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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 03/10/09

1:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
Che! (1969 USA): If you want a serious bio-pic examining the life of Bolivian bad boy Che Guevara, you'd be advised to check out Steven Soderbergh's recent two-part magnum opus or Walter Salles' excellent (and comparatively bite-sized) adaptation of Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries. If, however, you are looking for a prime slice of Hollywood cheese, you can hardly do better than this train wreck from the normally reliable Richard Fleischer. Egyptian-born Omar Sharif is not entirely bad as the famed revolutionary, but you need to see the cigar- and scenery-chewing performance of Jack Palance as Fidel Castro to truly appreciate Che!'s unrelenting awfulness. The film's wrap-around segments - where actors portraying "ordinary" South Americans expound their views on Che - are equally embarrassing. The big news, however, is that Fox has finally liberated a widescreen print from their vaults — so if you've avoided watching Che! on aspect ratio principle in the past, you just ran out of excuses.

10:30 PM Showtime 3
The Ferryman (2006 NZ-GB): An ancient curse gets the better of a group of pleasure cruisers in this minor but enjoyable horror effort from down under. Kerry Fox stars as spunky tour guide Suze, who, with the assistance of skipper Big Dave (Tamer Hassan), is playing host to two couples traveling from New Zealand to Fiji. Along the way they encounter a mysterious cloud and rescue The Greek (John Rhys-Davies), who's been possessed by an evil spirit determined to hack his way into the hearts of our holidaying half-dozen. If you tune in expecting Peter Jackson-style ultra-gore you'll be disappointed, but The Ferryman is a perfectly serviceable, rather old-fashioned supernatural thriller.

Wednesday 03/11/09

4:00 AM IFC
Mon Oncle d'Amerique (1980 FRA): There was a time — why, I think it was around 1980! — when big-beaked Gerard Depardieu was a huge star and quite a sex symbol in his native Gaul. I never really got his appeal — at his best, the guy looked like he had a baked potato stuck between his eyes — but he was certainly in some fine films. Mon Oncle d'Amerique (not to be confused with either Mon Oncle or Mon Oncle Antoine, both recommended recently in these here parts) stars Depardieu as a factory manager about to lose his job, as well as Nicole Garcia as an actress confronted by an unenviable moral dilemma and Roger Pierre as a man going through a mid-life crisis. This being an Alain Resnais film, however, it's far from a vanilla trilogy of middle-class woe, and is framed as a psychological case study being conducted by real-life psychologist Henri Laborit. It's an easier film to "get" than other Resnais brainteasers (Last Year at Marienbad, take a bow), and looks wonderful thanks to cinematographer Sacha Vierny.

Thursday 03/12/09

4:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Squaw Man (1931 USA): Warner Baxter, of all people, portrays an English aristocrat unfairly blamed for the sins of a relative in this typically preachy Cecil B. DeMille schlockbuster. Baxter plays Jim Wingate, whose cousin Henry (Paul Cavanagh) has embezzled ten thousand pounds cash money. Jim decides to start afresh by changing his name and relocating to the Wild West, where he falls for and weds Indian girl Naturich (Lupe Velez). Seven years later, Henry is killed in a fox-hunt after having paid his debt to society, and widow Diana (Eleanor Boardman) heads to Arizona to tell Jim the news — only to discover he's gone native. This being 1931, this isn't considered an acceptable lifestyle choice, and the story ends on a predictably tragic note. This was the third time De Mille filmed The Squaw Man, and though I prefer the original 1914 version, this iteration is not bad as far as early talkies go.

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