Turner Classic Movies Vintage Movies Top Picks Great Directors June 12 - 14 2009 Review

Turner Classic Films is presenting the work of great directors all months long.  During weekdays it's one director in the day... another in the evening and on the weekends its 24 hours of a great directors movies.

Friday june 12th during the day it's the films of Jacques Tourneur.  He directed what many consider the best film noir, 1947's Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas and Rhonda Fleming (it was remade in the 80s into the so-so Against all Odds with Jeff Bridges and James Woods) and the great Val Lewton horror films of the 40s and 50s like  Curse of the Demon aka Night of the Demon(1958)  airing at 10:15 am.,  The Leopard Man  airing at 1 p.m.  PST,  I Walked with a Zombie,  airing at 2:15 p.m.,  and Cat People airing at 3:30 p.m.  There's also the nifty 1956 film noir  Nightfall with Aldo Ray, Brian Keith and Anne Bancroft airing at 5 a.m. in the morning.  It's about a guy on a hunting trip who gets mixed up with some very bad bank robbers.   There's  1958's Fearmakers  wherein  Korean war veteran Dana Andrews discovers that his P.R. firm in Washington D.C. has been taken over by communist spies!! (it airs at 6:30 in the morning on the West Coast). 

On Friday evening it's some movies from Woody Allen.   It begins with an interesting documentary made in 2002 by Richard Schickel.  It's a TCM original and the first time Woody cooperated with a documentary about his movies.    This airs at 5:00 p.m. (PST).  It's followed by most of the best movies he made with  Mia Farrow, 1984's Broadway Danny Rose.  And then Oscar winning  Hannah and Her Sisters from 1985 with great performances b y  Michael Caine, Barbara Hershey, Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest.   (it airs at 8:15 p.m. on the West coast).  It's followed by Woody's innovative derivation on Buster Keaton masterpiece Sherlock Jr, known as The Purple Rose of Cairo.  It's the story of a movie star stepping out of the movie screen (Jeff Daniels) and into the real life of one of his biggest fans played by Mia Farrow.  It airs at 10:15.   This is followed by the Ingmar Bergman like mostly serious Interiors from 1978 starring Diane Keaton, Geraldine Page, E.G. Marshall and Maureen Stapleton.    Then you get one of his most entertaining and funniest movies...  1969's  Take the Money and Run  airing at 1:30 in the morning.  Good stuff.

On  Saturday June 13th  TCM  presents 24 hours of movies by  Billy Wilder and features some of his best and most popular films.   My personal favorite Wilder films screening on Saturday include:  The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes  which is a racy re-telling of Holme's investigation of the Loch Ness monster as he gets involved with a mysterious French woman (airs at 7:45 a.m. on the West Coast).  I have seen and enjoyed  1959's Some Like it Hot more than a dozen times  and still enjoy watching Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown and George Raft do their thing (it's on at 12:30 PST). Don't miss  the film noir classic Double Indemnity (Barbara Stanwyck, convinces insurance salesman Fred MacMurrray to kill her husband) which airs at 7:15 p.m. and is followed by the masterpiece Sunset Boulevard  at 9:15 p.m. in which a struggling bitter screenwriter gets involved with an older aging former silent film star  (William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Eric von Stroheim and look for Buster Keaton in a memorable scene).   Other Wilder films some good;  Fortune Cookie;  some I don't like such as  Kiss Me Stupid  also air during the day.

On Sunday June 14th TCM presents 24 hours of movies by one of the greatest directors of all time  Howard Hawks.  Hawks worked in just about every genre of film and with some of the biggest stars who ever worked in Hollywood.  He created dozens of classics and most of his films are gems very much worth watching.   TCM presents some of his best  with great screwball comedies like  Twentieth Century and Bringing up Baby, (airing at 11 a.m. and 9:00 a.m  on the West Coast)   the comic masterpiece , His Girl Friday, (airing at 1 p.m. PST)  Bogart and Bacall's best;  To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, (airing at 5 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.)  the true story of a religious pacifist who turned into a war hero starring Gary Cooper; Sergant York, (airing at 6:30 a.m.)  the delightful comic gem with Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper;  Ball of Fire (airing at 3:00 p.m. on the west coast) that he remade 7 years later  for Danny Kaye as The Song is Born (not quite as good screening at 3:00 a.m. Sunday Morning).  And the superb romantic drama with Cary Grant  Only Angel Have Wings (airing at 9 p.m. PST).

Two Hawks movies that aren't as well known are screened that I'll mention for Hawks buffs. Since  1932's Tiger Shark  stars Edward G. Robinson, Richard Arlen and Zita Johan.  It's the story of a Tuna Fisherman who marries a woman in love with a another man.  It screens Sunday at 5:00 a.m.  . 1943's Air Force and 1932's The Crowd Roars are lesser Hawk efforts still worth catching at 11:15 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. (Monday morn).  Air Force is about a bomber crew in World War 2, with John Ridgely, Gig Young and Arthur Kennedy,   and  The Crowd Roars stars James Cagney and Joan Blondell in a story about a race-car drive who tries to stop his brother from following in his footsteps.

Enjoy some great flicks.