Movies-on-TV: Ken Fox's Picks for the Week of Jan. 14
Keanu Reeves in River's Edge courtesy MGM
Monday, Jan. 14, at 6:45 pm/ET
Chinatown | HBOS
Forget the godawful
Bucket List and pretty much everything he's done since
The Shining (
The Departed notwithstanding): This is the Jack we like to think of when we think Nicholson. He plays Jake, a sleazy, 1930s private dick who winds up with a noseful of trouble after taking on what looks like a routine case.
Tuesday, Jan. 15, 8 pm
Fight Club | HBO2
It's not David Fincher's best film - this year's
Zodiac gets our vote - but his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel has found its cult, and it might prove Fincher's most enduring. If you don't already know what it's about, we're not telling. After all, the first rule of Fight Club is... well, you must know at least that much.
Wednesday, Jan. 16, 10:05 pm
Live Flesh | FLX
Pedro Almodovar made the switch from candy-color sex farces to sincere, full-blown melodrama with
The Flower of My Secret, but he didn't really hit his stride until this very loose, very sexy adaptation of novelist Ruth Rendell's dank tale of bad luck, seething envy and, almost incidentally, crime. Javier Bardem stars as a paralyzed former Madrid cop tangled in a web of erotic intrigue.
Thursday, Jan. 17, 7:15 pm
Who Are You, Polly Magoo? | Sundance Channel
Former fashion photographer William Klein made his filmmaking debut with this rarely seen take on the glossy, flavor-of-the-month world he knew so well. It's a surreal satire that Almodovar himself (see above) has rightfully called the epitome of '60s pop filmmaking. Catch it while you can.
Friday, Jan. 18, 8 pm
The File on Thelma Jordon | TCM
After her unforgettable turn in
Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck began playing a series of man-eating femme fatales, and this entry from the great noir director Robert Siodmak is one of her best. She plays a married woman who gets involved with a married cop (Wendell Corey). Next thing he knows, someone's dead.
Saturday, Jan. 19, 9 pm
River's Edge | IFC
Out of all teen-themed movies of the late '80s that tried to capture that generation's alienation and anomie, Tim Hunter's account of a real-life murder and cover-up among a group of terminally disaffected kids was the most chilling. Need more? It stars a young Keanu Reeves in his big breakout role.
Sunday, Jan. 20, 9:45 pm
Diva | TMC
For a moment there, Jean-Jacques Beineix looked like the next big thing out of France. It never quite happened, but his visually scrumptious feature debut has held up even if his career hasn't. In it, a mailman's (Frederic Andrei) obsession with an American opera diva (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) gets him into a whole lot of a trouble with music bootleggers and a pair of nasty thugs.
What's your take? Does anything on Ken's list sound like must-see (or at least must-DVR) TV?
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