Playtime, playing on TCM on Monday

There are a refreshing number of Newly Featured titles this week, from Golden Age musicals to classic noir to Kurosawa masterpieces to modern crime thrillers. I’d highly recommend Playtime on Monday, Touch of Evil on Wednesday, and Layer Cake on Sunday, but check out the whole set of listings – there are plenty of other things both new to the column and repeats that are worth watching this week.

Monday, September 6

9:30pm – IFC – Office Space
Anyone who’s ever worked in an office will identify with Office Space immediately – with the paper-jamming printers, the piles of beaurocratic paperwork, and the difficulty of keeping up with staplers if not the plot to make off with boatloads of money due to an accounting loophole. In fact, if you do or have worked an office job, I’m gonna call this required viewing.
1999 USA. Director: Mike Judge. Starring: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston.
(repeats 3:30am on the 7th, 8:00pm on the 11th, and 1:00a on the 12th)

11:45pm – TCM – Playtime
Jacques Tati applies his nearly silent comedy to a story about society, modernity, and commercialism that hits so many right notes you’ll easily forgive the few that don’t strike home perfectly. Plus this film is one of the greatest examples of how to compose within a frame that I’ve ever seen, utilizing an unusual 1.85:1 aspect ratio in tandem with 70mm film to create a sense of depth and space almost unparalleled in cinema.
1967 France. Director: Jacques Tati. Starring: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek.
Newly Featured!
Must See

3:30am (7th) – TCM – Dersu Uzala
In one of Akira Kurosawa’s later films, he turns his camera on the relationship between a Russian army explorer and a Siberian hunter whose knowledge of the land is unparalleled and whose quiet wisdom moves the army man greatly. Kurt’s write-up from the Kurosawa Centenary
1975 Japan/Russia. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Maksim Munzuk, Yuri Solomin.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, September 7

1:00pm – TCM – The Ladykillers
One of the most delightful of the Ealing comedies, with Alec Guinness leading a bunch of crooks (including a young Peter Sellers) whose bankrobbing plans get flustered by an unlikely old lady.
1955 UK. Director: Alexander Mackendrick. Starring: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers.
Must See

3:15pm – IFC – Strictly Ballroom
The first of Baz Lurhmann’s “Red Curtain” trilogy, about a Latin ballroom dancer who shakes up the Australian ballroom competition circuit with his unorthodox choreography. Among other things. A little shrill at times, but mostly funny and endearing, and less borderline schizophrenic than the rest of the trilogy (which I love, don’t get me wrong).
1992 Australia. Director: Baz Luhrmann. Starring: Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter, Pat Thomson, Gia Carides.

6:15pm – TCM – Model Shop
If you only know Jacques Demy from his bright New Wave musicals, prepare for something a bit different with Model Shop, an existential crisis of a film about an LA drifter’s attempts to get enough money to make his car payment, until he gets sidetracked by an intriguing French woman working at the eponymous Model Shop (a rather unusual fetishistic enterprise). The film isn’t GOOD, exactly, but it’s interesting as a totally different type of thing for Demy, and it has enough unintentional humor to make it enjoyable to watch. Trivia tidbit: Demy had met Harrison Ford in Hollywood and initially wanted him to play the lead, but the studio wouldn’t have a complete unknown – this would’ve been Ford’s first real film role, and it would’ve been a very different film.
1969 USA. Director: Jacques Demy. Starring: Gary Lockwood, Anouk Aimée, Alexandra Hay, Carol Cole.
Newly Featured!

Wednesday, September 8

6:00am – IFC – Broadway Danny Rose
It’s lesser Woody Allen, but it’s still Woody Allen. 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 very substantial, but enjoyable.
1984 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte.
(repeats at 11:30am)

6:00pm – IFC – Barton Fink
One of the Coen Brothers’ most brilliant dark comedies (heh, I think I say that about all of their dark comedies, though), Barton Fink follows its title character, a New York playwright whose hit play brings him to the attention of Hollywood, where he goes to work for the movies. And it all goes downhill from there. Surreal, quirky, and offbeat, even among the Coens work. It’s based loosely on the experiences of Clifford Odets, whose heightened poetic style of writing has clearly been influential on the Coens throughout their career.
1991 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, Tony Shalhoub.
(repeats at 11:05am on the 11th)

8:00pm – Sundance – Marie Antoinette
Though Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is unconventional, it is a solid and riveting re-interpretation of the giddy but not untroubled courts of Louis XVI and Louis XVII. The use of actors like Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, who are not known as period actors, as well as anachronistic music, sounds like an ill-conceived attempt to make the story feel contemporary, but it actually works. Coppola took some serious risks with this film, but they paid off beyond all expectation.
2006 USA. Director: Sofia Coppola. Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne.
(repeats at 11:35am on the 9th)

10:00pm – TCM – Springtime in the Rockies
Betty Grable was so popular in the ’30s and ’40s that the studio reportedly ensured her legs (a pin-up’s finest asset) for $1 million. This is probably her best film, a slight Technicolor confection that displays 20th Century Fox’s escapist style to its very fullest.
1942 USA. Director: Irving Cummings. Starring: Betty Grable, John Payne, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero.
Newly Featured!

12:00M – TCM – Touch of Evil
Likely the last great noir films, with Orson Welles directing and starring as the corpulent corrupt sheriff of a corrupt border town, and Charlton Heston as a cop trying to solve a case with little, no, or negative help from Welles. Throw in Marlene Dietrich in one of her last roles and a virtuoso opening tracking shot, and you’ve got one of the most memorable noirs ever.
1958 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff.
Newly Featured!
Must See

Thursday, September 9

7:30am – IFC – High and Low
Kurosawa in contemporary crime film mode, taking on corporate intrigue, kidnapping, and police procedural with a healthy dose of ethical quandry. Kurt’s write-up from the Kurosawa Centenary
1963 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuay Nakadai, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi
Newly Featured!

11:45am – TCM – Girl Crazy
One of the better entries out of the ten films that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made together, largely due to the extremely strong Gershwin score. Rooney’s a city boy who gets banished to the country to teach him some lessons, but ends up being okay with it because Garland is there. They’re both older than in the majority of their meet-cute adolescent films, which serves the film well. If you like the pairing, TCM is playing Babies in Arms and Strike Up the Band earlier today, both of which are pretty inconsequential but inoffensive lets-put-on-a-show programmers.
1943 USA. Director: Norman Taurog, Busby Berkeley. Starring: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Rags Ragland.

4:00pm – 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.
1948 USA. Director: Norman Taurog. Starring: Tom Drake, Mickey Rooney, Betty Garrett, Janet Leigh, Cyd Charisse, June Allyson, Gene Kelly, Vera-Ellen, James Mitchell, Lena Horne, Kathryn Grayson, Judy Garland.

5:55pm – IFC – Renaissance
In near-future Paris, a brilliant young scientist is kidnapped; her employer Avalon (a highly influential company that sells youth and beauty itself) wants her found, but her importance to them may be more sinister than first meets the eye. The story’s not handled perfectly here, but it’s worth watching for the beautifully stark black and white animation.
2006 France. Director: Christian Volckman. Starring (English version): Daniel Craig, Romola Garai, Ian Holm, Catherine McCormack, Jonathan Pryce.

11:30pm – TCM – Point Blank
I’ve seen this film, but it’s been a while and I don’t recall much of it. IMDb is failing to jog my memory, so rather than try to write about it, I’m just going to point out that it’s on. I know it’s pretty well-regarded in at least some quarters around here, so maybe someone else will jump in with why you should see it. I’ve been wanting a rewatch on it for a while myself.
1967 USA. Director: John Boorman. Starring: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn.
Newly Featured!

Friday, September 10

6:00am – TCM – Curse of the Cat People
Ostensibly a sequel to 1942′s Lewton-Tourneur collaboration Cat People, but it’s almost completely unrelated in story. Simone Simon is back, but this time she’s a mysterious woman, apparently a ghost, who becomes a friend to a little girl who doesn’t have any other friends. It tries to get creepy/scary at the end, but it’s much more of a slightly supernatural drama than a horror film – as Lewton was likely to make despite the lurid titles thrust upon him by studios.
1944 USA. Director: Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise. Starring: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter.
Newly Featured!

7:15am – TCM – The Body Snatcher
Producer Val Lewton is known for his extraordinarily literate 1940s B-level horror films, and this one is more of a drama with a lot of creepiness throughout and a scary climax. In 19th century Britain, a couple of doctors carry out their medical research on corpses snatched from cemeteries – but what if there aren’t enough viable corpses to snatch? Leave that up to Boris Karloff, as the menacing cab driver who acquires them. A little slow to get going, but rewarding.
1945 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Russell Wade, Edith Atwater, Bela Lugosi.

10:15am – IFC – Dancer in the Dark
Bjork plays a factory worker whose increasing blindness threatens to keep her from being able to do her job, which will keep her from earning the money she needs for an operation that will prevent her son from suffering the same blindness. Add in the relationship with her not-as-happy-as-they-seem neighbors and a trenchant critique of the justice system and death penalty, not to mention several musical numbers juxtaposed throughout, and you have a film that’s unlike any other.
2000 Denmark. Director: Lars von Trier. Starring: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare.

6:00pm – TCM – The Haunting
No worries, this is the good, 1963 version of The Haunting, not the overblown 1999 remake. The story’s the same, but Robert Wise’s original is creepy, disturbing, and, like, good.
1963 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn.

Saturday, September 11

6:00am – IFC – I Heart Huckabees
Not too many films take philosophy as their base, but this one basically does, following a man (Jason Schwartzman) plagued by coincidence who hires a couple of existentialists to figure out what’s going on.
2004 USA. Director: David O. Russell. Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Isabelle Huppert, Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin, Jude Law.
(repeats at 1:05pm)

9:30am – IFC – Tristram Shandy
Lawrence Sterne’s 1769 proto-postmodern novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy has long been considered unfilmable. So what does director Michael Winterbottom do? He makes a film about the difficulty of filming Tristram Shandy. Winterbottom’s film is something of an experiment, but it’s a delightful one, showing the behind-the-scenes antics of production as well as highlighting the circularity and self-defeating narrative of Sterne’s novel in the film-within-the-film.
2005 UK. Director: Michael Winterbottom. Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Jeremy Northam.
(repeats at 4:35pm)

6:15pm – IFC – Crimes and Misdemeanors
When Martin Landau’s long-time mistress threatens to expose their affair unless he marries her, he’s faced with the decision to let her ruin his life and career or have her murdered. In a tangentially and thematically-related story, Woody Allen is a documentary filmmaker forced into making a profile of a successful TV producer rather than the socially-conscious films he wants to make. One of Allen’s most thoughtful and philosophically astute films – there are few answers here, but the questions will stay in your mind forever.
1989 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Martin Landau, Anjelica Huston, Claire Bloom, Joanna Gleason.
Must See
(repeats at 8:15am on the 12th)

8:00pm – 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.

9:35pm – IFC – Annie Hall
Often considered Woody Allen’s transition film from “funny Woody” to “serious Woody,” Annie Hall is both funny, thoughtful, and fantastic. One of the best scripts ever written, a lot of warmth as well as paranoid cynicism, and a career-making role for Diane Keaton (not to mention fashion-making).
1977 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane.
Must See
(repeats at 2:35am and 6:35am on the 12th)

10:00pm – TCM – High Sierra
Bogart’s breakout role as an on-the-run con man who gets involved with the lame Joan Leslie. (No, I mean actually crippled.) He’d been bumming around for a few years as a Warner second lead or villain, but with 1941’s double punch of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, he unequivocally arrived.
1941 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino.

11:15pm – IFC – Go
In the first section of this tripartite film, bored grocery store clerk Sarah Polley seizes an opportunity to broker a drug deal when her dealing coworker takes a trip to Vegas. It goes very wrong. Meanwhile, her coworker in Vegas gets mixed up in a murder there. Also meanwhile, two actors work with a narcotics officer to break up the drug ring. All three stories tie up together in the end, but not before a lot of quite well-constructed Pulp Fiction-esque jumping around. A lot of fun, and better than you might expect.
1999 USA. Director: Doug Liman. Starring: Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf.
(repeats at 4:15am on the 12th)

2:00am (12th) – TCM – They Died With Their Boots On
Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland’s last of ten films together is this highly fictionalized account of General Custer, from his days at West Point through his legendary last stand against the Sioux Indians. History’s out the window here, but rousing Hollywood western action takes its place, and Flynn & de Havilland are always worth watching, especially together.
1941 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy, Charley Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Anthony Quinn.

Sunday, September 12

6:00am – TCM – Young Bess
Charles Laughton was born to play King Henry VIII in his portly years, and here he reprises the role that brought him an Oscar in 1933 (for The Private Life of Henry VIII). This time it’s mostly about the early life of his daughter Elizabeth (Jean Simmons), who would be the first solo queen of England. I grew up with this movie for some reason, and so I’ve always enjoyed revisiting it though it’s really a fairly standard costume drama. Deborah Kerr’s presence as Catherine Parr adds a bit of class.
1953 USA. Director: George Sidney. Starring: Jean Simmons, Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Charles Laughton.
Newly Featured!

8:00am – 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).
1951 USA. Director: Stanley Donen. Starring: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Sarah Churchill, Peter Lawford.

2:30pm – 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.
1943 USA. Director: Fred M. Wilcox. Starring: Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester, Elizabeth Taylor.

6:30pm – IFC – Layer Cake
Sounds like an unusual title for a crime film, but it’s also an unusually solid crime film, with Daniel Craig in one of his breakthrough roles as a drug dealer given a couple of tough jobs just before planning to retire. Last jobs never go well, so you can kind of predict all won’t go as planned.
2004 UK. Director: Matthew Vaughn. Starring: Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Sally Hawkins, Burn Gorman.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 1:00am on the 13th)

12:00M – TCM – The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
There’s a musical version of this story from the 1950s, with powerful vocals from tenor Mario Lanza, but this silent version is much stronger and more evocative – likely because of director Ernst Lubitsch. Latin heartthrob Ramon Novarro plays the prince trying to ignore his royal duties when he falls in love with barmaid Norma Shearer.
1927 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, Jean Hersholt.