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Thursday 9/20/12

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Hearts and Flowers (1919 USA): Another heaping helping of silent Mack Sennett-produced humor is on tap this evening, commencing with Hearts and Flowers, in which musician Ford Sterling gets himself into hot water with pretty little flower girl Louise Fazenda. To be honest, this film (available on Kino’s essential DVD boxed set The Slapstick Encyclopedia) isn’t amongst Sennett’s finest, but it still has enough raucous and risque moments to make it worth your while. There are a total of 18 short subjects on offer tonight, pick of the litter probably being 1920’s Don’t Weaken!, in which Sterling and co-star Charles Murray square off in the boxing ring for a hilariously inept display of pugilistic non-prowess.

7:10 PM Sundance
Death Wish (1974 USA): Well, this isn’t what you expect to see on Sundance in a prime-time (or really any other) slot, but I’m not complaining. The grandaddy of Right Wing Vigilante Bringing Frontier Justice to the Big City films, Death Wish stars Charles Bronson as New York City architect Paul Kersey, who vows revenge against the scumbuckets who murdered his wife (Hope Lange), raped his daughter (Kathleen Tolan), and evaded the clutches of the inept losers in the NYPD. Soon, former bleeding heart Paul is walking around bad neighborhoods after dark and shooting anyone who looks like they might try to nab his bag of groceries. Directed by Michael Winner, Death Wish is morally repulsive, but a powerful film nonetheless that’s had an incalculable influence on American attitudes towards crime and gun ownership in the almost 40 years since it was made. Also airs at 10:30 PM.

Friday 9/21/12

12:10 AM Sundance
UV (2007 FRA): Former pop star Jacques Dutronic stars in this French erotic thriller, but don’t worry - he’s not the one wearing a skimpy bathing suit. Dutronc plays a reclusive resident of a remote beachside villa, where he lives with his two daughters (Laura Smet and Anne Caillon). The girls spend much of their spare time lazing topless in the sun, but when a handsome stranger (Nicolas Cazale) shows up claiming to be a friend of Dutronc’s absent son, things take a turn for the tense and mysterious. A film that will appeal as much to fans of Gallic thrillers as to admirers of naked ladies, UV co-stars Marthe Keller as our aging hero’s suspicious wife.

5:00 PM Showtime
Melancholia (2011 DEN): Everyone’s favorite Scandinavian bad boy, Lars von Trier, returned to form last year with this memorable slice of science fiction. Kirsten Dunst stars as Justine (ah, shades of the Marquis de Sade!), a woman whose wedding day is about to be spoiled by a planet that’s on a collision course with Earth. Happily, Justine’s dad (Bruce Willis) is able to jump into his spaceship and blow the planet off course and...oh, sorry, wrong movie. No, in Melancholia, John Hurt plays Kirsten’s father, and you can be pretty sure he doesn’t have any planet-averting super technology up his sleeve. What follows is a typically von Trierian rumination on the end times; a beautiful, goofy, sad, and at times totally over-the-top film that shouldn’t be missed. Here’s hoping Showtime airs it in its correct aspect ratio. Also airs at 8:00 PM.

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