TCM Look-Ahead - June 26
A weekly feature here on Big Heads that looks forward to the week ahead on the mighty Turner Classic Movies. For your viewing and recording pleasure.
Friday, June 26
06:15 p.m. PST The Beast with Five Fingers (1947) Remember my Mad Love rec from last week? This is its spiritual sequel, and features a disembodied hand with bad intentions. And Peter Lorre again! Atmospheric and hokey in all the best ways. From the underrated auteur Robert Florey.
11:30 p.m. PST Moonrise (1948) My favorite film noir, an atypically dark Frank Borzage film. Dane Clark plays a young man haunted by his past with an abusive father who, typical of the cycle, eventually turns to violence himself. It is a Borzage film, so redemption is sought through romantic love (though there is an overall queasiness in Moonrise that is largely missing from Borzage's more resolute romances). Remarkable, dizzying film making, Borzage going baroque in his late career. An absolute must see.
Saturday, June 27
Noon PST The Apple (1980) So, if camp is not your thing, stay far away from this notorious Golan/Globus epic that screams early 80s. A sort of Faustian musical, with the devil incarnate a record producer named Boogalow, a twin in some ways to De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise only, you know, terrible (complimentary!). Directed by Menahem Golan himself!
10:00 p.m. PST Contempt (1963) The Godard film that seemingly everyone loves, with its popping technicolor, star-laden cast (Bardot at her hottest, Piccoli in a Dean-Martin hat, a scenery chewing Jack Palance as an evil movie producer), and gorgeous Italian locations (among them Casa Malaparte and the Capri Islands). Piccoli plays a writer hired to adapt The Odyssey for director Fritz Lang (playing himself), who earns the contempt of his wife (B.B.) for....well, that is under discussion, isn't it? What is not under discussion it's place in the canon, made in the heart of the French New Wave, when Godard could be easily bought for a bucket of Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine's money (in a delightful act of biting the hand that feeds him, Palance's crass, awful producer is a clear doppelganger for Levine). Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia.
Sunday, June 28
01:45 a.m. PST Night Moves (1975) Quintessentially mid-70s neo-noir with an embittered divorcee private dick Gene Hackman investigating a missing persons case and falling deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the Florida Everglades. Director Arthur Penn does not exactly take you for a walk in the park, but this is a feel-bad masterpiece.
Then on Sunday a series of Mel Brooks movies, celebrating his 100th birthday! You don't need me to recommend his best-known classics, but have you seen:
02:30 p.m. PST The Twelve Chairs (1970) Probably the closest thing to "straight" film making of Mel's career, but don't worry, it is still hilarious. Ron Moody (remember him?), Frank Langella and a scene-stealing Dom DeLuise (who shows that a great comic presence he may have been if he had not been underutilized as the fat guy), as three men who team together and/or betray each other as they seek the titular chairs containing untold treasures.
Monday, June 29
04:00 a.m. PST Chungking Express (1994) Wong Kar-Wai's rapid-fire, freewheeling romantic masterpiece was his introduction to a lot of western viewers. Shot by Wong in a delirious two-weeks, every frame screams "here is the master we have long sought, and amalgam of Godard and Joseph Von Sternberg."
11:15 p.m. PST Desert Hearts (1985) Donna Deitch's landmark film about a an affair between a stick-in-the-mud professor (Helen Shaver) and a free-spirited Reno casino worker. Credited as being the first feature film to feature a lesbian relationship without any of the usual "bury your gays" trappings. Deeply felt and essential.
Tuesday, June 30
08:00 p.m. PST Slap Shot (1977) A desert island pick for me, I watch it every year and marvel at its comic set pieces and it's genuine sympathy for its at-times dodgy characters, holds up. Paul Newman, loose as a goose and delightfully comic (he could do that, you know) is the captain of a hockey team that is encouraged to lose so that the team can be sold to the highest bidder (yes, this premise has been ripped off a bunch, most famously by the vastly inferior baseball version Major League). The screenplay, by Nancy Dowd, is a masterclass in delineating character. Every one on screen, including the players wives and girl friends (who, in an inferior version like Major League, are marginalized almost to the point of not existing), have their moment to shine with remarkable verisimilitude. And who can every forget the Hanson Brothers? Directed by George Roy Hill in his peak.
Wednesday, July 1
06:00 p.m. PST Strange Brew (1983) I recall resenting that of all the fantastic characters invented by the crew at SCTV the McKenzie Brothers were the ones who hit it big. For me the Canadian stereotype jokes just grew pretty thin pretty quickly. That being said, Strange Brew is a great comedy, with Bob and Doug (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) doing battle with an evil Brewmeister played by a slumming (and clearly delighted-to-be-there) Max Von Sydow.
Thursday, July 2
04:00 p.m. PST This Land is Mine (1943) A Jean Renoir film from his Hollywood period I have yet to see. It's reputation is not stellar, but it is Renoir and Charles Laughton (playing a cowardly school teacher who eventually finds his spine in opposition to the Nazis), so, of course, smash that record button.
Friday, July 3
08:00 p.m. PST Force of Evil (1948) Andrew Sarris, the inspiration for this newsletter, once said he saw Force of Evil so many times (mostly on television) that he began to believe the events of the film were really happening. His championing of the film helped to put it on the map for late-coming viewers. John Garfield is brilliant as the "bad brother," a mobbed-up lawyer, who sets his "good brother" up for not complying with the plans of his gangster boss. Guilt and potential redemption soon follow. Abe Polansky, who was blacklisted largely because of this film (which is, in the end, an unremitting critique of capitalism), was essentially missing from the movies for 20-odd years after the making of Force of Evil. The American cinema, thusly, was deprived of a great talent. The film's final line of dialogue will stick with you.
