Monday, March 5

6:15am – TCM – Bombshell
One of the first films to really bring Jean Harlow to prominence (or at least use her talents to their fullest), as she plays a Hollywood star who tries out various other life pursuits, with comic results.
1933 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone.

11:45am – TCM – Only Angels Have Wings
I’ve never gotten into Only Angels Have Wings as much as I have into other Howard Hawks films – why I don’t know. It has elements I like – Cary Grant as a daring pilot making dangerous cargo runs in exotic locales, Jean Arthur in an uncharacteristically dramatic turn, and a sighting of a young Rita Hayworth. Just doesn’t seem to come together in a memorable whole for me.
1939 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell.

3:45pm – TCM – The Outlaw
After being a successful aviator and before becoming a hopeless hypochondriac, Howard Hughes tried his hand at moviemaking, most notably with 1930′s Hell’s Angels and this 1943 film, notable for being Jane Russell’s first major role as well as for being suppressed/banned for a few years thanks to Russell’s frank and earthy sexuality. I actually haven’t seen it myself yet, so I can’t comment on its quality, but the story surrounding it is interesting enough for me to want to take a look.
1943 USA. Director: Howard Hughes. Starring: Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell.

5:45pm – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. Mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.
1944 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.

8:00pm – 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 – Sundance – L’auberge espagnol
A French student moves into an apartment with six other people in Barcelona. The interactions of these roommates with diverse cultural backgrounds and personalities forms the basis of the film as a whole, which may be short on plot but is great on the interpersonal relations and conversations that the French are so good at putting on film.
2002 France. Director: Cédric Klapisch. Starring: Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Kelly Reilly.

5:30am (6th) – TCM – Suddenly, Last Summer
Hollywood powerhouses Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor clash as Hepburn, an imperious matriarch, wants to have Taylor lobotomized to cover up the circumstances of Hepburn’s son’s death, which Taylor witnessed and for some reason drove her insane. Seeing these two duke it out in an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play sounds like my idea of a good time.
1959 USA. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Mercedes McCambrige.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, March 6

6:00am – Sundance – Grizzly Man
Werner Herzog’s fascination with the duality of nature’s beauty and destructiveness continues into documentary, as he brings the story of grizzly researcher Timothy Treadwell to the screen.
2005 USA. Director: Werner Herzog.
(repeats at 10:15am and 4:30pm)

7:45am – 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 1:00pm)

11:30am – IFC – 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 8:00pm and 12:45am on the 7th)

10:30pm – IFC – Little Miss Sunshine
One of the most successful indie-circuit-to-mainstream films in recent years, this crowd-pleasing favorite has just enough quirk to set apart its story of an unhappy family tied together by the beauty pageant aspirations of the young daughter and just enough of a dark edge to keep it from becoming too treacly (though some may find it a bit too self-consciously quirky for comfort). The solid cast doesn’t hurt either.
2006 USA. Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris. Starring: Toni Colette, Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 3:15am on the 7th)

1:30am (7th) – 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.

3:30am (7th) – TCM – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
One of Frank Capra’s most whimsical films stars Gary Cooper as an unassuming country boy who suddenly inherits a great amount of money. When he decides to give it all away to whoever comes and asks for some, he garners a media frenzy, everyone thinking he’s crazy. Idealistic, warmly funny, and, yes, Capracorny. But as corn goes, it’s among the best. Also, any chance to see Jean Arthur is worth taking.
1936 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille.

Wednesday, March 7

8:00pm – 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.
(repeats at 2:15am on the 8th)

12:55am (8th) – 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.

Thursday, March 8

11:00am – TCM – The Big Sleep
One of the greatest detective/mysteries/films noir ever made. Humphrey Bogart is the definite hard-boiled detective, Lauren Bacall is the potential love interest/femme fatale. Don’t try to follow the story; whodunit is far less important than crackling dialogue and dry humor. Watch out for future Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind) in the small but extremely memorable part of the bookshop girl.
1946 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Elisha Cook Jr., Dorothy Malone.
Must See

11:30am – IFC – Miller’s Crossing
The Coen brothers take on 1930s gangland with this film, and do so admirably well. As they do most things. I have to admit I wasn’t quite as enamored of it as I usually am of Coen films, but it definitely has its moments.
1990 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, Albert Finney.

8:00pm – TCM – Arsenic and Old Lace
In what is probably Capra’s zaniest, least Capra-corn-esque film, Cary Grant plays Mortimer Brewster – a perfectly normal man until he discovers that his sweet old maid aunts have accumulated several dead bodies in the basement due to poisoning lonely old men. Add in another nephew who is a serial killer, a quack plastic surgeon, and an uncle who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and Mortimer’s got his hands full trying to keep his family secrets away from the girl he loves. It’s over-the-top, sure, but you gotta love the crazy.
1944 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre.

8:00pm – IFC – Hard Candy
Ellen Page burst onto the scene as a teenage girl getting involved with an older guy she met on the internet – initially looks like a cautionary tale about internet chat relationships, but goes into even more twisted realms than that, with Ellen owning the screen every second.
2005 USA. Director: David Slade. Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh.
(repeats at 2:45am on the 9th)

10:15pm – IFC – 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.

12:00M – Sundance – Blue Velvet
I’ll be honest, this is not one of my favorite David Lynch films. There are a lot of things I like about it. The unsettling take on suburbia, the gorgeously disturbing photography, the kids playing detective, the severed ear, you know, the normal Lynch stuff. But then it just gets to be too cruel for me. Still, it’s a Lynch classic, and you oughta see it. And I oughta see it again, see if my opinion has changed.
1986 USA. Director: David Lynch. Starring: Kyle McLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper.

Friday, March 9

6:45am – IFC – Exam
Setting a film entirely in one room is a constraint that often results in some very interesting cinema, and Exam certainly sounds interesting, placing a bunch of people in a single room for a job interview that consists of only one question. But they aren’t told what the question is.
2009 UK. Director: Stuart Hazeldine. Starring: Adar Beck, Gemma Chan, Nathalie Cox.
(repeats at 1:15pm)

1:15pm – TCM – Meet Me in St. Louis
The ultimate nostalgia film, harking back to the turn of the century and the year leading up to the 1903 St. Louis World’s Fair. Judy Garland holds the film and the family in it together as the girl who only wants to love the boy next door, but it’s Margaret O’Brien as the little willful sister who adds the extra bit of oomph, especially in the manic Halloween scene and the violent Christmas scene that carries the film from an exercise in sentimentality into a deeper territory of loss and distress.
1944 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Judy Garland, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Margaret O’Brien, Leon Ames, Mary Astor.
Must See

6:15pm – TCM – Two Weeks with Love
A slight but enjoyable teen musical comedy of the type that MGM excelled at during the 1950s – this one has both Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, two of MGM’s darlings at this sort of thing, at their brightest. It’s not a particularly good movie, but if you’re a fan of the genre, it’s a fun one.
1950 USA. Director: Roy Rowland. Starring: Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Louis Calhern, Ann Harding.

4:00am (10th) – TCM – The Haunting
No worries, this is the good, 1963 version of The Haunting, not the overblown 1999 remake. The story’s the same, but Robert Wise’s original is creepy, disturbing, and, like, good.
1963 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn.

Saturday, March 10

5:45pm – TCM – The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford’s homage to the dust bowl farmers of the 1930s, taken from the Steinbeck classic, won several awards (including one for Ford) the year it came out. Despite sounding like a downer of a time, it really isn’t – the moody cinematography by Gregg Toland and the undertones of crime and corruption give it a noirish feel that both complements and offsets the social drama of the main story.
1940 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Razor’s Edge
There’s a lot going on in this film based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel, from rich young Tyrone Power heading off to India to “find himself” to the financial troubles facing his socialite ex-girlfriend Gene Tierney and her husband to their rekindled affair when Power returns, but what you’ll mostly remember is Anne Baxter in a deservedly Oscar-winning performance as the former friend whose life has hit rock bottom. It’s one of Baxter’s best roles (Eve Harrington notwithstanding), and it’s worth watching just for her.
1946 USA. Director: Edmund Goulding. Starring: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall, Lucile Watson.

8:00pm – IFC – Sin City
Frank Miller joined Robert Rodriguez in creating this adaptation of Miller’s graphic novel series, a highly stylized evocation of film noir tropes that’s rather overdone in many ways, but still so visually striking that I really enjoyed watching it. Most of it.
2005 USA. Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller. Starring: Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson.
(repeats at 10:35pm)

12:00M – Sundance – Enter the Void
One of the most unusual films to come out over the past several years, I’ll grant you that. Gaspar Noë’s first-person erotic dreamscape is sure to polarize. It’s got some staunch supporters in the Third Row, though I myself am still hesitant to form an opinion on it.
2009 France. Director: Gaspar Noë. Starring: Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander, Masato Tanno.

Sunday, March 11

2:00pm – TCM – Splendor in the Grass
Warren Beatty made his screen debut in this film of frustrated young love (written by Thomas Inge), fairly racy for the time as Beatty and Natalie Wood struggle with sexual repression and social mores.
1961 USA. Director: Elia Kazan. Starring: Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle, Audrey Christie, Barbara Loden.

3:00pm – 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 – I Was a Male War Bride
Not one of my favorite Hawks-Grant outings, but it definitely has its moments, as American army officer Sheridan tries to take advantage of the war bride clause to get French (don’t ask) officer Grant into the United States. Cross-dressing zaniness ensues.
1949 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan.