TV films guide

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

ITV1, 9.10pm

James Cameron’s dazzling sequel to his 1984 sci-fi hit features some ground-breaking special effects, and reverses the original role of Schwarzenegger’s time-travelling killer cyborg. This time Schwarzenegger plays a caring Terminator, blasted back from the future to protect Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from Robert Patrick’s remorseless death machine. Pocketing a pay packet of around £10 million, Schwarzenegger earned £16,000 a word for the role. No wonder he returned for a third instalment last year, though his political career means that he probably won’t be back for a fourth outing. (136min)

PRESSURE (1976)

BBC Four, 9.40pm

A rarely screened cinematic landmark, Pressure is credited as Britain’s first all-black film. Adapted by the pioneering director and reportage photographer Horace Ové from a bittersweet book by Samuel Selvon, the plot revolves around Anthony (Herbert Norville), a British-born son of Caribbean émigrés whose attempts to assimilate into white society are met with racism and hostility. Co-starring Oscar James, who went on to star in EastEnders, Ové’s culture-clash drama transcends its earnest tone to serve as a fascinating and enlightening social document of 1970s Britain. (120min)

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)

BBC Three, 10pm

Like most films about pop fads, John Badham’s seminal cash-in on the 1970s disco craze now looks absurdly dated. But as a certified piece of pop history it scarcely matters how clumsy the script now sounds, or how ludicrous John Travolta appears as Brooklyn’s medallion man Tony Manero. Travolta actually earned an Oscar nomination, although the soundtrack is the real star of Saturday Night Fever. Badham’s film is based on a magazine article by the author Nik Cohn, who later admitted that the story was pure fabrication. (118min)

Sunday

TIGERLAND (2000)

BBC Two, 9pm

Directed by Joel Shumacher, Tigerland is a hard-hitting story about Vietnam War recruits rebelling against their sadistic boot-camp bosses in early 1970s Louisiana. Shot on digital video for a grainy, washed-out feel, Shumacher’s edgy and involving period piece stars Colin Farrell as Bozz, a young Texan hothead with anti-war convictions and an anti- authority attitude. Schumacher’s noble experiment was not a box-office hit, but it helped to propel Farrell towards his current superstar status. (100min)

MAGNOLIA (1999)

Channel 4, 11.05pm

A visual symphony full of millennial angst and biblical references, Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to Boogie Nights is a much more ambitious film. Working with a huge cast, including Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson weaves a complex three-hour tapestry of chance and coincidence around one dramatic day in the San Fernando Valley. Abusive fathers and estranged sons figure prominently in this semi-autobiographical story, which has a film-stealing cameo by Tom Cruise as a slick misogynist. (188min)

THIRTEEN DAYS (2000)

BBC One, 11.15pm; Scotland, 11.10pm

Kevin Costner helps to restore some mythical gloss to the tarnished legacy of John F. Kennedy in Roger Donaldson’s tense but overlong docudrama about the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. Costner plays the White House adviser Kenny O’Donnell, while Bruce Greenwood does a respectful imitation of JFK, two heroic liberals struggling with both Commie-bashing hawks and the imminent risk of nuclear Armageddon. Co-starring Christopher Lawford, Thirteen Days was partly shot on White House sets borrowed from the TV drama The West Wing. (145min)

PERSONS UNKNOWN (1996)

BBC Two, 11.15pm

Naomi Watts (who is about to film the Fay Wray role in a King Kong re-remake) landed one of her earliest Hollywood parts in George Hickenlooper’s stylishly downbeat thriller. Watts plays Molly, the wheelchair-bound younger sister of Kelly Lynch’s femme fatale Amanda, who seduces a morally shady LA security expert (the excellent Joe Mantegna) in a convoluted scheme to steal a fortune from a Colombian drug cartel. When the heist is discovered, this ill-matched trio flee to a remote mountain cabin. Hickenlooper’s finely acted character-driven crime caper is moody and several cuts above mainstream thriller fare. (99min)

Monday

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971)

BBC One, 2.20pm

Disney’s Oscar-winning blend of animation and live action was clearly conceived as a semi-sequel to Mary Poppins, which shared the same director, Robert Stevenson. Julie Andrews was even considered for Angela Lansbury’s role as Eglantine Price, the self-taught witch who takes in a trio of evacuated London children during the Blitz. Featuring a series of classic Disney set pieces, including a delightful animated football match between animals and humans, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a mildly psychedelic treat for the whole family. (139min)

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961)

Channel 4, 3.30pm

See Behind the Screen

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

Five, 3.25pm/Sunday, RTE1, midnight

Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen and Jack Lemmon declined the roles, while Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman were seriously considered. But Paul Newman and Robert Redford finally signed up to play the real-life bank robbers Robert Leroy Parker and Henry Longabaugh in George Roy Hill’s romanticised western adventure. It earned four Oscars in total, including one for William Goldman’s screenplay and another for the Hal David and Burt Bacharach song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, which provides a memorable interlude. (110min)

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)

Channel 4, 5.35pm

A glossy Agatha Christie adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet, Murder on the Orient Express combines sumptuous production values with a cast of international superstars. Albert Finney plays the detective Hercule Poirot with a hefty dash of deadpan humour, while the likes of Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Lauren Bacall and an Oscar-winning Ingrid Bergman do their party pieces in luxurious train carriages borrowed from the real Orient Express. (128min)

HOPE SPRINGS (2003)

Sky Movies 1, 8pm

Based on a novel by Charles Webb, Mark Herman’s light romantic comedy tangles Colin Firth, Heather Graham and Minnie Driver in a lively love triangle. Firth plays Colin Ware, a heartbroken artist who flees London for picture-postcard Vermont after being dumped by his fiancée (Driver). Graham’s seductress offers ample compensation, but Colin is torn when his former lover changes her mind. Sweet but slight, Hope Springs is pure escapist fun. (92min)

THE ICE STORM (1997)

BBC Two, 10.30pm

Based on Rick Moody’s 1994 novel, Ang Lee’s tale of wife-swapping and parental neglect in swinging suburbia is a classy and engrosiing ensemble drama set in Nixon-era America. Kevin Kline’s unfaithful husband is trapped in a chilly affair with his neighbour (Sigourney Weaver), driving his embittered wife (Joan Allen) to breakdown. Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire play the children caught in the repressed emotional crossfire. (112min)

THE EDGE (1997)

ITV1 except Scottish, 11.15pm

David Mamet must have had his tongue partly in his cheek when he wrote this hugely entertaining survivalist adventure about a lethal love triangle between a billionaire mogul (Anthony Hopkins), his trophy wife (Elle Macpherson) and his younger rival (Alec Baldwin) deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Shot in handsome wintry tones by Lee Tamahori and making full use of a grizzly bear co-star, The Edge almost ended in tragedy when Hopkins fell into a frozen river and had to be treated for hypothermia. (117min)

NEXT STOP WONDERLAND (1998)

Channel 4, 2.50am

A familiar but absorbing tale of frustrated lovers set in Boston, Next Stop Wonderland made a big splash at the Sundance Film Festival for its novice writer and director Brad Anderson. Hope Davis plays the heroine, a lonely nurse trapped on a treadmill of depressing dates with unsuitable suitors. Romance finally blossoms with a humble plumber and would-be marine biologist (Alan Gelfant). But the path of true love, of course, is never smooth. (104min)

Tuesday

TILL THE END OF TIME (1946, b/w)

BBC Two, 1.30pm

Although conceived as a star vehicle for the screen pin-up Guy Madison, Till the End of Time actually became the career launchpad for his more brooding and dangerous co-star, Robert Mitchum. Edward Dmytryk’s meaty drama stars Madison, Mitchum and Bill Williams as former Marines struggling to adjust to civilian life after the Second World War. While Madison’s troubled prodigal son romances Dorothy McGuire, Mitchum ‘s traumatised drifter steals the film’s second half. Dmytryk’s darker twist on the more celebrated The Best Years of Our Lives begins a welcome season of Mitchum films. (105min)

TWISTER (1996)

ITV1, 8pm

In Jan de Bont’s dumb but dazzling action rollercoaster, a meteorologist couple (Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt) spend almost the entire film chasing tornadoes across Oklahoma. The Oscar- nominated effects are impressive, with tractors, cows and buildings sucked up and spat out by the digitally generated tornado. De Bont proves that he is a master of fast-moving mayhem, but is less comfortable with any sort of characterisation or plot. (113min)

D.O.A. (1988)

BBC One, 11.05pm

Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the creators of the robotic TV star Max Headroom, directed this revved-up remake of a 1949 noir classic, throwing several extra plot twists into the mix. Dennis Quaid revives Edmund O’Brien’s role as a washed-up college professor with just 24 hours to find the stranger who has injected him with a slow-acting poison. Co-starring Charlotte Rampling and Meg Ryan, Morton and Jankel’s supercharged update is a triumph of style over content. (96min)

Wednesday

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

BBC One except Scotland, 8pm

Steven Spielberg took his first potshots at the Nazis in this rip-roaring romp. Tom Selleck was first choice to play the rugged tomb raider Indiana Jones, but Selleck’s TV commitments meant that Harrison Ford stepped in. Affectionately modelled on vintage B-movie adventure serials, Raiders of the Lost Ark feels a little creaky by modern blockbuster standards, but it spawned two hugely lucrative sequels, with a third reportedly on the way. (115min)

NARC (2002)

Sky Movies 2, 10pm

Powerful performances by Ray Liotta and Jason Patric lend raw emotional impact to Joe Carnahan’s hard-knuckled police thriller. Patric plays Nick Tellis, a Detroit narcotics cop suspended and traumatised after shooting a pregnant woman during a drug bust. His way back means working for Henry Oak, a human bulldozer played by Liotta. Shot with a deliberately raw and gritty edge, Narc is a punchy crime story in the classic 1970s vein. (95min)

MEAN STREETS (1973)

ITV1, 12.40am

Martin Scorsese’s early flirtation with the modern-day gangs of New York helped to reshape the language of modern cinema by applying European social realism to the American gangster genre. Drawing on his own youth, Scorsese depicts young Italian-American street toughs as volatile, troubled, sin- obsessed hotheads. Revolving around the friendship between the sensible Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and the manic livewire Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), Mean Streets bounds along with a ragged energy. (110min)

Thursday

DOCTOR SLEEP (2002)

BBC Two, 9pm

A low-budget British thriller with occult overtones, Doctor Sleep stars Goran Visnjic as a hypnotherapist with psychic powers who is recruited by Scotland Yard to search for a Satanic serial killer just as his wife is about to give birth. Combining elements of Rosemary’s Baby with some nightmarish twists, Nick Willing’s tale is saddled with an implausible plot. But it is still an unnerving horror yarn that features a high-class cast, including Shirley Henderson and Corin Redgrave. (108min)

THE KRAYS (1990)

ITV2, 10pm

Both may be long gone, but Ronnie and Reggie Kray still cast a long shadow across British cinema. Martin Kemp teams up with his brother Gary to immortalise the dapper twins who ruled postwar London gangland. Peter Medak dwells on the duo’s oedipal relationship with their mother (Billie Whitelaw) and, controversially, seems to imply a link between Ronnie’s homosexuality and his psychotic nature. An efficient, well-played biopic. (119 min)

PULP (1972)

BBC One except Scotland, 12.05am

Mike Hodges directs Michael Caine in this offbeat fusion of hard-boiled thriller and black comedy. Caine plays Mickey King, a washed-up pulp author tempted to a Mediterranean island by an enigmatic job offer. An obnoxious Holly- wood legend with Mafia connections (Mickey Rooney) wants King to ghost-write his autobiography, but he is shot and killed before the book is completed. Co-starring Dennis Price and Nadia Cassini, Pulp is an enjoyably quirky curio, rich in allusions to Alice in Wonderland and vintage Hollywood noir. (92min)

Friday

HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951, b/w)

BBC Two, 1.35pm

Produced and co-written by Howard Hughes, His Kind of Woman is a muddled potboiler that begins as a straight thriller before becoming a bizarre parody of film noir clichés. The mix is uneven but the first-rate cast make it worthwhile, especially Robert Mitchum as a luckless gambler lured to Mexico by a sinister mobster (Raymond Burr), as well as Vincent Price’s scene-stealing turn as a B-movie ham. Jane Russell also co-stars in this pleasingly twisted cocktail of genres, which was directed by John Farrow, then virtually reshot from scratch by Richard Fleischer. (120min)

A ONE AND A TWO (2000)

BBC Four, 11pm

The Taiwanese director Edward Yang dissects life in modern-day Taipei much as Mike Leigh or Robert Altman might depict their respective societies. Yang’s Cannes Film Festival prizewinner is a multi-viewpoint yarn about friendship, love and social responsibility revolving around N. J. (Wu Nien-Jen), a middle- aged electronics executive who is haunted by dreams of the life that he never pursued with his childhood sweetheart, Sherry (Ko Su-Yun). Meanwhile, his wife (Elaine Jin), teenage daughter (Kelly Lee) and young son (Jonathan Chang) are suffering their own minor crises in this quietly profound and tender drama. (173min)