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Oasis countered with the grindingly dull Roll With It, truly one of the worst efforts from that tedious band. The result was an unsurprising win for Blur, and three less-than-special CDs added to my overstuffed collection. Yes, those were the halcyon days of Britpop, when shaggy-haired rockers rubbed elbows with future war criminals like Tony Blair in a squirm-inducing rite of political passage. Those less-than-golden memories are recaptured in this pleasant if inconsequential documentary, which features interviews with the swaggering Gallagher Brothers, a bitter Damon Albarn, and a befuddled Jarvis Cocker, amongst others. No sight of Menswear, though.

Thursday 6/9/11

2:00 PM HBO2
Dead Again (1991 USA): Kenneth Branagh’s stylish neo-noir never gets as much credit as it deserves, so I’ll give it a shout out this afternoon. Branagh directs himself in two roles: as Roman Strauss, a ‘40s musician executed for killing his wife with some scissors; and as Mike Church, a ‘90s private dick whose current case - which revolves around amnesia, hypnosis and a spooky mansion—seems strangely linked to the Strauss murder. The film is cleverly structured and features a tip-top supporting cast, including Emma Thompson (Branagh’s spouse at the time), Derek Jacobi, Hanna Schygulla, Andy Garcia, and Robin Williams. Yep, even Robin Williams doesn’t ruin this one.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Them! (1954 USA): June is going to be one of the best months ever on TCM: Drive-In Double Features are the theme, and every Thursday evening the channel will be airing four or five gems from the Golden Age of Science Fiction (the 1950s, of course). Tonight the Drive-In features one of the best giant monster movies of all time, Them!, in which dear old Edmund Gwenn does battle against the mutant ants (damn you, radioactivity!) populating Los Angeles’ sewer system.

Them! is amongst the cream of the big bug movie crop, and also features James Whitmore as a policeman, James Arness as a G-Man, and Leonard Nimoy as a teletype operator. It’s followed at 6:45 PM by Cosmic Monsters (1958), a rare British genre entry headlined by Forrest Tucker; at 8:15 PM by the world’s first giant spider movie, Tarantula (1955); at 9:45 PM by 1957’s set-in-Mexico thriller The Black Scorpion; at 11:30 PM by the laughable turkey monster that is The Giant Claw (1957); and at 1:00 AM by The Wasp Woman (1959), in which Susan Cabot makes some unwise choices in her quest for eternal youth. You’re going to need an extra big bucket of popcorn tonight and every Thursday night in June!

Friday 6/10/11

12:25 AM HBO Signature
Backyard (2009 MEX): Here’s Mexico’s official entry for the 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar. It didn’t win (heck, it didn’t even get nominated), but is well worth a look nonetheless. Directed by Carlos Carrera, whose 2005 drama The Crime of Father Amaro was an outstanding character study concerning a morally compromised priest, Backyard tells a grim tale set in the border town of Ciudad Juarez. It’s here where Mexico’s incendiary drug wars - fueled in part by (believe it or not) U.S. trained paramilitaries - are at their hottest, and where hundreds of women have been murdered since 1995. The film stars Ana de la Reguera (soon to be seen in Cowboys and Aliens) as Blanca Bravo, a police officer sent to the city to try to put a stop to the killing. Needless to say, she encounters difficulties. Backyard is not quite as good as Father Amaro, but those in search of a superior police procedural need look no further.

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