May 10th 2013. Pick Of the Day.

REPRIEVE! I mean, SOSPENSIONE DELLA PENA! Roberto Rossellini's VOYAGE TO ITALY is held over at Film Forum for an additional week! George Sanders and Ingrid Berman make the eponymous journey both geographical and metaphysical 35 more times! Grazie mille, B-Gold!

Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek make their own, quite different journey across America's BADLANDS in Terrence Malick's debut feature, joining Rossellini's Neorealist classic for a week at the Forum. The film's new DCP restoration should offer Tak Fujimoto's luminous cinematography its most breathtaking presentation since the inital 1973 release. The film's got some stuff to say. It's lucky that way.

Michelangelo Antonioni's meditative L'ECLISSE focuses on the love affair between the materialistic Alain Delon and the spiritual and exceedingly hot Monica Vitti. Screens at BAM as part of their Booed at Cannes series. I favor a different director from Europe's Boot this day.

Antonioni is also repped at MOMA today as THE CRY ends its three-day run as part of the museum's Auteurist History of Film series. The story of a father and daughter wandering an existential postwar Italian landscape in the wake of a love affair's bitter end mirrored the director's real-life quest to capture perfect truth through the camera lens. Fun stuff, but Antonioni's fellow countryman's quest for perfect escapism snags my Pick today. Keep readin'.

Overdue, Anthology Film Archives' series dedicated to shining the spotlight on overlooked talent deserving of reappraisal, focuses this month on director Delmer Daves. John Garfield stars as real-life war hero Al Schmid in the filmmaker's PRIDE OF THE MARINES, and Edward G. Robinson's farmer warns his adopted daughter against the perils lurking within THE RED HOUSE. Solid genre fare from a slightly better than journeyman pro, but I don't want merely solid tonight. I want gloriously over the top. With waiter service. Move on.

Midnight fare tonight brings us Ridley Scott's ALIEN at the Landmark Sunshine, while Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (11:15pm) and THE SHINING and Terry Jones' MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN screen at IFC Center. All worthy efforts, all personal faves. None warrant my Pick today. No, I reserve that honor for one of the greatest comic book adaps in the history of cinema, maybe the first truly magnificent super-hero, or rather super-villain, flick. Inspired by the 007 movies, their evil masterminds in particular, and overseen by one of the most feverishly creative imaginations the film world has ever seen, it sadly languishes in semi-obscurity, as its brief apperance on DVD has become a costly OOP purchase on Amazon or E-Bay, no BluRay edition seems forthcoming and it's rarely afforded a screening. A damn shame, because the vim and vigor with which it was made is infectious, and it remains perhaps the best example of its director's inventive-on-the-cheap brilliance, evidenced by his 60's classics BLACK SUNDAY, BLACK SABBATH and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES. When producer Dino De Laurentiis asked the filmmaker if he could make the film for 3 million bucks he is said to have replied "No, I can make it for 1 million dollars". Then he brought it in for half that much. Michael Bay only WISHES his 200 million could result in so aweosme a popcorn flick.

The wonderfully insane and vice versa Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK unspools at half past midnight tonight at the tater tot temple in B-Burg the Nitehawk Cinema. Live musical accompaniment would normally steer me away from a screening of this B-Movie masterpiece, but the Nitehawk has booked none other than the legendary Morricone Youth to provide the tuneage. I fully approve. I mean, Io approvo pienamente.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy/gal is too! Back tomorrow with the week's last Pick! Ai, sarà questa settimana è già finita?!?

-Guiseppe Walsh