Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of January 4-10, 2021. There's no Packer game this week since the Packers have the bye as the #1 seed in the NFC. So since you're waiting two weeks for the next game, why not use this week to catch up on some good old movies? There's a lot that's interesting this week, including a new Star of the Month on TCM and even a documentary from just a few years ago. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
A quarter century after Cliff Robertson won the Oscar for playing Charly, a movie with a similar theme was released: The Lawnmower Man, which you can see at 3:13 PM Monday on ThrillerMax. Pierce Brosnan plays Dr. Angelo, a researcher at a government institution involved with using technology to make people more intelligent, probably with military applications in mind. When Angelo is placed on leave, this gives him time to start working on a virtual reality project, but to carry out the experiment, he's going to need somebody who's mentally challenged. To his great good luck, he realizes that he's got a landscaper in his midst, Jobe (Jeff Fahey) who fits the bill. Jobe agrees to the experiment, since he's been subject to a lifetime of bullying and thinks that when he's smart, that bullying will stop. The experiment turns out to be more or less a success, at least in that Jobe's intelligence is increased. But Jobe decides he wants more control over how the experiment is being conducted. And Angelo's government bosses also want control over the experiment.
TCM is looking at the Korda Brothers' London Films on Monday night, including a movie I think I haven't recommended before: Conquest of the Air, at 11:00 PM. From the first time man saw birds in flight, mankind had a fascination with flight and being able to fly himself. Of course, human evolution did not allow for man to fly under his own power, no matter how much people may have tried in the days before engines existed. Eventually the Montgolfier brothers pioneered the hot air balloon in pre-revolutionary France; 120 years later, the Wright brothers flew the first airplane. The movie chronicles all of this up to the 1930s in an episodic manner for pre-movie days and vintage footage once movies started filming flight, and was re-released in 1940 with a bit of extra footage and commentary added to discuss the Battle of Britain that was taking place in the skies above Britain at that time. Among the actors in the re-enactment portion of the movie is Laurence Olivier as the Italian aeronaut Vincent Lunardi.
Singer Amy Winehouse died back in 2011 after several years of being fodder for tabloid press and late-night TV. Her life and early death are chronicled in the documentary Amy, which will be on Showtime Next at 3:00 AM Tuesday. The movie starts off with some home movie footage of her when she was about 15, singing Happy Birthday to a friend, and it's obvious even then that she had phenomenal talent. But she already had all sorts of serious personal problems even at that young age; indeed, as one of her producers says on hearing her demo, she was an 18-year-old woman with the voice of a 65-year-old jazz singer (and all the personal issues that entails). As Amy's fame rose, everybody around her pushed her in ways that weren't necessarily in her best interest, especially her father and her drug-using boyfriend/husband. Through extensive use of archival footage and voiceover interviews, we see what happens, leading to the inevitable conclusion. Probably nobody could have prevented Amy's young death, but you can't help but wonder watching this personal train wreck what could have been done.
I think it's been a while since TCM ran It Should Happen to You, a really fun little romantic comedy. It gets another showing this week, at 3:00 PM Tuesday. Jack Lemmon, right at the beginning of his career, plays Pete Sheppard, a documentary film maker making a documentary about New York. In Central Park, he runs into Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday), a model who's just lost her job and dreams of becoming a celebrity; she and Pete just happen to live in the same building. Gladys decides that she's going to try to make herself a celebrity by renting a billboard on Columbus Circle and putting just her name on it, in the hopes that everybody will wonder who Gladys Glover is. One person who does wonder is Evan Adams (Peter Lawford), whose family company has rented that billboard for a seasonal campaign for years and would like that billboard, but Gladys won't give it up. This leads to her getting more billboards and then people finding out who she is. But fame isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially once Evan starts pursuing her romantically.
If you're in the mood for some dark humor after being tired of the way state governors fucked up their handling of the coronavirus this past year, then you might want to try watching The End, showing at 6:27 AM Wednesday on Cinemax (and three hours later for those of you with only the west coast feed). Burt Reynolds plays Wendell Lawson, a salesman with a wife (Joanne Woodward) and daughter (Kristy McNichol) who finds he's got a terminal illness and only has a year to live. He finds it difficult to tell his family (including his parents, played by veterans Pat O'Brien and Myrna Loy), and he doesn't want to suffer the pain that his disease might cause, so he decides that he'll just kill himself with a quick, painless death. But multiple attempts fail, ultimately ending up in a mental institution, where he is roomed with Marlon Borunki (Dom DeLuise) who decides that he's willing to help Wendell with his end of life issues. Things get complicated however, when Wendell decides that maybe he'd rather not commit suicide after all, but Marlon isn't so willing to stop “helping” Wendell.
If you want an all-star movie, we've got a couple this week. First up is Death on the Nile, at 8:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. Based on the book by Agatha Christie, the movie stars Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poiror, Christie's fussy Belgian private detective who, as you can probably guess, is taking a cruise on the Nile in Egypt. Lois Chiles plays Linnet Doyle, an heiress also on the cruise who somehow seems to have a prior relationship with a large number of the other passengers. And wouldn't you know it, but most of those passengers have a reason why they'd be happy if Linnet somehow suddenly died. With Hercule Poirot around, you just know she's going to be murdered, and he'll have to solve the case. Among the suspects are elderly Mrs. Van Schuyler (Bette Davis), who wants Linnet's jewels, and her servant Bowers (Maggie Smith); Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy), who's been embezzling from Linnet's family; writer Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury), embroiled in a libel suit with Linnet; and more. David Niven plays Col. Race, who tries to help Poirot solve the mystery.
Now that we're into the first full week of a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, it's Miriam Hopkins, who was a leading lady as a younger actress in the 1930s before growing into supporting roles later in her career. Her movies will be airing on TCM every Thursday in prime time in January. You might remember her best as one of the women in the love triangle of These Three (airing Jan. 21), and the grandmother of the nasty little girl who gossips about the love triangle in the remake, The Children's Hour (airing Jan. 28). But for this first week of her time as Star of the Month, we get some of her earlier films, mostly pre-codes.
We could all use more money. Damon Wayans has a rather odd way of going about it in Mo' Money, airing at 2:11 AM Saturday on StarzEncore Action. Damon plays Johnny Stewart, a petty crook who's trying to go straight, in part because he's found a woman he's interested in pursuing, Amber Evans (Stacey Dash). That job happens to be in the mailroom for a financial services company that mails out new credit cards to people. Johnny gets access to the credit card information of recently deceased people whose cards for whatever reason have not yet been canceled, and uses this along with his brother Seymour (Marlon Wayans) to bilk the company. Now, you'd think that Johnny's boss would be pissed, but in fact the boss Keith (John Diehl) is an even bigger crook than the Stewarts. Realizing what Johnny has done, Keith sees that he can use Johnny as part of a bigger scheme to defraud the company, although of course it's probably going to be dangerous for Johnny.
Nunnally Johnson is best known as a screenwriter, but he also directed a handful of movies. One of them is The Angel Wore Red, which is on this week at 6:15 AM Saturday on TCM. Dirk Bogarde plays Fr. Arturo Carrera, a priest in the early days of the Spanish Civil War who decides he's going to leave the priesthood because the Catholic Church isn't doing enough to help the downtrodden people of Spain. Unfortunately for him, the Republicans run the town where he was a priest, and they're seriously anti-clerical, declaring all-out war on Catholic priests. Nobody but Arturo's bishop knows that he's quit, and he'd never be able to convince the authorities. So when he runs into a cabaret singer Soledad (Ava Gardner), he winds up hiding out with her and falling in love with her. The authorities would never believe Arturo in part because the big church in their city had a holy artifact that both sides think would help them win the war, which the bishop (Finlay Currie) gave to a priest to hide. Arturo claiming he left the priesthood would be a too-perfect cover story. Needless to say, Arturo and Soledad get captured and made prisoners. Joseph Cotten plays an American correspondent covering the war.
Returning to the FXM rotation after a prolonged absence is The Kremlin Letter, at 11:20 AM Sunday. Patrick O'Neal plays Rone, a brilliant young naval intelligence officer who gets recruited for an extra-secret mission. This is so secret that it's not the normal spy agencies handling it, but an informal group of allegedly retired – or even allegedly dead – spies led by the mysterious Sturdevant, who never reveals himself. Instead, any of the spies he meets may actually be Sturdevant. The mission involves getting the titular letter, which was written by a Soviet official and asking the Americans for help in the case that China should get the bomb, which I thought China already had by the time the movie was released in 1970. But why would the Soviets do this? The movie has a lot of big actors in small roles, including Orson Welles, George Sanders, Dean Jagger, and Max von Sydow, and is rather convoluted thanks in no small part to self-indulgent direction by John Huston.
Another movie that it's been a while since I've recommended is The Romance of Rosy Ridge. It's got a TCM showing at 8:00 AM Sunday. Janet Leigh makes an auspicious screen debut as Lissy MacBean, daughter in a Missouri farming family (parents Thomas Mitchell and Selena Royle and kid brother Dean Stockwell) in the summer of 1865. If you know your history, you'll realize that this is just after the end of the Civil War, and that Missouri was a place with a lot of divided loyalties, as the state stayed in the Union but many of its residents fought for the Confederacy; even Pa MacBean had Confederate sympathies. Into all this comes Henry Carson (Van Johnson), a harmonica-playing man who gets work as a farmhand at the MacBean place since their elder son hasn't returned from the war. Carson is hoping to open up a school in the area, and falls in love with Lissy along the way. But there's still the conflict between those farmers who supported the North and those who supported the South, and Carson is going to have to take sides and reveal his past.