Pandora’s Box, playing on TCM late Sunday/early Monday

The last week of TCM’s tribute to Hal Roach finishes up on Tuesday with a few Laurel and Hardy sound films and some other comedies, then switch comedy styles entirely to European sophistication with Love Me Tonight on Wednesday and Trouble in Paradise (along with a bunch of other Lubitsch films) on Friday. Don’t miss the classic silent Pandora’s Box on Sunday/early Monday, plus lots of other great repeats on all channels.

Monday, January 24

7:45am – IFC – The Protector
Whatever you do, don’t mess with Tony Jaa’s elephants. Consider yourself warned. Here Jaa takes on a city full of gangsters intent on stealing his elephant (and the mystical power they possess); the story here isn’t anything special, but Jaa’s fighting ability and choreography certainly is.
1995 Thailand. Director: Prachya Pinkaew. Starring: Tony Jaa, Nathan Jones, Petchtel Wongkamlao.
(repeats at 2:00pm)

Tuesday, January 25

7:40am – Sundance – Mammoth
A favorite among a few Row Three writers, though not unanimously, this film from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson gives a three-faceted look at the modern world, contrasting an American businessman, his family, their Filipino maid, and her family.
2009 Sweden. Director: Lukas Moodysson. Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Michelle Williams, Marife Necesito.
(repeats at 11:35am)

9:50am – 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 4:20pm)

4:45pm – IFC – Before Sunrise
Before Sunrise may be little more than an extended conversation between two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend all night talking and walking the streets of Vienna, I fell in love with it at first sight. Linklater has a way of making movies where nothing happens seem vibrant and fascinating, and call me a romantic if you wish, but this is my favorite of everything he’s done.
1995 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
Must See
(repeats at 10:15am on the 26th)

7:00pm – 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.
(repeats at 4:00am on the 26th)

8:00pm – TCM – Sons of the Desert
One of Laurel and Hardy’s better known films has them making up stories to tell their wives so they can attend a convention – but that story doesn’t hold up for long. TCM’s finishing up their tribute to Hal Roach Studios tonight with several comedies moving into the ’30s and ’40s, including more Laurel and Hardy later in the evening.
1933 USA. Director: William A. Seiter. Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase.
Newly Featured!

10:30pm – 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. If you like the Topper films, the two sequels are playing on Wednesday at 10am and 2:45pm.
1937 USA. Director: Norman Z. McLeod. Starring: Roland Young, Cary Grant, Constance Bennett.

11:35pm – IFC – Blood Simple
The Coen Brothers’ first feature is already a pretty good indication of their style – a noirish thriller with a black comedy edge where everything goes more and more wrong the more people try to fix their mistakes. When the “mistakes” involve murder, leaving evidence at murder scenes, and having the worst time ever trying to get rid of a body, you’re in for a good time at pretty much every character’s expense.
1984 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh.

1:35am (26th) – IFC – The Proposition
Australia’s answer to the western; Guy Pearce must hunt down and capture his brothers for the law in order to save his own skin. Gritty and violent almost to a fault, and it definitely brought new life to the Western genre.
2005 Australia. Director: John Hillcoat. Starring: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone.

Wednesday, January 26

7:05am – Sundance – The Darjeeling Limited
Not perhaps my favorite Wes Anderson film, but that’s not really that much of a negative statement for one of my favorite directors. Certainly the central image of the train is a fitting one for his flat, widescreen visual style, and the Indian setting allows for great use of color, so if nothing else, it looks freaking gorgeous.
2007 USA. Director: Wes Anderson. Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Angelica Huston.
(repeats at 1:45pm on the 26th, 10:00pm on the 30th, and 4:40am on the 31st)

1:00am (27th) – TCM – Love Me Tonight
MacDonald and Chevalier were a quite successful pairing in early sound-era operettas, and this is one of their best – a pretty excellent musical comedy of noblemen and peasants and mistaken identity directed by Rouben Mamoulian doing his best Ernst Lubitsch impersonation (Lubitsch actually did do a couple of films teaming MacDonald and Chevalier, but none as good as this one).
1932 USA. Director: Rouben Mamoulian. Starring: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Myrna Loy.
Newly Featured!

1:35am (27th) – 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.

Thursday, January 27

6:25am – 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 12:40pm)

10:00am – TCM – D.O.A.
A man staggers into a police office to report a murder…his own. He’s been poisoned with an antidote-less poison, and he spends the rest of the film trying to convince the police what’s happened and trying to figure out who poisoned him and why. It’s not my favorite film noir, but it’s unusual premise and solid quality makes it worth watching.
1950 USA. Director: Rudolph Maté. Starring: Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Beverly Garland.

10:15am – IFC – Curse of the Golden Flower
One of the weaker entries in Zhang Yimou’s series of historical martial-arts-on-wires films, but it still has its moments – and the production design, as usual, is flawlessly beautiful. Definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the style.
2006 China. Director: Zhang Yimou. Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Ye Liu.

6:00pm – TCM – The Asphalt Jungle
The Asphalt Jungle was really MGM’s first foray into noirish crime films. Being MGM, it’s more polished and, to me, less interesting than the crime dramas that Warner Bros. and the smaller studios were putting out, but hey. It’s still pretty good. And has a really young Marilyn Monroe.
1950 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe.

9:45pm – TCM – Being There
In one of his last great roles, Peter Sellers is a sheltered, simple gardener whose only exposure to the world outside his employer’s home is via television; when his employer’s death forces him to leave, his tv-gained knowledge is mistaken for wisdom.
1979 USA. Director: Hal Ashby. Starring: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas.
Newly Featured!

11:15pm – 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.

12:00M – TCM – Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
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

1:45am (28th) – TCM – Lolita
How did they ever make a film of Lolita, the posters scream. I haven’t seen it, so I’m not sure, but I’ve never had Kubrick steer me wrong yet. That said, I found the book well-written, but extremely hard to read and I’m not too anxious to see the film, Kubrick or no Kubrick.
1962 USA. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon.
Newly Featured!

Friday, January 28

9:00am – Sundance – No One Knows About Persian Cats
A pair of Iranian rock musicians, unable to perform their music publicly because the government won’t give them a permit, try to put together a final underground gig to raise money to escape the country – it’s based on the actual story of the two people playing the musicians, so there’s an intriguing intersection of reality and fiction.
2009 Iran. Director: Bahman Ghobadi. Starring: Negar Shaghaghi, Ashkan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad.
(repeats at 6:10pm, and 1:35am on the 29th)

10:30am – TCM – The Shop Around the Corner
The original version of You’ve Got Mail has James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as feuding employees of a shop who are unknowingly exchanging romantic letters. Ernst Lubitsch directs, bringing his warm European wit to bear.
1940 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan.

10:45am – IFC – Harlan County, U.S.A.
Often considered one of the finest documentaries ever put on film, Barbara Kopple’s film documents a 1973 coal miner’s strike in Kentucky which lasted over a year.
1976 USA. Director: Barbara Kopple.

12:30pm – TCM – To Be or Not to Be
If you never listen to anything else I ever say, listen to this: To Be or Not To Be is one of the greatest films of all time, and you should see it. It’s a comedy about Nazi Germany. I know. Jack Benny plays the leader of a Polish theatre troupe, specializing in playing Hamlet alongside his philandering wife, played by Carole Lombard. I know. When Hitler takes over Poland, the troupe engages in an act of espionage both dangerous and ridiculous. I know! It’s simultaneously hilarious, ominous, and heartbreaking. Director Ernst Lubitsch’s finest hour? For me it is. Carole Lombard’s best role (the final one of her career, before she was killed in a plane crash returning from a war bond tour)? For me it is.
1943 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Sig Ruman.
Must See

2:30pm – TCM – Ninotchka
“Garbo Laughs!” proclaimed the advertisements, playing up the comedic factor of the usually implacable Greta Garbo’s 1939 film. True enough, though it takes a while for the charms of Paris and Melvyn Douglas to warm the Communist Ninotchka to the point of laughter. Pairing up director Ernst Lubitsch and writers Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder (who had yet to become a director himself) turns out to be a brilliant move, as Ninotchka has just the right combination of wit and sophistication.
1939 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas.

6:30pm – TCM – Trouble in Paradise
Lubtisch excels in sophisticated comedies set among the fading European nobility, and this is right up there with his best, as classy thief Herbert Marshall and pickpocket Miriam Hopkins join forces to infiltrate and fleece the rich.
1932 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Edward Everett Horton.
Must See
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – Sundance – 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 3:20am on the 29th)

Saturday, January 29

6:45am – IFC – Hero
Jet Li is the titular hero in this Zhang Yimou film, arguably the best of Yimou’s period action-on-wires films (though I’m partial to House of Flying Daggers myself). The story unfolds in flashback as Li explains to a warlord how he eliminated three would-be assassins (who happen to be three of Hong Kong cinema’s biggest stars, incidentally) – but all may not be precisely how it seems.
2002 China. Director: Zhang Yimou. Starring: Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung.
(repeats at 1:45pm)

2:00pm – 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.

10:00pm – Sundance – The Piano
I often find Jane Campion films overly pretentious, but this one strikes the right chord, with Holly Hunter as a mute woman in an arranged marriage who finds love with one of her husbands’ hired hands – but stealing the show is her young daughter, an Oscar-winning performance by Anna Paquin.
1993 New Zealand. Director: Jane Campion. Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin.
(repeats at 3:40am on the 30th)

1:15am (30th) – TCM – Marty
Ernest Borgnine won an Oscar for his role as the schlubby, lonely title character, resigned to being unloved, until he meets a plain schoolteacher whose similar resignedness might make her his perfect match. The idea of having unlovely people in lead roles was a new one in Hollywood in the 1950s, and Marty capitalized on Paddy Chayefsky’s story with great results.
1955 USA. Director: Delbert Mann. Starring: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti.
Newly Featured!

3:00pm – TCM – The Wild Bunch
One of several westerns in the sixties and seventies preoccupied with aging cowboys and their displacement as the world moves on around them – and one of the best, with a level of grit and violence that hadn’t really been seen up to this point. Uncompromising direction from Sam Peckinpah plus a cast that knew their way around traditional westerns make this one to remember.
1969 USA. Director: Sam Peckinpah. Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Ben Johnson.
Must See

Sunday, January 30

12:00N – TCM – The Lost Weekend
A classic addition story, with Ray Milland as the alcoholic on a bender over a weekend, while he flashes back to earlier points in his “relationship” with alcohol, complete with DTs and over-the-top hallucinations and the whole bit. But if anyone can make a hard-hitting story about addiction entertaining, it’s Billy Wilder, and he does so here.
1945 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry.
Newly Featured!

2:00pm – TCM – Doctor Zhivago
Idealistic Zhivago experiences the Bolshevik Revolution while also dealing with his conflicting feelings for his wife Tonya and young nurse Lara. There are a few things about the romance side of the story that bother me, mostly the fact that I liked Tonya way more than Lara, but I have to admit Lean knows how to make epic films, and Maurice Jarre’s score is unforgettable.
1965 UK/USA. Director: David Lean. Starring: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness.

12:00M – TCM – Pandora’s Box
Flapper icon Louise Brooks’ best-known role is this story of a young dancer whose allure creates destruction everywhere she goes.
1929 Germany. Director: G.W. Pabst. Starring: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer.
Newly Featured!