Film choice

A strong ensemble cast led by Kevin Spacey, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Kevin Kline play neighbours caught up in a sinister game of wife-swapping. Although Alan J. Pakula eventually abandons carefully balanced tension for sensational melodrama, his actors remain riveting throughout. (95min)

MultiChannel

MONSTER-IN-LAW (2005)

Sky Movies 1, 8pm/11.45pm

The pleasure of seeing Jane Fonda back on screen is marred by the hysterical pitch of Robert Luketic’s bitchy family comedy. Fonda plays a matriarch who declares war on her prospective new daughter- in-law, played by the pop diva Jennifer Lopez. There are plenty of crude laughs, but Meet the Parents tackled the same theme more effectively. (101min)

SUNDAY 18

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)

Five, 9pm



Like Hitchcock on rocket fuel, Renny Harlin’s stylish action adventure employs dream sequences, double identities and black humour to drive its absurd plot. Geena Davis plays a small-town housewife suffering from amnesia about her past life as an assassin. Haunted by flashbacks, she hires a private detective (Samuel L. Jackson) to investigate, sending both of them on a dangerous ride. (120min)

THE ABYSS (1989)

Channel 4, 10.30pm

Often dismissed as one of James Cameron’s weakest efforts, The Abyss is actually a gripping undersea thriller. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio perform most of their own stunts as the leaders of a fractious deep-sea diving team searching for a lost submarine. The sci-fi plot twists may stretch credibility, but the special effects are magnificent. (146min)

MultiChannel

THE JACKET (2005)

Sky Movies 2, 8pm

A stylish psychological sci-fi thriller about an injured Iraq War veteran travelling through time to investigate his own murder, The Jacket is adventurous but ultimately insubstantial. Adrien Brody plays the paranoid anti-hero, with Keira Knightley as a troubled waitress and Kris Kristoffersen as a sinister doctor. (103min)

MY NAME IS JOE (1998)

More4, 10.10pm

Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe is both a hard-edged thriller and a bleak examination of one man’s disintegration under the crushing effects of poverty, unemployment and booze. Peter Mullan stars as Joe, a recovering alcoholic trying to do the right thing in a harsh world. (105min)

MONDAY 19

FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO (1943, b/w)

BBC Two, 1.30pm

Billy Wilder was already on fine wisecracking form in his second feature — a droll blend of romantic thriller and wartime propaganda. In a role declined by Cary Grant, Franchot Tone stars as a British corporal holed up under cover at a desert hotel when German forces invade Egypt. Anne Baxter and Akim Tamiroff co-star, but Erich von Stroheim steals the film with

his grandstanding impersonation of Field Marshal Rommel. (96min)

SAILOR BEWARE(1956, b/w)

Channel 4, 1.30pm

A creaky English seaside postcard romp, Sailor Beware is largely a vehicle for the formidable Peggy Mount. Bellowing her disapproval of all men, from her feckless husband (Cyril Smith) to her daughter’s naval fiancé (Ronald Lewis), Mount’s fearsome matriarch is an enjoyably monstrous comic creation. Adapted by Philip King and Falkland Cary from their stage hit, Gordon Parry’s clunky museum piece offers undemanding fun wrapped in rock-bottom production values. (81min)

MultiChannel

THE ABDUCTION CLUB (2002)

BBC Four, 10.20pm

The impoverished younger sons of rich families resort to desperate measures in their quest for wealthy wives in this swashbuckling caper comedy set in 18th-century Ireland. Its protagonists, Byrne (Daniel Lapaine) and Strang (Matthew Rhys), are highwaymen with a difference, kidnapping heiresses for hastily arranged marriages. Stefan Schwartz’s mildly amusing, largely forgettable period romp never quite takes itself seriously. (96min)

TUESDAY 20

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955)

BBC Two, 1.40pm

Billy Wilder would later direct a superior collaboration with Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot, but this snappy New York comedy is still something of a minor classic. Monroe plays the flirty model neighbour of Tom Ewell’s Manhattan writer, who sends his family off to cooler climes while he stays in the sweltering city with his bachelor fantasies. The Seven Year Itch began as a play, in which Ewell not only starred but got to seduce his female co-star. The film version settles for a tamer, family-friendly compromise. (105 min)

THE LAND GIRLS (1998)

Channel 4, 8pm

A familiar rural England of drizzly skies and muddy fields forms the backdrop to David Leland’s wartime rites-of-passage drama. Rachel Weisz, Anna Friel and Catherine McCormack play a mismatched trio of Second World War Land Army volunteers, bonding and bickering over their shared attraction to a local farmer’s son (Steven Mackintosh). The Land Girls is full of nostalgic charms, if somewhat pedestrian in execution. (112min)

MultiChannel

RECONSTRUCTION (2003)

Artsworld, 10pm

This is a chic psychological puzzle from the the Danish writer-director Christoffer Boe. Nikolaj Lie Kaas stars as a jaded photographer who becomes romantically involved with two women, both played by Maria Bonnevie. With nods to David Lynch, Lars Von Trier and Bertholt Brecht, Boe plays confusing games with identity while constantly stressing the artificiality of cinema itself. The end result is a coolly impressive, prize-winning film noir. (91min)

WEDNESDAY 21

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

Five, 8pm

Rob Reiner’s warm and witty comedy classic traces 12 years in the life of two platonic friends (Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal) as they tiptoe around their unspoken romantic feelings for each other. Ryan’s Sally is endearingly neurotic, Crystal’s Harry a wisecracking loudmouth. But the duo’s gradual evolution from fractious acquaintances to gooey- eyed lovers is wryly observed by the screenwriter Nora Ephron. (96min)

GREGORY’S TWO GIRLS (1999)

Channel 4, 3.10am

Bill Forsyth’s belated sequel to his much-loved 1981 teen drama Gregory’s Girl lacks the freshness of the original, but still oozes warm-hearted humanity and comic insight. John Gordon Sinclair repriseshis role as Gregory, still a bumbling classroom misfit after returning to teach at his former school. A farcical plot involves Gregory’s thwarted passion for one of his sixth-form students (Carly McKinnon) and a fellow teacher (Maria Doyle Kennedy). (116min)

MultiChannel

BAD EDUCATION (2004)

Sky Cinema 1, 10pm

The Mexican sex symbol Gael García Bernal plays dual roles at the heart of Pedro Almodóvar’s darkest and most autobiographical film for years. In the 1980s, an aspiring screenwriter and sometime drag queen (Bernal) offers a script to a film-maker (Fele Martínez) that takes both of them back to a childhood of painful secrets and abusive priests. Jumping back in time to expose the political and sexual repression of Franco’s Spain, Bad Education unveils its layers like a sinister striptease, and ends with a grim twist. (106min)

THURSDAY 22

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (1975)

ITV1, 4pm

Adapted from James Herriot’s hugely successful, autobiographical novels about a vet in 1930s Yorkshire, this comforting piece of nostalgic whimsy spawned the much-loved BBC TV series. Simon Ward plays the Herriot figure, alongside Lisa Farrow as his fiancée Helen and a scene-stealing Anthony Hopkins as Siegfried Farnon. (92min)

PERFECT FRIDAY (1970)

BBC One, 12.45am

In between stints as the artistic director of both the RSC and the National Theatre, Peter Hall made this quirky caper comedy just as the Swinging London era was waning. Stanley Baker plays a stuffy bank manager who plans a heist with the help of an eccentric Old Etonian (David Warner) and his Swiss girlfriend (Ursula Andress). Cross-cutting between stories in the offbeat style of the era, Perfect Friday is a little dated, but not without period charm. (94min)

MultiChannel

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)/PULP FICTION (1994)

Sky One, 10pm/BBC Three, 10.30pm

Still fresh and exuberant more than a decade later, Quentin Tarantino’s first two films are audacious cocktails of movie in-jokes, stylistic trickery, black humour and visceral violence. The hard-boiled heist thriller Reservoir Dogs combines the time-jumping structure of arthouse cinema with the bloody carnage of Hong Kong action movies. Pulp Fiction, a much more ambitious film, is a sprawling multi- chapter epic starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Ving Rhames, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis. (99min/154min)

FRIDAY 23

THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (1965, b/w)

Channel 4, 1pm

A taut maritime thriller about Cold War nuclear brinkmanship, The Bedford Incident stars Richard Widmark as the captain of an American destroyer pursuing an elusive Soviet submarine in the Arctic Sea. Sidney Poitier co-stars as a reporter on a routine assignment who witnesses an increasingly suicidal bout of superpower sabre- rattling. James Harris takes a decidedly 1960s anti-war line, but the film’s pro- peace message remains timeless. (102min)

SUDDENLY (1954, b/w)

BBC Two, 12.35am

Allegedly the film that Lee Harvey Oswald watched just days before shooting John F. Kennedy, Suddenly stars Frank Sinatra as a psychotic hitman who holds a family hostage in a small town while he plans to attack the presidential train. However implausible the plot, Lewis Allen’s nervy little thriller is a reminder of the crooner’s underrated acting skills. After the assassination, Sinatra withdrew both this and The Manchurian Candidate from circulation. (75min)

MultiChannel

KISS ME, STUPID (1964)

Sky Cinema 1, 8pm

Billy Wilder scored a rare critical and commercial flop with Kiss Me, Stupid.In a small Nevada town, Ray Walston’s aspiring songwriter tries to interest Dean Martin’s womanising superstar singer in his work, even enlisting Kim Novak’s sassy local prostitute to pose as his wife. After losing Peter Sellers with a heart attack early in production, then being banned by the Catholic League of Decency, Wilder’s farce flopped at the box office. Although hardly a classic, it is better than its reputation suggests. (125min)