A lot of good repeats this week on all channels, with a good chunk of newly featured Oscar winners on TCM, still celebrating Academy Award nominees throughout February. This week TCM has edged into much newer films than they usually show, but still solidly in the “great movie” category. Note especially Amadeus and Thelma & Louise on Tuesday, a triple Fellini feature overnight on Wednesday/Thursday, and serial killer Oscar-sweeper The Silence of the Lambs on Saturday.

Monday, February 21

7:35am – Sundance – A Town Called Panic
One of the most delightful films I saw in 2009, a whacked out stop-motion film from Belgium that follows Horse, Cowboy, and Indian throughout a series of adventures, mostly focused on trying to rebuild their house which keeps getting stolen every night. This is mile-a-minute absurdity with more inventiveness in 75 minutes than I usually see all year.
2009 Belium. Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar. Starring: Stéphane Aubier, Jeanne Balibar, Bruce Ellison, Vincent Pater.
(repeats at 12:20pm and 5:50pm)

10:45am – 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

10:00pm – TCM – The Best Years of Our Lives
One of the first films to deal with the aftermath of WWII, as servicemen return home to find both themselves and their homes changed by the long years of war. Director William Wyler and a solid ensemble cast do a great job of balancing drama and realism without delving too much into sentimentality.
1946 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Herbert Russell, Cathy O’Donnell.

1:00am (22nd) – TCM – Pygmalion
A straight non-musical version of the George Bernard Shaw play that would later become My Fair Lady, with Leslie Howard as the prickly Professor Higgins who takes in street vendor Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) to turn her into a lady. A bit more acidic than the musical version.
1938 USA. Director: Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard. Starring: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr.
Newly Featured!

2:00am (22nd) – IFC – Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough film (Pi remains a cult favorite) follows a quartet of people as their lives spiral out of control due to drug addiction.
2000 USA. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.

Tuesday, February 22

7:00am – IFC – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Julian Schnabel’s intensely moving retelling of the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was almost completely paralyzed in a car accident, able only to move his left eye. The impressionist storytelling lends an otherworldly beauty to the film, already solid due to the script and acting.
2007 France. Director: Julian Schnabel. Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze.
Must See
(repeats at 1:45pm)

8:45am – TCM – Limelight
One of Charlie Chaplin’s last films, a bit of an elegy to show business, following an aging comedian and a suicidal ballerina as they give each other hope.
1952 USA. Director: Charles Chaplin. Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce, Buster Keaton.

11:15pm – 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.
1937 USA. Director: Sam Wood. Starring: The Marx Brothers, Allan Jones, Maureen O’Sullivan, Margaret Dumont.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Defiant Ones
Convicts Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier escape, but are chained together and must learn to work with each other to evade the authorities. Made in 1958, just a few years into the Civil Rights Movement, it probably falls squarely into the message picture arena, but sometimes those are needed.
1958 USA. Director: Stanley Kramer. Starring: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel.

10:00pm – TCM – Amadeus
A Best Actor Oscar went to F. Murray Abraham for his portrayal of conflicted Antonio Salieri, hard-working court composer in 18th century Vienna, whose music and status is threatened by obnoxious genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The film is rather fictionalized, especially in the antagonism between the two composers, but it makes for powerful narrative.
1984 USA. Director: Milos Forman. Starring: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice, Jeffrey Jones.
Newly Featured!

1:00am (23rd) – TCM – Thelma & Louise
A feminist take on buddy crime films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with street-smart Louise and repressed housewife Thelma escaping the men in their life along with a murder charge together.
1991 USA. Director: Ridley Scott. Starring: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brad Pitt.
Newly Featured!

3:15am (23rd) – TCM – Giant
The saga of a Texas cattle rancher and two generations of his family’s rivalry with a nearby rancher and oil tycoon. A bit sprawling and overlong for my tastes, but certainly has its moments, and is one of only three films James Dean made before his death.
1956 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, Mercedes McCambridge.
Newly Featured!

Wednesday, February 23

12:30pm – TCM – You Were Never Lovelier
Fred Astaire once called Rita Hayworth his favorite dancing partner; truth be told, it may be because he had a little crush on her or something (and who could blame him), because she’s not, as a dancer, up to par with many of his other costars – but she is very charming and lovely in both this and their other pairing, You’ll Never Get Rich. Neither are great films, but both are quite enjoyable, and You Were Never Lovelier usually gets the edge in reputation.
1941 USA. Director: William A. Seiter. Starring: Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Adolphe Menjou.

10:00pm – TCM – You Can’t Take It With You
Capra won his third directing Oscar for this film (the others were for It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), but to me it’s not one of his more interesting pieces. Young couple James Stewart and Jean Arthur invite chaos when his staid, wealthy family meets her wacky, irreverent one.
1938 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Spring Byington.

11:30pm – IFC – The Usual Suspects
One of the earliest in the late 90s wave of “twist” films, and still one of the few that did it best. Spoiler warnings may not have been invented for The Usual Suspects, but it was certainly one of the films that popularized anti-spoiler sentiment (and the converse glee for spoiling, I suppose). Thanks to Christopher McQuarrie’s tight script and great acting turns, though, the film is about more than the twist, which is what makes it continue to be worthwhile over a decade and multiple viewings later.
1995 USA. Director: Bryan Singer. Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Bryne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollack, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite.

12:15am (24th) – TCM – The Great Ziegfeld
This very fictionalized biography of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld is not really that great a film, but epic enough in scale to win a Best Picture Oscar in 1936, as well as one for Best Actress for Luise Rainer as Ziegfeld’s first wife (Myrna Loy plays his second wife Billie Burke, in one of several on-screen pairings of Loy and Powell). There are also a number of improbably large-scale production numbers that are fun to look at it if you’re into that sort of thing.
1936 USA. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer.

3:30am (24th) – TCM – Amarcord
One of Federico Fellini’s four Best Foreign Film statuettes is for this film, and though I rail against many of Oscar’s choices when it comes to foreign films, Fellini deserved all of his. Amarcord is a slice-of-life film showcasing a small 1930s Italian village, with Fellini’s typically flair.
1973 Italy. Director: Federico Fellini. Starring: Bruno Zanin, Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Josiane Tanzilli.

6:00am (24th) – TCM – 8 1/2
Federico Fellini translates his creative block in making his next film into a film about a director with a creative block – and in so doing, makes one of the most brilliant and creative films of all time.
1963 Italy. Director: Federico Fellini. Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée.
Must See

Thursday, February 24

8:30am – TCM – La Strada
One of Fellini’s more neo-realist films (though he had a surrealistic flair already), La Strada follows a simple-minded innocent played beautifully by Giulietta Masina as she travels with brutish circus strongman Anthony Quinn. There simply are no faces in cinema quite like Masina’s, and Fellini’s camera loves her so much it’s impossible not to be caught under her spell, and the film’s.
1954 Italy. Director: Federico Fellini. Starring: Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart.
Must See
Newly Featured!

8:35am – Sundance – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Luis Bu˜uel 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 1:15pm)

10:30am – TCM – The Lavender Hill Mob
Alec Guinness leads the Ealing Studios regulars in this delightful heist comedy, one of the greats among a bunch of great late ’40s, early ’50s Ealing films. Also look for a really young Audrey Hepburn in a walk-on (this is her first film, I believe).
1951 UK. Director: Charles Crichton. Starring: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sid James, Marjorie Fielding.

12:00N – TCM – Great Expectations
David Lean’s definitive version of one of Charles Dickens’ most well-known books, about the boy Pip and his rise to fortune through the aid of a mysterious benefactor. I’ve avoided this because of my distaste for Dickens, but hey. The movie can’t have time to ramble on like Dickens does, so maybe I’d like it.
1946 UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: John Mills, Tony Wager, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Martita Hunt.

4:30pm – 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.

10:00pm – TCM – Ben-Hur
Charlton Heston is the titular character, going through pretty much everything a Jew in the first century could expect – mistreatment from the Romans, being sold as a galley slave as punishment for a minor offense, fighting for his life as an arena chariot racer, and becoming convinced by Jesus of Nazareth’s promises of hope and a better kingdom to come. Ben-Hur practically defines the word “epic,” and remains one of the best of the sword-and-sandal films so popular in the ’50s and ’60s.
1959 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Hugh Griffith, Cathy O’Donnell, Martha Scott.
Must See

10:00pm – Sundance – Metropolitan
If Jane Austen made a movie in 1990 and set it among entitled Manhattan socialites, this would be it. The film follows a group of such entitled teens from party to party, focusing especially on the one outsider, a boy from the blue-collar class who has to rent a tux and pretend he likes to walk to avoid letting his new friends know he has to take the bus home. Though they find out soon enough, they keep him around because his intellectual nattering amuses them. In fact, it’s quite amazing that this film is interesting at all, given the amount of pseudo-intellectual nattering that goes on, from all the characters. But from start to finish, it’s both entertaining and an incisive look at the American class structure.
1990 USA. Director: Whit Stillman. Starring: Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman, Carolyn Farina, Taylor Nichols, Dylan Hundley.
(repeats at 3:05am and 11:15am on the 25th)

10:15pm – IFC – Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino’s first directorial feature sets the tone for his career – ultraviolet, talky, self-aware, and flamboyantly confident. It’s far from my personal favorite Tarantino film, but I’m in the minority on that; most Tarantino fans rank it quite favorably against his later films.
1992 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi.

12:15am (25th) – IFC – 28 Days Later
Danny Boyle brought the zombie film into the new millennium, with a fast-spreading virus infecting the population at record speed (the “zombies” also move at record speed), leaving only a few survivors to try to escape London before it’s too late. I’m not a particular fan of the ending, but up until then, it’s a mile-a-minute thrill ride that’s hard to beat.
2002 UK. Director: Danny Boyle. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston.

Friday, February 25

7:00am – TCM – Suspicion
The first of four films Hitchcock made with Cary Grant, and probably the weakest, but it’s still well worth watching. Hitchcock’s second American film has Joan Fontaine (his star from Rebecca) becoming paranoid that her husband Grant is trying to poison her.
1941 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty.
Newly Featured!

10:30am – IFC – Barton Fink
One of the Coen Brothers’ most brilliant dark comedies, 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.

7:45pm – 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.

8:00pm – 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

10:00pm – 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.
1953 USA. Director: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Montgomery Clift, Lee J. Cobb.

12:15am (26th) – TCM – Tom Jones
The book Tom Jones, written in the late 1700s by Henry Fielding, is usually considered one of the earliest novels, and part of its charm is the way it pastiches earlier literary forms as it tells its story of a rakish young English nobleman and his adventures with women. Though the film version can’t really claim the same place in cinematic history that the novel does in literary history, it’s still quite enjoyable, and manages to convey a similar playfulness by pastiching earlier filmmaking styles – which never fails to earn it a spot in texts on adaptation.
1963 UK. Director: Tony Richardson. Starring: Albert Finney, Susanna York, Hugh Griffiths.

2:30m (26th) – TCM – Bonnie and Clyde
This is a perfect film. If you have not seen it, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. In either case, rather than write again how much I love it, I will just refer you here.
1967 USA. Director: Arthur Penn. Starring: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons.
Must See

Saturday, February 26

11:45am – 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

1:45pm – TCM – The Letter
In this cut-above-average melodrama, Bette Davis shoots a man in self-defense. Or was it self-defense? Film noir hadn’t quite come into its own yet by this point, and it plays more like a well-produced domestic drama, but it’s an enjoyable precursor to the grittier crime dramas to come.
1940 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall.

3:30pm – TCM – The Maltese Falcon
Humphrey Bogart inhabits the role of Dashiell Hammett’s private eye Sam Spade, creating one of the definitive on-screen hard-boiled detective (vying only with Bogart’s Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, really). Not mention setting the early benchmark for noir films.
1941 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr, Walter Huston.
Must See

5:15pm – IFC – The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Tommy Lee Jones takes up the directorial reins for the first time with this revisionist western about a rancher whose Mexican right-hand-man dies, his last request being that his body be returned across the border to his family. Thus begins an odyssey that’s more about mood and character than anything else. It’s not wholly even, but Jones has an excellent eye, and this was one of the more surprisingly good films of its year.
2005 USA. Director: Tommy Lee Jones. Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, January Jones, Melissa Leo.

8:00pm – TCM – It Happened One Night
In 1934, It Happened One Night pulled off an Academy Award sweep that wouldn’t be repeated until 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, snagging awards for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Colbert is a rebellious heiress, determined to run away and marry against her father’s wishes. Along the way, she picks up Gable, a journalist who senses a juicy feature. This remains one of the most enjoyable comedies of all time, with great scenes like Colbert using her shapely legs rather than her thumb to catch a ride, Gable destroying undershirt sales by not wearing one, and a busload of people singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”
1934 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert.
Must See

8:30pm – 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.
(repeats at 1:45am on the 27th)

10:00pm – TCM – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Criminal Jack Nicholson gets put into a psychiatric hospital to see if maybe he’s crazy, and he ends up shaking the place up a bunch, especially the extremely strict by-the-book Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). I like this film but I’m not as big a fan as a lot of people; but if you’re a fan of Nicholson, he’s never better than here.
1975 USA. Director: Milos Forman. Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif.

12:30am (27th) – TCM – The Silence of the Lambs
Only three films have ever swept the top five Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay), and this is one of them, managing both to be a solid serial killer thriller and something more, in its exploration of psychosis and the demons we all hide inside ourselves.
1991 USA. Director: Jonathan Demme. Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine, Scott Glenn.
Must See
Newly Featured!

Sunday, February 27

8:00pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce
In quite probably Joan Crawford’s best role (only perhaps excepting her catty “other woman” in The Women), she plays a woman trying to work her way up in the world from lowly waitress to entrepreneur, all the while dealing with her shrew of a daughter. Melodrama isn’t a particularly prized genre these days, but films like Mildred Pierce show how good melodramas can be with the right confluence of studio style, director, and star.
1945 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden.
Must See

8:30pm – IFC – Pan’s Labyrinth
One of my absolute favorite films of the past decade (or ever, really), an absolutely beautiful and terrifying fantasy that juxtaposes the gruesome horrors of the Spanish Civil War with an equally horrifying fantasy world that provides, if not escape, at least some measure of importance and control to the film’s young heroine. Guillermo Del Toro solidified my view of him as a visionary filmmaker with this film, and it still stands to me as a testament to what fantasy can and should do.
2006 Spain/Mexico. Director: Guillermo Del Toro. Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Meribel Verdú, Doug Jones.
Must See

10:00pm – TCM – 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

2:05am (28th) – IFC – thirteen
As disinterested as I am in Twilight and as dubious as Red Riding Hood looks, I keep giving Catherine Hardwicke the benefit of the doubt based on this film, a pretty solid exploration of a young teenager’s troubled relationship with her mother as she acts out with a wild-living friend.
2003 USA. Director: Catherine Hardwicke. Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed.