Monster-in-Law (2005)
Channel 4, 9pm
The pleasure of seeing Jane Fonda back on screen after a 15-year absence is slightly marred by the otherwise hysterical pitch of this bitchy family comedy.
Fonda plays an overbearing matriarch who declares war on her prospective new daughter-in-law, played by the pop diva Jennifer Lopez. Monster-in-Law offers plenty of crude laughs, but Meet the Parentsaddressed the same theme much more effectively. (101min)
Last Orders (2001)
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BBC One, 11.20pm
A heavyweight cast of big-name British talents share the bill in the director Fred Schepisi’s solid adaptation of Graham Swift’s Booker prize-winning novel.
Seen in flashback, Michael Caine is terrific as the dying East End butcher whose ashes are due to be scattered on Margate beach. Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are reunited on screen for the first time since The Long Good Friday. Ray Winstone, David Hemmings and an underused Tom Courtenay co-star. (109min)
Duel at Diablo (1966)
BBC Two, midnight
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James Garner and Sidney Poitier star in this superior western, which manages to juggle topical peace-and-love themes of racial and sexual equality with a strikingly violent revenge plot. Garner plays a former Indian scout searching for the men who killed his Native American wife, and Poitier the former cavalry officer turned horsebreaker who joins his quest. Bibi Anderson and Dennis Weaver co-star. (103min)
MultiChannel
Shaft (2000)
E4, 10pm
Thirty years after the original blaxploitation hit Shaft, the director John Singleton rebranded the character for a 21st-century audience in this shallow but flashy sequel.
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Samuel L. Jackson comes out with all guns blazing as the badass private investigator and nephew of the original John Shaft, as played by Richard Roundtree, who has a cameo here. Not far behind Jackson in the cool stakes is Christian Bale as a terrifically slimy yuppie villain. (99min)
Funny Ha Ha (2002)
Film4, 11.35pm
Not much happens in this low-budget drama, but the attractive young cast and sardonically funny tone just about make do in place of a real plot. Kate Dollenmayer stars as an insecure Boston woman with an unrequited crush on a casual friend, played by Christian Rudder, which inevitably leads to a series of awkward and prickly encounters. With its intimate, semi-improvised feel, the director Andew Bujalski’s debut feature is emphatically low-key, but eventually repays your patience. (85min)