Very few newly featured ones this week, but still a lot worth seeing, both new and repeated. TCM’s tribute to Jean Harlow continues on Tuesday – I’ve only highlighted Red Dust, as the only one I’ve seen, but I’m hoping to check out Wife vs. Secretary and Saratoga (her final film) myself. Also look out for Sam Fuller’s B-movie thriller Shock Corridor on Wednesday, a mini-marathon of David Lean films on Friday, the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers on Saturday, and Neorealist classic Open City late Sunday/early Monday.

Monday, March 21

6:15am – IFC – Away from Her
A very strong directing debut film from actress Sarah Polley, about an older woman (Julie Christie) suffering from Alzheimer’s and her husband’s difficulty in dealing with essentially the loss of his wife as she has more and more difficulty remembering their life together. It’s a lovely, heartbreaking film, bolstered by great understated performances.
2006 Canada. Director: Sarah Polley. Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Stacey LaBerge.
(repeats at 2:45pm)

6:20am – 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 1:50pm)

10:30am – Sundance – Mary and Max
This adult-aimed stop-motion film from Australia got a number of positive reviews last year on the festival circuit, but didn’t get much of a release in the United States despite having a fairly recognizable voice cast. Anyway, here it is on Sundance (it’s also on Netflix Instant Watch), and I’m greatly looking forward to catching it one of these days.
2009 Australia. Director: Adam Elliott. Starring: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana.
(repeats at 4:35pm)

2:30am (22nd) – TCM – The Seven Samurai
Probably Kurosawa’s best-known film, The Seven Samurai is an eastern version of a Western, with down-on-their-luck samurai (led by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune) working together to help a ravaged village hold off bandit invaders. Completing the cycle of cinematic borrowing, the film was remade in the US as The Magnificent Seven.
1954 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima.
Must See

Tuesday, March 22

6:15am – IFC – My Life as a Dog
Lasse Hallstrom gives us this simple but effective coming-of-age story, focusing on the every day life of a young boy as he’s sent to live in a provincial village after acting out at home.
1985 Sweden. Director: Lasse Hallstrom. Starring: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Melinda Kinnaman.
(repeats at 2:45pm)

7:50am – 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 5:00pm)

10:00am – TCM – Gypsy
One of the best shows ever written about stage mothers turns into a pretty decent film – it purports to be the story of vaudeville/burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee, but ends up being much more about her mother Mama Rose. It’s a good showcase for any actress, and Rosalind Russell, though not quite the singer that the role pulls on Broadway, does a fine job. Plus, it’s chock-full of showstopping tunes.
1962 USA. Director: Meryvn LeRoy. Starring: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden.

3:45pm – TCM – A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire won Vivien Leigh her second Oscar as fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois, and made a star out of Marlon Brando. It’s also one of the films I’m most embarrassed to say I’ve never seen. I even have it on DVD somewhere! Someday, I will get to it.
1951 USA. Director: Elia Kazan. Starring: Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Stanley, Karl Malden.

9:45pm – TCM – Red Dust
You want some pre-Code action? Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made several films together, and Red Dust is one of the most entertaining, in no small part because its story of a love triangle on a South Seas rubber plantation gives them plenty of opportunity to push the sensuality envelope, while still keeping a delightfully sarcastic sense of humor.
1932 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp.

Wednesday, March 23

8:50am – Sundance – Man on Wire
One of last year’s most highly-acclaimed documentaries tells the story of high-wire walker Philippe Petit as he embarks on perhaps his most dangerous stunt yet.
2008 UK/USA. Director: James Marsh. Starring: Philippe Petit, Jean François Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau.
(repeats at 2:45pm)

1:30pm – TCM – Shock Corridor
One of memorable director Samuel Fuller’s most memorable films has a journalist hungry for a Pulitzer Prize get himself committed to an insane asylum in order to investigate a murder. But not everything is as it seems, and it turns out to be harder than he expects to maintain his own sanity surrounded by lunatics.
1963 USA. Director: Samuel Fuller. Starring: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best.
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4:45pm – TCM – They Live By Night
An early film for Nicholas Ray, following unjustly incarcerated Farley Granger just after he escapes from jail, falling in with a group of crooks setting out to rob a bank, and beginning to love the young daughter of one of his new partners. Classic film noir stylings plus the deft hand of Ray raises this a notch.
1949 USA. Director: Nicholas Ray. Starring: Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig.

6:30pm – TCM – Gun Crazy
A sort of proto-Bonnie & Clyde, with a pair of young lovers knocking over liquor stores and banks as they travel cross-country, indulging their love of guns and violence. This is one of the great unsung B-level noir films, though among noir lovers you’ll find it’s plenty sung, with Joseph H. Lewis bringing out the tragedy within the story’s pulp. Definitely don’t miss it if you’re into 1940s crime films.
1950 USA. Director: Joseph H. Lewis. Starring: Peggy Cummins, John Dall.

7:30pm – 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

8:00pm – TCM – Guys and Dolls
Marlon Brando seems like an unusual casting choice for a musical, and indeed, he’s a bit uncomfortable for a good part of this. But the rest of the cast (especially second leads Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine) make up for it, bringing Damon Runyon’s colorful underground New York gambling scene come to life.
1955 USA. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring: Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, Vivian Blaine.
Must See

Thursday, March 24

6:45am – 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.
(repeats at 2:30pm)

9:00am – 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.
(repeats at 4:45pm)

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 – 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.

10:00pm – 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 3:20am on the 25th)

10:05pm – 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.

1:35am (25th) – IFC – The Crying Game
British soldier Forest Whitaker is captured by an IRA cell, and one of the IRA members (Stephen Rea), against his better judgement, befriends him. Later, Rea leaves the cell and makes his way to London to find Whitaker’s lover and ends up getting involved with her under an assumed identity. There’s an additional twist that you likely know if you play any film trivia at all, but the rest of the film is a solid exploration of terrorist guilt with director Neil Jordan’s characteristic angst.
1992 UK. Director: Neil Jordan. Starring: Stephen Rea, Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson.

2:00am (25th) – TCM – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis both won acting awards for their parts in Mike Nichols’ version of Edward Albee’s dysfunctional dinner party play. Remains probably the most well-remembered team-up of erstwhile couple Taylor and Richard Burton.
1966 USA. Director: Mike Nichols. Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis, George Segal.

Friday, March 25

8:15am – 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.

9:45am – 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.

11:45am – TCM – Oliver Twist
Another classic Dickens adaptation from David Lean. This is one of the few Dickens stories I actually do like, yet I haven’t gotten around to this version of it yet.
1948 UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: John Howard Davies, Alec Guinness, Robert Newton, Kay Walsh, Anthony Newley.

11:45am – IFC – A Prairie Home Companion
One of Robert Altman’s final films, and one I’ve not yet gotten up to in my attempts to rectify my Altman blind spot. As much as I’ve been enjoying his films during the New Hollywood marathon, though, I’m definitely putting his entire filmography higher on my to-watch list.
2006 USA. Director: Robert Altman. Starring: Woody Harrelson, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Lily Tomlin.

3:45pm – 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.

4:00pm – IFC – The Aviator
A relatively safe film for Martin Scorsese, perhaps, but a really solid one, with DiCaprio solidifying his place in Scorsese’s films as legendary aviator/producer/hypochondriac Howard Hughes and a host of near-perfectly cast supporting players as the stars and starlets of 1930s Hollywood.
2004 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale.

8:00pm – TCM – The More the Merrier
A World War II housing shortage has Charles Coburn, Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur sharing an apartment; soon Coburn is matchmaking for McCrea and Arthur, and we get a wonderful, adorable romance out of it.
1943 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Jane Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn.

8:10pm – Sundance – The Royal Tenenbaums
My favorite of all of Wes Anderson’s films (and indeed, one of my favorites of the whole decade), a web of fine characterizations surrounding Royal Tenenbaum, an eccentric old man whose imminent mortality forces a reunion with his family. But its morbidity is tempered by absurd humor and quirk.
2001 USA. Director: Wes Anderson. Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Bill Murray.
Must See
(repeats at 3:45am on the 26th)

10:00pm – 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 5:35am on the 26th)

Saturday, March 26

6:00am – 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 1:00pm)

8:30am – TCM – Animal Crackers
The Marx Brothers at their zaniest, with Groucho as African explorer Captain Spaulding – when a painting is stolen during a party honoring him, the Brothers join in the search with hilarious results.
1930 USA. Director: Victor Heerman. Starring: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont.
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4:00pm – TCM – Lawrence of Arabia
Most epics are over-determined and so focused on spectacle that they end up being superficial – all big sets and sweeping music with no depth. The brilliance of Lawrence of Arabia is that it looks like an epic with all the big sets and sweeping music and widescreen vistas, but at its center is an enigmatic character study of a man who lives bigger-than-life, but is as personally conflicted as any intimate drama has ever portrayed.
1962 UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Jose Ferrer.
Must See

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

8:00pm – IFC – Shadow of the Vampire
What if actor Max Schreck, who played the vampire in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, actually WAS a vampire and kept eating various members of the cast and crew? That’s the premise set forth by this slight but entertaining film, with John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as the eccentric Schreck.
2000 USA. Director: E. Elias Merhige. Starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack.
(repeats at 2:00am on the 27th)

Sunday, March 27

10:00am – TCM – Stella Dallas
I tend to prize Barbara Stanwyck most for her sparkling comedic performances, but she did her fair share of melodramas, and Stella Dallas remains one of the best. Stanwyck is the title character, a working class girl who marries above her class, leading to various problems and heartbreak. It’s a three-hanky film, but a pretty solid one.
1937 USA. Director: King Vidor. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley.

12:00N – TCM – State Fair
The only musical Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote directly for the screen, and yeah, it’s fairly inconsequential, but it’s a lot of fun. And really made me want my dad to take me to the Iowa State Fair when I was a kid. He never did, so I never got to find out if it was as much fun as this. Probably not.
1945 USA. Director: Walter Lang. Starring: Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine.

2:00am (28th) – TCM – Open City
One of the central works of Italian Neorealism, as Roberto Rossellini turns his camera on a realistic portrayal of the Italian Resistance in 1944. The use of non-professional actors, real locations, and available light makes a relatively simple story come to visceral life.
1945 Italy. Director: Roberto Rossellini. Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagliero.
Must See
Newly Featured!