Film on TV: June 28-July 4
Originally published at Jandy's Meanderings. Please leave any comments there.
The beginning of June marked the one year anniversary for this column, and in that time we’ve featured over 400 different films spanning years from 1903-2008 and representing more than eighteen different countries and pretty much every genre. I think that’s not bad at all. But I’m the first to admit that I haven’t seen everything, so I’m going to start including just title and basic info for films that I’ve heard positive things about but haven’t seen myself; if you have seen a film that’s listed without a blurb, please feel free to write a little blurb and either send it to me (faithx5 AT gmail DOT com) or post it in the comments, and I’ll include it for any future showings of that film, credited to you.
Monday, June 28
6:05am - IFC - Broadway Danny Rose
It’s lesser Woody Allen, but it’s still Woody Allen. Danny Rose (Woody) is a theatrical agent whose clients always leave him when they start becoming successful. His current client, a has-been tenor trying to make a comeback, gives him further grief by having an affair with a young woman (Mia Farrow) with gangster connections. Not very substantial, but enjoyable.
1984 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte.
(repeats at 12:05pm and 5:30pm)
10:15am - IFC - I Heart Huckabees
Not too many films take philosophy as their base, but this one basically does, following a man (Jason Schwartzman) plagued by coincidence who hires a couple of existentialists to figure out what’s going on.
2004 USA. Director: David O. Russell. Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Isabelle Huppert, Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin, Jude Law.
(repeats at 3:35pm, and 4:45am on the 29th)
Tuesday, June 29
10:00am - 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.
Newly Featured!
12:00N - TCM - Too Many Husbands
This is not that good a movie, but it makes an interesting comparison with another 1940 film, My Favorite Wife. That film stars Irene Dunne, and this one stars Jean Arthur, two of the better comediennes of the 1930s, but both have essentially the same story, only gender-flopped - here Arthur’s husband is believed dead so several years later she remarries, only to have her husband turn back up. This is a weaker film overall than its role-switched doppelganger, but I’d argue that Arthur still manages to prove herself a stronger comedienne than Dunne.
1940 USA. Director: Wesley Ruggles. Starring: Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas, Harry Davenport.
Newly Featured!
12:00N - IFC - La Jetee
Very few short films become classics (outside of silent films and arguably Looney Tunes), but Chris Marker’s La Jetee, told entirely in sequences of still photographs, is one of them. In a postapocalyptic future, a man is sent back in time to try and stop WWIII from happening. But he both falls in love and is haunted by a childhood memory - two things that are fatefully interconnected.
1962 France. Director: Chris Marker. Starring: Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich.
3:15am (30th) - TCM - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Notable solely because it’s one of a handful of films made during WWII with, like, every star a studio could possibly muster in cameos or musical numbers. In this case, the studio is Warner Bros, so they could muster a lot. And where else are you going to be able to see Bette Davis do a musical number? For reals.
1943 USA. Director: David Butler. Starring: Joan Leslie, Eddie Cantor, Dennis Morgan, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, ETC.
Newly Featured!
5:55pm - IFC - Days of Glory
One I haven’t seen, but it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars that year. And apparently has Mélanie Laurent pre-Inglourious Basterds, so I might have to check it out now.
2006 France/Algeria. Director: Rachid Bouchareb. Starring: Mathieu Simonet, Assaad Bouab, Mélanie Laurent.
Newly Featured!
Wednesday, June 30
8:00pm - IFC - Heathers
I’ve actually had this on my DVR for like three months now, and still haven’t gotten around to it. One of these days…
1988 USA. Director: Michael Lehrmann. Starring: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 3:00am on the 1st)
11:30pm - IFC - Antichrist
Lars von Trier’s latest film isn’t exactly what I’d call fun to watch, but it definitely has its compelling moments in its story of a couple grieving over the death of their son and the lengths the husband will go to in order to help his wife recover her sanity - and the lengths to which her sanity is gone. Extremely strong performances from the two principals and von Trier’s way of mixing arthouse mood with extremely disturbing content make Antichrist hard to forget.
2009 Denmark. Director: Lars von Trier. Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Thursday, July 1
10:30am - TCM - Lili
Slight but charming tale of an orphan girl “adopted” by a circus troupe. I enjoyed this as a kid, and strangely enough, I can still sing the entire theme song to it. Even though I knew, even then, that Leslie Caron had to be way too old to play this part.
1953 USA. Director: Charles Walters. Starring: Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Newly Featured!
2:00pm - TCM - Dodge City
Dodge City, not a particularly great movie. It’s a fun entry in the group of Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland matchups, as Flynn deals with the outlaw element in the western frontier town of Dodge. The real reason I like it? It has one of the best barroom brawls ever put on film.
1939 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Alan Hale.
3:45pm - TCM - To Each His Own
Olivia de Havilland’s first Academy Award was for this film about a woman forced to give up her illegitimate child during WWII, yet continuing to love and sacrifice for him from afar. I have not seen it.
1946 USA. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Starring: Olivia de Havilland,Mary Anderson, Roland Culver, Phillip Terry.
Newly Featured!
6:00pm - TCM - The Heiress
Olivia de Havilland’s second Academy Award was for this film, based on Henry James’ novel Washington Square, about an aging woman (in those days, aging meant like “older than 25″) forbidden by her father from loving an earnest but non-socially-equal young man.
1949 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins.
Newly Featured!
8:00pm - TCM - Rebel Without a Cause
Nicholas Ray’s best-known movie (though not, I’d argue, his best), likely because it’s one of James Dean’s three films. Dean is a rebellious teen, hanging out with the wrong crowd, whose parents don’t understand him. It all seems a little overwrought these days, but there’s an intensity to Dean and the film that manages to make it still relatable.
1955 USA. Director: Nicholas Ray. Starring: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo.
10:00pm - TCM - Blackboard Jungle
Glenn Ford is the teacher who takes on rowdy inner-city kids in one of the earlier “heroic teacher” films. A young Sidney Poitier is one of the students, and a scene in which a record of “Rock Around the Clock” is played is reputed to be the first time rock n’ roll appeared in a film.
1955 USA. Director: Richard Brooks. Starring: Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Sidney Poitier.
Friday, July 2
5:00am - TCM - The Wild One
1953 USA. Director: Laslo Benedek. Starring: Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin.
Newly Featured!
8:00pm - TCM - The Wizard of Oz
Breakout role for Judy Garland, one of the earlier Technicolor films (and one of the first to mix black and white with Technicolor to dramatic effect), and one of the few adaptations where the film is better than the book. Oh, right, it’s also one of the most magical, beautiful, and wonderful films ever made.
1939 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Margaret Hamilton.
Must See
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 6:00pm on the 3rd)
10:30pm - TCM - Fury
I haven’t seen this one, but it’s Fritz Lang directing a young Spencer Tracy in one of his breakout films as a victim of a lynch mob attack. Definitely one I ought to have seen by now.
1936 USA. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Walter Brennan.
Newly Featured!
2:00am (3rd) - TCM - 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.
4:15am (3rd) - TCM - Persona
Of all the Ingmar Bergman films I’ve seen, Persona is the one I always come back to. A nurse takes her patient, a former actress who one day simply refused to talk any more, to a lonely island to try to help her recover. They soon engage in a battle of the wills, and their identities start merging. Meanwhile, Bergman interrogates not only the concept of identity within the film, but the apparatus of film itself and its capacity for understanding and communication. There’s more to it every time I watch it.
1966 Sweden. Director: Ingmar Bergman. Starring: Bib Andersson, Liv Ullmann.
Must See
Saturday, July 3
2:00pm - TCM - On the Town
Sailors on leave Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin hit New York City, spending the day sightseeing and searching for Kelly’s dream girl Vera-Ellen, meanwhile picking up Betty Garrett and Ann Miller for the other boys. Not much plot here, but enough to precipitate some of the best song and dance numbers on film. Also one of the first musicals shot on location.
1949 USA. Directors: Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly. Starring: Gene Kelly, Vera-Ellen, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, Alice Pearce.
Must See
4:00pm - TCM - An American in Paris
Expat artist Gene Kelly in Paris, meets Leslie Caron, woos her away from rival Georges Guetarey, all set to Gershwin music and directed with panache by Vincente Minnelli. All that plus Kelly’s ground-breaking fifteen-plus-minute ballet to the title piece.
1951 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetarey.
Must See
6:00pm - Sundance - Paris, je t’aime
I have a huge soft spot for Paris - basically any movie set there I will like to at least some degree. So an anthology film with eighteen internationally-renowned directors giving their take on Paris with eighteen short films all mashed together? Yeah, instant love. Obviously some sections are far stronger than others - the Coens, Gus van Sant, Alexander Payne, Isabel Coixet, Tom Tykwer, and Wes Craven turn in my favorites.
2006 France. Director: various. Starring: many.
(repeats at 11:50pm)
8:00pm - 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
8:00pm - 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.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 1:30am on the 4th)
10:00pm - 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 4:00am on the 4th)
1:30am (4th) - TCM - The Women
Only the cattiest, most man-less film ever made. Several of Hollywood’s greatest female stars, from established divas like Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford to up-and-comers like Rosalind Russell and Joan Fontaine to character actresses like Mary Boland and Marjorie Main (and even non-actresses like gossip columnist Hedda Hopper), give their all to one of the wittiest scripts ever written.
1939 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard, Virginia Weidler, Mary Boland, Marjorie Main, Hedda Hopper.
Sunday, July 4
7:15am - IFC - Solaris
2002 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone.
8:30am - TCM - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra puts on his idealist hat to tell the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an inexperienced young man appointed as a junior senator because the corrupt senior senator thinks he’ll be easy to control. But Smith doesn’t toe the party line, instead launching a filibuster for what he believes in. Wonderful comedienne Jean Arthur is the journalist who initially encourages Smith so she can get a great story from his seemingly inevitable downfall, but soon joins his cause.
1939 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Thomas Mitchell.
Must See
5:30pm - TCM - Yankee Doodle Dandy
James Cagney won an Oscar putting on his dancing shoes to play song-and-dance man and Broadway composer George M. Cohan in this biopic. Though it seems strange to think of gangster picture regular Cagney in a musical, he actually got his start in show business as a hoofer, and returned to musicals many times throughout his career, though this remains the most notable example.
1942 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: James Cagney, Joan Leslie.
8:00pm - Sundance - A Prairie Home Companion
2006 USA. Director: Robert Altman. Starring: Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin.
(repeats at 5:10am on the 5th)
10:00pm - TCM - Oklahoma!
I can’t begin to guess how many times I watched Oklahoma! growing up, but it’s well into double-digits. It’s a routine but darker-than-usual story for a musical, about minor conflicts between farmers and cowboys, a couple of young lovers, and the obsessive farmhand who wants the girl for himself. But the way the music and dancing is integrated is wonderful (and groundbreaking in the 1943 play the film is based on).
1955 USA. Director: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Rod Steiger, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, Eddie Albert, Charlotte Greenwood, James Whitmore.
11:30pm - 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.
12:30am (5th) - TCM - The General
One of the greatest silent comedies of all time; no, scratch that, one of the greatest any kind of comedies of all time. Buster Keaton is at the top of his game as a Civil War era engineer whose train (with his girl on it) gets captured by the Union army, and he’s got to get them both back, with many an amazing stunt along the way. No one did stunt-based comedy better than Keaton, and he’s never been better than this.
1926 USA. Director: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman. Starring: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack.
Must See
Newly Featured!
2:00am (5th) - TCM - Gigi (1949)
I don’t actually know much about this French non-musical version of the Gigi story, but I saw TCM had it on in tandem with better-known American version, and thought, hey, that could be interesting.
1949 France. Director: Jacqueline Audry. Starring: Gaby Morlay, Jean Tissier, Yvonne de Bray, Franck Villard.
Newly Featured!
3:30am (5th) - TCM - Gigi (1958)
Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” might come off as more pervy now than it was originally intended, but as a whole Gigi stands as one of the most well-produced and grown-up musicals made during the studio era. Vincente Minnelli gives it a wonderful visual richness and sophistication, while music from Lerner & Loewe (usually) stresses the right combination of innocence, exuberance, and ennui for its decadent French story.
1958 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Louis Jourdan, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold.