There seems to be a crime/thriller theme going on in my picks to highlight this week – I didn’t initially do that on purpose, but I guess I do kind of like that sort of thing. Also, TCM is still doing their film noir thing, I think, which means a lot of good crime-related stuff to choose from. A lot more good stuff is playing this week, though, including a higher-than-usual number of things I’m featuring for the first time, so head on over to Row Three to see the rest.

The Night of the Hunter

Tuesday, March 27 at 12:00M on TCM
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.
1955 USA. Director: Charles Laughton. Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish.
Must See

Love Crime

Friday, March 30 (late Thursday) at 12:05am on Sundance
Alain Corneau’s final film is a Hitchcockian thriller of business intrigue heightened by personal emotions, with icy blondes facing off against each other trying to gain the upper hand both at their company and in their personal lives. It’s got a lot of twisty turns, and ends up being quite satisfying by the end. My only complaint is that the stylistics don’t match up to the plotting or the acting, but I guess in the grand scheme of things, that’s a quibble.
2010 France. Director: Alain Corneau. Starring: Ludivine Sagnier, Kristin Scott Thomas, Patrick Mille.

The Others

Friday, March 30 at 8:00pm on IFC
More than ten years later, this film remains one of my favorite horror films, because it perfectly captures that ghostly, creepy atmosphere I love so much. Nicole Kidman does her best Grace Kelly homage as a mother sequestered on a remote British island (awaiting her husband’s return from WWII) along with her children, who have a unique skin condition that means they cannot be exposed to sunlight. Swapping the safety factor of lightness and darkness is a brilliant move, and the ultimate twist is pretty good, too. But this film lives and dies by its atmosphere – menacing housekeepers, dust-covered furniture, creepy photographs, it’s all here.
2001 USA. Director: Alejandro Amenabar. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Saturday, March 31 at 8:00pm on TCM
I credit this film with my real interest in silent film. Silent comedy was a big entry point, but Sunrise, with its simple but lovely story of marital infidelity, potential murder, and reconciliation, convinced me that silent films wasn’t just about being funny, but that they could really and truly be art in and of themselves. Murnau does so much with so little here, filling every frame with such visual beauty and storytelling that he barely needs any title cards, that I was immediately sold and I’ve never turned back.
1927 USA. Director: F.W. Murnau. Starring: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston.
Must See

Born to Kill

Saturday, March 31 at 12:00M on TCM
A film noir that had slipped past me until last year, but I certainly am glad I caught up with it. The always reliable Claire Trevor leads the film as a woman who leaves town instead of dealing with the aftermath of finding her friend murdered; unfortunately, the murderer has unwittingly left on the same train and the two end up inextricably entwined in a love-hate relationship. It’s got some obvious film noir tropes, but also plays along the edges of others (Laurence Tierney is basically an homme fatale, instead of Trevor being a femme fatale). Definitely a film worth your time if you’re into noir or classic crime dramas.
1947 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook Jr., Isabel Jewell.

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s the most beautiful movie you’re ever seen?

I guess you could answer this beautiful-looking or beautiful-sounding or beautiful-spirited or any number of other interpretations of “beautiful,” but I’m a bit of a cinematography whore so I went with visual beauty. Even with that, there are so many choices, and I had a number of others in here first, like The Tree of Life and other Malick films, or Sunrise and its moody Expressionism, or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford or The Double Life of Veronique or any number of others. But I decided to go for the black and white stunner The Night of the Hunter. I love this film for many reasons, but one of the main ones is its gorgeous painterly photography, which makes nearly every shot screencappable. It’s basically Expressionist like Sunrise, but with sharp contrasts and angles compared with Sunrise‘s softer, dreamier approach. I’ve seen the film several times, but I still gasp at many visual moments scattered throughout it.

Here’s a clip of my favorite part.

And what the heck, some favorite stills.

Aha! A Criterion Three Reasons video for a film I don’t have to lust after – because I already bought it. And you should to. The Night of the Hunter is one of the most oddball and incredible films ever made, somewhere in between film noir, Southern gothic, fantasy, surrealism, and parable. It’s the only film that actor Charles Laughton ever directed, partially because it was not well-received at the time. But looking back, it’s hard to see what he could’ve done to top this, so perhaps it’s fitting that it stands as his only film as director – as unique in his filmography as it is in cinema history.

Ride the High Country, playing on TCM Friday, November 13.

A few interesting new ones this week. I haven’t seen Nicholas Ray’s Bitter Victory, playing on Wednesday, but it comes highly recommended by Jean-Luc Godard. So there. Then there’s Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder on Thursday, which I can’t believe we haven’t seen in this feature before, and Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country on Friday – a film which sits, like many of Peckinpah’s films, right on the cusp between traditional and revisionist westerns – and Jean Cocteau’s poetic Orpheus late on Sunday. Finally, Sundance has both parts of Steven Soderbergh’s Che on Saturday, probably the first time it’s played on TV outside of PPV or premium cable.

Monday, November 9

5:30am – 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.
1974 USA. Director: John Cassavetes. Starring: Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Fred Draper, Lady Rowlands.

5:35pm – IFC – A Fish Called Wanda
It’s not a Monty Python picture, but with John Cleese and Michael Palin on board as participants in a zany crime story, along with ambiguous-relationshiped Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline, it has some of the same absurd charm.
1988 USA/UK. Director: Charles Crichton. Starring: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Maria Aitken, Tom Georgeson.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 3:30am on the 10th)

Tuesday, November 10

5:25am – 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 Agnès 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.
1962 France. Director: Agnès Varda. Starring: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blank, Michel Legrand.
Must See

Wednesday, November 11

5:15am – TCM – Bitter Victory
The major thing I know about this film is that it’s the one that prompted Jean-Luc Godard to write “Henceforth there is cinema. And cinema is Nicholas Ray” in his Cahiers du cinema review. And I love other Nicholas Ray films, so that’s enough for me to be interested in catching this one. TCM’s description: “A World War II commander jeopardizes his mission to endanger a colleague involved with his wife.”
1958 USA. Director: Nicholas Ray. Starring: Richard Burton, Curd Jürgens, Ruth Roman, Raymond Pellegrin.
Newly Featured!

6:55am – IFC – Three Times
Hsiao-hsien Hou directs this tripartite film – three stories set in three different time periods (1911, 1966, and 2005), each with the same actors, and each depicting a relationship that’s both very specific and individual and also sheds light on the mores of its respective time period. I liked the 1966 story the best, but they were all intriguing, and the contrast between them even more so.
2005 Hong Kong. Director: Hsiao-hsien Hou. Starring: Qi Shu, Chen Chang.
(repeats at 12:30pm)

Thursday, November 12

9:00am – 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.
1962 France. Director: Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, René Lefèvre.
(repeats at 4:30pm, and 4:25am on the 13th)

6:35pm – Sundance – The Squid and the Whale
Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are married writers/academics who finally drive each other too crazy to keep living together, bringing their two adolescent sons into their turmoil when they separate. Everything about the film works together to create one of the best films of the past few years. Writer/director Noah Baumbach has crafted a highly intelligent script which is achingly witty and bitterly funny; the acting is superb all around; the music fits beautifully, and even the setting (1980s Brooklyn) is something of a character.
2005 USA. Director: Noah Baumbach. Starring: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – Dial M For Murder
A bit of a lesser Hitchcock film to my mind, but still pretty damn good – and any chance to see Grace Kelly is worthwhile. Ray Milland plays her husband whose plans to have her murdered go awry when her self-defense skills prove too good.
1954 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Robert Cummings.
Newly Featured!

10:00pm – TCM – Rear Window
Hitchcock, Stewart, and Kelly mix equal parts suspense thriller, murder mystery, romance, voyeristic expose, ethical drama, caustic comedy and cinematographic experiment to create one of the greatest films of all time.
1954 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr.
Must See

10:30pm – IFC – Gangs of New York
It’s 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, though I found myself underwhelmed with it.
2003 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo diCaprio, Cameron Diaz.

Friday, November 13

8:00am – 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.
1955 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring; Cary Grant, Grace Kelly.

12:00N – TCM – Gigi
Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” might come off as more pervy now than it was originally intended, but as a whole Gigi stands as one of the most well-produced and grown-up musicals made during the studio era. Vincente Minnelli gives it a wonderful visual richness and sophistication, while music from Lerner & Loewe (usually) stresses the right combination of innocence, exuberance, and ennui for its decadent French story.
1958 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Louis Jourdan, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold.

3:30pm – Sundance – Bob le flambeur
Jean-Pierre Melville’s 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.
1956 France. Director: Jean-Pierre Melville. Starring: Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Gérard Buhr, Daniel Gauchy.
(repeats at 10pm on the 15th)

8:00pm – TCM – Ride the High Country
In the 1960s, Sam Peckinpah contributed to the beginnings of the revisionist western, taking complicated heroes and violence to new levels – in Ride the High Country, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (who had both starred in many westerns throughout the 1930s and 1940s) play jaded cowboys hired to transport gold who get caught up in a family feud that forces them to confront their own differences and troubled pasts. It’s a fairly simple plot on the surface, but goes much deeper than you’d expect.
1962 USA. Director: Sam Peckinpah. Starring: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr.
Must See
Newly Featured!

1:35am (14th) – 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.

3:30am (14th) – 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.
1955 USA. Director: Charles Laughton. Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish.
Must See

Saturday, November 14

10:00am – 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.
1949 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, Margaret Wycherly.

2:00pm – 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).
1955 USA. Director: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Rod Steiger, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, Eddie Albert, Charlotte Greenwood, James Whitmore.

2:00pm – Sundance – Che (parts 1 and 2)
Sundance is getting an early shot at Steven Soderbergh’s opus about South American freedom fighter Che Guevara, starring Benicio Del Toro as the titular character. I haven’t watched it yet, but it’s apparently worthy of Criterion release next year.
2008 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Carlos Bardem.
Newly Featured!

12:00M – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgiousie
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, Paul Fankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel.
(repeats at 7:40am and 4:15pm on the 15th)

Sunday, November 15

6:45am – 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.
1985 Sweden. Director: Lasse Hallstrom. Starring: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Melinda Kinnaman.
(repeats at 2:50pm)

2:15pm – 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.

4:35pm – 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.
2004 USA. Director: Shane Carruth. Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya, Carrie Crawford.
(repeats at 5:25am on the 16th)

11:00pm – IFC – Pulp Fiction
Tarantino’s enormously influential and entertaining film pretty much needs no introduction from me. Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta give the performances of their careers, Tarantino’s dialogue is spot-on in its pop-culture-infused wit, and the chronology-shifting, story-hopping editing style has inspired a host of imitators, most nowhere near as good.
1994 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames.
Must See

2:00am (16th) – TCM – Orpheus
Orpheus, a poet in post-war France, finds himself caught up with Death in the visage of a beautiful woman and her minions. When Death takes his wife Euridyce, Orpheus follows them into the underworld–but is it really Euridyce he desires, or is it Death herself? Director Cocteau was as much a poet as a filmmaker, and that poetic sense is in full force in this lovely film.
1950 France. Director: Jean Cocteau. Starring: Jean Marais, María Casare, Maria Déa, François Périer.
Newly Featured!

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

Stage Door, playing at 1:45am on April 22 (TCM)

Monday, April 20th

11:00pm – TCM – Top Hat
Must See

12:45am (21st) – TCM – A Night at the Opera
The title of “Best Marx Brothers Film Ever” is pretty much a dead heat between this film and Duck Soup. I throw my vote to A Night at the Opera, though. Must See

2:30am (21st) – TCM – Dinner at Eight
MGM could put together a killer ensemble cast when they wanted to, and Dinner at Eight is one of the best early 1930s examples – John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke, Marie Dressler, and others – plus it’s seriously funny.

Tuesday, April 21st

8:00pm – TCM – The Women
Talk about your ensemble casts: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Mary Boland, Virginia Weidler, Hedda Hopper, Marjorie Main, and not a man in sight. Add in one of the best (and most bitingly catty) scripts ever written, and you’ve got a film that always draws a huge audience when it’s revived. Not so much when it’s remade, though.

12:00M – TCM – Topper
Socialite couple Cary Grant and Constance Bennett take one inebriated drive too many and end up as ghosts. The fun starts when they decide to help Grant’s staid boss Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) learn to live a little. Screwball comedy meets the supernatural, and it’s a winner.

12:00M – IFC – Amores Perros

1:45am (22nd) – TCM – Stage Door
I cannot describe to you how much I love this film. I’m not sure it’s wholly rational. Katharine Hepburn plays an heiress who wants to make it on her own as an actress, so she moves (incognito) into a New York boarding house for aspiring actresses. Her roommate ends up being Ginger Rogers (who’s never been better or more acerbic), and the boarding house is rounded out with a young Lucille Ball, a young Eve Arden, a very young Ann Miller, and various others. The dialogue is crisp and everyone’s delivery matter-of-fact and perfectly timed, and the way the girls use humor to mask desperation makes most every moment simultaneously funny and tragic – so that when it does turn tragic, it doesn’t feel like a shift in mood, but a culmination of the inevitable. Dang, now I want to watch it RIGHT NOW. Must See

Wednesday, April 22nd

8:00am – IFC – Millions

1:15pm – TCM – Kiss Me Kate

11:00pm – TCM – 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, April 23rd

9:15am – IFC – Jules et Jim
(repeats at 2:35pm)

9:30am – TCM – The Adventures of Robin Hood
This is one of the first movies I can remember seeing. And all these years later, it remains one of the greatest adventure movies ever made. Errol Flynn was born to play Robin Hood, and Olivia de Havilland is a luminous Maid Marion. Also one of the first Technicolor films. Must See

11:30pm – IFC – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(repeats at 5:30am on the 24th)

3:45am (24th) – 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

Friday, April 24th

4:15pm – TCM – The Trouble With Harry
Hitchcock’s films usually have some degree of macabre humor in them, but The Trouble With Harry is probably the funniest. Harry is dead. And everyone else in the film (including a young Shirley MacLaine) is trying to somehow hide his body, mostly unsuccessfully and with hilarious results.

Saturday, April 25th

8:00am – TCM – Yojimbo
Yojimbo gets talked about probably more than any of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movies other than The Seven Samurai. Maybe Rashomon, if you count that as a samurai movie. But I haven’t seen it. Maybe this will be the time? We’ll see. :)

10:00am – TCM – The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

5:00pm – TCM – I Married a Monster from Outer Space
Okay, I have never heard of this movie, and I have NO IDEA what it is. But it is called I Married a Monster from Outer Space. How can it not be awesomely bad, and thus imminently worth watching?

10:45pm – TCM – The Lion in Winter
Kate Hepburn won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elinor of Aquitaine (wife of England’s Henry II and mother to Richard the Lionhearted and John I). Peter O’Toole handles Henry II with equal aplomb, and the two competitive brothers are Timothy Dalton and Anthony Hopkins in early roles. It’s a fascinating time in history to me, as well, and this is one of the better films that depicts it.

1:15am – TCM – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
Fredric March does right by the famous doctor and his alter-ego, though he did have a lot of help from makeup. ;)

3:00am – TCM – The Champ (1931)
Just saw this Wallace Beery pic a couple of months ago, and thought it was mighty solid. It’s much less of a boxing picture than I originally thought – much more about washed-up boxer Beery’s relationship with his tough-talking son Jackie Coogan, who’s fantastic in his part. It’s simple, but effective in its early 1930s Warner Bros. way.

Sunday, April 26th

8:00am – TCM – Dark Victory

12:00N – TCM – The Band Wagon
There are many reasons to consider The Band Wagon among the best movie musicals ever made. The satirical plot involving a Shakespearean director who tries to turn a lighthearted musical into a doom-and-gloom version of Faust, the bright yet sardonic script and score by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who basically appear in the film as the characters played by Nanette Fabrey and Oscar Levant), the last really great role for Fred Astaire (maybe Funny Face is a contender, but barely), and of course, the never-surpassed beauty of dance numbers like “Dancing in the Dark” with Fred and Cyd Charisse. But even if it didn’t have all that, I’d still rank it among my favorites for the epic “Girl Hunt Ballet” number spoofing hard-boiled detective fiction. Must See

6:00pm – 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 NEVER.” In a good way. Must See

Monday, January 26

9:45am – TCM – The Petrified Forest
Bette Davis and Leslie Howard are top billed in this 1936 crime drama, but the thing you’ll remember is Humphrey Bogart in his breakout role as criminal-on-the-run Duke Mantee. They’re all holed up in a remote gas station while Mantee figures out his scheme to escape the manhunt for him. He fairly sizzles on screen.

2:00am (27th) – 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.

Tuesday, January 27

9:00am – IFC – Millions (repeats 2:30pm)
A young British boy finds millions of pounds a few days before the UK is set to switch to the Euro. A deceptively simple story because something more, in both style and substance, as director Danny Boyle brings his trademark visual panache and throws in an intriguing series of ethical dilemmas.

Wednesday, January 28

10:15am – TCM – Words and Music
MGM liked to do largely fictionalized composer biopics in the 1940s and ’50s, mostly because it gave them an opportunity to show off their stable of singing and dancing stars. Words and Music is their retelling of the career of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and it’s pretty routine. What isn’t routine is Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen’s dazzling rendition of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” a ten-minute dance number that is 100% worth the price of the film.

Thursday, January 29

4:15pm – TCM – Father of the Bride
Long before Steve Martin kicked of his now-twenty-year run of remaking classic comedies with his version of this film, Spencer Tracy was the Father of the Bride, dealing with the difficulty of letting his only daughter, Elizabeth Taylor, go to some other man. I don’t hate the Martin version, but this one is better. The family’s son is played by a young Russ Tamblyn (of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story).

8:00pm – TCM – Annie Hall
I recommend this film every time. Just ’cause. Although the fact that TCM has played Annie Hall five or six times since I started writing these, and have only played Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters maybe once each? Bothering me a little. Balance, TCM, balance. Must See

11:45pm – TCM – The Apartment
I also recommend this one every time. Because it’s awesome. Must See

4:00am (30th) – TCM – The Clock
In 1945, Judy Garland took a break from doing all those wonderful musicals to do a purely dramatic film (in the capable directorial hands of her then-husband Vincente Minnelli). It worked out quite well, giving us this solid wartime romance between a soldier about to shove off and the girl he meets with only one day to spare.

Friday, January 30

12:45am (31st) – TCM – The Night of the Hunter
Actor Charles Laughton only directed one film in his career, this strange yet mesmerizing Southern gothic thriller. In one way, it’s easy to see why he never got another directing gig – the film is quite weird, and doesn’t fit easily into any genre that studios at the time knew how to produce. In another way, it’s a great pity we never got to see what else he could come up with, because Night of the Hunter is one of the most original and poetic films ever made. It starts off as a relatively straight suspenser, with conman-posing-as-a-preacher Robert Mitchum insinuating himself into a young family whose father died burying a heap load of stolen money (which Mitchum would like to have). Soon, however, it turns into a fantastic fable, rife with symbolism and images that will stay seared into your brain for ever. Must See

Saturday, January 31

1:30pm – TCM – Rear Window
Hitchcock, Stewart, and Kelly mix equal parts suspense thriller, murder mystery, romance, voyeristic expose, ethical drama, caustic comedy and cinematographic experiment to create my favorite film of all time. Must See

6:00pm – TCM – The Pink Panther
Many other film buffs would join me in citing Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark as the best of the series, but the first entry is still well worth watching. Peter Sellers is perfect as bumbling detective Jacques Clouseau, trying to recover a stolen diamond for David Niven.

Sunday, February 1

12:15am – TCM – Network
Peter Finch is as mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. And when he eschews his news script to say so live on national TV, he starts a phenomenon that his network initially fears but soon embraces when they realize that they stand to get more viewers for a deranged newscaster than for the actual news. Finch won the first posthumous acting Oscar for his role – in fact, the only one until Heath Ledger likely wins one this year.