It may seem like a weekend of chick-flick mediocrities in the theaters -- Eat Pray Love, Cairo Time -- but on cable you could get a feminist overhaul that doesn't necessarily include sexless romance with hunky Mediterraneans...
I Shot Andy Warhol (Indieplex, Saturday @ 2:35 AM)
Mary Harron's 1996 take on the life story of borderline personality/queer revolutionary/S.C.U.M. Manifesto author/cheap whore/Factory parasite/Andy assassin Valerie Solanas is the real 15 minutes Solanas never got in real life. If there's a case to be made for castrating bughouse-dyke feminist militantism, this film makes it. Jared Harris plays Warhol strictly for chuckles, but as Solanas, Lili Taylor is a firebrand of man-hate and streetwise hubris. At her best, Taylor can shift from a whispery intelligence to the strident bark of the defiant underdog in a heartbeat; here, no matter how meshuga Solanas gets, we see a moral fire burning behind her eyes.
Holy Smoke (IFC, Saturday @ 8:00 PM & 2:45 AM)
Infectiously anarchic and crazy, Jane Campion's 1999 movie takes on cult membership vs. deprogramming, but obviously bigger fish are on the line -- it's a parable about gender combat. Common sense and character sometimes have to wait it out as the film goes bonkers with estrogen. The setup is simple, and bursting with possibilities: On a trip to India, Aussie free spirit Kate Winslet becomes besotted with a local Baba, and commits herself, harmlessly, to his cult. Her white-trash family back home lure her back and spend the family bank account on "exit counselor" PJ (Harvey Keitel), a no-nonsense American outlaw-type in cowboy boots. Once Ruth is cornered for her deprogramming, all hell breaks loose: In more or less complete control of herself, her body and her sexual allure, Ruth mocks, insults and sleeps with PJ until he is in fact deprogrammed himself. Crazy, man.
Rosemary's Baby (Thriller Max, Saturday @ 11:45 PM)
Imagine, being used for your womb by Satan himself -- that's exploitation by The Man. Roman Polanski's still unbeatable 1968 prenatal thriller shows up every week on the Cinemax circuit, and you could do far worse than to see it again.
Baz Luhrmann's 1996 hyper-rock-pop-camp version, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, is still, improbably, the best version, maybe because Akira Kurosawa never made one. Overshadowed by Luhrmann's brain-surgery Moulin Rouge! five years later, it's the saner film.
Whirlpool (5Star Max, Sunday @ 4:50 AM)
An Otto Preminger noir from 1949, with Gene Tierney as a kleptomaniac who gets hypnotized by goldbricking charlatan Jose Ferrer to cover up a murder. Prime, acidic Preminger.
The Grandmother (Sundance, Sunday @ 5:40 PM)
David Lynch's 1970 short, again, and you should make an effort.
The Shanghai Gesture (TCM, Saturday @ 1:00 PM)
An absolutely outrageous and ridiculous kitsch explosion from Josef von Sternberg's post-Marlene days, this 1941 movie has Gene Tierney as a Brit millionaire's party-girl daughter fall under the opiate spell of a casino dragon lady (Ona Munson), who may or may not be her mother. Intrigue, censor-befuddling decadence, baroque von Sternbergian visuals. It's a scandal wrapped in a wartime melodrama, and it has only gained flavor with the years.
More exploitation and decadence: Roger Avary's hair-raising and absurdly overlooked 2002 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel is far better, and more nightmarish, than any others. College students screw, snort and crash in Herculean quantities, and it's not pretty, despite James Van Der Beek (whose career never recovered, apparently) and Shannyn Sossamon.
Billy Budd (TCM, Friday @ 11:00 PM)
Enough with the chicks -- today is Robert Ryan Day on TCM, and this muscular, gritty, almost Biblical adaptation of the Melville book is all man. The story pits good vs. evil on a British frigate in 1797, with Ryan mustering all of his legendary craggy menace as Claggart.
Joe vs. the Volcano (Movieplex, Friday @ 10:00 PM; Encore Love, Friday @ 9:00 PM)
In 1990 John Patrick Shanley did for dreary wage-slavery daydreams what he did for Italianate romance in Moonstruck, following nowhere man Tom Hanks out of a Kafka-esque work-life and into a supremely silly adventure involving a fake terminal illness, a tropical volcano and Meg Ryan as three different women. A marzipan movie, and terribly overlooked.