Quite a good many new things to look at this week, from modern indies like Sherrybaby to the late Chaplin film A King in New York. TCM continues their series about race in film with a few newer films than they usually have, including Three Kings and The Band’s Visit, and then has a series of documentary or near documentary films in The Battle of Algiers, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, and Tokyo Olympiad. Lots more to check out during the week in repeats, as well.

Monday, July 25

6:00am – 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.
(repeats at 2:30pm)

6:45am – 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.
1968 France. Director: François Truffaut. Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy.

7:30am – 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 12:10pm and 4:50pm, and 2:00am on the 26th)

8:15am – TCM – Red River
Howard Hawks’ brilliant transposition of Mutiny on the Bounty into the Old West has John Wayne as a tyrannical cattle drive leader and Montgomery Clift (in one of his earliest roles) as his adopted son who soon defies him.
1948 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru.
Must See

3:15pm – TCM – The Music Man
A musical favorite of many (though not of me personally), with conman Robert Preston entering River City to play his con of selling the town on the idea of a marching band, then absconding with the money raised for instruments and uniforms. However, his plans run awry when he falls for the town’s librarian.
1962 USA. Director: Morton DaCosta. Starring: Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Hermione Gingold.

6:35pm – Sundance – Wendy & Lucy
This is a favorite among Row Three writers, following a young woman on the verge of financial collapse as she’s about to lose a major job opportunity as well as her beloved dog.
2008 USA. Director: Kelly Reichardt. Starring: Michelle Williams, Will Oldham, Michell Worthey, John Robinson.
(repeat at 5:05am on the 26th)

10:00pm – TCM – The Ox-Bow Incident
A pair of drifters become the leaders of a lynch mob when they hear about a local cattle rustler and murderer. Ahead of its time in terms of psychological depth and shades-of-grey morality at a time when most westerns were pretty simplistic with clear good guys and bad guys.
1943 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn.

12:00M – Fox Movie – The Panic in Needle Park
A harrowing tale of NYC heroin addicts, exemplifying the dark side of youth culture that New Hollywood does so well. A star-making turn for Al Pacino, just a year prior to The Godfather.
1971 USA. Director: Jerry Schatzberg. Starring: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint.

2:15am (26th) – IFC – Sherrybaby
A tour de force performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal centers this otherwise rather run-of-the-mill film about a young mother returning home after three years in jail for drug-related reasons. Returning to her life isn’t as easy as she’d hoped, though.
2006 USA. Director: Laurie Collyer. Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Bottoms.
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Tuesday, July 26

6:00am – IFC – Dear Frankie
Emily Mortimer is a young mother who writes responses to her son’s letters to his father; when her elaborate ruse to convince him his father is just away at sea starts to fall apart, she hires a handsome stranger to pretend to be his father. A charming and unassuming tale, and the Glaswegian accents don’t hurt either, at least for me.
2004 UK. Director: Shona Auerbach. Starring: Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, Jack McElhone.
(repeats at 12:00N)

1:00pm – TCM – Victor/Victoria
Pretty classic among gender-switching comedies, this one has Julie Andrews as a singer who finds she has more success pretending to be a man working as a female impersonator. Lots of fun and confusion ensues.
1982 UK/USA. Director: Blake Edwards. Starring: Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston.

4:10pm – MGM – Death at a Funeral
The British original, this is, not the three-years-later American remake. Even the British film is not quite as solid as you’d hope, but the strong cast plays well with the idea of a stiff-upper lip British family discovering their father had a gay lover (played winningly by Peter Dinklage). A hilarious turn from Alan Tudyk helps, too.
2007 UK. Director: Frank Oz. Starring: Matthew Macfadyen, Peter Dinklage, Alan Tudyk, Keeley Hawes, Ewen Bremner, Andy Nyman, Rupert Graves.

5:00pm – TCM – The Last Metro
One of François Truffaut’s last films stars the ineffable Catherine Deneuve as the wife of a Jewish theatre owner in WWII occupied Paris who has to both hide him from the Nazis and do both of their jobs to keep the theatre running. I haven’t seen this yet, but I’m a big fan of most of these elements, so I’m not sure how I’ve let it slip by me.
1980 France. Director: François Truffaut. Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Poiret, Heinz Bennent.

5:55pm – 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 5:25am on the 27th)

12:00M – TCM – Three Kings
At the end of the Gulf War, three American soldiers go back to get a stash of gold they figured to steal from Iraq (who had stolen it from Kuwait). But when they get out there, they stumble upon a bunch of people who need their help. A genre-bending action black comedy that’s much better than you’d expect all around.
1998 USA. Director: David O. Russell. Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze.
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3:30am (27th) – Sundance – The Dreamers
Bernardo Bertolucci’s love letter to the French New Wave, with American Michael Pitt heading to Paris just in time to join the ’68 Cinematheque riots, becoming friends and eventually lovers with a siblings Louis Garrel and Eva Green, a pair of fellow cinephiles. Bertolucci draws on Band of Outsiders and Jules and Jim especially, as well as the history of the era and his own sensibilities. It loses me personally a bit in the eroticism of the second half, but the first part is fantastic.
2003 France/UK/Italy. Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green.

Wednesday, July 27

8:00am – 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 12:00M on the 31st)

10:15am – Sundance – Man on Wire
One of the most highly-acclaimed documentaries of recent years 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 2:20pm)

10:30am – IFC – Cache
Very deliberate but intensely thought-provoking film from director Michael Haneke, delving into issues from privacy and surveillance to war guilt and revenge. It’s a difficult film, and one that stretches the limits of the suspense thriller, but if you’re willing to go along with it, it’s well worthwhile.
2005 France. Director: Michael Haneke. Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou.

1:00pm – TCM – The Big Heat
Director Fritz Lang came out of the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, so it’s not surprising that he ended up making some of the better noir films, given film noir’s borrowing of Expressionist style. Glenn Ford is a cop working against his corrupt department, but the parts you’ll remember from the film all belong to Gloria Grahame in a supporting role as a beaten-up gangster’s moll. Her performance and Lang’s attention to detail raise the otherwise average story to a new level.
1953 USA. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame.
Must See

4:30pm – TCM – Sleeper
One of Woody Allen’s early films, and a rare attempt at science fiction on his part, has meek Miles Monroe cryogenically frozen only to wake in a totalitarian future as part of a radical movement to overthrow the government. A rather different film for Woody, but still with his signature anxious wit and awkwardness.
1973 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, John Beck, Mary Gregory.

Thursday, July 28

6:00pm – Fox Movie – Bedazzled
One of the best films of the British mod era, a comedic take on Faust with Dudley Moore a socially inept guy infatuated with the unattainable (to him) Eleanor Bron – granted seven wishes by Satan (Peter Cook), he tries to wish his way to her, but somehow fails hilariously every time.
1967 USA. Director: Stanley Donen. Starring: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eleanor Bron.
(repeats at 4:00am on the 29th)

6:25pm – 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.

9:30pm – TCM – The Band’s Visit
A front-runner for the Best Foreign Film Oscar until a rule technicality made it ineligible; it remains a crowd favorite, though, with its story of an Egyptian musical group who arrives in Israel for a cultural event, but ends up lost and having to rely on Israeli villagers to make their way, bringing up all sorts of cultural and racial issues.
2007 Israel/USA/France. Director: Eran Kolirin. Starring: Sasson Gabai, Ronit Elkabetz, Saleh Bakri.
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12:10am – Sundance – Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Sadly this turned out to be Sidney Lumet’s final film before his death. But from what I hear, this is a fine one to have as a swan song, an intense and well-constructed heist thriller – something Lumet was certainly skilled at directing. I have got to get around to checking it out myself soon.
1997 USA. Director: Sidney Lumet. Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney.
(repeats at 3:35am on the 29th)

1:00am (29th) – TCM – The Battle of Algiers
A fiction film that’s about as close to reality as any you’ll ever see, telling a wide-ranging story of the French-Algerian war, showing the devastation caused by and endured by both sides with unflinching directness. A great film that covers many aspects of the war, always keeping a personal touch.
1968 Italy/Algeria. Director: Gillo Pontecorvo. Starring: Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi.
Must See
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3:15am (29th) – TCM – Taste of Cherry
One of Abbas Kiarostami’s most acclaimed films, an inquiry into the value of life and death as a middle-aged Iranian man plans to commit suicide and seeks an assistant to bury him after the deed is done.
1997 Iran. Director: Abbas Kiarostami. Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari.
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Friday, July 29

9:55am – MGM – Interiors
In case anyone doubted Woody Allen’s admiration for Ingmar Bergman, he made this film to prove it. Interiors is about the best imitation of a Bergman chamber drama you could ask for, down to the spare set design, strained family relations, and a climax involving an angry sea. Still, it is also very much Allen’s film–his first straight drama–focusing on deeply neurotic, introspective characters unable to get outside their own heads for long enough to form really true relationships.
1978 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Diane Keaton, Kristin Griffith, Geraldine Page.

1:50pm – 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

6:45pm – IFC – Pulp Fiction
Tarantino’s enormously influential and entertaining film pretty much needs no introduction from me. Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta give the performances of their careers, Tarantino’s dialogue is spot-on in its pop-culture-infused wit, and the chronology-shifting, story-hopping editing style has inspired a host of imitators, most nowhere near as good.
1994 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames.
Must See
(repeats at 2:35am on the 30th)

8:00pm – 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.

10:00pm – 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

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.

12:00M – Capote
Phillip Seymour Hoffman inhabits the role of author Truman Capote, capturing the period of time while Capote researches the senseless murder of a Kansas family for the book that would become In Cold Blood, in the meantime getting rather too involved with one of the killers as he interviews him extensively.
2005 USA. Director: Bennett Miller. Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener.

2:00am (30th) – TCM – Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
A classic of avant-garde cinema, capturing a film crew filming a confrontational scene in Central Park, dealing with controversial issues within the scene and also inquiring into the process of filmmaking itself and more, as the crew and other passersby enter into the frame.
1968 USA. Director: William Greaves. Starring: Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows, Bob Rosen.
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3:15am (30th) – TCM – Tokyo Olympiad
A document of the 1964 Olympics, the first to be held in Asia, from director Kon Ichikawa, who captures both the micro and the macro, the athletes and the spectators.
1965 USA. Director: Kon Ichikawa.
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Saturday, July 30

6:00am – MGM – The Purple Rose of Cairo
A love letter to cinema, The Purple Rose of Cairo has Woody Allen at his most romantic. Unhappy housewife Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes to the cinema to see The Purple Rose of Cairo again and again, where she fantasizes over hunky character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). Much to her surprise (and the other characters’ consternation), Baxter steps off the screen to join her. It makes it even more complicated when Gil, the actor who played Baxter, turns up as well.
1985 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello.

8:15am – IFC – Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
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.

2:15pm – 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

8:00pm – TCM – All Quiet on the Western Front
One of the great anti-war films, showing the horrors of WWI from the German point of view, though the message is universal. The film does a great job of contrasting the “war is glory” viewpoint of the older generation with the reality of modern warfare realized in the trenches WWI, and the shift from bright-eyed schoolboy to soldier who can no longer relate to anything but war is perfectly captured by Ayres and Milestone. A devastating film still, 80 years later, but with a great deal of wistful beauty.
1930 USA. Director: Lewis Milestone. Starring: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim.
Must See

8:25pm – Sundance – The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde’s brilliant satirical mistaken-identity play gets turned into a rather good movie, with Rupert Everett at his most sarcastic as ennui-filled decadent Algy Moncrieff and the rest of the cast filling in nicely. No one has bettered Wilde at what he does best, and this version does him justice.
2002 UK. Director: Oliver Parker. Starring: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O’Connor, Reese Witherspoon.
(repeats at 3:30am on the 31st)

10:00pm – Sundance – Moulin Rouge!
Baz Lurhmann admittedly has a love-it-or-hate-it flamboyantly trippy aesthetic, especially in the informal Red Curtain trilogy which Moulin Rogue! closes. And sure, it’s over the top; sure, the story is fairly routine; sure, the acting is so-so. I love it to pieces anyway.
2001 USA. Director: Baz Lurhmann. Starring: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo.

10:00pm – Fox Movie – The Name of the Rose
A fine adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel of medieval mystery and religion, with two monks tasked with finding a murderer in their midst. Not as esoteric as the novel, which is probably just as well for a film, but more thoughtful and deep than many mystery films.
1986 France/Italy. Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud. Starring: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Helmut Qualtinger.
(repeats at 2:15am on the 31st)

2:00am (31st) – TCM – Johnny Belinda
Jane Wyman won an Oscar for playing a deaf/mute woman surrounded by a rape/pregnancy scandal, and may have given the best acceptance speech ever. Paraphrased: “You gave this to me for keeping my mouth shut, and I think I’ll do the same now.”
1948 USA. Director: Jean Negulesco. Starring: Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford.

Sunday, July 31

8:15am – IFC – Paranoid Park
I go back and forth on whether I think Gus Van Sant is brilliant or a pretentious bore – maybe some of both. But I really quite liked the slow, oblique approach in this film about a wanna-be skateboarder kid who relishes hanging out with the bigger skateboarders at the titular skate park – but there’s a death not far from there, and it takes the rest of the movie to slowly reveal what exactly happened that one night near Paranoid Park. Gets by on mood and cinematography.
2007 USA Director: Gus Van Sant. Starring: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Lu, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen, Lauren McKinney.

12:00N – TCM – Sweet Smell of Success
One of the most acidically witty films of the 1950s, Sweet Smell of Success turns its gaze on Broadway gossip columnist Burt Lancaster, who connives with press agent Tony Curtis to break up his sister’s romance – a searing indictment of unscrupulous newspaper men, yes, and a bitingly funny one to boot.
1957 USA. Director: Alexander Mackendrick. Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene.

4:15pm – 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.

6:00pm – TCM – A Patch of Blue
Very much a product of its mid-1960s, civil-rights-movement-era time, but a solid story in its own right of a blind girl falling for a black man, played (of course) by Sidney Poitier. There’s a lot of heart in here.
1965 USA. Director: Guy Green. Starring: Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman, Shelley Winters.

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 – Notes on a Scandal
If you want to see a be-all-end-all actress-on-actress battle of the wills, this is the film to watch. Aging teacher Judi Dench finds out her younger colleague Cate Blanchett is carrying on with one of her students, and Dench sets out to psychologically blackmail Blanchett, with whom she is secretly infatuated. There are a ton of levels to these characters, and both actresses shine in their roles, playing off each other with an intensity rarely seen on-screen.
2006 UK. Director: Richard Eyre. Starring: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Andrew Simpson.

4:15am (1st) – TCM – A King in New York
One of Charlie Chaplin’s last films, focusing on a deposed king who comes to the US and goes into television to make some money, but soon gets labeled a communist and has to face a McCarthy-style investigation. Equally as capable of taking down McCarthyism as Hitler (as in The Great Dictator), Chaplin’s film was nonetheless unpopular in the US at the time, but is probably ripe for rediscovery.
1957 UK. Director: Charlie Chaplin. Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Maxine Audley, Jerry Desmonde.
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