Joanna Going, TCM Guest Programmer for January, is an actress well-remembered for her roles in numerous films and television shows over the past several years. She was part of the cast of the sci-fi horror thriller Phantoms (1998), which also starred Peter O'Toole, Liev Schreiber and Ben Affleck. Going's other movie credits include Wyatt Earp (1994), Inventing the Abbotts (1997), Still Breathing (1997) and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), costarring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt.

TV appearances for Going range from those on soap operas of the 1980s and '90s (including Another World and Dark Shadows) to the series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Mad Men, House of Cards and Kingdom, among others. Going was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Rhode Island, where she graduated high school before studying at Emerson College and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Going's first programming pick is The Black Stallion (1979), Carroll Ballard's ravishing adaptation of the children's novel by Walter Farley about a boy and a wild horse stranded together on a desert island. She tells TCM host Ben Mankiewicz that "This is a movie where, if I turn on the TV and it's on - no matter what place in the movie - I have to sit down and watch it."

Going finds this film "so incredibly gorgeous, particularly the first half of it. The sound, or in some cases the absence of sound, is incredible. It's a classic horse-kid movie and there's something about that combination that lets us all in - the need in both the animal and the boy to have another being there."

Going values the "authenticity" of the scenes between the horse and a child (Kelly Reno) who was familiar with horses but had never acted before: "It's totally fresh and in the moment." She also appreciates the rest of the cast, especially Mickey Rooney. "For those who know his history and previous movies, it adds so much." (The 1944 National Velvet, starring Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor, is also one of Going's favorites.)

Going notes that Teri Garr, who plays the boy's mother, "is not at all the comedienne, the Tootsie Teri Garr. She's so simple and economical [in her performance]." And she notes that cinematographer Caleb Deschanel deserves special mention. "Carroll Ballard credits him with a lot of the creation of the film."

Going's next choice is Wings of Desire (1987), German director Wim Wenders' fantasy about invisible angels who hover over Berlin and listen to the thoughts of the city's citizens, comforting those who are troubled. She happened to be "madly in love" when she first caught the film while it was in theaters, and found that it spoke to her profoundly in its portrayal of "This tenuous place we're in between spirit and humanity."

Her research revealed that Wenders and his production unit "shot the film on the fly - making it up as they went along. They didn't start out with a script, and Wenders walked around Berlin trying to get some ideas. He kept seeing these images of angels [particularly in the artwork of the city's cemeteries], and the film started to formulate." Wenders collaborated with Austrian novelist/playwright Peter Handke, who wrote many of the interior monologues that are heard on the soundtrack.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is that Peter Falk plays himself - and yet is portrayed as an "ex-angel" who has returned to earthly existence. Going recalls that, "like a hundred years ago," she acted with Falk in an episode of his TV series Columbo, playing a kidnapped bride. "Having sat across from this man, I totally buy it - I totally believe this man is an angel. He was just as warm, as generous, as keenly observant and sly and witty as you imagine...and I totally believe he dropped down from the heavens!"

Again, Going gives special mention to the cinematography - in this case partly in black-and-white, partly in color, as shot by Henri Alekan, who came out of retirement at around ago 80 to work on the movie. As for those who "get bogged down in the philosophy" of the film (as Mankiewicz confesses he has done), she offers this advice: "Don't overthink it. Just sit back and enjoy the gentle ride of where it takes you."

"It's a complete delight from beginning to end," Going says of her next pick, Day for Night (1973). French writer-director François Truffaut's film details the entanglements -- sexual and otherwise -- among a film company who are at work on a melodrama. "I watch it with a smile on my face the whole time," Going adds.

As a film actress, she identifies with the idea that a cast and crew are thrown together for a brief, intense time as they make a movie -- and then, just as suddenly, it's over. She notes that she "always wells up" during the farewell speech by Valentina Cortese as the film's aging diva: "We meet, we work together, we grow to love each other, and then, as soon as we grasp something, it's gone. Gone!"

Going, whose early training in acting focused on the stage, came late to the study of film as an art form. "It wasn't until my early twenties in New York that I started going to film houses and seeing old film festivals and French film festivals. I became completely enamored by the French New Wave, and Truffaut in particular."

Recently, she introduced Day for Night to her 13-year-old daughter, Stella. "Of all the movies I could choose, I really wanted to her see this one because she knows what I do, and her dad [Going's former spouse, Dylan Walsh] is an actor too... So much technology has changed in how we make movies and television now, but the essence is the same."

Going's final pick is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), the film version of Edward Albee's stage drama about a quarrelsome middle-aged pair (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) who entertain a younger couple (Sandy Dennis and George Segal) during a harrowing evening of psychological fun and games. "It really is a work of art," says Going, "having come from a play where the words are No. 1. Often in films it's much more about the visuals, but here it's through the words that you discover the relationships among all four of these people."

In addition to its artistic merits, the movie was noted for breaking through boundaries of what was permissible on the screen. "We take it for granted now," Going says, "But we have all these different platforms where you can do anything, say anything, show anything... [This movie] opened up a whole new arena of adult behavior."

"It's a thrill seeing these two monumental figures go at it," Going says of the Taylor-Burton combo in the film. "Who they were in the world comes through on the screen, and who they were to each other. They were deep into their own relationship at the time... Because we know them as these sparkling, beautiful people, it gives us a glimpse into who the characters were when they met, how this relationship happened in the first place, who they might have been before they became so dissipated."

Taylor, in particular, impressed Going with her deglamorized appearance and bravura performance. "She relished the chance to come undone, to put on the weight and let go of the responsibility, the onus, of being the beautiful star... She was a very accomplished actress, and I think she got short shrift on that in the early part of her career because of her incredible beauty."

By Roger Fristoe