The Quiet Man, playing on TCM on Tuesday

Notable newly featured films this week: the Monty Python troupe turn their irreverent eye towards the New Testament in The Life of Brian on Monday; John Ford, John Wayne, and Maureen O’Hara join forces for a couple of classics in The Quiet Man and Rio Grande on Tuesday; Cillian Murphy crossdresses for Neil Jordan in Breakfast on Pluto on Wednesday; Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn team up for the first time in Woman of the Year on Thursday; Paul Newman and Robert Redford follow up their Butch Cassidy success with the great conman flick The Sting on Friday; Gandhi comes to life and the Swiss Family Robinson get shipwrecked on Saturday. I also saw the Julius Shulman documentary Visual Acoustics since featuring it sight-unseen last week, and it is definitely worth a look, if only to get a glimpse behind some of the most stunning photographs of Los Angeles buildings ever taken.

Monday, August 16

8:05am – IFC – The New World
Terrence Malick may not make many films, but the ones he does make, wow. Superficially the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, The New World is really something that transcends mere narrative – this is poetry on film. Every scene, every shot has a rhythm and an ethereal that belies the familiarity of the story we know. I expected to dislike this film when I saw it, quite honestly. It ended up moving me in ways I didn’t know cinema could.
2005 USA. Director: Terrence Malick. Starring: Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer.
Must See
(repeats at 2:20pm)

1:15am (17th) – TCM – Airplane!
The classic Abrahams/Zucker spoof of 1970s disaster and airplane crash movies has the all the crew and passengers fall ill, leaving a former war pilot who’s now terrified of flying the only one who can land the plane safely. But the plot pales in comparison to the random collection of wacky characters and the script full of snappy one-liners – lines that have been repeated in and out of context ad nauseum since the film’s release.
1980 USA. Director: Jim Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker. Starring: Robert Hays, Julie Haggerty, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peter Graves, Robert Stack.

3:00am (17th) – IFC – Monty Python’s Life of Brian
After dismantling the King Arthur legends, Monty Python turn their attention to the Bible itself, satirically suggesting what might happen if a random 1st century baby got mistaken for the Messiah. Irreverent and hilarious, though not as consistently so for me as Holy Grail.
1979 UK. Director: Terry Jones. Starring: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, August 17

6:05am – IFC – Love’s Labour’s Lost
Kenneth Branagh has taken on a lot of Shakespeare plays and usually does them with incredible fidelity (like his uncut, four-plus hour-long Hamlet). This time around, he takes a lesser-known comedy and adds music by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern to turn it into a 1930s style musical. It doesn’t work all the time, but for fans of Shakespeare and old musicals (like me), it’s still a fun watch.
2000 USA. Director: Kenneth Branagh. Starring: Alessandro Nivolo, Alicia Silverstone, Natascha McElhone, Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Lillard.
(repeats at 11:05am and 4:35pm)

7:45am – IFC – Bananas
Woody Allen in full-on zany mode in one of his earlier films, as the wonderfully named Fielding Mellish. In an attempt to impress a politically-minded girl, Mellish runs off to a Latin American country and takes it over.
1971 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán.
(repeats at 3:05pm)

8:00am – Sundance – Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s inspired transposition of King Lear into medieval Japan, mixing Shakespeare and Japanese Noh theatre tradition like nobody’s business.
1985 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu.
Must See
(repeats at 2:05pm)

12:00N – TCM – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
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.
1939 USA. Director: William Dieterle. Starring: Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien.

8:00pm – TCM – The Quiet Man
John Wayne plays a retired boxer returning to his ancestral home in Ireland, where he meets spitfire Maureen O’Hara and decides to marry her. She’s game, except her somewhat boorish brother Victor McLaglen disapproves and refuses to give up her dowry, and tradition is tradition! A great supporting cast of character actors and an epic (and comic) boxing match round out The Quiet Man into one of the most entertaining and endearing films John Ford ever made. Though I will say the last time I watched it, I was a little more concerned by its gender politics than I had been in the past.
1952 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Barry Fitzgerald, Mildred Natwick.
Newly Featured!

8:05pm – IFC – Hard Candy
Ellen Page burst onto the scene as a teenage girl getting involved with an older guy she met on the internet – initially looks like a cautionary tale about internet chat relationships, but goes into even more twisted realms than that, with Ellen owning the screen every second.
2005 USA. Director: David Slade. Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh.

10:15pm – TCM – Rio Grande
One of several collaborations between John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and John Ford, and the last in the informal Ford/Wayne Cavalry trilogy. This time Wayne and O’Hara play an estranged couple brought together when their teenaged son enlists and shows up to Wayne’s outpost for training, with O’Hara on his heels to try to take him home. Family relations and escalating conflicts with the Apaches combine to make, if not one of the best Ford/Wayne films, at least a very good one.
1950 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Ben Johnson, Claude Jarman Jr., Harry Carey Jr., Victor McLaglen.
Newly Featured!

Wednesday, August 18

5:45pm – IFC – Breakfast on Pluto
Patrick is a young Irish boy who before very long becomes Patricia. His story is about more than just his attempts to get people to accept him as a her; his quest for identity and his lost family is played out against the backdrop of the early years of the Troubles, as his friends get more and more involved in IRA factions while he does his best to keep from getting involved in things that are too “serious.” There’s a tough-to-find sweet spot between hilarity and tragedy, and hilarity that masks tragedy, and director Neil Jordan and actor Cillian Murphy found it with this film.
2005 Ireland. Director: Neil Jordan. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Eva Birthistle, Liam Neeson.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – IFC – The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Any half-decent film about three drag queens driving a bus through the Australian outback in outlandish costumes (and sometimes lipsynching to opera while sitting in an enormous shoe strapped on top of the bus) pretty much has to be fabulous, and this one is. Hugo Weaving is the one with the secret former marriage and son, Terence Stamp the aging one who tends to be somewhat bitter but can also be the consummate lady, and Guy Pearce is the flamboyant youth. As they move through the Outback toward their next proposed gig as lipsynching dancers, they run into mechanical difficulties, bigotry, and interpersonal conflicts that get into more thoughtful territory than you might expect.
1994 Australia. Director: Stephan Elliott. Starring: Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, Terence Stamp, Rebel Penfold-Russell.
(repeats at 4:45am on the 19th)

12:00M – TCM – The Man Who Came to Dinner
A rare comedic film for Bette Davis, though the film mainly focuses on Monty Woolley as an acerbic newspaper critic forced to take up residence with a midwestern family when he breaks his hip outside their house. Woolley was a great character actor here given the spotlight, and he takes it and runs with it. A great script by Julius and Philip Epstein (of Casablanca) doesn’t hurt, either.
1942 USA. Director: William Keighley. Starring: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Jimmy Durante, Billie Burke.

Thursday, August 19

8:30am – 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.
2004 USA. Director: Joshua Marston. Starring: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Virginia Ariza, Yenny Paola Vega.
(repeats at 2:45pm)

12:15am (20th) – TCM – Mrs. Miniver
One of the more celebrated World War II home front films has Greer Garson in an Oscar-winning turn as the stalwart title character, holding her home together against the German Blitz. It’s the kind of movie that could only be made in 1942, and it won awards all over the place. It comes off a bit over-earnest today, though.
1942 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright.

2:45am (20th) – TCM – Forbidden Planet
What’s better than Shakespeare’s The Tempest? Why, a science fiction film set on a planet run by a maverick genius, his robot, and his daughter, of course. Okay, Forbidden Planet isn’t really better than The Tempest, but it is an interesting take on the play, and an obvious influence on the original Star Trek.
1956 USA. Director: Fred M. Wilcox. Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis.

Friday, August 20

8:00pm – TCM – Woman of the Year
The first teaming of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, a relationship that would last for eight more films onscreen and the rest of Tracy’s life offscreen. Here they play sparring reporters who wind up getting married and struggling to reconcile their relationship and their careers. The battle of the sexes and how marriage works with feminist ideals is a recurring theme in the Tracy-Hepburn catalog, and they start with it right out of the gate here.
1942 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, William Bendix.
Newly Featured!

8:05pm – IFC – Blow Out
Sound man John Travolta is recording sound samples one night, and may have accidentally recorded a murder occurring. As he tries to investigate, he’s drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. Inspired to some degree by Antonioni’s photography-based Blow-Up, but this is definitely DePalma’s film all the way.
1981 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz.
(repeats at 3:00am on the 21st)

12:00M – 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 zaniest of all screwball comedies.
1938 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, May Robson, Barry Fitzgerald.
Must See

2:00am (21st) – TCM – The Philadelphia Story
Katharine Hepburn 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.
1940 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Katharaine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, Ralph Bellamy, Virginia Weidler.
Must See

Saturday, August 21

9:05am – IFC – The Station Agent
One of the most pleasant surprises (for me, anyway) of 2003. Peter Dinklage moves into a train depot to indulge his love for trains and stay away from people, only to find himself befriended by a loquacious Cuban hot-dog stand keeper and an emotionally delicate Patricia Clarkson. A quiet but richly rewarding film.
2003 USA. Director: Thomas McCarthy. Starring: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale.
(repeats at 3:35pm)

12:00N – Sundance – Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
As an architectural photographer covering modernist architecture during the mid-twentieth century, Julius Shulman captured some of the most iconic images ever of homes and other buildings, basically creating an entire generation’s perception of Los Angeles and Palm Springs especially. This well-designed documentary is a great primer on his life and work, and through his work, on modernist ideals and architecture itself. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in photography, architecture, modernism, or Los Angeles.
2008 USA. Director: Eric Brickner. Starring: Julius Shulman, Dustin Hoffman.
(repeats at 5:15pm)

8:00pm – TCM – The Sting
A couple of conmen team up to pull an elaborate con on criminal kingpin who killed one of their partners. A great 1920s setting and the solid chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford make their follow-up to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a highly enjoyable romp, if not quite the quintessential classic that film is.
1973 USA. Director: George Roy Hill. Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Eileen Brennan.
Newly Featured!

10:15pm – TCM – Cool Hand Luke
One of Paul Newman’s most memorable films, with Newman playing a renegade prisoner on a Southern chain gang who refuses to do what he’s told, escaping time and time again only to be recaptured as the guards attempt to break him.
1967 USA. Director: Stuart Rosenberg. Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Cannon, Lou Antonio.

Sunday, August 22

7:05am – IFC – Paranoid Park
I go back and forth on whether I think Gus Van Sant is brilliant or a pretentious bore – maybe some of both. But I really quite liked the slow, oblique approach in this film about a wanna-be skateboarder kid who relishes hanging out with the bigger skateboarders at the titular skate park – but there’s a death not far from there, and it takes the rest of the movie to slowly reveal what exactly happened that one night near Paranoid Park. Gets by on mood and cinematography.
2007 USA Director: Gus Van Sant. Starring: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Lu, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen, Lauren McKinney.

4:30pm – TCM – Gandhi
Ben Kingsley plays the titular figure with uncanny verisimilitude, tracing Mohandas Gandhi’s life and career throughout his quest for unbiased treatment of native peoples in British-held lands, especially India, where his leadership of a non-violent rebellion helped to gain India its independence from the British Empire.
1982 UK. Director: Richard Attenborough. Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – TCM – Swiss Family Robinson
Disney’s classic version of the quintessential family adventure story, as the Robinson family are shipwrecked and must learn to survive and thrive in the jungle wilderness on their own. It’s basically impossible to watch this movie and not immediately want your own elaborate treehouse.
1960 USA. Director: Ken Annakin. Starring: John Mills, Dorothy Maguire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Sessue Hayakawa, Tommy Kirk.
Newly Featured!