Saturday January 13
Rio Bravo
(Howard Hawks, 1959) 12.45pm, ITV1
In Hawks's riposte to High Noon, Sheriff John Wayne doesn't scurry around town looking for help against the bad guys; he believes in himself and his motley crew: Dean Martin's town drunk, creaky old Walter Brennan, bar gal Angie Dickinson and young gun Ricky Nelson. It's an easygoing western.
Onegin
(Martha Fiennes, 1998) 2.50pm, BBC2
A Fiennes romance, with Martha directing brother Ralph as the hero of Pushkin's classic novel and their sibling Magnus providing the music. It's a sombre, stately affair, beautifully shot. The aristocratic Onegin leaves the chattering classes of the salons of 1820s St Petersburg for the country, where he meets Toby Stephens and Liv Tyler, sparking a soulful love.
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
(Alfonso Cuarón, 2004) 6.45pm, ITV1
There's a darker, chillier tone to the third instalment of the Potter series: this is Rowling pepped up with some of the threat of Cuarón's Great Expectations. As well as having the eerie Dementors to play with, he invests the whole Hogwarts scene with an air of menace and teenage dread. Most of the familiar faces are back, but Michael Gambon is a slightly less grandfatherly Dumbledore, while Gary Oldman adds bite as Sirius Black and David Thewlis is the new master of defence against the dark arts, Prof Lupin.
The Madness Of King George
(Nicholas Hytner, 1994) 7.05pm, C4
George III, of course, the king who lost the American colonies and whose bouts of madness may have been caused by porphyria. Both a handsome historical drama about skulduggery at court, and a moving study of the man inside the ermine. Nigel Hawthorne's George is magnificent; counterpointing the courtly manners is his moving relationship with his Queen Charlotte, Helen Mirren.
The Shipping News
(Lasse Hallstrom, 2001) 9.10pm, BBC2
Hallstrom's screen version of E Annie Proulx's bestseller relies heavily for atmosphere on the wintry Newfoundland coastline. Kevin Spacey isn't entirely convincing as the timid Quoyle, returning from the big city to the simple life of a fishing village after his disastrous marriage to Cate Blanchett. Moving in with his formidable aunt (Judi Dench), he starts reporting the shipping news on the local paper, while launching a reticent relationship with widow Julianne Moore.
First Blood
(Ted Kotcheff, 1982) 11.50pm, BBC1
Introducing Rambo, the former Green Beret who goes bonkers after being knocked about by the redneck sheriff's men in a bad little midwest town. Busting out of jail and into the woods, he plays cat-and-mouse with the police and then the National Guard, before heading back to town for a showdown with hefty sheriff Brian Dennehy.
Sunday January 14
Five Graves To Cairo
(Billy Wilder, 1943) 11.55am, BBC2
A minor Wilder, this, though its skewed and cynical second world war plot is much in line with his more celebrated Stalag 17. It stars Franchot Tone as a British spy posing as a German at a hotel in enemy-held North Africa, trying to locate secret fuel supplies. Also holed up there is Erich von Stroheim's astonishing Rommel: a bravura performance in a sly and highly entertaining drama.
The Legend Of Bagger Vance
(Robert Redford, 2000) 4.10pm, Five
The story of how Matt Damon's Rannulph Junuh gets his swing back. Since his return from the first world war he's hit the bottle, made his girlfriend, Savannah heiress Adele (Charlize Theron), miserable and just can't get it together on her dad's glorious golf course. Just when you think he can't possibly win the tournament she's fixed up, in steps Will Smith's Bagger Vance, the caddie from heaven. Another way-over-par score on director Redford's schmaltz card.
The Three Musketeers
(Stephen Herek, 1993) 8pm, BBC2
The (not-so) Young Guns take on the swashbuckling Dumas classic - Young Blades perhaps. It's competently done, but its action scenes and sheer sense of fun is no match for Richard Lester's exuberant 1973 version. Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt and Kiefer Sutherland are the slightly colourless three, Chris O'Donnell is D'Artagnan, but sharper than any of them is Rebecca De Mornay as sly Milady.
Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines
(Jonathan Mostow, 2003) 9pm, Five
No James Cameron at the helm this time around, but Mostow constructs an efficient third chapter of the cyborg saga. It's the usual blend of state-of-the-art special effects, anti-nuke sentiment and slushy man-and-machine friendship, between Arnold Schwarzenegger's soft-circuited T-101 and young rebel leader John Connor (Nick Stahl). A new self-deprecating sense of humour is evident, with Arnie getting beaten up by a girly terminator (Kristanna Loken).
Final Destination 2
(David R Ellis, 2003) 10pm, C4
No prizes for originality - in the first film, a group of teenagers who narrowly avoided death in a plane crash are pursued by an understandably miffed grim reaper. Here another group of teenagers, saved from a freeway pile-up by the premonition of young Kimberley (AJ Cook), are similarly stalked. The fun, of course, is in the ingenuity of the kids' apparently haphazard, inevitably gory ends, and the expert manipulation of suspense.
Moonlight Mile
(Brad Silberling, 2002) 10.45pm, BBC1
Loosely based on the events surrounding the murder of Silberling's girlfriend Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989, this is a quietly sensitive study of grief that loses its way with the introduction of an unlikely new love interest. Though Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon as the parents, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the young man, make it an engrossing drama.
Monday January 15
On Moonlight Bay
(Roy Del Ruth, 1951) 1.45pm, C4
Entertainment as wholesome as mom's apple pie, a musical set in domesticated 1917 Indiana. Doris Day is sweetness itself as big sister of the family yearning for college kid Gordon MacRae: the film was so popular the pair did the whole song-and-dance routine again in a sequel, showing on Tuesday.
Man On The Moon
(Milos Forman, 1999) 11.35pm, BBC1
Jim Carrey is spot-on as the enigmatic stand-up comedian Andy Kaufman (best known here as Latka in the TV show Taxi): it's a flamboyant blend of off-the-wall humour on stage and sad mixed-up human being off it. The point seems to be that no one could tell when he stopped performing. An intriguing biopic.
Tuesday January 16
By The Light Of The Silvery Moon
(David Butler, 1953) 1.35pm, C4
This sequel to the musical comedy On Moonlight Bay is as tinselly innocent as the original, the song-titles indicating the prevailing tone: Ain't We Got Fun?, Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee. Doris Day and Gordon MacRae are reunited as the sweethearts, back together after the first world war and encountering moderate difficulties on the path to marital bliss.
Money Train
(Joseph Ruben, 1995) 10.35pm, BBC1
Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes are reunited after the success of Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump. Now the buddies are even closer; they're foster brothers. They are also New York transit police spending a lot of time on the subway, arguing over beautiful colleague Jennifer Lopez and oppressed by sadistic boss Robert Blake. All very sketchy, joshing and unsatisfactory, until the high-speed finale.
Wednesday January 17
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle Of Life
(Jan De Bont, 2003) 9pm, BBC1
Very noisy, very dull sequel for the running, jumping, fighting videogame heroine, here taking on evil scientist Ciaran Hinds in a tussle for the plague-spewing Pandora's box. Still, amid all the carnage Angelina Jolie looks very much the part as Lara.
The Man Who Sued God
(Mark Joffe, 2001) 9pm, Five
Billy Connolly is in his element as Steve Myers, a lawyer who's given it up to become a simple fisherman. But when his boat is destroyed by a bolt of lightning and the insurers refuse to pay out on an "act of God", he sues Him, in the form of His earthly representatives in the Church. Connolly gets to rage against authority in court, but also, as a divorcee finding new love with journo Judy Davis, to be a bit sad too, in an enjoyably offbeat comedy.
Life Or Something Like It
(Stephen Herek, 2002) 11.30pm, BBC1
Second part of a really lame Angelina Jolie double bill, this so-called comedy has the pouting star playing a Seattle TV reporter who is told by a tramp that she has only a week to live. Naturally, she believes him (otherwise we wouldn't have a plot), and begins to discover what really matters in life - thanks to sweet cameraman Edward Burns.
Thursday January 18
Send Me No Flowers
(Norman Jewison, 1964) 1.35pm, C4
Consummate Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedy in which he's a hypochondriac convinced his time is running out and trying to fix Doris up with another husband. It's as dark a tale as the fizzy pair ever managed, but full of laughs, courtesy of Julius Epstein's witty script and fine support from the likes of Tony Randall and Paul Lynde.
Bamboozled
(Spike Lee, 2000) 3.10am, C4
Spike Lee's heartfelt but awkward satirical attack on TV's misuse of black images stars Damon Wayans as Pierre Delacroix, the only black writer on a cable television station. Trouble is, as his ratings-hungry boss Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) tells him, his shows are "too white". In retaliation he creates a programme that's so controversial it has to fail - a new, millennial minstrel show ...
Friday January 19
Caprice
(Frank Tashlin, 1967) 1.40pm, C4
Glitzy 1960s comedy adventure with a little James Bondery thrown in. Doris Day is the cosmetics careerist who smells something fishy when her boss dies; she's soon on the scent of industrial spies and drug dealers. Richard Harris plays a smooth and nasty double agent in a polished, entertaining film.
Stigmata
(Rupert Wainwright, 1999) 11.15pm, BBC1
Patricia Arquette stars as the atheist hairdresser Frankie, who suddenly starts to suffer the stigmata. Gabriel Byrne's Catholic priest investigates, while his boss, Jonathan Pryce's pragmatic cardinal, pursues more worldly interests than her protection. A primitive horror.
