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Sunday 11/25/07

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Green For Danger (1946 GB): Alistair Sim headlines as Inspector Cockrill in this extremely good murder mystery about the killing of a postman, apparently at the hands of the medical staff tending to him at a hospital somewhere in rural England. Cockrill is investigating the death of Higgins, a Royal Mail carrier whose wartime injuries cause him to be wheeled into the operating theatre alive and wheeled out dead. Nurse Bates (Judy Campbell) suspects foul play, but she, too, ends up a victim, and it's up to Scotland Yard's finest to solve the case. Was it Nurse Freddie (Sally Gray), in the theatre, with the anaesthesia? Or was it Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard), also in the theatre, with the scalpel? Or perhaps it was a dose of MRSA delivered by a doctor with dirty hands. Directed by Sidney Gilliat and produced by Frank Launder, Green For Danger is equal parts shaggy dog tale and murder mystery, with as much pleasure coming from watching Sim go through the motions as from trying to figure out who the killer is. Look for the big screen debut of an unbelievably young-looking Hattie Jacques.

9:00 PM Sundance
Lady Vengeance (2005 ROK): The third and final film in director Chan-Woo Park's loosely related trilogy of ‘revenge' stories (the first two being Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy), Lady Vengeance stars Lee-Young Ae as Geum-ja, a beautiful woman who is also the confessed and convicted murderer of a five-year old child. Geum-ja has done her time, though, and like villains the world over has found a modicum of peace via religious conversion, in this case to Christianity. But she's also harboring a secret - an obsession with her old high school teacher Mr. Baek (Min-sik Choi), who has a few skeletons of his own in the closet. It's thrilling, deeply dark and disturbing stuff that will leave you feeling a little queasy - even if you've already experienced Park's frequently gruesome set pieces in other films.

11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Age of Consent (1969 AUS): After the critical hammering that greeted Peeping Tom, director Michael Powell found himself on the outs with mainstream producers, and ended up briefly relocating to Australia in order to get a job of work. After directing the engaging immigrant-out-of-water comedy They're A Weird Mob in 1966, Powell went on to helm this semi-autobiographical drama about an over the hill artist (James Mason) who relocates to a remote island, where his muse is rekindled by the love of a sexy young thing (Helen Mirren in the buff!). Shot on the Great Barrier Reef, this lesser (though thankfully less pretentious) Powell feature makes its commercial-free American television debut this evening.

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