DODGE CITY (1939)
BBC Two, 1.35pm
The first Technicolor western is thick with genre clichés, but fairly entertaining with it. The credit belongs partly to Errol Flynn, in his first cowboy role, and partly to the director Michael Curtiz, who would later make Casablanca. Flynn stars as Wade Hatton, the sheriff intent on taming a lawless Dodge City. Ann Sheridan co-stars alongside Flynn’s frequent sidekicks Olivia de Havilland and Alan Hale. (104min)
A FEW GOOD MEN (1992)
Five, 9pm
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The now notorious US base at Guantanamo Bay is the setting for this superior courtroom drama from the director Rob Reiner and writer Aaron Sorkin, the future creator of The West Wing. Tom Cruise and Demi Moore get all the earnest heroics as hotshot Navy lawyers, but an Oscar- nominated Jack Nicholson dominates the film as the brutally arrogant base commander. Inspired by real events, this is mainstream Hollywood on intelligent form. (138min)
WHITE OLEANDER (2003)
BBC One, 11.35pm
Alison Lohman shines in her first starring role as an emotionally scarred adolescent passing through a series of care homes after her narcissistic artist mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) kills her shiftless boyfriend (Billy Connolly). Renée Zellweger, Robin Wright Penn and Svetlana Efremova co-star in the British director Peter Kominsky’s overwrought but engrossing thriller. Barbra Streisand was initially approached to direct and star, but declined. (109min)
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THE THIN RED LINE (1998)
ITV4, 10pm
Returning after almost 20 years in exile, the revered director Terrence Malick’s meditation on war and peace proved absorbing but oddly aimless. George Clooney, John Travolta, Billy Bob Thornton, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte and many more play US soldiers fighting on Guadalcanal in a languid visual symphony. (170min)