Film guide

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1966)

BBC Two, 7.10pm

THE DIRECTOR Robert Aldrich specialised in stories about male camaraderie under pressure and Flight of the Phoenix remains one of his best and most memorably intense. James Stewart plays Frank Towns, a veteran pilot who crashlands a plane full of oil workers in the Sahara Desert. With rescue impossible, the group’s only hope is an eccentric aviation designer (Hardy Krüger), who suggests building a new aircraft from the wreckage. A gripping parable about human resilience, Aldrich’s unorthodox adventure yarn also features Richard Attenborough and Ernest Borgnine. (142 min)

LAKE PLACID (1999)

BBC One, 9.30pm

WRITTEN BY the creator of Ally McBeal, David E. Kelley, Steve Miner’s comical creature feature recalls the sort of shameless exploitation romp that Roger Corman used to make in the Seventies. The eponymous lake, in a scenic corner of Maine, is inhabited by huge crocodiles which enjoy the taste of human flesh. And they have plenty of menu options in the shape of game warden Bill Pullman, palaeontologist Bridget Fonda and gruff sheriff Brendan Gleeson. Terrific cast, completely ridiculous plot. (82 min)

FROM HELL (2001)

Sky Movies Premier, 10pm

THE JACK the Ripper story has inspired many lurid films, but From Hell adds deluxe gloss and modern-day conspiracy theories to the usual Gothic shock tactics. Working from the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, Albert and Allen Hughes conjure up a compellingly creepy vision of Victorian London. Johnny Depp stars as the opium-addict detective tracking the Ripper, ably supported by Robbie Coltrane and Heather Graham in this heady cocktail of fact and fiction. (122 min)

Sunday

EL DORADO (1967)

BBC Two, 5.10pm

A LOOSE remake of his 1959 film Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks’s El Dorado stars John Wayne as Cole Thornton, a laconic outlaw who is hired by a small-town tycoon (Ed Asner) to kill the local sheriff (Robert Mitchum). Thornton, though, decides instead to muster a posse of injured, aged and plain incompetent gunslingers to take on his corrupt employer. Superior cowboy fare, El Dorado is dignified by a great cast and grudging nods towards mortality from the 70-year- old Hawks. (126 min)

SHOW ME LOVE (1998)

BBC Four, 9.40pm

LUKAS MOODYSSON broke box-office records in his homeland with this tender snapshot of teenage frustration and romantic escapism. In the backwater town of Amal, a lonely outsider (Alexandra Dahlström) nurses a lesbian crush on her classmate (Rebecka Liljeberg). Moodysson and his fine young cast show the cruelty of adolescence, but also suggest that big dreams can sometimes defeat small-minded cynics. (89 min)

AIMÉE AND JAGUAR (2000)

BBC Four, 11.05pm

A HARROWING true story about the tragic absurdities of German life under Nazi rule, this engrossing feature debut by Max Färberböck recreates the dangerous love affair between Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler), an Aryan housewife, and a reckless Jewish lesbian, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader). Posing as a gentile in wartorn Berlin, Schragenheim initially pursues Wust as a sly and vengeful challenge, but seduction soon blossoms into a full-blown and potentially lethal romance. (125 min)

FELICIA’S JOURNEY (1999)

BBC Two, 11.15pm

BASED ON a novel by William Trevor, the first British-made feature by the renowned Canadian director Atom Egoyan is a hypnotically eerie study in the banality of evil. Bob Hoskins plays Hilditch, an unassuming West Midlands chef with a mother complex that even Norman Bates might consider excessive. Elaine Cassidy co-stars as Felicia, an innocent Irish teenager who unwisely accepts Hilditch’s offer of hospitality. Both performances are terrific, even if Egoyan’s sketchy narrative ultimately lacks coherence. (116 min)

Monday

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967)

ITV1, 8.30pm

SCRIPTED BY Roald Dahl, the first Bond thriller to depart considerably from its source novel is a glitzy action yarn set mostly in Japan. The climactic battle inside an impressive million-dollar volcano set the formula for all subsequent 007 films, while Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld became the role model for Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers series. Sean Connery finished his golden run of Bond movies with You Only Live Twice, negotiating an end to his contract soon afterwards. (117 min)

QUICK CHANGE (1990)

Five, 10.30pm

BILL MURRAY stars in this engaging comedy about a bank robbery and its muddled aftermath. Murray maintains a hilariously deadpan tone throughout as Grimm, a disgruntled town planner who decides to pull off one big heist with his dim-witted partners in crime, Geena Davis and Randy Quaid. Quick Change is an enjoyable absurdist farce full of wonderful eccentrics. (89 min)

HARRY, UN AMI QUI VOUS VEUT DU BIEN (2000)

Channel 4, 12.20am

A CHANCE encounter at a motorway service station opens Dominik Moll’s macabre black comedy. An aspiring author, Michel (Laurent Lucas), is approached by Harry (Sergi López), an overbearing stranger who claims to have known him in school. Before long, Harry is staying at Michel’s unfinished country cottage with his young wife and family, offering friendly favours with an edge of homicidal mania. A delightfully fresh and cheerfully grim farce packed with dark twists. (117 min)

Tuesday

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

BBC One, 11.15pm; Scotland, 12.15am

THE COEN brothers wrote the part of the broody policewoman Edwina McDonnough especially for Holly Hunter in this breakneck comic-book farce about a childless couple (Hunter and Nicolas Cage) who kidnap a baby from a local businessman. With its crazed, screwball energy and Cage’s comically grandiose voiceover, Raising Arizona finds the deadpan Coens at their most warm-hearted and anarchic. (94 min)

Wednesday

DIE HARD (1988)

ITV1, 9pm

THE BRUTALLY simple techno-thriller genre reached a sublime plateau with John McTiernan’s Die Hard. Bruce Willis earned an unprecedented fee of $5 million to star as John McClane, the off-duty cop who foils an assault by teutonic terrorists on a Los Angeles skyscraper after gatecrashing the Christmas office party of his estranged wife (Bonny Bedelia). Slick, high-tech and almost entirely free of narrative logic, McTiernan’s methodical blockbuster is soulless but exhilarating. (131 min)

JUMP TOMORROW (2001)

Channel 4, 12.15am

EXPANDED FROM an acclaimed short film by the young writer and director Joel Hopkins, Jump Tomorrow is a charming road movie that throws together four unlikely strangers in an upstate New York that is tinged with nostalgic Hollywood fantasy. Strait-laced George (Tunde Adebimpe) is heading for Niagara Falls to get married, but destiny sends him instead to a party with the seductive Alicia (Natalia Verbeke) and the suicidal Gerard (Hippolyte Girardot). Light-headed and stylish, Hopkins’s delightfully offbeat love story is shown as part of Channel 4’s Outside season of experimental shorts. (97 min)

Thursday

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Channel 4, 10pm

FOR HIS first major screen role Arnold Schwarzenegger had to tone down his workouts as his huge muscles were hampering the swordplay scenes. The quasi-fascistic overtones of Robert E. Howard’s pulp-fiction warrior hero are fully exploited by the screenwriter Oliver Stone and the director John Milius. Schwarzenegger’s acting is wooden, but he is surrounded by such credible support players as James Earl Jones and Max von Sydow. The plot, such as it is, is a feast of savagery, sorcery, mythical beasts and macho blood-letting. In other words, enjoyably dumb entertainment. (121 min)

THE PEACEMAKER (1997)

BBC One, 10.35pm

THE DEBUT feature from the Steven Spielberg-backed DreamWorks SKG studio, The Peacemaker is an action thriller for the post-Cold War era. In his first serious big-screen assignment, George Clooney transcends a slightly stereotypical role as Thomas Devoe, a brilliant but cocky army bomb expert. Nicole Kidman brings a steely resolve to the part of his anti-terrorist boss, while both stars make an engagingly odd couple of global trouble-shooters chasing rogue nuclear warheads from Bosnia to New York. Mimi Leder directs with grit and assurance, especially the eye-popping action scenes. (124 min)

Friday

SUICIDE KINGS (1997)

BBC Two, 11.35pm; Scotland, 12.35am

THE UNMISTAKABLE influence of Quentin Tarantino hangs over Peter O’Fallon’s low-budget thriller. Christopher Walken stars as a former New Jersey Mafia don who is kidnapped by a gang of Manhattan rich kids (led by Henry Thomas) who urgently require his shady connections. A battle of wits between gangster and kidnappers soon turns lethal as the don’s psychotic minder (Denis Leary) goes on the warpath. An enjoyable black comedy. (106 min)

JACOB’S LADDER (1990)

BBC One, 11.50pm; Wales, 12.30am

A VISUALLY dazzling conspiracy thriller with a supernatural edge, Jacob’s Ladder was a clear forerunner of films such as The Sixth Sense. Tim Robbins stars as Jacob Singer, a depressed Vietnam veteran working for the US Post in Seventies New York. Tormented by terrifying flashbacks to his military past, Jacob and his fellow veterans vow to uncover the truth behind what happened to them on the battlefield. Adrian Lyne evokes Singer’s descent into a hellish, drug-induced psychosis with an intensity worthy of David Lynch. (115 min)