New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Thursday 12/20/12

2:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Witness to Murder (1954 USA): Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman whose claim to have witnessed a murder in a nearby apartment building is rubbished by the police in this solid Roy Rowlands-helmed suspenser. In best Rear Window fashion, Cheryl Draper (Stanwyck) espies neighbor Albert Richter (George Sanders) strangling a woman to death, but when cops Lawrence Matthews and Eddie Vincent (Gary Merrill and Jesse White) show up to investigate, evidence of the crime is lacking. Soon the oily Richter is working hard to get Cheryl committed to the loony bin, but her blossoming relationship with Matthews means she finally has a sympathetic ear downtown. Will someone ever believe the awful truth about the dastardly Richter? Tune in to find out!


6:00 PM HBO
Project Nim (2011 GB-USA): Everybody loves monkeys, right? Even the kind that wear diapers and down jackets to the mall, right? Unless you’re one of the miserable few who don’t find our primate chums positively scintillating, you’ll love Project Nim, which is not actually about a monkey but a chimpanzee, but what’s the dif. Directed by James Marsh (Man On Wire), the film is an utterly fascinating documentary about a long-term scientific (?) experiment conducted on New York’s Upper East Side. Brought to the Big Apple by Columbia Professor Herbert Terrace, young Nim Chimpsky was taught sign language by human stepmother Stephanie LaFarge (who also helpfully allowed her "child" to smoke pot and drink beer). However, being a chimp and not a human being, Nim soon began to revert to wilder ways, suggesting that the ability of nurture to trump nature has its limits. This is a terrific documentary, albeit somewhat undercut by some necessary but still distracting "dramatic recreations." No truth to the rumors that either Cheetah or Lancelot Link body doubled for Nim. Also airs at 9:00 PM.

7:00 PM Sundance
Christine (1983 USA): Immovable object (general crappiness of Stephen King adaptations) meets irresistible force (John Carpenter at his peak) in this ultimately "meh" chiller about a death-dealing automobile. I’ve never been much of a Christine enthusiast, but will check it out again this evening in hopes that this will mark its widescreen television debut. Also airs at 10:00 PM.

Friday 12/21/12

7:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Monte Carlo (1930 USA): Did I say I don’t like musicals? Let me be a little more specific: I don’t like musicals, unless they were made between 1929 and 1934, in which case they’re utterly fascinating examples of the early days of talking pictures. Directed by Ernst "son of" Lubitsch (sorry, I always remember that classic Mae West line when I think of Lubitsch), Monte Carlo takes place, of course, in the gambling capital of Europe. Jeanette MacDonald (happily without her normal cinema counterpart Nelson Eddy) headlines as Countess Mara, a noblewoman who dumps fiancee Duke Otto (Claud Allister) in favor of a trip to the titular city. Alas, she loses all (except, we hope, her virtue) on the roulette wheel, and takes up with a man much beneath her station (Jack Buchanan). Will love trump class? Though the film features nothing in the way of Busby Berkeley pyrotechnics, I still find it fascinating. Perhaps I’m simply grateful for Eddy’s absence.

Continued:       1       2       3