Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of March 21-27, 2022. There's no more drama involving Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams, at least not until camp opens in the summer. So why not spend the down time with some good movies? Amazingly, there are no movies from before 1940 this week, although I had thought of recommending The Broadway Melody at 4:00 AM Tuesday. Still, there are a lot of other interesting movies on this week, including Oscar nominations on non-TCM channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start the week off with a happy little movie: Leaving Las Vegas, at 3:00 AM Monday on TCM. Nicolas Cage plays Ben Sanderson, who at the start of the movie is buying a bunch of alcohol to go on the bender of all benders. That's because he's an alcoholic, and it's already cost him his job as a Hollywood producer along with his personal relationships. He tells people he's going to get away to Las Vegas for a while. But "for a while" really means "permanently, as he plans to drink himself to death in Vegas. Once there, he meets Sera (Elisabeth Shue), one of those Hollywood tropes, the "prostitute with a heart of gold". Ben trusts Sera with his story, telling her not to interfere because there's nothing she can do to stop him. However, she becomes enough of friends with him that she checks him out of the strip motel and brings him back to her apartment. But for both of them, things are definitely going to get worse before they reach the end of their storylines. Director Mike Figgis was able to get several cameos; look for Julian Lennon and Lou Rawls.
I know how much you all love the accuracy of Hollywood biopics, so I'll mention that Buffalo Bill gets an airing this week, at 12:56 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns. Joel McCrea plays William Cody, who at the start of the movie is an Army scout who defends a US Senator (Moroni Olsen) and the senator's daughter Louisa (Maureen O'Hara) from an Indian attack. Bill falls in love with Louisa and they eventually marry, although the marriage was not as happy as portrayed here. Along the way, Bill hunts a lot of buffalo and gets in battles with Indians like Chief Yellow Hand (Anthony Quinn). But it's not until he starts a "wild west" show to bring the mythos of the old American west, which wasn't so old at the time, to the rest of the world, that he becomes famous, aided in no small part by his publicist Ned Buntline (Thomas Mitchell). However, Bill also uses his fame to bring the plight of the Indians to the fore, accusing eastern money of fomenting Indian wars, and that brings Bill enemies in high places.
I think it's been a while since 49th Parallel has shown up on TCM. It's back this week, at 9:15 AM Tuesday. Filmed in 1941 before the US was drawn into World War II but not released until 1942, the movie tells the story of a Nazi submarine patrolling the waters off Canada, that's forced into Hudson Bay. When the sub is sunk, a small party is able to escape, headed by Lt. Hirth (Eric Portman). Their mission is to get south to the US which, still being neutral, will be forced to repatriate the Nazi sailors. On their journey, however, they find that the Canadians are a surprisingly resourceful lot, and getting to the US isn't going to be easy (not because of Canada's size, however; the Nazis are able to go west and east quite easily). This was commissioned by the British government as a propaganda effort, and director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger responded with a complex story in which the Nazis aren't stereotypically ultra-evil. It's also an all-star movie, with a lot of people taking pay cuts to appear, including Laurence Olivier as a Québecois trapper (lol); Leslie Howard as an artist who wanted to sit out the war; Raymond Massey as an AWOL soldier; and Glynis Johns (still alive at 98 as of this writing) as a girl in a Hutterite religious community.
A vintage Oscar-winner not on TCM this week is The Three Faces of Eve. It is, however, on FXM, at 11:40 AM Tuesday. Based on a true story, the movie tells of Eve White (Joanne Woodward), who has a husband Ralph (David Wayne) and a young daughter. However, Eve also has terrible headaches and blackouts, which leads her to seek medical treatment from a psychiatrist, Dr. Luther (Lee J. Cobb). At the psychiatrist's office, Eve starts acting strangely, whereupon we learn that she's got a second personality as Eve Black, who is much more licentious than Eve White. Ralph doesn't believe in the idea of multiple personality disorder, and after a lot of marital difficulty between him and Eve, he finally divorces her. (To be fair to Ralph, Eve Black tries to hurt the kid.) Eve, meanwhile, has a third personality, somewhere between the first two Eves in temperament, lurking inside her, but perhaps that third personality might be the key to figuring out what caused her to have multiple personalities in the first place.
Another film that I'm happy to see showing up on TCM this week is The Solid Gold Cadillac, which will be on at 10:30 AM Wednesday. Judy Holliday plays Laura Partridge, a woman who has invested in a conglomerate by buying a small number of shares. It's enough to allow her to show up at that annual shareholders' meeting, and show up she does, asking all sorts of questions that more or less have the board facepalming since they're less than honest businessmen. That is, excepting the chairman. McKeever (Paul Douglas), who is about to take a big job in the Defense Department, and decides that the thing to do with Partridge is to give her a job in the PR department answering the questions of other small shareholders. But McKeever falls in love with Partridge along the way. Partridge, for her part, finds out that one part of the conglomerate is deliberately putting another part out of business for arcane financial reasons, and decides to fight it.
Poor Buster Keaton. MGM misused him when they hired him at the end of the silent era, and he suffered for 30 years before a comeback. And his final film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, is a bit of a mess. You can, however, see it on TCM at 6:30 AM Thursday. Zero Mostel stars as Pseudolus, a slave to Roman senator Senex (Michael Hordern). He lives next door to Marcus Lycus (Phil Silvers), who procures young women for high-class men, and Pseudolus' son Hero (Michael Crawford) falls in love with Phila, who is one of the women Marcus Lycus has obtained for a wealthy man. So Pseudolos, being a schemer by nature, comes up with increasingly convoluted plots to keep Phila away from the man who wants to buy her. However, events conspire to make his plots rather more risky and less likely to succeed. As for Keaton, he plays Erronius, who lives on the other side of Senex's house and is part of a running joke (no pun intended) about running around the seven hills of Rome. Based on a popular Broadway musical, and you'll probably recognize the tune to the opening song "Comedy Tonight" even if you don't recognize the lyrics.
For Those of you who want more recent movies, you could try Airheads. You can see it at 9:26 AM Thursday on HBO Comedy. Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler play Chazz, Rex, and Pip respectively. Together, they're the three members of the Lone Rangers, a band that has recorded a couple of songs but can't get anybody to listen to the songs. They're currently trying to get into a rock station and eventually do, getting an interview with DJ "The Shark" (Joe Mantegna). Station GM Milo (Michael McKean) doesn't want the Lone Rangers on the air, which results in Rex and Chazz pulling pistols on Milo and holding the station members hostage to get their demo tape played. However, things get complicated when the demo tape gets eaten by the reel-to-reel player and police surround the station. However, as in Dog Day Afternoon, a crowd of fans, having heard the situation develop on air, has come to the studio to surround it and cheer on the band. (Nowadays, shit like I Anus Radio would all be programmed remotely and there would be no DJs at the station to get an interview with.)
Another great movie about the entertainment industry is Day for Night. TCM has this one on at 11:00 AM Friday. François Truffaut plays an alter ego named Ferrand, a movie director who has gone down to a studio in Nice to make his newest film, about an English woman who marries a French man and falls in love with her father-in-law. However, getting the film made is not as easy as it looks. Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), the English actress, has had a nervous breakdown and is uninsurable. Alphone (Jean-Pierre Léaud), the male lead, may be about to have a nervous breakdown himself. Supporting actress Séverine (Valentina Cortese) is prone to get drunk and has trouble remembering her lines. A woman in a small part gets pregnant and is about to start showing. And on and on and on, with calamities both hilarious and tragic. As Ferrand says in the opening scene, "Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive."
Up against Day for Night is the movie that made Leonardo DiCaprio a star: What's Eating Gilbert Grape, at 11:00 AM Friday on Showtime Showcase. (Thankfully, it has another airing at 4:30 PM Wednesday on Showtime 2.) Gilbert Grape, played by Johnny Depp, is a man in small-town Iowa with a tough life. Dad committed suicide many years back; Mom (Darlene Cates) has eaten herself into a case of morbid obesity; and kid brother Arnie (DiCaprio) has intellectual disabilities. At least there are two other sisters to offer some help. Gilbert has been having an affair with married Betty (Mary Steenburgen), but a convention of vintage Airstream travel trailers comes through town, resulting in Becky (Juliette Lewis) and her grandma getting stuck in town. This might give Gilbert another chance at love with Betty leaves town after the sudden death of her husband. Still, there's a whole lot to deal with regarding Mom and Arnie.
I know I've recommended the movie Valmont before, but around the same time, another movie from the same source material was released: Dangerous Liaisons, which will be on TCM at 2:00 AM Sunday. In France not long before the revolution, the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) is a ladies' man who has one conquest after another. His former girlfriend the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) decides to taunt him by proposing a deal: seduce the young Cécile de Volanges (Uma Thurman), and he'll get to spend a night with Merteuil. Mertueil wants this because Cécile is set to be married off to Merteuil's current boyfriend. Valmont, however, is trying to seduce the morally upright Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), married but notably faithful to her husband. So Valmont suggests if he can bed Tourvel, then he gets the rights to another night with Merteuil. All these machinations leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Keanu Reeves is hilariously miscast as Danceny, who loves Cécile; Mildred Natwick near the end of her life plays Valmont's aunt who is a grande dame of the Parisian social scene.