Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of June 24-30, 2019. It's the first full week of summer going on, so no football until training camps open at the end of July. Well, there's the other football, if you want to watch the CONCACAF Paper Cup. So now is an excellent time to sit back and relax with some movies. There's one last night of Jane Powell and one last night of World II movies on TCM. There's also a lot of interesting stuff on some of the other movie channels. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
A search of the archives suggests that it's been quite some time since I last recommended The Wild One. It's going to be on again this week, at 11:30 AM Monday on TCM. Marlon Brando stars as Johnny Strabler, the head of a motorcycle gang that goes from one town to the next, basically just enjoying life in their way and making life a mess for the people who just want to live quietly. In one town the gang steals a trophy for Johnny which causes them to have to flee to the next town. At a diner in town, Johnny meets young Kathie (Mary Murphy) and he takes a shining to her. The feeling winds up being mutual, even if Kathie isn't so sure she should have these feelings for him. Things are about to get worse for the gang, however, when another group of motorcyclists shows up. These guys are led by Chino (Lee Marvin), who had been in Johnny's gang before getting kicked out, so Chino wants revenge. This is the movie where Brando is asked the question “What are you rebelling against?”, to which he answers, “Whatcha got?”
If Brando and his gang want the town to be wide open for their hijinks, perhaps the next title might be appropriate: Wide Open Town, at 5:05 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns. This is yet another Hopalong Cassidy western, this time starring him (real name William Boyd) as a man with his sidekicks Lucky (Russell Hayden) and California (Andy Clyde) on the trail of some cattle that have been rustled. They arrive in the town of Gunsight, where the bad guy Fraser (Victor Jory) is busy beating the crap out of the newspaper publisher Jim Stuart (Morris Ankrum). Stuart also happens to be the mayor, so he asks Hopalong to become sheriff in hopes of cleaning up the crime in Gunsight. Hopalong meets the local saloon owner Belle Langtry (Evelyn Brent), and they could even fall in love, but it turns out that Belle is actually a front for Fraser's group of bad guys. Of course, we know that Hopalong and friends are going to save the day because they always do.
Tuesday night brings another edition in the quarterly (or so) series of Treasures from the Disney Vault to TCM. This time, there are a couple of cartoon shorts from the 30s, but much of the night's lineup is live-action from the 60s and 70s. The bad news is that the schedule seems to be off by an hour as the second movie of the night is a 104-minute movie in a three-hour time slot. That's a shame, since I'm looking forward to seeing Emil and the Detectives, which is listed as being at 3:15 AM Wednesday on the TCM schedule and 2:15 AM on my box guide. Based on the late Weimar-era novel by Erich Kästner, the story is of a boy Emil (Bryan Russell) who is traveling to Berlin to see his grandmother and bring her some money from his mother. However, a strange man steals the money from him and Emil in trying to track down the thief winds up with a bunch of junior detectives led by Gustav, and also gets involved in a bank robbery masterminded by the Baron (Walter Slezak). Location shooting and color photography help enhance the atmosphere.
I know how much you all like the more mindless 80s movies, so the one I'll mention this week is Stakeout, which will be on Cinemax at 11:35 AM Tuesday. Convict Stick Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) has just escapes from prison, and the authorities are watching people who had a connection to him. One of those is his ex-girlfriend Maria (Madeleine Stowe). The police pit two pairs of cops on the stakeout, working in shifts around the clock. Chris and Bill (Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez respectively) have a bit of a friendly rivalry with the other pair (Dan Lauria and Forest Whitaker), but things take a more serious turn for Chris when he find himself falling in love with Maria, something that's all sorts of wrong even though Bill finds himself covering for Chris. And then just as Chris is about to let Maria know his true feelings for her, what should happen but Stick coming back into the picture, putting everybody in danger. Formulaic, but successful enough that a sequel was made.
We get one last night of Jane Powell movies on TCM this Wednesday, concluding with a movie in which she only has a cameo: Marie: A True Story, at 1:30 AM Thursday. Marie Raghinetti (Sissy Spacek) is a mother of three who at the start of the movie gets out of an abusive marriage, moving back in with her mother and working her way through college. After graduation, she meets old college friend Eddie (Jeff Daniels) at an event for the new governor of Tennessee, and Eddie gets her a job in the bureau of corrections. She's good enough at her work that she eventually winds up on the Parole Board. But once there, she realizes that the governor is selling pardons. She tries to get various people to understand the gravity of the situation, but she's stonewalled and ultimately fired. So she sued for wrongful termination and hires former Watergate counsel Fred Thompson (playing himself) to represent her. Daniels shows he really could act, while Morgan Freeman get to play a less-than-perfect person as a member of the Parole Board.
I've mentioned the Michael Shayne movies before. Lloyd Nolan made a series of these detective movies at Fox in the early 40s, and one that I don't think I've mentioned before is The Man Who Wouldn't Die, which will be on FXM at 4:50 AM Thursday. Dudley Wolff (Paul Harvey, not the one with the pregnant pauses) is a wealthy businessman under investigation by Washington with an adult daughter Catherine (Marjorie Weaver) and trophy wife Anna (Helene Reynolds). There's an odd nighttime burial after which Catherine shows up to announce she's been married. Later that night she gets shot at, but everybody tells her she just dreamed it. So she finds her old friend Shayne and gets him to pose as her new husband so that he can investigate what's going on without being found out. Mr. Wolff has one of those classic movie old dark houses, so there's a lot to investigate, especially once there's more shooting and a corpse that goes missing. It's a bit convoluted, but Nolan gives another good performance and makes this worth watching.
I'm surprised at the number of more recent movies I'm suggesting this week. Two from the 80s, one from two years ago, and next up is one from 1999: Waking Ned Devine, at 7:50 AM Thrsday on HBO Comedy. Jack O'Shea (Ian Bannen) is an old man living in a small Irish village, and the acquaintance of Ned Devine. One day, the Irish lottery announces that the winning ticket came from Jack and Ned's village. But after several days have gone by, nobody has come to claim the winnings. Jack eventually realizes that it must be Ned who won, and goes to see Ned. Unfortunately, Ned is in his chair, dead of shock on having heard the news that he won the lottery. And since there are no heirs to the ticket, Irish inheritance law isn't going to give any of the money to Ned's friends. With that in mind, Jack convinces his good friend Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) to play the part of Ned Devine. Keeping up the ruse isn't going to be so simple, and these aren't the only two who want a share of the money.
Thursday brings the final day of TCM's two-month spotlight on World War II movies. One that hasn't aired recently is To Hell and Back, which will be on at 8:00 PM Thursday. You may have heard that Audie Murphy is generally listed as the most-decorated American soldier in World War II, and of course you know from the westerns I recommend here that he became an actor after the war. This movie purports to tell Audie's true story, with Audie playing himself. Young Audie grew up in East Texas with an absent father and a sick mother, so he was forced to quit school and become the man of the house to help feed his younger siblings. And then when he was 16, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into World War II. Murphy signed up even though he was only 16, and was shipped off to the European theater, fighting his way through Italy and into France and Germany. Along the way, he committed those acts of heroism that if anything are actually underplayed in the movie.
If you have the Cinemax package, they've been running Darkest Hour a lot recently. It'll be on again this week at 3:50 AM Wednesday on regular Cinemax (three hours later if you only have the west coast feed), and again at 4:45 AM Friday on 5Star Max. It's May, 1940, and the government of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) is falling because of the failure of British action against the Nazis in Norway. Worse, the Germans have just invaded the Benelux countries, so France is certain to be next. Chamberlain resigns, and Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) is selected to lead a War Cabinet. But Churchill has a past history of failures, and there are a lot of people who don't like him and his idea of never suing for peace with the Germans. Among them are King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn). Things get worse when the Nazis do invade France and the British retreat to Dunkirk with no further retreat possible since they're up against the Strait of Dover. Of course, as we know from history, Churchill triumphed.
I'm happy to see that The Ritz is back on TCM this week, at 10:00 PM Friday. Jack Weston plays Gaetano, a midwestern son-in-law in a New York crime family. The patriarch is on his deathbed, and one of his last actions is to tell his son (ie. Gaetano's brother-in-law) Carmine (Jerry Stiller) to get Gaetano. Since Gaetano knows he's in danger, he flees, eventually making his way to a hole-in-the-wall hotel in known as the Ritz. What he doesn't realize until he checks in is that the Ritz is actually a gay bathhouse! Carmine is trying to find Gaetano, and gets a detective, the falsetto-voiced Michael (Treat Williams) into the Ritz. There's also a chubby chaser harassing Gaetano, while Chris (F. Murray Abraham) helps Gaetano navigate the place. And then there's Googie (Rita Moreno), a once big star who thinks she'll get her big break here and that Gaetano is just the man to provide it. Can Gaetano stay safe? The Ritz is a hilarious movie that probably couldn't be made today.