TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24

I saw The Cheaters (1945, Film4, 11am) for the first time the other week and was really taken with it. Playing like a cross between Merrily We Live, Christmas in Connecticut and Remember the Night, it sees a dizzy, well-to-do family take in a penniless, drunken former matinee idol over the Christmas period. But if you're expecting him to teach them a few life lessons, a la Merrily We Live or My Man Godfrey, you're liable to be surprised. Not only is he a complete fraud, but he has a severely dark side and is willing to help them defraud a showgirl out of her rightful inheritance. This intelligent, incisive prestige production from Republic Pictures looks and feels very Christmassy, that festive flavour augmenting a narrative that's loaded with interesting ideas and unexpected diversions, even if they don't always come off. It could have done with a few less jokes about drunkenness, too – Hollywood tended to see alcoholism as amusing until Wilder's The Lost Weekend, released the same year. Joseph Schildkraut, who appeared in perhaps the greatest Christmas film of all – The Shop Around the Corner – is the standout as the John Barrymore-esque actor, with an unusually strong supporting cast, given the studio, headed by Billie Burke and Preston Sturges alumni Eugene Pallette and Raymond Walburn. (4/5)

Big Momma's House (2000, Film4, 7.10pm) is not a good film. (1/5)

And over on satellite...

A Night at the Opera (1935, TCM, 5pm) isn't the Marx Bros' funniest film, that would surely be Monkey Business or Duck Soup, but it's perhaps their most rounded, polished vehicle – if that's what you're looking for. It was their first film after moving to America's biggest studio, MGM, from Paramount, and the step up in production values is obvious. There are gifted comedians in support (including Sig Ruman, the scene-stealing German blowhard), fine musical numbers featuring top singing talent Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, and lavish sets. The plot, such as it is, sees the boys putting their trademark anarchy to good use in boosting Carlisle and Jones to opera stardom, whilst relegating talented bully Walter Woolf King to obscurity (and subjecting him to general ridicule). The set-pieces are legendary: the aviation presentation; the "sanity clause" dispute; the hotel room farce, and while some of Groucho's one-liners are as impenetrable to modern audiences as, say, the physical charms of Jean Harlow, the bulk of them are still hilarious. Like this one, as he observes King bullying assistant Harpo: "Hey, you big bully – what's the idea of hitting that little bully?" In fact, it's Harpo, as usual, who steals the film, his commitment to sweet-faced chaos serving up a succession of massive laughs. (5/5)


WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25

Helena Bonham Carter is one of my favourite actresses, that affection based almost entirely on her turns in a string of exceptional period dramas. She's excellent once more in Howards End (1992, Film4, 6.15pm), a tale of love, skulduggery and social manoeuvring that doubles as a portrait of a nation in flux. As with Merchant-Ivory's earlier classic, A Room with a View, it's based on an E.M Forster novel, with a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The cast includes Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave and Samuel West, and though Bonham Carter doesn't dominate the screen time, it's she – once more – who leaves an indelible impression. (5/5) Did anyone catch Enid on BBC4 last week? Bonham Carter elevated the one-dimensional script with another fine performance; I hope that one of these days someone will give her something good to do again.

Hitch (2005, Five, 9pm) looked fairly appealing on release, with star Will Smith talking up the film most convincingly during an extensive publicity campaign. He must be an excellent actor. Or perhaps he genuinely believed it was good. Anyway, it's not. Smith plays a lifestyle coach who helps Kevin James snare the woman of his dreams, only for he and his protégé to discover that (excuse me while I yawn widely) it's better to just be yourself and yadda yadda yadda. Smith is as appealing as ever in a role that requires an agreeable lack of vanity, but Eva Mendes is thoroughly dislikeable as his leading lady, and the by-the-numbers plotting is pretty wearying. As mindless escapism, it's passable, with a handful of good gags, but there are so many great romantic comedies out there, it seems a shame to choose this one. Why not rent It Happened One Night, Libeled Lady, His Girl Friday or Metropolitan instead? Or perhaps just get an early night. (2/5)

The American President (1995, Sky Drama, 8pm), from writer Aaron Sorkin, plays like an extended pilot for The West Wing. Michael Douglas is the widowed, very human president who falls in love with an environmentalist (Annette Bening) and faces down the barbs and brickbats of the conservative establishment. This is an exceptional piece of present-day Americana that has the temerity to name-check Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and then comes close to matching it. West Wing premier Martin Sheen plays Douglas' chief of staff, while Michael J. Fox is effortlessly likeable as an idealistic advisor, and Richard Dreyfuss peddles an agreeable strain of Republican villainy as the insidious Senator Bob Rumson. Former indie stalwart Taylor Nichols (Metropolitan, Barcelona) has a solitary scene. (5/5)


THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, C4, 1.25pm) has Steve McQueen as an art thief pursued by pouting insurance agent Faye Dunaway. It's shallow but fun, with good chemistry between the leads, a fine theme song and some notably sexy chess. (3/5)

The first screen version of Cheaper by the Dozen (1950, Film4, 5pm) was adapted by Lamar Trotti, one of the best and most underrated screenwriters of the 20th Century and – suitably enough – a Fox executive. It's a minor, alarmingly episodic comedy that skirts by on its sheer affability and the playing of its stars, including the great Myrna Loy – playing the mother of 12 children. Though virtually forgotten today, Loy was an enormous star from the early '30s to the late '40s and was crowned Queen of Hollywood in 1938, having being voted America's favourite actress in the biggest poll of its kind ever commissioned. She was also President Roosevelt's heartthrob of choice, had the most requested plastic surgery profile of the '30s and, when Dillinger was gunned down by the feds outside the Biograph Theatre, it was Loy he'd broken cover to see – in 1934's Manhattan Melodrama. Anyway, back to the film. This gentle, broad family comedy radiates pleasantness, and also offers a good showcase for emerging star Jeanne Crain. (3/5)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2008, Sky Drama, 1am FRI) - Johnny Depp is Sweeney Todd, the wronged barber returning to London to wreak revenge on his tormentors with a cut-throat razor, in this invigorating adaptation of the Sondheim musical. Though he's no singer, Depp is one hell of an actor, imbuing his skunk-haired serial killer with a dramatic intensity that's compulsively watchable, while Helena Bonham Carter and Ed Sanders offer sterling support. There are bravura moments aplenty – Alan Rickman's climactic realisation of Todd's true identity is a gem, while an appealingly off-kilter dream sequence recalls director Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands – compensating for gaps in plot and characterisation, and the film's inescapably feeble second leads. Despite its flaws, Burton's latest venture into gothic gore is delivered with such bloody conviction that one can't help but marvel. It's comfortably the best thing he's done in a decade. (3/5)?


FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27

"Look up "idiot" in the dictionary – you know what you'll find?" "A picture of me?" "No! The definition of the word idiot, which you are." Imagine a good version of The Hard Way, the underwhelming Michael J. Fox vehicle about an actor researching his role alongside a hard-bitten cop. Got it? Excellent, that's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005, ITV1, 11.05pm), though this time it's Robert Downey, Jr. who is the green ham (urgh) and Val Kilmer the (openly gay) cop he's paired with. Written and directed by Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black, it's a consistently inventive action-comedy that provides top entertainment whilst effectively deconstructing a genre that had grown stale. The Russian Roulette sequence is great. (5/5)

Duel (1971, ITV1, 1.50am SAT, with sign language) is a decent early thriller from Steven Spielberg that sees moustachioed motorist Dennis Weaver pursued by the driver from hell, who's in a big lorry. It's a fast-paced, well-directed yarn that's exciting and enjoyable without generating the white-knuckle terror you'd hope for. (3/5)


Thanks for reading. For #s 60 to 51 in our all-time Top 100 countdown, please click on the link below right. It's got a Brazilian gangster movie, a silent comedy and even a movie from the last 10 years. Go on. Click it. Please?