pm – TCM – The Women
Only the cattiest, most man-less film every made. :) Several of Hollywood’s greatest female stars, from established divas like Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford to up-and-comers like Rosalind Russell and Joan Fontaine to character actresses like Mary Boland and Marjorie Main (and even non-actresses like gossip columnist Hedda Hopper), give their all to one of the wittiest scripts ever written. It’s tremendous fun every time I see it. And I’ve seen it like ten or fifteen times.
Must See

10:00pm – IFC – Blue Velvet
(repeats at 3:15am on the 15th)

Friday, May 15th

7:15am – TCM – Shadow of a Doubt
Must See

9:25am – IFC – Primer
(repeats at 2:35pm)

10:45am – TCM – The Third Man
Carol Reed directs Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in a Graham Greene script with a film noir style that seems to point directly toward European filmmaking styles of the 1950s and 1960s. Can’t be beat, I tell you. Can’t.
Must See

9:30pm – 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 – maybe it’s finally due to recover in the 2000s?
(repeats at 3:00am on the 16th)

Saturday, May 16th

6:00am – TCM – Murder!
Best.Title.Ever for a Hitchcock film, right down to the included exclamation point. :) It’s an early Hitchcock, one of his first sound pictures.

Sunday, May 17th

9:45am – IFC – Far From Heaven
Director Todd Haynes homages 1950s melodrama king Douglas Sirk with this film, loosely based on Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. I don’t think he succeeded as well as he might’ve (Sirk’s sort of in a class by himself), but he and lead Julianne Moore make a darn good attempt.
(repeats at 2:15pm)

11:30am – TCM – Double Indemnity
Must See

6:00pm – TCM – In the Heat of the Night
Northern police officer Sidney Poitier is brought in to aid racist small-town cop Rod Steiger. It’s 1967. You think sparks aren’t gonna fly from that? Come on. Steiger won an Oscar.

Monday, April 13

2:00pm – TCM – Kiss Me Kate
It’s hard to improve Shakespeare, but Kiss Me Kate comes pretty close by couching Taming of the Shrew in a backstage show business story and adding Cole Porter tunes.

8:00pm – TCM – The Letter
A cut-above Bette Davis melodrama – great example of Warner Bros. studio style.

10:00pm – TCM – Grand Illusion
You ever get that feeling when you’re watching a film that you’ve somehow become privvy to something wonderful? The sense that being allowed to see such an incredible film is a great privilege. I get it once in a while, and it’s usually on a film that I expected not to like that much – I mean, come on, French prisoners of war? Meh. But Grand Illusion is pretty much the opposite of “meh.” It’s extremely special. Must See

2:00am (14th) – IFC – Before Sunrise
It takes a special kind of filmmaker to make a moving, entertaining, and engaging film out of two people talking all night, and Richard Linklater is just that special. Of course, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy help him out by being highly engaging and entertaining.

Tuesday, April 14

6:30pm – IFC – Garden State
(repeats at 12:30pm on the 15th)

8:00pm – TCM – Gone With the Wind

12:00M – TCM – Singin’ in the Rain
Must See

12:00M – IFC – Trainspotting
(repeats at 4:00am on the 15th)

12:00M – Sundance – 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

2:00am (15th) – TCM – Angels With Dirty Faces

Wednesday, April 15

9:30am – IFC – The New World
(repeats at 3:45pm)

11:15am – TCM – The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
I rewatched this the last time it was on TCM, and it’s pretty much just as bizarre as I remember – turn Dr. Seuss loose on Hollywood with Technicolor, and this is what you get. No, seriously, he wrote it. The main character is a kid who hates taking piano lessons, so he daydreams a world in which his teacher, Dr. Terwilliker, is an evil mastermind forcing children to play the piano against their will.

8:00pm – TCM – Double Indemnity
Must See

8:00pm – IFC – Night Watch
The first of a planned vampire trilogy, I wish Night Watch were better – it has so many good ideas and backstory, but it ended up fairly incoherent. It’s still worth watching, and I’m still hoping the rest of the trilogy pulls it out.
(repeats at 2:15am on the 16th)

10:00pm – IFC – Day Watch
The sequel to Night Watch. Haven’t seen it yet, so I’ve yet to discover if my hopes for the remainder of the planned trilogy are realized.

10:00pm – TCM – Swing Time

11:30pm – Sundance – Oldboy

Thursday, April 16

6:00am-6:00pm – TCM – SUPER MONDO CHAPLIN FESTIVAL
TCM is running Charlie Chaplin films all day today, and they are ALL WORTH WATCHING. They’re starting with some early shorts and short features, then moving on to the absolute classics – I’ll highlight the best below with the actual times, but seriously. All worth watching.
(see below for highlighted listings)

8:30am – TCM – The Kid
Chaplin’s Little Tramp persona comes into its own in one of his first feature-length films (and by feature-length, that’s like an hour, here). Add in an adorable kid that the Tramp tries to keep from having to take care of, but of course, he ends up taking care of him.

9:15am – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Luis Bunuel’s biting critique of the bourgeoisie. Quite surreal, so don’t expect anything else.
(repeats at 3:45pm)

11:30am – TCM – The Gold Rush
The Little Tramp takes up prospecting in one of Chaplin’s most enduring films, with great set pieces including the house that’s about to fall over the cliff, and memorable scenes like the starving Tramp boiling and eating one of his boots.

12:45pm – TCM – Modern Times
My absolute favorite Chaplin film has him as a cog in the wheel of a factory, rebelling against the mechanization of the industrial age. It was made in 1936, long after synchronized sound was introduced in film (1927), but is mostly silent. Which doesn’t hurt the film at all. Must See

2:15pm – TCM – The Great Dictator
Chaplin’s first completely talking film, and one in which he doesn’t play his Little Tramp character. Instead, he’s both Hitler and a Jewish man who looks strikingly like Hitler. This obviously creates confusion. Brilliantly scathing satire – always amazes me that it was made as early as 1940.

8:00pm – TCM – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Friday, April 17

8:00am – TCM – Sunset Boulevard
Recently rewatched this as part of a series at the local repertory cinema, and totally loved it – before I had admired it but it hadn’t quite grabbed me. This time it grabbed me, and most every bit of it is perfect. Still easily the best “dark side of Hollywood” ever made. Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Maltese Falcon

11:30pm – TCM – Silk Stockings
The musical version of Ninotchka, about a staid, repressed Communist woman who goes to Paris on a mission, only to get loosened up by a Western guy. You’re better off with Ninotchka, honestly, which has the triple-threat of Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and Greta Garbo behind it. Silk Stocking substitutes Cyd Charisse (who’s really only ever convincing when she’s dancing), Fred Astaire (who’s fine, though a bit on the old side by 1957), and adds Cole Porter music, which is really the major reason to check this version out.

Saturday, April 18

6:00am – TCM – Dead of Night
An omnibus horror film from 1945, set at a country house where each guest tells his or her horror story. The frame story I love (a man is drawn to the house, where he seems to know everything that will happen before it does, though he can’t figure out how); the other stories are pretty varied, a couple of them even comedic. But Michael Redgrave’s evil ventriloquist dummy story is one to watch. It’s quiet horror, but that makes it all the better for me.

8:00pm – TCM – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

10:00pm – TCM – The Graduate

Sunday, April 19

11:00am – TCM – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

3:00pm – TCM – Oklahoma!

6:00pm – IFC – Miller’s Crossing
(repeats at 5:00am on the 20th)

8:00pm – TCM – A Shot in the Dark
Here’s your counter example for the “sequels are never as good as the original” argument. This second film in the Pink Panther series is easily the best, and stands as ones of the zaniest 1960s comedies ever.

12:00M – TCM – City Lights
TCM didn’t get City Lights in on their Chaplin day, but apparently decided to make up for it a couple of days later. This one is from 1931, but is silent. The Little Tramp helps a blind girl get the operation she needs to see again, but doesn’t immediately reveal himself to her. One of the most beautiful and poignant final scenes in film history. Must See

1:45am (20th) – Sundance – 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

4:00am (20th) – TCM – The More the Merrier

Okay, I can haz new computer now. It’s a shiny, pretty Macbook that anyone who happens to follow me on Twitter or FriendFeed has already heard WAY too much about. Suffice it to say that it is much more fun writing these on a computer than on an iPhone (finding the greater than/more than symbols for all the html tags got old REAL quick on the phone). Looked like it was gonna be slim pickings this week with TCM’s lineup, but IFC more than picked up the slack.

Monday, March 9th

8:35am – IFC – Diabolique
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense thriller about a man whose wife and lover decide to join forces to off him. But there’s another twist beyond that.
(repeats at 2:30pm)

8:00pm – IFC – Day Watch
The sequel to the moody apocalyptic sci-fi film Night Watch from a couple of years ago. Night Watch was far from perfect (way better in concept than in execution, which was quite muddled), but still interesting, and I’m curious to see if Day Watch improved on it. It’s eventually supposed to be a trilogy.
(repeats at 1:30am on the 10th)

12:00M – Sundance – The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
One of the forerunners of Romania’s ongoing New Wave, focused on a spare, minimalist style of realism – my beloved 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days belongs to this movement as well. Lazarescu is an indictment of the Romanian healthcare system, following a dying man as a parademic tries to get him into hospital after hospital over the course of a night.

Tuesday, March 10th

8:30am – IFC – Howl’s Moving Castle
(repeats at 2:05pm)

11:00am – TCM – Detour
If you wanna see some classic B-level film noir, look no further. This is one of the touchstones – you got low-budget, dim lighting, fatalistic anti-hero, femme fatale, the works.

2:45pm – Sundance – Avenue Montaigne
Sweet and unassuming ensemble film, set in Paris. That’s all it takes to hook me.
(repeats at 1:00pm on the 14th)

1:00am (11th) – TCM – The Bridge on the River Kwai

Wednesday, March 11th

10:00am – TCM – Love Me or Leave Me
Doris Day turns in her best performance ever as the abused girlfriend of gangster James Cagney.

Thursday, March 12th

8:00pm – IFC – The Player
Robert Altman. Tim Robbins as a hotshot Hollywood producer who may just get his comeuppance. Virtuosic opening tracking shot.
(repeats at 2:00am on the 13th)

10:15pm – IFC – The Royal Tenenbaums
(repeats at 4:25am on the 13th)

2:00am (13th) – TCM – The Third Man

Friday, March 13th

6:25am – IFC – Picnic at Hanging Rock
I have a love-hate relationship with director Peter Weir, and I’m never sure which side of the fence this film falls on. I don’t really understand it, but it’s stuck in my head for years. I think I’m assigning that to love.
(repeats at 11:40am and 4:55pm)

7:45am – TCM – Blackboard Jungle
One of the first teacher-in-an-inner-city-school films, with a very young Sidney Poitier as one of the unruly students.

9:10am – Sundance – Mutual Appreciation
I actually just watched this today. It’s part of the so-called Mumblecore movement, which is largely associated with a group of New York indie filmmakers including Andrew Bujalski (who directed Mutual Appreciation), Joe Swanberg, Mark and Jay Duplass, Mary and Ronald Bronstein, actress Greta Gerwig, etc. Mumblecore often comes under fire for being pointless and navel-gazing, and sure. It’s that. I’m not even sure I like Mumblecore-labeled films that much, but if you’re interested in seeing some real DIY filmmaking (not what passes for indie in the world of Little Miss Sunshine and Juno), check this one out. It has a bit more plot than some of the others, plus it stars Justin Rice, the lead singer/guitarist/songwriter for Bishop Allen, which is fun.
(repeats at 4:35pm)

2:45pm – TCM – To Sir, With Love
Another teacher film, but this time Sidney Poitier’s the teacher, and the school is in inner-city London.

8:00pm – TCM – Double Indemnity
It’s James M Cain night over at TCM tonight, and all three of these films (this one, Mildred Pierce, and The Postman Always Rings Twice are well worth watching, straddling the film noir-melodrama line perfectly.

10:00pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce

12:00M – TCM – The Postman Always Rings Twice

Saturday, March 14th

9:45am – IFC – Waking Life
It may be a while before you see another film like Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped Waking Life, which doubles as philosophic treatise. It’s one of the most interesting, innovative, and brilliant films of the 21st century.
(repeats at 2:35pm)

4:00pm – TCM – From Here to Eternity

Sunday, March 15th

8:00am – IFC – Cléo from 5 to 7
At the end of last year, I posted a list of the best films I had seen. Cléo from 5 to 7 was at the top of that list. It combines a New Wave sensibility with a female director’s eye, which turned out to be such a perfect combination for me that I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since, and I can’t wait to see it again. And again.

9:35am – IFC – Vagabond
Vagabond is by the same director as Cléo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda. Haven’t seen it yet, but hope to this time around.
(repeats at 4:15pm)

8:00pm – IFC – Raging Bull

9:45pm – Sundance – A Woman Under the Influence
I still have this John Cassavetes film on my DVR from the last time it was on. I should rectify that at some point.
(repeats at 5:30pm on the 16th)

12:00M – TCM – Nosferatu
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula still ends up being one of the best versions of the story. For a great double feature, watch this and then 2001′s Shadow of the Vampire, a fun little film that wonders if Nosferatu actor Max Shrenk actually WAS a vampire.

Monday, February 16th

9:35am – 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… Must See
(repeats at 2:45pm)

10:00am – TCM – Angels With Dirty Faces
James Cagney is a local criminal idolized by a gang of young boys. When he’s caught, it’s up to his childhood friend-turned-priest Pat O’Brien to convince him to do what he can to keep the boys from following in his footsteps. One of several gangster films that Cagney’s best known for.

3:30pm – TCM – Double Indemnity
Billy Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck. Fred MacMurray. Edward G. Robinson. One of two or three contenders for the title of greatest film noir ever made. Must See

8:00pm – TCM – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Paul Newman and Robert Redford play this titular outlaws in this 1969 western, one of the greats of the 1960s revisionist cycle. Many great moments and shootouts make this one worth coming back.

10:00pm – TCM – Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder. Marilyn Monroe. Jack Lemmon. Tony Curtis. One of two or three contenders for the title of greatest comedy ever made. (Yes, I can do this with Billy Wilder movies for a long time…) Must See

Tuesday, February 17th

8:15am – TCM – The Red Shoes
Michael Powell. Emeric Pressburger. Moira Shearer…Okay, enough of that. But this really is one of the best ballet films ever made, though that’s a fairly small genre. The story is basically Svengali and comes across a little cliched today, but the extended ballet sequence has yet to be matched.

3:30pm – TCM – Royal Wedding
This isn’t one of the all-time great Fred Astaire musicals, but it’s quite charming in its small way, and has the distinction of including the Fred’s “dancing on the ceiling” extravaganza, as well as a few surprisingly competent dance numbers from Fred and not-dancer Jane Powell. Oh, and Fred’s love interest is Sarah Churchill, Winston Churchill’s daughter, which is interesting (Powell plays his sister).

1:00am (18th) – Sundance – Paris, je t’aime
18 great directors, 18 short films about Paris. There was no way I was not going to love this film, given my ongoing love affair with cinematic Paris. But there’s enough variety in the film that most anyone is going to find something to like here.

2:30am (18th) – TCM – 42nd Street
The definitive backstage musical creaks a bit around the edges, but it still pretty darn solid.

4:15am (18th) – TCM – Gold Diggers of 1935
There is absolutely nothing distinguished about most of Gold Diggers of 1935 (unlike Gold Diggers of 1933, which is a hidden gem right the way through). However, it includes the dazzling Busby Berkeley-choreographed “Lullaby of Broadway” routine, which follows a young socialite through her nights and days of being a “Broadway baby” – with a shockingly tragic turn for a musical of the time. The whole rest of the movie is worth sitting through to see it, or honestly, just fast-forward to it. It’s near the end.

Wednesday, February 18th

3:00pm – TCM – Anatomy of a Murder
Lawyers James Stewart and George C. Scott face off over a murky rape/murder/self-defense case. A great combination of character study and courtroom drama, with a fantastic original jazz score by Duke Ellington and a gorgeous title sequence by Saul Bass thrown in.

10:00pm – TCM – The Caine Mutiny
Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg may be insane. Or he may just be quirky. When his paranoid behavior goes over the edge, Van Johnson leads the crew in a mutiny – but are they right? One of Bogart’s best performances.

Thursday, February 19th

8:00am – TCM – Blackboard Jungle
An early example of the “great teacher in a difficult classroom” films also cuts across the race issues of the 1950s, as Glenn Ford takes a job as teacher in one of the roughest schools in the city, butting heads against a very young Sidney Poitier. Also notable as, I believe, the first time a rock song (“Rock Around the Clock”) was played in a film.

1:00am (20th) – TCM – Singin’ in the Rain
There’s very little question that this is the greatest musical in existence. Must See

Friday, February 20th

7:00am – TCM – Adam’s Rib
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn take on the battle of the sexes as married lawyers on opposite sides of an assault case involving gender politics. It’s a great movie in dialogue and acting, and still interesting for the 1949 view of women struggling for even basic equality. Some of its approach to gender may be a bit strange today, but…that’s why it’s interesting. :)

10:30am – TCM – The Battle of Algiers
This would be one of those I’m recommending without having seen, simply because it ends up so near the top of critical best lists all the time. It’s a 1966 French film about the Algerian war, using a very realistic, almost documentary filming style. Looking forward to seeing it myself.

10:00pm – TCM – The Conversation
Gene Hackman is a surveillance operator, paid to listen in to other’s conversations. But when he thinks he overhears something connected with a murder, how far should he go to uncover the truth? And, in fact, how much of what he heard was his own interpretation? In this film along the lines of Blow-up and Blow Out, what he hears may or may not be accurate, but where is the line between privacy and responsibility when fallible humans are in the middle? This film was timely when it was released in 1974, and it’s pretty much remained so ever since. Must See

Saturday, February 21st

5:30pm – TCM – Glory
Matthew Broderick commands a platoon of black soldiers in the Civil War’s Union army (the platoon includes Morgan Freeman and a young Denzel Washington, who earned a supporting Oscar). Director Edward Zwick has been trying for a Best Picture Oscar with his over-earnest “important” action dramas for years, but 1989′s Glory remains his best work.

10:15pm – TCM – They Were Expendable
John Ford’s 1945 film captures the daily life of a PT Boat unit commander (John Wayne) in the Philippines near the end of WWII; this is one of those films that doesn’t seem that amazing during any given scene, but by the end, the cumulative effect is staggering, and the film’s solid reputation among WWII films is well-deserved.

Sunday, February 22nd

8:00am – IFC – Amarcord
Something of a combination of Fellini’s neo-Realist and surrealist phases, as a film director’s memories of his childhood in Italy become larger and crazier than life. I get it mixed up in my head with Roma a bit, so I could use a rewatch on it myself. It’s in theatrical rerelease right now, so keep an eye for it to hit a theatre near you. (It’s in LA till the 20th.)

8:45am – TCM – The Band Wagon
The Band Wagon combines the dancing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse with the lush directorial style of Vincente Minnelli and a witty script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green to create one of the best movie musicals ever. Second to Singin’ in the Rain, of course. “The Girl Hunt Ballet” alone is worth the price of admission, but you get so much more. Must See

10:45am – TCM – The Producers (1968)
Sometimes it’s easier to make money on Broadway when your show flops – at least, that’s what producer Zero Mostel and accountant Gene Wilder hope when they seek out the worst play they can find to put on stage: A musical called “Springtime for Hitler.” I haven’t seen the musical remake (which I’ve heard is terrible) based on the musical stage version (which I’ve heard is great), but the original non-musical is fantastic enough that I don’t feel like I’ve missed out.

8:00pm – TCM – Stage Door
I can’t even tell you how many times I borrowed this film from the library when I was younger. It was many times, in the double digits surely. Katharine Hepburn is a privileged heiress who wants to prove she can be an actress without daddy’s money, so she goes to live incognito at a boarding house for theatrical wannabes and starts on the audition circuit. That’s the main strand of the story, but the real draw is the wonderful script and supporting cast that pulls together a snarky Ginger Rogers (Kate’s unwilling roommate), a REALLY young Lucille Ball, a REALLY young Ann Miller (the other half of Ginger’s dance act), a catty Gail Patrick, a wry Eve Arden, and a tragic Andrea Leeds (the talented actress with a hit last year who’s starving this year), as well as smarmy producer Adolphe Menjou. I now own the DVD, and on a recent rewatch, I fell in love with it just as much as I ever did ten years ago. This isn’t a film that’s too well known these days, but that’s a shame, and I recommend it in a heartbeat. Must See

Next Week Sneak Peek

Tuesday, February 24th
1:45pm – TCM – The 400 Blows
3:45pm – TCM – Au revoir, les enfants
10:00pm – TCM – Rashomon
11:30pm – TCM – The Seven Samurai

Monday, January 12

7:30am / 6:30am – IFC – The Seventh Seal
One of Ingmar Bergman’s better-known films, though I don’t like it as much as some of his others. I guess the image of a medieval knight playing chess with Death is an image that’s hard to get out of your head, though.
(repeats 12:35pm EST)

9:15am / 8:15am – IFC – American Splendor
Paul Giamatti burst on the scene with this film about unconventional comic book artist Harvey Pekar. It’s an appropriately offbeat, funny, cynical, and yet warm film.
(repeats 2:35pm EST)

Tuesday, January 13

2:00am / 1:00am (14th) – TCM – Annie Hall
TCM’s playing this, one of Woody Allen’s best, a lot lately, and that’s not a bad thing. Must See

Wednesday, January 14

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – The Apartment
Also a frequent TCM film, but always worth another look. Tonight it’s part of a Jack Lemmon-Billy Wilder marathon. Must See

10:15pm / 9:15pm – TCM – Some Like It Hot
But if you only see one Jack Lemmon-Billy Wilder film, see this one. If you only see one Marilyn Monroe film, see this one (or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but I digress). If you only see one Tony Curtis film…you get the idea. Must See

Thursday, January 15

12:30am / 11:30am – TCM – Double Indemnity
And if you only see one Billy Wilder film, see THIS one. :) Still one of the most iconic and definitive film noirs ever made (seriously, when people ask you “what is film noir, anyway,” you could almost just say Double Indemnity – almost). Also provides Barbara Stanwyck another chance to be AWESOME. Must See

2:30am / 1:30am (16th) – TCM – Shaft
The original black private eye who got all the ladies. There was a huge wave of African-American-centric films in the 1970s (so-called blaxploitation films), and Shaft is one of the first and one of the best.

4:15am / 3:15am (16th) – TCM – The Big Sleep
I think I’ve already highlighted this one a few times since I started this post series. I don’t care. This is one of my favorite movies, the best hard-boiled detective film ever made, one of Humphrey Bogart’s best roles, and the best pairing of Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It’s full of win any way you look at it. Must See

Friday, January 16

6:15am / 5:15am – TCM – Thousands Cheer
There’s nothing particularly special about Thousands Cheer, a fairly routine 1943 war-time musical, except that it ends with a spectacular revue of MGM stars including June Allyson, Frank Sinatra (both in probably their first or second screen appearance), Virginia O’Brien, pianist Jose Iturbi, Judy Garland, and the actual stars of the picture, Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson.

6:20am / 5:20am – IFC – Fanny and Alexander
One of Ingmar Bergman’s later films; I haven’t seen it yet, but hopefully this will be the time that my DVR decides not to randomly delete it before I watch it. I know it’s about a couple of kids, which is an unusual subject for Bergman, but I’ve heard so many good things about it I can’t wait.
(repeats 12:25pm EST)

8:30am / 7:30am – TCM – National Velvet
Being as how I grew up loving old movies AND horses, I probably don’t need to state that I pretty much wore out my tape of National Velvet. It’s one of the greatest kid-friendly films in existence, with a young Elizabeth Taylor and an exciting horse race. Ah, good times.

Saturday, January 17

4:00pm / 3:00pm – TCM – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Paul Newman and Robert Redford in one of those late 1960s revisionist westerns that managed to simultaneously revitalize a genre whose traditional values were out of step with the times and kill the genre for future filmmakers. Well, that aside, Butch Cassidy is a great film any way you cut it.

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
What do you do when you’re seven brothers in the backwoods and need wives? Why, go kidnap them of course! Patriarchal values aside, Seven Brides is one of the most entertaining movie musicals ever made, and I defy anyone to outdo the barn dance/raising scene.

8:00pm / 7:00pm – IFC – Raging Bull
It’s a huge black mark on my cinephile record that I haven’t seen Raging Bull, widely acclaimed as a high point (or maybe THE high point) in the careers of both Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Situation will hopefully soon be rectified.
(repeats 1:30am EST and 11:30am EST on the 18th)

Sunday, January 18

6:00am / 5:00am – TCM – Arsenic and Old Lace
The Brewster sisters are kindly old ladies – even if they are poisoning lonely old gentleman callers. As an act of kindness! Such is the premise of one of the screwiest of all comedies, which never lets up on the hilarity. Cary Grant turns in one of his most sustained comic performances, and even the usually quite serious Peter Lorre gets in on the fun.

10:15am / 9:15am – TCM – Notorious
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films (and if you know how I feel about Hitchcock, that’s saying a lot), 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

12:35am / 11:35am – TCM – The Cameraman
Buster Keaton works as a cameraman on a film to try to get closer to the attractive leading lady. I’ve seen this years ago, and remember enjoying it quite a lot. Plus, any chance to see Keaton is a chance worth taking.