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From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 5/25/10

4:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Soldier and the Lady (1937 USA): This one’s quite the oddity: an RKO costume drama with scenes from a (reputedly superior) German film, Der Kurier des Zaren, edited into it. Viennese émigré Anton Walbrook stars as Michael Strogoff, an emissary of the Tsar sent to deliver orders to Grand Duke Vladimir (William Stack), whose army is engaged in a life or death struggle in Siberia against the Tartar hordes. Michael meets cute on the train with Tartar spy Zangarra (Margot Grahame), and things get even more complicated when he travels through his home village and must deny all knowledge of his own mother. Co-starring Fay Bainter (as Mom), Akim Tamiroff (as, naturally, a baddie), and Eric Blore (as, for a change, a journalist), The Soldier and the Lady is an enjoyable melodrama with lashings of mild sadism.

7:00 PM Sundance
Mermaid (2007 RUS): Mermaid is a Russian fantasy about Alisa (Masha Shalaeva), the product of a one-night stand who can move inanimate objects using only the power of her mind. She’s trying to live the life of a normal Moscow university student, but meets con man Sasha (Yevgeni Tsyganov), who convinces her to help him in his latest real estate venture: selling land on the Moon. Though this sounds like a recipe for Amelie-style quirkiness, Mermaid defies easy categorization, not least thanks to a surprising and unsettling denouement that will knock you back on your heels. Also airs 5/26 at 2:20 AM.

12:50 PM Starz
Soul Power (2008 USA): If you like soul music—sweet soul music—or outrageous seventies fashions, you won’t want to miss Soul Power. A documentary about the concert scheduled to coincide with 1974’s legendary Ali-Foreman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa, Zaire, the film features James Brown, Miriam Makeba, B.B. King, Bill Withers, and others. The only drawback is that we only get a few performances from each—presumably, there’s more on the DVD. Also airs at 3:50 PM.

8:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Smoke Signals (1998 CAN-USA): A wry comedy-drama of contemporary Indian life based on a book by Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals features Evan Adams as Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a homely, bespectacled type who inveigles himself into a road trip with perfunctory pal Victor Joseph (Adam Beach). Victor’s on his way to Phoenix to pick up the ashes of his estranged father, and grudgingly accepts his travelling companion in exchange for a free bus ticket. What follows is the most entertaining big screen bus trip since Midnight Cowboy, and the film benefits further from fine supporting turns by Gary Farmer and Tantoo Cardinal. It’s followed at 10:45 PM by 1998’s Naturally Native, another Native American-produced feature, and at 12:45 AM by 1920’s silent, but decidedly Anglo-oriented, James Fenimore Cooper adaptation Last of the Mohicans.

Thursday 5/27/10

3:30 PM Sundance
Treeless Mountain (2008 ROK): Writer-director So Yong Kim, responsible for 2006’s opaque character study In Between Days, returns with this superior drama of dysfunctional Korean family life. The story centers upon Bin and Jin, respectively three and seven-year old sisters temporarily left in the care of gruff Big Aunt (Mi-hyang Kim) whilst mother searches for their absent father. Big Aunt, who has a bit of a drinking problem, uses the girls as household servants, sends them out begging when funds run short, and promises them Mom will return when their piggy bank is full. When this condition is met and Mom still doesn’t return, the sisters strike out on their own to find her. This finely detailed drama won the curiously monikered Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

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