BACK FROM ETERNITY
(1956, b/w)
BBC Two, 1.10pm
One of the earliest blueprints for the disaster movies of the 1970s and the spoofs that followed in the 1980s, Back to Eternity was the director John Farrow’s slicker update of his own 1939 air-crash thriller Five Came Back. When an airliner comes down in a South American jungle, the disparate band of survivors must pull together against all odds. As the shaken passengers and flight crew struggling against hostile terrain and cannibal tribes, a capable cast including Rod Steiger, Anita Ekberg and Robert Ryan pull out all the stops when Farrow’s gripping B-movie reaches it shock finale. (100 min)
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NOTHING TO LOSE
(1997)
Five, 9pm
Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins breathe new life into the odd-couple comedy formula in Nothing to Lose, in which an angry, cuckolded LA executive is carjacked by an ineffectual would-be criminal (Lawrence). A series of slapstick events leave both penniless and on the run, where they form a grudging bond and finally help each other to face their personal problems. Steve Oedekerk’s light-hearted tale is reminiscent of the Steve Martin/John Candy vehicle Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and is similarly blessed with two likeable performances. (97 min)
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SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
(1952)
TCM, 9pm
Initially released to lukewarm reviews, Gene Kelly’s finest film outing is generally regarded as the greatest of all screen musicals. Co-starring Debbie Reynolds, Singin’ in the Rain was hurriedly cobbled together by MGM and the director Stanley Donen to cash in on Kelly and Donen’s Oscar-winning An American in Paris a year earlier. And yet this magical fairytale of Old Hollywood hangs together sublimely, with Kelly on debonair form as an early talkies icon besotted with his teenage co-star (Reynolds). Kelly famously performed his legendary rain-soaked dance scene with a 103-degree fever. And Donald O’Connor’s outrageous rendition of Make ‘Em Laugh remains a marvel to behold. (103 min)
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ED WOOD
(1994, b/w)
Sky Movies 2, 11.10pm
A love letter from one movie misfit to another, Tim Burton’s exquisitely shot biopic of the 1950s trash director Ed Wood is a much more polished feature than Wood ever produced during his haphazard career. Starring Johnny Depp as the eternally optimistic, openly transvestite director, Ed Wood pays romantic homage to a lost Hollywood of visionary amateurs and low-budget ambition. An Oscar-winning Martin Landau outshines the all-star cast as the ailing horror legend Bela Lugosi, a Wood regular in his drug-addled autumn years. Perhaps understandably, Burton overlooks Wood’s own decline into booze, pornography and early death. (127 min)
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S. F. W.
(1994)
Channel 4, 3.20am
Jefery Levy’s prophetic satire on reality TV and third-division celebrity stars Stephen Dorff as Cliff Spab, a beer-guzzling nobody who is catapulted to stardom as one of just two surviving hostages of a televised terrorist stand-off inside a convenience store. Confused by his sudden fame, Cliff sets off in search of his fellow hostage, Wendy, played by a young Reese Witherspoon. Levy’s nihilistic commentary on early 1990s youth culture is very much a product of its era, and painfully po-faced at times. (96 min)