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Thursday 11/20/08

1:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Spider and the Fly (1949 GB): Eric Portman stars as Fernand Maubert, a French police officer working in cahoots with master safecracker Lodocq (Guy Rolfe) to fend off the advancing German Army circa 1914. Offering a pardon in exchange for temporary employment, Maubert hires Lodocq to obtain a list of Boche spies working in France, but regrets his decision when gal pal Madeleine (Nadia Grey) turns up on the roster. Also on hand in this comparatively minor Robert Hamer effort: James Hayter as an army officer (naturellement!), Arthur Lowe as comedy relief, a less portly than usual Sebastian Cabot, and Hattie Jacques.

8:30 AM Sundance
This Is England (2006 GB): My favoritest film of all 2007, Shane Meadow's study of working class adolescents in 1980s Britain makes its American television debut tonight. Young Thomas Turgoose stars as Shaun, a small-for-his-age kid trying to find a place for himself amidst the Nottingham yoof scene. He befriends some of the local (multi-racial) skinheads, gets a crop and braces, and hangs out in the neighbourhood caff. Things change for the worse, however, when hard man Combo (Stephen Graham) comes home after doing a stretch in HM Prisons, flexing his street cred and dragging his easily manipulated pals to meetings of the racist National Front. Meadows avoids the predictable good/bad, black/white paradigms, and though Combo is a deeply unpleasant fellow, he still has enough shades of grey to make you sympathize with him — to a point. The film's Falklands War coda doesn't completely gel with what has gone before, but this is still a very powerful, superbly acted coming of age drama. Here's hoping Meadows' latest, Somers Town, gets a big screen American release soon.

7:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
Capone (1975 USA): Ben Gazzara devours the scenery as Chicago gangster Al Capone in this overripe Roger Corman-produced shoot 'em up, which makes its widescreen television premiere this evening. Directed by Steve Carver, who had success the previous year helming Corman's box office hit Big Bad Mama, Capone gilds the historical lily considerably but succeeds as a mindless action flick. Gazzara gets to shout a lot at the supporting cast, which includes Harry Guardino as sidekick Johnny Torrio (a gangland character deserving his own movie, I'll add), Sly Stallone as a much too young Frank Nitti, Susan Blakley as Gazzara's love interest/object of abuse (and the first woman to reveal her, erm, innermost secrets in a mainstream movie), and, of course, Dick Miller, who seems to have been granted a job-for-life within the Corman empire sometime back in the 1950s. If you can overlook the cardboard back-lot sets and anachronistic hair-don'ts and just enjoy the copious violence (not to mention the darkest recesses of Ms. Blakley's anatomy), you'll be well satisfied.

Friday 11/21/08

Midnight Showtime 3
Exposed (1983 USA): This is a pretty lousy movie with just enough pedigree to make it a very mild buy in this week's movie market. Nastassja Kinski stars as a Wisconsin farm girl — yeah, right — taken under the wing of fashion photographer Ian McShane and transformed into a Manhattan catwalk star. Enter, stage ludicrous, Rudolf Nureyev as a spy out to kill terrorist Harvey Keitel, and in need of the beautiful model's assistance in completing said task. With music by Georges Delerue and cinematography by Henri Decae, you'd expect this James Toback-helmed meller to aspire to nouvelle vague heights, but instead it plumbs the depths of cinema sewage. It's a fascinating misfire, but McShane is good.

3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Lady of Vengeance (1957 GB): Paging Eady money! Paging Eady money! Here's a prime example of the sort of swill churned out by British studios in thrall to government cinema subsidies back in the day. American for hire Dennis O'Keefe plays Bill Marshall, a Yank journo covering the UK beat and eager for revenge against the man who drove his best girl to suicide. Said rotter is criminal mastermind Karnak (Anton Diffring), and Bill becomes entangled in a cat and mouse game with him revolving around possession of a rare postage stamp. Yes, this is another in the tiny "philatelic mystery" genre, which also includes 1963's Charade and one of those Krzysztof Kieslowski movies, the title of which is eluding me at present. Not to worry, though — things turn out for the best, and Bill doesn't have to do anything too slimy in order for justice to win out.

9:00 PM IFC
House (1977 JAP): I've read a lot about this film recently — it's newly available from Video Search of Miami, and it had an enthusiastic write-up in the most recent issue of Steven Puchalski's absolutely essential Shock Cinema (www.shockcinemamagazine.com). Ostensibly a thriller about young women disappearing in a spooky old mansion, Shock Cinema's review describes it as a surreal, psychedelic comic horror near-masterpiece. It's the one film you really won't want to miss this week.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Monster A Go-Go (1965 USA): One of the worst of the so-bad-it's-good genre makes its TCM premiere this evening. Directed by legendary schlockmeister Bill Rebane and produced by Herschell Gordon Lewis, Monster A Go-Go tells the tale of a crashed space satellite and the hideous creature it brings to the Greater Chicago Metro area. Even at 69 minutes, it feels too long, and though the "monster" (an irradiated astronaut played by super-sized amateur thesp Henry Hite) is semi-memorable, Lewis' extensive re-editing did the film few if any favors. If you like voice-overs, this is your movie — it makes The Creeping Terror look (and sound) like Citizen Kane. Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. Would you believe The Brain from Planet Arous? It's followed on 11/22 by Rebane's much more professional but equally silly 1975 epic, The Giant Spider Invasion, which stars The Skipper, Alan Hale Jr., as a Wisconsin sheriff confronted by out of control mega-arachnids.

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