TCM Alert: Journalist Marathon (2-5-21)

 

Turner Classic Movies has an excellent marathon lined up for this first Friday of February 2021. In the late afternoon and early evening things kick off with a rare LA gumshoe vehicle with Warren Oates (Chandler) followed by Terrence Malick's debut Badlands with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. 

 

In the prime time slots are two war reporter classics from the early 80s, The Year of Living Dangerously, featuring the young and beautiful Mel Gibson (pre wacko) and Sigourney Weaver and one that I recommended you do not miss - Under Fire - starring Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman. Both films are about the romances between war correspondents and photojournalists during the good ole days of military coups and Sandinistas - you know when foreign governments were the unstable ones. Nolte gives one of his greatest performances and Hackman is in top form in Under Fire, a film that I would definitely categorize as 'Lost Cinema' and ripe for discovery.

In the early morning hours, the marathon moves from Cambodia to Black exploitation with the Oscar winner The Killing Fields and the Pam Grier vehicle Friday Foster. This is one of the best Friday evening TCM marathons in recent memory - set your DVR!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oscar Preview Part I: My favorite 20 films of 2016

Image
With the Academy Awards airing next weekend, I've decided it's finally time I've gotten around to posting a list of my favorite films from 2016. I still haven't watched every movie that came out last year (and I probably never will) and I'm sure some films I missed deserve to be on here. I'll try harder next time.  1. La La Land (Damien Chazelle) A sweet escape -- great music, excellent photography and gushing delight. Gosling and Stone have infectious onscreen chemistry and this simple love story/musical hybrid is a cinematic treat. 2. Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford) Tom Ford drips style in every frame. A dark feature where Ford embraces his inner Hitchcock/DePalma that jettisons his debut A Single Man . Nocturnal Animals is a harrowing film with excellent performances from leads Adams and Gyllenhaal, but most especially the two supporting roles from Shannon and Tyler-Johnson.  3. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman) Made in America tra
Read more

The Dream is Always the Same: From Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" to Timothee Chalamet in "Call Me by Your Name"

Image
Tangerine Dream's sultry synths pulse in the background as the camera zooms out from twinky Tom Cruise's wayfarers, a slim cigarette dangling from his lips as he flashes back to a reoccurring dream of sneaking into the neighbor's house and stumbling upon a beautiful girl showering, she invites him to wash her back, but the steam obscures his reach for her until he finds himself transported to a classroom, three hours late for the college entrance exams. With the aforementioned opening scene following the moody neon pastel credits as a night train rolls through a gritty Chicago twilight, we are introduced to Joel Goodson and for the most part, Tom Cruise, in Paul Brickman's 1983 classic Risky Business . The film was a breakout for Cruise, who some 35 years later has both delivered and disappointed on the potential of his brilliant performance in this early movie. Cruise can act and when he truly slips into character, as he did when portraying the innocent "Good
Read more