TCM Look-Ahead - May 1
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.
Saturday, May 2
10:00 p.m. PST Inside Moves. Richard Donner was coming off the massive success of Superman (1978) and used the clout to direct this personal and quite effecting drama. Set in mostly in a bar and centered on Rory (80s icon John Savage), a suicide survivor trying to cope with the help of his bar rat friends. Credulity is stretched a bit as the bartender gets a try out and makes the team for the Golden State Warriors, but the whole thing is so sincere that you can't help but love it. Iceman Cometh, lightened up.
Sunday, May 3
04:00 a.m. PST Metropolitan. You may not like the characters in Whit Stillman's masterly directing debut, but you will enjoy them. This manages to skewer the upper classes without an ounce of judgement. And Chris Eigman, a Stillman regular, as Nick Smith, the cynical, charming lout is, or at least should have been, a national treasure.
Monday, May 4
04:00 a.m. PST Cria Cuervos. Carlos Saura's 1976 masterpiece with the heartbreaking 8-year old wunderkind Ana Torent (Spirit of the Beehive). The dreamlike narrative concerns the inner life of Ana (Torent) and her recollections and reveries about her dead mother (Geraldine Chaplin, one of 9 movies she made with Saura). Just beautiful.
10:00 p.m. PST Cooley High. Influential film that was referred to, rather condescendingly, as "the black American Graffiti." It deals with two cats (Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, from Welcome Back, Kotter) who are having the time of their lives until they are falsely arrested for stealing a car. Things get temporarily traumatic, but friendships survive. Just a genial, laid back gem with a slightly serious edge, directed by the underrated auteur Michael Schultz (Car Wash). Great Motown-drunk score!
Tuesday, May 5
No need to have your channel or DVR set for anything but TCM today. Lord Love a Duck! Zombies! Tourneur classics!! Ozu!!!
02:00 a.m. PST Lord Love a Duck. This is a ride or die for me, at times silly, but a quintessentially 60's satire on youth culture, fame and cashmere sweaters (you'll see). The great Tuesday Weld makes you almost believe she could be high-school age. You cannot say the same for thirties-ish Roddy McDowell, but he is great anyway as the genius trickster protagonist who secretly loves Weld's shallow character, Barbara Ann, in spite of herself. Hilarious and moving, particularly as writer-director George Axelrod (his directing debut, and one of only two he ever helmed) begins to draw parallels between the tragic life of Marilyn Monroe (only dead for three years at this point) and Barbara Ann (note the similarity with Norma Jean). Hey, hey, hey!
08:00 a.m. PST White Zombie. Wacky, Haitian-set 1932 first-ever entry into the zombie genre, directed by the otherwise forgotten Victor Halperin and starring a scenery chewing Bela Lugosi. Visually striking if at times quite ridiculous.
05:30 p.m. PST I Walked With a Zombie. All of the Tourneur films showing today are great, but Zombie is something else again. A re-thinking of Jane Eyre set on a plantation haunted by zombies and colonialism. As always with Tourneur, the horror comes at you in the subtlest ways, then creeps in and doesn't leave any time soon.
10:30 p.m. PST I Was Born, But... Arguably the film you should start with if you want to go down the Ozu path (and why wouldn't you want to do that). Charming, silent 1932 classic, recently restored, about two brothers who are embarrassed by their Father's acquiescence to his office job and superiors. Delicate, hilarious (how does Ozu get these performances from these kids?), and not without its critique of class climbing, subtle as it is, as always, with the Master.
Wednesday, May 6
12:15 a.m. PST The Only Son. Another early Ozu film I know nothing about, so you can imagine my excitement! His first talkie, this one a female-centric story about a poverty-stricken Mother who goes to every end possible to provide an education for her son. Poignancy and class-critique, no doubt, follow.
