Though I included a number of newly featured ones this week, there are two I’d point out especially. First, Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm on TCM on Friday, which has an unusually direct depiction of drug addiction for the 1950s, a great role for Frank Sinatra, and a great Elmer Bernstein jazz score. Second, Victor Erice’s highly imaginative Spirit of the Beehive on TCM late Sunday/early Monday, which is followed immediately by the original 1931 Frankenstein, a perfect double feature, since the latter plays such a large role in the former.

Monday, June 13

8:30am – 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 3:45pm)

10:45am – 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.

11:35am – MGM – The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman’s brilliant take on Raymond Chandler’s quintessential gumshoe Philip Marlowe complicates the hard-boiled detective genre with an apathetic and often ineffectual lead, while still bearing nostalgia for a time when the genre could be taken seriously. Works as homage, satire, elegy, and straight genre piece, which is something very hard to pull off.
1973 USA. Director: Robert Altman. Starring: Elliott Gould, Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt.
Must See
(repeats at 2:00am on the 19th)

1:30pm – TCM – Sherlock Holmes films
Basil Rathbone made umpteen films as Sherlock Holmes in one of the longest running and most popular serial film series of all time, and TCM is playing four of the better-known ones today, including The Woman in Green and Terror by Night.
1942-1946 USA. Starring: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce.
Newly Featured!

12:05am – IFC – Carrie
There aren’t that many movies that you can say are equally loved by horror fans and feminist academics, but Carrie is one of them – Carrie’s physical coming-of-age sparks telekinetic abilities, allowing her to take bloody revenge on the schoolkids who mistreated her. And who can’t relate to that, really?
1976 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving.

12:15am (14th) – TCM – Captains Courageous
Spencer Tracy won an Oscar for this film, based on Rudyard Kipling’s adventure story about a spoiled rich kid who falls off a steamship and ends up having to work on a fishing vessel to get home. A young Mickey Rooney plays the ship captain’s rough-and-tumble son.
1937 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Freddie Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Mickey Rooney.

Tuesday, June 14

6:00am – MGM – Cyrano de Bergerac
Probably the best version of the play, with Gerard Depardieu a moving and sympathetic Cyrano, helping Christian woo Roxanne as she remains oblivious as to who is really behind Christian’s pretty words.
1990 France. Director: Jean-Paul Rappeneau. Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Vincent Perez.

6:00am – Fox Movie – Unfaithfully Yours
Preston Sturges’s last great film is a pitch-black comedy with Rex Harrison as a jealous conductor who fantasizes ways to deal with his wife’s supposed infidelity as he conducts a symphony. The combination of bombastic music and his by turns morbid and farcical fantasies makes for one of the more unusual memorable films of the 1940s.
1948 USA. Director: Preston Sturges. Starring: Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallee.
(repeats at 5:30pm on the 17th)

6:00am – 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.
(repeats at 1:30pm)

8:40am – MGM – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play about the “in-betweens” of Hamlet, following two minor characters around as they discuss existential philosophy and various other topics while the main action of the play happens elsewhere, becomes an almost-as-brilliant film. I still recommend seeing the play if you can, as it’s slightly different and I think better, but the film is still wonderful.
1990 UK/USA. Director: Tom Stoppard. Starring: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss.
(repeats at 3:10am on the 18th)

9:45am – Fox Movie – Anna and the King of Siam
The earlier/non-musical version of The King and I stars Irene Dunne in one of her last films and Rex Harrison in one of his earliest. Both do a fine job.
1946 USA. Director: John Cromwell. Starring: Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Gale Sondergaard.

7:10pm – 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 3:15am on the 15th)

8:00pm – Fox Movie – Suspiria
Dario Argento’s best-known film is replete with memorable (and horrifically bloody) set-pieces of death, as a ballerina goes further than she should in trying to figure out what’s weird about her new dance school. There’s little plot, but the strong visual sense and imaginative set-pieces are what make it a justifiable giallo classic.
1977 Italy. Director: Dario Argento. Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci.
Must See

12:00M – IFC – The Wicker Man
The original version of this moody horror film, as policeman Edward Woodward tries to find a girl missing from an isolated island village – except the locals claim she doesn’t even exist. Weird rites and rituals await him as he delves further into the mystery.
1973 UK. Director: Robin Hardy. Starring: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt.

1:15am (15th) – TCM – Hamlet
Laurence Olivier’s near-definitive take on the Shakespeare play, with a dark and moody tone befitting the melancholy Dane.
1948 UK. Director: Laurence Olivier. Starring: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sydney, Eileen Herlie.
Must See

Wednesday, June 15

10:15am – TCM – Without Love
A lesser-known Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn pairing, with the two playing scientists who enter a marriage of convenience to observe propriety as they work and live together. As you might expect, things start to heat up, and the Tracy-Hepburn chemistry is as good as ever.
1945 USA. Director: Harold S. Bouquet. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Keenan Wynn.
Newly Featured!

2:15pm – TCM – The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
In this slight but charming comedy, a nearly-grown-up Shirley Temple is the bobby-soxer crushing on Cary Grant’s bachelor, but he’s more interested in Temple’s sister Myrna Loy, a no-nonsense judge who’s caught Grant up on disorderly behavior more than once. There are a lot of great bits in here, including Grant’s attempt at the “man with the voodoo” patter.
1947 USA. Director: Irving Reis. Starring: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Rudy Vallee.
Newly Featured!

6:00pm – TCM – Kind Hearts and Coronets
In one of the zaniest of the zany comedies that Alec Guinness was best known for in his early career, he plays eight, count ‘em, eight characters – all relatives in line to receive a duke’s massive fortune upon his death. The last in line plots to murder all the others to make himself the sole heir.
1949 UK. Director: Robert Hamer. Starring: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, Dennis Price.

8:00pm – TCM – The Night of the Hunter
If there’s ever a film that defined “Southern gothic,” it’s this one. Underhanded “preacher” Robert Mitchum weasels his way into a young widowed family to try to gain the money the late father hid before he died. But what starts off as a well-done but fairly standard crime thriller turns into a surreal fable somewhere in the middle, and at that moment, jumps from “good film” to “film you will be able to get out of your head NEVER.” In a good way.
1955 USA. Director: Charles Laughton. Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish.
Must See

8:00pm – IFC – Valhalla Rising
Nicholas Winding Refn’s nearly wordless take on the Viking action film, privileging visual storytelling and a somewhat surreal and philosophical feel.
2009 Denmark. Director: Nicholas Winding Refn. Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Maarten Stevenson, Alexander Morton.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 10:00pm, and 4:00am on the 16th)

12:15am (16th) – TCM – A Face in the Crowd
A rare film role for homespun comedian Andy Griffith really shows his chops as he plays an Ozark hobo who becomes an overnight sensation on radio and TV; when the fame and power starts going to his head, the film shows the cynical dark underbelly of media sensations. One of the recently late Patricia Neal’s best roles, too, as the girl who discovers him.
1957 USA. Director: Elia Kazan. Starring: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.

2:30am (16th) – TCM – Touch of Evil
Likely the last great noir film, 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.
Must See

Thursday, June 16

9:30am – Fox Movie – The Snake Pit
One of the earlier films to deal with the realities of mental illness seriously, with Olivia de Havilland as a woman in an insane asylum, brilliantly moving back and forth between lucidity and falling back in the fog of illness. She got an Oscar nom for her role, based on a true story.
1948 USA. Director: Anatole Litvak. Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm.

10:05am – MGM – The Bride Wore Black
That Truffaut admired Hitchcock is no secret – he even wrote a book of interviews with him shortly before making this film, his most overt homage to Hitchcockian suspense. After a failed suicide, Jeanne Moreau heads out to track down the five men who are responsible for her husband’s death on their wedding day. I’ve yet to see this one, but I’m looking forward to it as a fan of both Truffaut and Hitchcock.
1968 France. Director: François Truffaut. Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy.

4:00pm – 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.

8:00pm – Sundance – Carlos
Sundance has all of Olivier Assayas’ 5 1/2 hour long epic about Venezuelan revolutionary Carlos the Jackal playing. I’ve heard the film is quite a good one and worth the length, so check it out here to see it in its entirety.
2010 France/Germany. Director: Olivier Assayas. Starring: Édgar Ramírez, Alexander Scheer, Alejandro Arroyo.

3:00am (17th) – 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.

Friday, June 17

2:30pm – TCM – The Man With the Golden Arm
Frank Sinatra gets one of his best acting roles as card dealer Frankie Machine, recently back from rehab and wanting to become a drummer, but held back and lured back into dealing and addiction by those around him. Solid direction and supporting performances, plus a great jazz score, make this a hard-hitting and excellent film.
1955 USA. Director: Otto Preminger. Starring: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Eleanor Parker.
Newly Featured!

4:30pm – MGM – New York, New York
Not generally considered one of Martin Scorsese’s better films, but still an intriguing attempt on his part to revive the classic Hollywood musical with a story of on-the-rise musicians and their rocky relationship. I personally enjoy seeing Scorsese bring his love of Golden Era Hollywood to the screen, successful or not.
1977 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Stander.
Newly Featured!

7:30pm – MGM – The Apartment
Billy Wilder had a knack for combining comedy and drama into bittersweet goodness, and that’s exactly what he does here, garnering Oscars for Picture, Director, and Screenplay in the process. Jack Lemmon lends his apartment to his boss Fred MacMurray for romantic trysts – a situation that gets even more complicated when MacMurray trysts with Shirley MacLaine, who Lemmon happens to love from afar. Everything comes together perfectly in this film, one of Wilder’s best.
1960 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MaLaine, Fred MacMurray.
Must See

Saturday, June 18

8:00pm – 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

10:00pm – TCM – Twentieth Century
In one of the films that defines “screwball comedy” (along with The Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby), John Barrymore plays a histrionic theatre producer trying to convince his star Carole Lombard to come back to him – both professionally and personally. Lombard is luminous as usual, and Barrymore can chew scenery with the best of them, which is precisely what his role calls for.
1934 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly.

10:00pm – MGM – 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.

12:00M – MGM – Fargo
Still one of the Coen Brothers’ best films, despite over a decade of mostly good films in the intervening years. Dark comedy is not an easy genre, and Fargo is the gold standard, blending shocking violence and a noir-ish crime story with comical inept criminals and a perfectly rendered performance from Frances McDormand.
1996 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi.
Must See

12:00M – TCM – Nothing Sacred
A newspaper offers to give terminally-ill Carole Lombard her dream trip to New York City in exchange for publishing her experiences. Only problem is, she’s lying about being terminally ill. One of the zaniest of all 1930s zany comedies – that said, it can be a little on the shrill side.
1937 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly.

1:00am (19th) – IFC – Evil Dead 2
The sequel/remake to Sam Raimi’s wonderfully over-the-top demon book film, set in the same creepy wood-bound cabin, with even more copious amounts of blood and a lot more intentional humor. I’m still not sure which I like best, but either one will do when you need some good schlock. (I still haven’t seen Army of Darkness, I’m shamed to admit.)
1987 USA. Director: Sam Raimi. Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks.

3:15am (19th) – TCM – Theodora Goes Wild
Irene Dunne got a few chances to test her screwball comedy skills, and while I don’t think Theodora Goes Wild is as solid as The Awful Truth on any level, it’s still a fun showcase for Dunne’s comedic talents.
1936 USA. Director: Richard Boleslawski. Starring: Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell, Thurston Hall.

5:00am (19th) – TCM – The Awful Truth
This is one of the definitive screwball comedies, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a married couple who constantly fight and decide to divorce, only to wind up meddling in each other’s lives (and screw up other relationship attempts) because they just can’t quit each other. Dunne’s impersonation of a Southern belle showgirl is a highlight.
1937 USA. Director: Leo McCarey. Starring: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy.
Must See

Sunday, June 19

6:45am – TCM – The Champ
Wallace Beery earned an Oscar for his role as a has-been prizefighter, living hand to mouth with his adoring son. But then the boy has a chance to go live with his mother, long-divorced from Beery and now married to a well-to-do man. This is a great example of a high-end Warner Bros. programmer from the early 1930s – it’s very lean, nothing extra in it, but it’s got a heart that I didn’t expect.
1931 USA. Director: King Vidor. Starring: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Roscoe Ates.

10:30am – IFC – Waking Life
Richard Linklater’s first foray into overlaid animation is a philosophical dreamscape that’ll either leave you cold or inhabit your thoughts for weeks. It’s the latter for me. Like most of Linklater’s films, it’s largely made up of people talking, but with the added interest of the unique ever-shifting, never-solid animation style (which he’d reuse with a slightly more standard sci-fi story in A Scanner Darkly).
2001 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
(repeas at 4:15pm)

11:45am – TCM – Life Begins for Andy Hardy
The Andy Hardy series is not really essential cinema, but it does represent a very popular genre at the time, the family-friendly musical comedy, and Mickey Rooney was one of the top box office draws at the time, largely for the Andy Hardy films and his series of musicals with Judy Garland. This is one of the better Andy Hardy films, bolstered by a more adult than most plot, plus Garland in the supporting cast.
1941 USA. Director: George B. Seitz. Starring: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Lewis Stone, Ann Rutherford.
Newly Featured!

1:30pm – TCM – Father of the Bride
Long before Steve Martin kicked off his nearly twenty-year run of remaking classic comedies with his version of this film, Spencer Tracy was the Father of the Bride, dealing with the difficulty of letting his only daughter, Elizabeth Taylor, go to some other man. I don’t hate the Martin version, but this one is better. The family’s son is played by a young Russ Tamblyn (of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story).
1950 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Russ Tamblyn.

6:45pm – 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.

8:00pm – TCM – Stagecoach
Major breakthrough for John Wayne, here playing outlaw Cisco Kid – he and the various other people on a stagecoach form a cross-section of old West society that has to learn to get on together to make it to the end of the ride alive. Excellent performances and stunt-filled action sequences make this one of the best westerns ever made.
1939 USA. Director: John Wayne. Starring: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Andy Devine, Thomas Mitchell.
Must See

8:00pm – Fox Movie – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
One of the most iconic westerns of all time, revisionist or otherwise, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford putting a fresh spin on the well-known outlaws as they try to escape from both an ever-looming posse of lawmen and the encroachment of the modern world.
1969 USA. Director: George Roy Hill. Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross.
Must See

8:30pm – IFC – Gone Baby Gone
Ben Affleck proved his directing chops beyond all doubt with his debut behind the camera, a meditative detective film ostensibly about a kidnapping, but with weighty ethical matters taking the foreground. In a year of great films, Gone Baby Gone more than held its own.
1997 USA. Director: Ben Affleck. Starring: Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Monaghan, Amy Ryan, Ed Harris.
Must See

10:00pm – Sundance – Wild at Heart
One of David Lynch’s most over the top films, and that’s saying something, but I love it anyway (or perhaps because it is). It’s a romance interrupted by crime, with Nic Cage and Laura Dern (not to the outrageous supporting cast) going for it every second.
1990 USA. Director: David Lynch. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe.

2:00am (20th) – TCM – The Spirit of the Beehive
A fascinating exploration of imagination, death, and cinema as a young Spanish girl’s experience of Frankenstein leads her in perhaps unexpected directions as she tries, with the help of the film and a dying soldier hiding nearby, to fathom the concept of death. Beautiful and associative in unusual ways.
1973 Spain. Director: Victor Erice. Starring: Ana Torrent, Isabel Tellería, Fernando Fern´n Góm;ez.
Newly Featured!

2:05am (20th) – TCM – 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.

4:00am (20th) – TCM – Frankenstein
The most recognizable image of Frankenstein’s monster comes from this film, rather a departure from Mary Shelley’s novel, but nonetheless iconic as a film. More a tragedy than a horror film, almost, with Dr. Frankenstein’s god-like experiments yielding a monster whose very simplicity becomes his downfall, and self-righteous townspeople who become monsters themselves. Lots more subtlety and tenderness than you’d expect.
1931 USA. Director: James Whale. Starring: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clarke.
Must See