BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON (1953)Channel 4, 12.50pm
A cute Thanksgiving holiday musical that reunited most of the cast and characters from On Moonlight Bay two years earlier, By the Light of the Silvery Moon takes place in an idyllic small-town America shortly after the Second World War. Doris Day reprises her role as the tomboy Marjorie Winfield, still pursuing her romance with Gordon MacRae’s returning GI, Bill Sherman. Centred on a slight plot in which Marjorie’s father (Leon Ames) is suspected of having an extra-marital affair, David Butler’s lightweight sequel is a fine way to fill a lazy summer afternoon. (101 min)
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CITY OF ANGELS (1998)
Five, 8pm
Nicolas Cage plays an angel who falls from his airy perch over Los Angeles in Brad Silberling’s New Age fairytale, which was modelled loosely on the German director Wim Wenders’s 1987 visual symphony Wings of Desire. Although the similarities are no more than skin deep, both films feature angels who are tempted down to Earth by a yearning to experience mortal emotions, in this case the love of a saintly doctor (Meg Ryan). Cage gives a soppy, puppyish performance, but the drama around him is handsomely shot and elegantly composed by Silberling. (114 min)
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THE WAR BRIDE (2001)
Sky Movies 1, 8pm
Scripted by Angela Workman, this low-key drama concerns one of the 48,000 British women who married Canadian soldiers and emigrated to North America during the Second World War. Anna Friel plays Lily, a feisty Cockney who beds and weds a dashing airman (Aden Young) in just two weeks, then flees the Blitz for rural Alberta and three troubled years with her new in-laws. Co-starring Brenda Fricker and Molly Parker, this absorbing period piece illuminates an interesting cultural exchange that is rarely seen in war movies. (107 min)
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STREETS OF FIRE (1984)
Sky Cinema 1, 8.15pm
A cult rock’n’roll musical, Streets of Fire is an offbeat hybrid combining elements of West Side Story with all the revved-up, hair-gelled action of a 1980s rock video. Directed by Walter Hill, the self-consciously archetypal plot involves a handsome former soldier (Michael Paré), a feisty rock singer (Diane Lane), a bloodthirsty biker (Willem Dafoe) and plenty of retro-cool 1950s pulp-movie references. Although the soundtrack was composed by Ry Cooder and the title derives from a Bruce Springsteen song, Hill’s overblown teen fable is probably closer in spirit to a Meatloaf album. Enjoy the excess. (83 min)
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CUL-DE-SAC (1966, b/w)
BBC Four, 10pm
Shot on Holy Island off the Northumbrian coast, Roman Polanski’s dark comedy, showing as part of BBC Four’s Summer in the Sixties season, is an engrossing and beautifully photographed companion piece to his psycho-thriller Repulsion. While that film starred Catherine Deneuve, Cul-de-Sac features her sister, Françoise Dorléac, as the young French wife of a pompous retired businessman (Donald Pleasence) whose life is shattered by the sudden arrival of two violent thieves (Jack MacGowran and Lionel Stander), one badly injured in a botched robbery. Polanski and his co-writer, Gérard Brach, milk every moment of sexually charged tension for maximum black humour. (111 min)