THE DESERT FOX (1951)
Channel 4, 1.35pm
Released so soon after the Second World War, Henry Hathaway’s biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (James Mason) is an unusually sympathetic depiction of the self- serving but courageous leader of Germany’s brutally effective Afrika Korps. Incorporating real battle footage, The Desert Fox is a gripping but simplistic caricature that paints its ambivalent hero as a “good German” and anti-Nazi martyr. Mason played Rommel again in The Desert Rats two years later. (88 min)
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ED WOOD (1994, b/w)
Sky Movies 2, 8pm
A love letter from one Hollywood misfit to another, Tim Burton’s exquisite biopic of the infamous 1950s trash film-maker Ed Wood is ironically far more polished than anything Wood himself produced during his haphazard career. Starring Johnny Depp as the eternally optimistic, openly transvestite director, Ed Wood pays romantic homage to a lost era of low-budget amateurs with big ambition. An Oscar-winning Martin Landau outshines the all-star cast as the ailing, drug-addled horror legend Bela Lugosi. Perhaps understandably, Burton overlooks Wood’s own decline into booze, pornography and early death. (127 min)
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THREE KINGS (1999)
Five, 9pm
Set during the first Gulf War, this cynical black comedy from David O. Russell has become topical again in the light of recent events in Iraq. George Clooney plays a rogue sergeant major leading a motley trio of soldiers (Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze) into the Iraqi desert in search of looted Kuwaiti gold. Firing its satirical ammunition at multiple targets, Three Kings is a powerful and stylish work, even though Russell and Clooney reportedly fought on set. (114 min)