Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of May 27-June 2, 2019. I apologize for missing last week's thread, which was down to technical problems. I thought I hit "post" after finishing the post in the editing box, but in fact hit "save as draft", so it never posted and I didn't notice until I opened up the draft posts page to start editing this week's thread. 
Anyhow, there are a bunch of interesting movies worth watching now that your Bucks' epic collapse has come to pass. 
There's more from Star of the Month Paul Newman, and a couple of movies a bit more recent than normal (indeed, there's only one movie from before 1949 this week). As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday is Memorial Day, so it's unsurprising that TCM is spending that day running a bunch of war movies. The holiday came about after the Civil War, but they don't normally show so many Civil War movies on the day. One that is getting run is The Red Badge of Courage, at 2:00 PM. Audie Murphy, who was of course a decorated World War II hero, stars as Henry Fleming, a young northerner who joins the army to fight the South. Henry is unsure of how he's going to act when the actual fighting comes, and sure enough, the first time his unit faces battle, he's a coward who runs off. But eventually he returns and realizes he has to prove himself to his fellow men. The title refers to the blood from battle wounds, which was really something to be avoided in those days since medicine wasn't so modern. John Huston directed, and as the movie became a bone of contention between the higher-ups at MGM, Huston left to make The African Queen, and the movie was severely edited down.
For a bizarre little western, you could do worse than Forty Guns, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 10:59 AM Monday. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica Drummond, the boss of a county in the Arizona Territory, helped by her hothead brother Brockie (John Ericson) and a gang of 40 hired gunmen, hence the title. But the federal government is sending in a new marshal, Griff Bonell (Barry Sullivan), who brings along his two brothers. After all, it's not as if the sheriff (Dean Jagger) is doing much. Griff sets about getting the goods on Jessica, but the two begin to find themselves falling in love with each other, which causes one set of complications. But there's also the fact that events are spiraling out of control, notably with Brockie getting into a gunfight with Griff's equally hot-headed brother Wes (Gene Barry). What makes the movie is that director Sam Fuller loaded it up with sexual innuendo. One interesting scene has a bunch of guys taking baths in barrels, while the proprietor croons about Jessica as a "woman with a whip"!
The Tuesday morning and afternoon lineup on TCM is a series of anthology movies. It kicks off at 6:00 AM with one I don't think I've recommended before: Invitation to the Dance. Gene Kelly had made a series of great musicals for the Freed Unit at MGM, so he let his vanity cloud his mind and pitch an idea that might be interesting artistically, but that he should have known wouldn't work commercially: an anthology telling three stories, using only dance and pantomime, with him starring and directing. (You can see why Stanley Donen was happy to get away from Kelly.) Anyhow, this misfire -- Kelly really bit off more than he could chew -- was the result. Kelly is the one name actor here, with a bunch of dance people. The first story, "Circus", is set against the backdrop of a circus and a love triangle involving a clown and a high-wire walker who both love the same woman. The second, "Ring Around the Rosy", comes across as a rip-off of Max Ophüls' The Earrings of Madame De.... Last and best is Kelly's version of "Sinbad the Sailor" in which he gets a genie (a young boy, not a young Barbara Eden ), and dances against a bunch of animation, shades of Anchors Aweigh.
On Tuesday nights in May, TCM has been running a bunch of romantic comedies under the term of "meet cutes". This final Tuesday in May includes movies from the 1970s and 80s, including The Owl and the Pussycat at 8:00 PM. Barbra Streisand plays Doris, a woman who as we can see in the beginning is struggling to make a living in New York. Also struggling is strait-laced writer Felix (George Segal), who has to pay the bills by working in a bookstore. Doris gets evicted from her apartment at midnight and since she lives in the same building as Felix, knocks on his door and starts to make a complete mess of his life because she's even more of a free-range a**hole than Henry. She gets Felix evicted too, and then they badger Felix's friend out of his apartment, eventually going through a series of apartments. Even though the two are absolute opposites in terms of personality and despite Doris' absolute jerk behavior, the two somehow inexplicably fall in love.
Another movie in which the director plays one of the characters is Mo' Better Blues, on StarzEncore Classics at 10:47 PM Wednesday. Denzel Washington plays Bleek Gilliam, a man who has known nothing but jazz trumpet in his life. He mad a bunch of sacrifices, but eventually made a success for himself as the frontman for the Bleek Gilliam Quintet, playing jazz clubs in New York. They're managed by Bleek's childhood friend Giant (Spike Lee, who also directed). Unfortunately, the various band members, as well as Giant, make all sorts of mistakes to screw up their personal and professional lives. Giant gambles, and is getting into debt over it. The sax player is cheating on his girlfriend, and Bleek himself is juggling two girlfriends. And, the band members want a raise because of the band's success. And then the sax player starts seeing one of Bleek's girlfriends. Oh, and the loan sharks are coming after Giant. Came the band stay together through all this?
On Wednesday night, we get one more night of Paul Newman movies on TCM in his turn as Star of the Month. This includes The Drowning Pool at 2:15 AM Thursday. Newman plays detective Lew Harper, whom you may recall Newman playing in the earlier movie Harper. One day, Harper gets a call from Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), a woman from Louisiana who was a one-time fling Harper had many years ago. She's worried about her husband finding out she's been unfaithful to him, as somebody's blackmailing her. She thinks it's the former chauffeur, and could Harper come to Louisiana to investigate? So he does, but of course all hell starts breaking loose as it seems everybody in this part of Louisiana has secrets and they don't want some out-of-town detective mucking around and finding out what those secrets are. There's the police chief (Anthony Franciosa) and his deputy (Richard Jaeckel); and an oil magnate (Murray Hamilton) and his wife (Gail Strickland). Oh, and the bodies start piling up, too.
For those of you who like more recent movies, I'll mention Mercury Rising, which will be on Starz Edge at 5:19 AM Thursday. Many of you probably remember Bruce Willis with a snotty little child who saw dead people, but this isn't that movie. This time the snotty little kid is young Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes). He's an autistic kid who's got a great knack for recognizing patterns. The NSA have come up with a code they think is unbreakable, so they test it by putting it in a puzzle magazine. Wouldn't you know it, Simon cracks it, which alarms the NSA, who decide to deal with the problem by killing Simon and his parents. (Remember, this was the day when there was a conspiracy theory that there really was an evil Deep State, which remained until the minute they decided to go after Orange Man Bad and suddenly, magically became virtuous.) The man in charge, Kudrow (Alec Baldwin) sends a hitman to kill the family, but they only get the parents. Rogue FBI agent Jeffries (Bruce Willis) takes Simon under his wing and tries to protect him while solving the crime.
For the first time since the fire, TCM is running the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, at 6:00 PM Friday. Charles Laughton plays Quasimodo, the deformed orphan abandoned on the steps of the cathedral and raised there by the bishop eventually becoming the bell ringer and going deaf because of all the noise from the bells. The bishop's brother Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke) protects Quasimodo and persecutes the gypsies, which is how he runs into Esmerelda (Maureen O'Hara). Frollo falls in love with her, but the feeling is most definitely not mutual, as she is in love with the soldier Phoebus (Alan Marshal). Frollo orders her kidnapped, but she escapes and lives with the beggars, even marrying their port Gringoire (Edmond O'Brien) just to keep safe. And then Frollo murders Phoebus and pins the blame on Esmerelda, forcing her to flee to the cathedral and the protection of Quasimodo.
Saturday Night's lineup on TCM is a pair of movies about teen gangs. The second of them is a British film, Violent Playground, at 10:45 PM. Stanley Baker plays Jim Truman, a detective in Liverpool working on an arson case. But he's asked to work with the Juvenile Liaison office, working with the troubled youth in the Gerard Gardens slum district (torn down in the late 80s) to try to prevent them from becoming repeat offenders. One of his assignments has him meeting the Murphy family, in which the two youngest siblings have engaged in some petty shoplifting. While dealing with them, he begins a relationship with the eldest daughter, grown-up Cathie (Anne Heywood). Ultimately, however, it's second-oldest Johnny (David McCallum, six years before The Man From U.N.C.L.E) who interests him, as be may be involved with the ring of arsonists who he was investigating at the beginning. An interesting British look at the teen delinquency problem of the 1950s.
With June 1 coming up on Saturday, it's unsurprising that FXM is pulling a few movies out of the vault to put on the channel. Among them is Down to the Sea in Ships, at 9:35 AM Sunday. Lionel Barrymore plays Bering Joy, captain of a whaling ship in 19th century New Bedford MA. His grandson Jed (Dean Stockwell) is getting to the age that it's time to start learning about growing up and being a man, so Bering wants to take Jed on his next trip to the Antarctic. However, the kid also needs more schooling, so the captain assigns his first mate Dan Lunceford (Richard Widmark) to teach Jed his academic lessons and be a sort of mentor to the young boy. Dan has a lot of stories about the seafaring life to tell Jed, which causes Jed to look up to Dan perhaps a little too much for Bering's liking. They also clash some over the business aspects of the voyage. Meanwhile, a bunch of the difficulties you can expect to happen on a months-long voyage to the Antarctic do, in fact, crop up. The supporting cast includes Cecil Kellaway as the cook, and Harry Morgan.