2001: A Space Odyssey, playing on TCM at 2:00am on the 22nd
There are several newly featured films worthy of highlight this week. TCM is playing a double-feature of Buster Keaton silents on Monday night, starting with Sherlock Jr.. They’re also throwing out some noirs that are new to our listing – the Raymond Chandler-based Murder, My Sweet on Wednesday and the Bogart-Bacall Key Largo Sunday. And don’t miss a couple of really great romances – Two for the Road Friday on the Fox Movie Channel, and Brief Encounter Saturday on TCM. Something for everyone this week, as well as the usual crop of repeats in case you missed something in earlier weeks.
Monday, September 21
6:30am – 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).
2004 Japan. Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Starring (dubbed voices): Christian Bale, Emily Mortimer, Jean Simmons, Lauren Bacall
(repeats at 12:20pm)
3:45pm – TCM – The Window
Young boy Bobby Driscoll is a chronic liar, which makes it very difficult to make his family and other adults believe him when he claims he saw a murder being committed. But when the murderer finds out what he knows… A solid little thriller told from a child’s point of view.
1949 USA. Director: Ted Tetzlaff. Starring: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman.
8:00pm – TCM – Sherlock, Jr.
Buster Keaton is a film projectionist who longs to be a detective so much that he dreams himself into a film he’s projecting so he can become the detective hero of the story. The scene of him entering the film is justly famous, though it’s a smaller portion of the film than its fame leads you to believe.
1924 USA. Director: Buster Keaton. Starring: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Ward Crane.
Must See
Newly Featured!
9:00pm – TCM – Steamboat Bill, Jr.
One of Buster Keaton’s best-known films has him as the city-boy son of a steamboat captain who goes to learn his father’s trade. Many mishaps later, he’s left to rescue his father from a tremendous hurricane – that scene is one of Keaton’s absolute best set-pieces, as he remains implacable while buildings literally fall around him.
1928 USA. Director: Charles Reisner. Starring: Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence.
Newly Featured!
9:45pm – 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.
1997 USA. Director: Kevin Smith. Starring: Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee.
(repeats at 3:15am)
10:15pm – TCM – On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando’s performance as a former boxer pulled into a labor dispute among dock workers goes down as one of the greatest in cinematic history. I’m not even a huge fan of Brando, but this film wins me over.
1954 USA. Director: Elia Kazan. Starring: Marlon Brando, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint.
Must See
12:00M – Sundance – Man on Wire
I haven’t taken the opportunity to see last year’s highly-acclaimed documentary about high-wire walker Philippe Petit yet, but here it is already on Sundance, so I’m hoping to catch it this week.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 12:00M on the 22nd/23rd)
12:15am (22nd) – TCM – Dr. Strangelove
Trust Stanley Kubrick to find the funny side of the Cold War. Peter Sellers plays multiple parts, including the President, an insane general who wants to nuke Russia, and the limb-control-impaired doctor of the title. It’s zany, it’s over-the-top, it’s bitingly satirical, and it remains one of Kubrick’s best films in a career full of amazing work.
1964 USA/UK. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott.
Must See
2:00am (22nd) – TCM – 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick’s visually stunning journey through thousands of years of technological evolution and man-vs-machine conflict is still one of the ultimate science fiction films. And it’s aged far better both visually and philosophically than one would expect. I think I watch it almost every time TCM plays it, and it never gets old.
1968 USA. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: Keir Dullea.
Must See
Newly Featured!
Tuesday, September 22
6:30am – TCM – I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Paul Muni plays an initially optimistic and energetic young man who struggles to find a job during the Depression. Eventually he ends up unwillingly involved in a robbery and sentenced to the chain gang. One of Warner Bros’ best “ripped from the headlines” socially conscious films – they did a lot of them in the 1930s.
1931 USA. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson.
8:00pm – TCM – North by Northwest
Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) gets mistaken for George Kaplan and pulled into an elaborate web of espionage in one of Hitchcock’s most enjoyable and funniest thrillers. So many great scenes it’s impossible to list them all.
1959 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau.
Must See
10:30pm – TCM – Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock built the foundation for all future psycho-killer movies with his classic. It’s not as terrifying as it once was, but that doesn’t at all diminish its greatness.
1960 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam.Must See
12:30am (23rd) – TCM – Marnie
Marnie gets something of a bad rap, I think, because it comes right after Hitchcock’s amazing Vertigo-North by Northwest-Psycho-The Birds streak of genius, but I think it’s one of Hitchcock’s most underrated films, despite a few somewhat obvious plot devices and the fact that ‘Tippi’ Hedren can’t act. In some ways, the imperfections in this one are what makes it interesting.
1964 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: ‘Tippi’ Hedren, Sean Connery.
Wednesday, September 23
12:00N – IFC – La Jetée
Very few short films become classics (outside of silent films and arguably Looney Tunes), but Chris Marker’s La Jetee, told entirely in sequences of still photographs, is one of them. In a postapocalyptic future, a man is sent back in time to try and stop WWIII from happening. But he both falls in love and is haunted by a childhood memory – two things that are fatefully interconnected.
1962 France. Director: Chris Marker. Starring: Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich.
6:15pm – TCM – Murder, My Sweet
Humphrey Bogart is the screen’s most famous Philip Marlowe, playing Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective in The Big Sleep in 1946, but Dick Powell beat him by two years in this adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. It’s not the classic that The Big Sleep is, but it’s a solid noir detective film that’s more than worth watching, not least of all for Claire Trevor, who’s pretty much always worth watching.
1944 USA. Director: Edward Dmytryk. Starring: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger.
Newly Featured!
8:00pm – 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).
1938 USA. Directors: William Keighley & Michael Curtiz. Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale, Patric Knowles, Una O’Connor.
Must See
12:00M – IFC – Pi
Darren Aronofsky’s first feature is this fever dream of a mathematician searching for the numeric patterns that will unlock the secrets of the stock market – paranoid, fearful of human contact, and beset by terrible headaches, he’s also pursued by Wall Street factions and Hasidic Jews, each seeking the results of his formulas. It’s heady stuff, but Aronofsky’s the right guy for that.
1998 USA. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman.
(repeats at 4:34am on the 24th)
2:00am (24th) – Sundance – Eraserhead
David Lynch’s first feature is a weird post-apocalyptic dreamscape of a film – what, you were expecting something normal? When you can have industrial decay and mutant babies?
1977 USA. Director: David Lynch. Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart.
Newly Featured!
Thursday, September 24
8:00pm – TCM – 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
The original version of 2007’s highly successful Christian Bale-Russell Crowe western is well worth watching in its own right – a little less actiony, a little more thoughtful, though its story of a peaceful farmer shuffled into the role of law enforcement to get a criminal to the train for his trial without having him rescued by his gang remains largely identical.
1957 USA. Director: Delmer Daves. Starring: Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr, Leora Dana.
8:00pm – IFC – Gangs of New York
I found this film a difficult one to like when I watched it, but I haven’t seen it for five years – perhaps a rewatch is in order. It certainly is hard to argue with the concept of a Scorsese/diCaprio/Day-Lewis trifecta in a story about Irish gangs at the dawn of New York’s existence.
2003 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo diCaprio, Cameron Diaz.
(repeats at 2:45am on the 26th)
12:45am (26th) – IFC – The Sweet Hereafter
Acclaimed Canadian director Atom Egoyan directs one of his best-known films, a story of the aftermath of a schoolbus accident that forever altered life in a small Canadian town and a big city lawyer who tries to put together a class-action suit for reasons of his own.
1997 Canada. Director: Atom Egoyan. Starring: Ian Holm, Caerthan Banks, Sarah Polley, Tom McCamus.
Newly Featured!
Friday, September 25
5:30pm – TCM – The King and I
Oklahoma! is my unabashed favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, but I have a lot of admiration for The King and I, if only because it addresses far more serious topics with far less happy outcomes than most musicals ever do.
1956 USA. Director: Walter Lang. Starring: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno.
5:45pm – 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.
(repeats at 12:00N on the 26th)
4:00pm – Fox Movie Channel – Two for the Road
Once in a while a film comes out of nowhere and blindsides me with brilliance. Two for the Road is directed by Stanley Donen, best known for lighthearted musicals, comedies, and mysteries. It stars Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney; Hepburn at least also best known for lighthearted, whimsical fare. But Two for the Road is one of the most thoughtful and adult films of the 1960s, and I mean that in a good way. It dissects Hepburn’s and Finney’s relationship, cutting back and forth between their meeting, their marriage, and their separation almost as if all three are happening at the same time – every moment of their life together becomes part of who they are and part of the sum of their relationship, and Donen has found the perfect way to depict that.
1967 USA. Director: Stanley Donen. Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney.
Must See
Newly Featured!
3:15am (26th) – 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.
2004 UK. Director: Richard Eyre. Starring: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Tom Wilkinson, Ben Chaplin.
Saturday, September 26
7:30am – TCM – Brief Encounter
In this quiet little doomed romance, a married woman bored with her dull husband meets a man on a train – and continues to meet him every week, indulging herself in the way he makes her feel, even though she knows it can’t really be. David Lean brings a lushness and depth to this deceptively simple story (by Noel Coward), making into one of the most memorable romances of the 1940s.
1945 UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond.
Must See
Newly Featured!
8:00pm – IFC – The Player
Robert Altman takes on Hollywood in this story of a script screener (Tim Robbins) who gets drawn further and further into a web of blackmail and double-crosses when he’s threatened by a screenwriter whose script he rejected. You gotta love it for the virtuosic opening pan at the very least; the rest of the Hollywood insider references are just gravy.
1992 USA. Director: Robert Altman. Starring: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopie Goldberg.
(repeats at 2:00am on the 27th)
Sunday, September 27
2:05pm – 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.
2001 USA. Director: Baz Lurhmann. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo.
6:00pm – TCM – Key Largo
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall team up for the final time on this great noirish melodrama of a group of people, including a wheelchair-bound hotel owner, his recently widowed daughter-in-law (Bacall), a war veteran (Bogart), and a ruthless gangster and his girl, forced to take refuge against a fierce hurricane. Among the best films for all involved, and that’s saying something considering who all is involved.
1948 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor.
Must See
Newly Featured!
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.
1996 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi.
Must See
(repeats at 1:30am on the 28th)
I agree, Jandy, a rewatch is in order for Gangs of New York. Haven’t seen it since the theater run, and at the very least I want to see DDL chew some more scenery. Thurs 8pm.
I still pine for the Original 45 minute longer, (and hopefully more coherent) cut of Gangs of New York that Scorcese delivered to Miramax and The Weinsteins before they cut it into the trainwreck that it became.
Some people did see this cut and liked it a lot.
Criteron, please stand up and deliver!
You know, I recently rewatched Gangs of New York. I think it’s a really good film, better than I remembered. But it’s flawed. It’s never really believable in some crucial way.
Maybe it would be a Onc Upon A Time In America type situation but I’m not sure an extra 45 minutes would do anything to address this problem. If anything they should cut 45 minutes of cameron diaz.
I also think the problems stem from the opening street fight as well. It really is one of the worst things Scorcese’s ever done.
So, I think “train wreak” is a little melodramatic. Furthermore, Danny Boy Lewis is much better in this than in There Will Be Blood which has gotta be one of the most overrated films ever. EVER.
I’ll take a longer GONY, but for what its worth I throw in with the camp that finds it extremely entertaining as it already is.
100% agree with you on this Goon. I actually quite like the film, and have on occasion, defended its strengths to those content to completely write it off. But in terms of a ‘complete film’ it is not that. It is a mess, narratively, thematically, even character consistency. It’s reach overextends its grasp and yes, Cameron Diaz is terrible.
But on a moment to moment or scene by scene basis, there is brilliance in there.
In my imagination, the original scorcese cut has none of the ‘what the hell happened to that character, or sub-plot or idea’ that seems to plague the current version of the film.
I don’t remember it enough to really articulate what I didn’t like about Gangs of New York, but I’m not sure it was anything specific anyway. It just felt…off. Like something just wasn’t working about it, but I couldn’t tell you what. I’ll try to find time to rewatch it this week and see if I can at least come up with some better reasons for not liking it, if I still don’t.
And Rusty, OMG, I thought I was the only one who wasn’t wowed by There Will Be Blood. I really didn’t like it. Really.
If I saw it in theaters I might be more judgmental of it as a ‘complete film’ in a ‘watch it in one sitting’ sense, however that, along with Once Upon A Time In America, are movies I took hour long breaks or so from while watching each time to make food or run an errand/check email etc, and maybe thats what some of these epic length things sometimes require.
I enjoyed the hell out of Gangs of New York when I first watched and and enjoy it even more today.
I agree that Gangs need not 45 more minutes, but 45 less minutes of Cameron Diaz. I wanna hear about the interesting political situation, not the lame vengeance love triangle.
I rewatched There Will Be Blood last week (inspired by Basterds) and liked it much more the 2nd time. First time I couldn’t get into DDL, but this time it went down much easier. I think masterpiece-hype ruins these films for me on first viewing in the moment, The Departed was the same. Recently re-watched it and liked it alot more.
There Will Be Blood, really good. DDL good in it. Not as good as Mickey Rourke.
THis is the first time I can remember where Henrik has flip flopped on something he campaigned strongly against. Good show.
I don’t know if I *didn’t like* There Will Be Blood but it’s made me reconsider the career of PTA and I’ve lowered my esteem of him as a director.
Though he’s still the best director named Paul Anderson, so he’s got that.
Yeah, but the other one has Milla Jovovich, so…..
TWBB was definitely over-hyped, and there were things I liked ABOUT it (the whole wordless opening sequence I loved and the cinematography was great), but as a whole, I didn’t like it. I’ll just watch Magnolia again, thanks.
I give you two for one as well.
My strong campaigning is due to the fact that the campaign for the opposition was immensely strong, so I had to beef myself up to match them. It probably misrepresented my honest opinion. This happens a-lot.
TWBB was way over-hyped. I have seen the film twice and if anything I thought even less of it the second time around. Tarantino’s youtube clip praising TWBB was weak… I love especially where he says Plainview is heroic because he crawled across the desert, what a complete misread of an act. It is not heroic, he wasn’t saving anyone but himself, who put himself in the position because of his greed, its an act of desperation, of raw desire to to be rich. If it was truly heroic we would see a glimmer of that understanding in the character, that life is worth preserving, or there is more to life then being rich, and its the complete opposite.
Then again, Mike, that would depend on your definition of heroic. Heroism does not necessarily mean one has to be selfless or have the best interests of others in his heart nor does it mean that there must be some understanding of there being “more to life.”
Not that I am arguing Plainview being a hero, because in my eyes, he was not, but that doesn’t mean that he committed no heroic deeds.
Tons of people have been called heroic just because they overcame tremendous odds in order to preserve their own life. People praise soldiers as heroic all the time, when all they are doing is killing other people, hardly an acknowledgement of life being worth preserving. I think Tarantino’s use of the word is justified, and you should look back on your own arguments backing up your misuse of the word nihilism, they would stick better here than there.
Jandy: I don’t want this to sound like I’m a misogynist or something, but I understand why TWBB would be pretty hard to get into for women. Then again, you’re not missing that much, but I think it makes sense that women would not respond to it the way men do.
“Tons of people have been called heroic just because they overcame tremendous odds in order to preserve their own life”
I’m not saying there isn’t this media-tinged usage of the word ‘heroic’ to sell newspapers and make people rise up and cheer every time someone beats the odds of survival, I acknowledge that that exists. I just find applying that to this film, like with all such sensational uses of the word, overly dramatic.
the desert crawl shows a perseverance to his character, a will to move forward, a base animal drive to survive… it does not, as Tarantino argues, make me think “he is heroic, he should be admired” nor do I think PTA even plays it that way in the film, as he says, its all virtually offscreen.
any of us in a situation of near-death would move forward as much as our bodies would allow, its instinct.
and to side step any further rehashing of the ‘nihilism’ episode with Henrik, let me be clear:
I am not saying there is only one and only one definition of a word (which was your position on ‘nihilism’), I am saying of the variety of ways to use the word ‘heroic’, Tarantino choose a pretty unfitting one to describe Plainview’s character.
My main position was that you were using it wrong. I could maybe be persuaded that there is a variety of ways to use nihilism as well, if somebody made a compelling case for it.
come to think of it, Plainview is less a hero in that scene so much as he is like a cockroach that crawls across the Earth in spite of all odds. If anything, that is what I get from that story point, how Plainview as a ruthless capitalist perseveres out of some kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest which the desert crawl comes to quite literally signify.
My issue with Tarantino’s choice of words is that it implies something praiseworthy when it isn’t, its more an awesome act of resilience, no more heroic than a cockroach could be said to be heroic.
My complaint with the film has always been that it gives us this potentially great character and puts virtually no obstacles in his way, no arc to explore, and thematically relies on such a naively explored relationship between the power struggle of modern capitalism and religion. With a killer score, a killer performance, a killer aesthetic it is surprising how hollow the whole film ultimately feels.
Well rot, I feel the same way about people calling soldiers heroes, as if what they did was something praiseworthy, but that seems to be acceptable, so Plainviews heroics are as well.
I think Plainview works because of his physical presence and his relentlessness. He makes Charles Foster Kane seem like Santa Claus, and it’s very entertaining. Had they tried to make him more grounded in reality, the performance would have been horrible, which is what I originally thought was a problem with the movie, but when I watched it a second time I could much more easily buy into it. I think it was because I didn’t have people on all sides screaming at me that this was the best acting ever seen.
Thanks again for another fantastic rundown, Jandy; it’s become an invaluable resource for me because I just moved beyond the antenna for the first time in my life. One question, are IFC and Sundance pay-per-view channels? TCM is basic cable, right? I know I have that one. Are IFC and Sundance extra? Thanks again!
matty,
No problem! It may depend on your cable company – for Time Warner I know TCM is basic cable and IFC and Sundance are in a separate tier called the Movie Tier (along with the Encore set of stations and a couple of others). It costs like $5 more a month to add that tier to your package. It’s not pay-per-view, and it’s not pay-per-channel like the premium HBO/Showtime type channels. I figure $5 a month is one rental, so it’s totally worth it to get IFC and Sundance.
Again, the exact tiers and pricing may depend on which cable company you have, but it’s probably similar among the big ones.