dvr this The only person who Hitchcock directed to an Oscar, Joan Fontaine, is wonderfully terrified as a meek heiress who marries a mysterious playboy played with devilish creepiness by Cary Grant at his best. Suspicion is one of Hitchcock’s great suspense melodramas of the 1940s, and it holds up nearly 70 years later, engrossing…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies Monday, Feb. 4, 5 p.m. Arthur Penn’s hyper-violent-for-1967 film about the legendary outlaws was wildly influential and it turned Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway into superstars. You can see the film in the work of Quentin Tarentino, Oliver Stone and Andrew Dominik, among others. Film history aside, it’s also entertaining….
dvr this Starz, Friday, Jan. 25, 10 p.m. The Starz show about mostly naked muscle men killing each other and having sex with each other and many of the women they come into contact with is loosely based on the actual Roman slave rebellion during the first century B.C. It’s astonishingly violent and the sex…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies 2:15 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 22 One of my favorite movies, Rebecca is romantic, creepy, thrilling and among the most beautifully shot films ever made. It is based on the Daphne du Maurier novel about a young woman who marries a widower and is haunted by his past, his housekeeper and…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 5 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 12 As camp masterpieces go, there’s no competition for this insane classic about two sisters, one stuck in a wheelchair (Joan Crawford) and the other suffering from delusions of grandeur (Bette Davis). Davis, under layers of makeup and in dresses more appropriate for a Victorian child,…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Friday, Dec. 14, 2:45 p.m. Katherine Hepburn won her third Oscar (in a tie with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl) playing Eleanor of Aquitaine, the scheming estranged wife of King Henry II (Peter O’Toole). At Christmas 1183, court wrangling over who is be heir to the throne – Eleanor wants…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Monday Nov. 19, 2:45 p.m. Julie Andrews is a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman in Blake Edwards’ hilarious musical comedy. Set in 1930s Paris, Andrews plays an out of work singer who gets a gimmick by pretending to be a male female impersonator. Complications…
dvr this Fox, Thursday, Sept. 13, 9 p.m. While it’s become cool to hate Glee, I haven’t become cool. I still find the campy high school musical soap opera absurdly enjoyable, and it’s still the gayest thing on TV. Last season, the show’s biggest stars graduated, and just like every other TV show about high…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Sunday, Aug. 26, 11:30 p.m. King Vidor’s 1949 adaptation of Ayn Rand’s ridiculous novel about an ambitious, obnoxiously individualistic architect is high camp absurdity, which is fitting because of how influential Rand’s politics are among the most selfish of the current Republican leaders. Gary Cooper is Howard Roark, in arguably…
dvr this Showtime, repeated constantly starting July 9 Matt LeBlanc plays Matt LeBlanc in this hilarious satire of Hollywood sitcom production. Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig play Sean and Beverly Lincoln, two British TV writers whose hit BBC sitcom is being adapted for American audiences. Despite bearing no resemblance to the show’s original star (the…
