Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of July 18-24, 2016. We're getting close to the time when football training camps open, but we're not quite there yet. So why not enjoy some good movies instead? As always, I've used my discerning taste to select several interesting movies for your viewing pleasure. As alwaya, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I am very pleased to see that one of this week's TCM Imports is Ballad of a Soldier, airing at 4:00 AM Monday. Vladimir Ivashov plays Alyosha, a private in the Soviet Red Army in World War II. He's committed an act of heroism in neutralizing some German tanks, but instead of a medal, he really wants leave so he can go home and see his mother, who needs a new roof on the shack of a house she lives in. The general actually grants him several days' leave to go see Mother. But it's not an easy journey to get home, considering how transportation links are chaotic at best. Along the way he meets Shura (Zhanna Prohorenko) who is stowing away on a train, and falls in love with her; he helps an invalided veteran; and meets the wife of one of his buddies on the front, only to find that the home front isn't all it's cracked up to be. Still, Alyosha presses on to try to see his mother. This is a beautiful, touching movie that I highly recommend if you haven't seen it before.
TCM will be spending Monday morning and afternoon with actor Red Skelton. One of his movies that I'm not certain I've blogged about before is A Southern Yankee, at 9:00 AM. In this one, Skelton plays Aubrey, a bellboy at a St. Louis hotel during the Civil War. He thinks everybody is a Southern spy, but amazingly actually catches one called the “Grey Spider”. In doing so, however, he himself is mistaken for the Grey Spider by southern belle Sallyann (Arlene Dahl). So the Union military intelligence gets the brilliant idea of giving Aubrey fake plans to give to the southerners, and real plans to give to a Union spy in the south. They don't realize that Aubrey is actually incompetent and a bit of a coward, so he gets the plans mixed up, putting himself in grave danger. Of course, this being a Red Skelton comedy, you know he's going to get out of it alive, but you watch a Red Skelton movie to see how that happens. Well, that and the rest of the gags, of which there are a lot in his movies.
Monday night sees TCM's Guest Programmer for July: Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr. He sat down, I believe with Robert Osborne before the latter's prolonged absence from presenting movies on TCM, to talk about and present four of his favorite movies. Those choices are:
Blackboard Jungle at 8:00 PM, in which teacher Glenn Ford deals with students who are supposedly tough punks, at least by mid-50s standards;
Touch of Evil at 9:45 PM, with Charlton Heston playing a Mexican cop solving a cross-border murder case;
Lifeboat at 11:45 PM, Alfred Hitchcock's character study of people stuck aboard a lifeboat including the U-boat commander who destroyed the boat of the rest of the passengers; and
Night of the Hunter at 1:30 AM, in which Robert Mitchum chases after his two stepchilden looking for $20,000 their biological father hid.
Over on FXM Retro, there's The Return of the Cisco Kid, airing at 4:45 AM Friday. Warner Baxter returns for one final time, playing the character that won him an Oscar at the dawn of the talking picture era in In Old Arizona. Here, the story has The Cisco Kid meeting young Ann Carver (Lynn Bari), the granddaughter of Col. Bixby (Henry Hull). It seems that Bixby has been swindled by Sheriff McNally (Robert Barrat) out of his ranch, and won't somebody do something about it? So of course the Cisco Kid tries to do something about it. Along the way, he falls in love with Ann, although she's already got another man in the form of Alan (Kane Richmond), who has been representing the grandfather in court. The Cisco Kid actually starts thinking of things to do to get Alan out of the way! And not in a good way. How's that for a hero? The Cisco Kid's sidekick Lopez is played by Cesar Romero, who would go on to play The Cisco Kid in a half dozen movies not long after this. The Cisco Kid was not a friend of mine.
Those of you who want something more recent, The Movie Channel is running Glengarry Glen Ross at 12:15 AM Thursday. For those who don't know the movie, it's set at a real estate office where corporate headquarters have sent in a “motivator” (Alec Baldwin), with an interesting idea: there's going to be a contest to see which of the office's four salesman can sell the most over the next month. The winner gets a new car; second place gets an OK prize; the bottom two are out the door. Some motivation. The salesmen are Ricky (Al Pacino), the hotshot who it seems is still good at what he does; Dave (Ed Harris), who probably could have been a great salesman but seems to have let defeatism take over; George (Alan Arkin), who probably never should have gotten into sales at all; and Shelley (Jack Lemmon), who at one point was a good salesman, but is now too old and used up. In between them and the corporate motivator is office manager John (Kevin Spacey). If you want an intelligent movie instead of a comic book rehash with a plethora of special effects, this is the movie for you.
TCM is running a bunch of classic westerns this month. I'll mention a western that's just old, airing over on StarzEncore Westerns: The Fighting Vigilantes, Thursday at 4:50 AM. This one has an interesting plot idea. Law and order seems to have gone missing in one part of the west, and when US Marshal Davis (Lash LaRue) and his sidekick Fuzzy (Al St. John) go to investigate, they find that the local trading post owner is waylaying all the supply wagons and stagecoaches so that he can abscond with the food and sell it at inflated prices! The locals have set up a vigilante group, but so far that's failed, which is why Marshal Davis is here. Obviously, he's able to help the vigilantes; after all in a western like this would you expect anything else? This is a B western released by Povery Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, so don't expect terribly good production values here.
The look at America in the 1970s continues on TCM on Thursday night, including The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three at 8:00 PM. The title refers to a subway train that starts in the Bronx and continues its route through Manhattan. Four men (Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Earl Hindman), code-named Blue, Green, Gray, and Brown, board this particular subway train and proceed to hijack it, decoupling the front car from the rest of the cars and holding eighteen people hostage. They then proceed to state their demands, for $1 million and safe passage out of the place. If they don't get the money at the appointed time, they'll kill one of the hostages for each minute the money is late. Back at the subway command center is Transit Police Lt. Garber (Walter Matthau). It's his job to negotiate with the hostage takers, as well as to deal with all the other authorities who are trying to manage the situation, not very successfully.
Early director Jack Conway gets a turn in the spotlight on Friday morning and afternoon. Typical of his work would probably be something likeJust a Gigolo, at 1:30 PM. (I make no apologies for the ear worm.) William Haines stars as Brummel, the nephew of a British nobleman, Lord Hampton (C. Aubrey Smith). Brummel has been living off of Hampton's allowance, being a playboy, and ticking off Hampton, who decides that either Brummel marries, or the allowance ends. So Brummel goes over to the UK to see who his uncle thinks he should marry, as well as to prove that women aren't so virtuous. He's going to play the part of a gigolo, dancing with intended fiancée Roxan (Irene Purcell) and getting her to have an affair with the gigolo, not knowing who he really is. However, things get complicated when Brummel actually falls in love with Roxan.
I'm not the biggest Woody Allen fan, but for those of you who do like his work, you'll be pleased to know that Manhattan is coming up this week on StarzEncore Classics at 2:15 AM Saturday. Allen plays Isaac, a television writer whose second wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has just left him – for another woman! Isaac has responded by taking up with Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), but she's just a high school studen, and the age difference causes all sorts of problems. Then Isaac meets journalist Mary (Diane Keaton), and falls in love with her. There's a catch, though: Mary is sleeping with Isaac's best friend Yale (Michael Murphy). Further complicating things is the fact that Yale is already married, and not to Mary, but Emily (Anne Byrne). Still, Mary isn't so certain she wants to be a mistress, so perhaps having a relationship with Isaac would be better, even though that would screw up Isaac's relationship with Yale.
TCM is showing a night of Brenda de Banzie movies on Saturday night, starting at 8:00 PM with Hobson's Choice. Hobson here is a family led by patriarch Henry (Charles Laughton), a shoemaker in late Victorian England. Henry is a widower with three adult daughters. Maggie (de Banzie) is the oldest; her kid sisters are Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vicky (Prunella Scales). Dad doesn't want to marry them off because he'd have to pay dowries; besides, Maggie is too old. Maggie has other ideas, of course. She's fallen in love with Dad's assistant William (John Mills), and is determined to marry him and help him set up his own shoe shop. And after she does that, she'll set out to find husbands for her two sisters. The whole cast is wonderful, but especially Laughton who didn't get to do too much comedy in his career. David Lean directed, long before he got the budgets to do overblown stuff like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. This is the sort of movie that shows just how well you can do when you have a good story.