Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of June 18-24, 2018. The World Cup is going on, but for you freaks who don't like soccer, why not spend some time with some good movies instead? It's not as if there's any interesting sport other than soccer going on. We get another night of Leslie Howard movies, two more days of musicals, and some interesting movies on channels other than TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
It's been a while since I've recommended Modesty Blaise, which has been back on FXM Retro recently. It's going to be on again this week, at 6:00 AM Monday. Based on a comic strip, Modesty Blaise (played by Monica Vitti) is a British secret agent and greatest female spy out there, who has a sidekick in knife-throwing Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp). The British government is planning to send a shipment of diamonds to an Arab oil-exporting country in exchange for the oil concession since the Arabs can use the Western management know-how. Meanwhile, at his secret hideout in the Mediterranean, Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) is a lover of diamonds who is coming up with a nefarious scheme to steal the British shipment. It's the job of Modesty and Willie to keep Gabriel from getting his hands on the diamonds and make certain they get to the Arab sheik they're intedned for. Of course, there are a whole lot of complications along the way. This is one of those spoof spy movies that were the rage for a while in the 1960s after the success of the more serious early James Bond films.
We get another night of Leslie Howard movies on TCM on Monday night, including one that I think I haven't mentioned before: Secrets, at 9:30 PM. This was the final film for actress Mary Pickford, who also produced it. Pickford plays Mary Marlowe, the daughter of a wealthy banker (C. Aubrey Smith) in New England circa 1880. Being one of those rich New England families, Dad wants his daughter to marry a respectable man of noble upbringing. But Mary falls in love with John (Leslie Howard), one of Dad's bank tellers. This is totally unacceptable, and Dad responds by firing John and blackballing him. John realizes he's got no future in the east, so he's going to go off to California to start a new life – and he takes Mary with him, the two eloping. They become ranchers, raising cattle and a family, while John rises in respectability to the point that the local bigwigs want him to run for governor. The only thing is, it turns out that he's got some scandals in his past that could destroy him. Shades of Cimarron and Cavalcade.
If you're of a certain age, you probably had to read S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders in a high-school English class. The book was turned into a movie in the early 1980s, and the movie version of The Outsiders is going to be on 5-Star Max at 7:25 PM Tuesday. The time is early-1960s Oklahoma and the Greasers are a gang living on the wrong side of the tracks. One of them is the youngest brother “Ponyboy” (C. Thomas Howell), living with older brothers Darrel (Patrick Swayze) and Sodapop (Rob Lowe); there's also Ponyboy's friend Johnny (Ralph Macchio). The Greasers go up against the Socs, a gang from the “good side” of town, and in the style of West Side Story, Ponybody falls in love with Cherry (Diane Lane), who one of the Socs (Leif Garrett, haha!) thinks is his girlfriend. This “forbidden” relationship results in the Socs going after some of the Greasers, ultimately leading to a fight in which Johnny stabs one of the Socs. Things spiral out of control from there.
Another film that tells a family saga is That Forsyte Woman, which will be on TCM at 7:00 AM Wednesday as part of a morning and afternoon of movies celebrating Errol Flynn on the anniversary of his death. Flynn plays Soames Forsyte, a Victorian-era lawyer married to Irene (Greer Garson), who at the start of the marriage openly admits she married him for money. Another branch of the family has cousin Jolyon (Walter Pidgeon) with a young daughter June (Janet Leigh plays grown-up June although at the start of the movie June is just a kid). Jolyon runs off with June's nanny after his wife dies, leaving Soames and Irene to raise the kid. Jolyon eventually returns, while June grows up and announces she's engaged to nice architect Philip (Robert Young). Irene falls in love with both Jolyn and June, while she still hasn't fallen in love with Soames. Flynn shows that can actually act and not just do those swashbuckling action roles.
The “Mad About Musicals” spotlight continues on TCM this Tuesday and Thursday with musicals from the 50s. One of them is High Society, at 1:30 PM Thursday. If this one looks familiar, it's because the movie is a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. (And as it turns out, The Philadelphia Story is also on this week's schedule, at 8:00 PM Wednesday.) Grace Kelly plays Tracy Lord, a spoiled rich girl who had been married to Dexter Haven (Bing Crosby), but got divorced from him and is about to marry boring John Kittredge (John Lund). A gossip mag decides they're going to send a reporter Mike and photographer Liz (Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm) to cover the wedding. Dex uses those two to get back into the house and cause all sorts of chaos. Dex tries to break up the wedding, but Tracy begins to think that Mike is the right man for her. Louis Armstrong and his band play themselves, and Bing, Frank, and Grace all get to sing.
Also on Thursday, over on StarzEncore Westerns is one I don't think I've recommended before: A Man Called Sledge, at 2:33 AM. James Garner plays Luther Sledge, who learns from an old outlaw about an interesting scheme for keeping the gold shipments safe. Apparently, the gold is shipped in a convoy with a couple of dozen armed men on horseback and a coach with a machine gun, so attacking the actual convoy is likely not going to work. (They should have watched The War Wagon.) However, in between the time the gold is pulled out of the mine to when it gets transported to the trains, it spends a night at the local high-security prison, in a high-security vault. After all, the prison has measures to keep people from escaping, which means they also can't get in to steal the gold. Luther, of course, immediately has other ideas, so he lets the outlaw turn him in instead to claim the reward, while Luther is going to plot how to get at that vault and get the gold out. The idea is nuts, but since this is a movie, it just might work….
An actor who did several westerns was Alan Ladd. This week, however, I'll recommend him in a period piece that isn't a western: Santiago, at 12:30 PM Friday on TCM. Lad plays Cash Adams, an arms dealer who's got a past. He's decided that he's going to try to make a buck selling weapons to the rebels in Cuba, which isn't as bas as you'd think because these aren't the Communist rebels that were fighting Batista at the time the movie was made; they were Cubans fighting Spain in the years just before the Spanish-American War and the US involvement with Cuba. Anyhow, Cash gets involved with a competing gunrunner in Clay (Lloyd Nolan, who usually played good guys). They're on a steamboat captained by Sidewheel (Chill Wills). Playing the Cuban who serves as a love interest for Cash and Clay to be rivals over is Italian actress Rossana Podesta. This one doesn't get seen all that often.
Steve McQueen is remembered for a string of excellent movies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His final role in his short life is generally overlooked: The Hunter, at 6:59 AM Saturday on StarzEncore Classics. Based on a true story, or at least a real person, McQueen plays “Papa” Thorson, the last of the bounty hunters. Bringing in wanted criminals for the reward was a staple of old westerns, but with the closing of the frontier it went out of style. Thorson knows no other way to live, however, so he's a bounty hunter in the current day, a man out of time who travels around the country finding bail jumpers. Meanwhile, he's got a pregnant girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold) to deal with, and law enforcement who doesn't want him and his somewhat lawless methods horning in on their job (sheriff Ben Johnson). It builds up to a climax on the Chicago subway. Rounding out the cast are Eli Wallach and LeVar Burton.
Another of those movies that I haven't recommended in a while because it doesn't show up often is Get Carter, which will be on TCM at 4:00 PM Saturday. Michael Caine plays Jack Carter, a small-time operator in the London underworld. One day, he hears that his brother was killed in a car crash back in their home town of Newcastle, up in northern England. So Carter goes home not only to bury his brother, but to find out exactly what happened. As he begins to investigate, he finds that peple who used to be old friends are trying to avoid him, which is a sure sign that things aren't what they seem. That, and everybody seems rather anxious that Carter gets back to London. One of the local crime bosses Kinnear (John Osborne) is likely behind it, but why? Carter, for his part, is quite violent, and when he finds out what's really been going on, he's only going to get angrier and more violent. For all the violence, Get Carter is still a really good movie.
Stanley Donen directed some interesting movies after he finished those great musicals of the 1950s. Among those later movies is Two for the Road, which TCM will be running at 6:00 PM Sunday. Architect Mark Wallace (Alfbert Finney) and his wife Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) are driving from London to the south of France for the big reveal of a house that Mark designed. The Wallaces have been married for ten years, but the marriage is now strained and there's some talk of divorce. As the couple makes their way south, we learn about what's gone wrong in the marriage to lead to this point. However, the story isn't told in a traditional flashback style; it's told by cutting back and forth between the multiple times the couple has made the same road trip to the south of France, with time jumping forward or back by years based on location. They've been to all these places before, and they all have meaning in the couple's life. The non-linear time in the movie makes it difficult for some viewers, but Finney and Hepburn both give good performances.