Lots of pre-amble this week. In the highly likely event you want to skip down to the main Films on TV business, that starts about halfway down this page.

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The pre-amble (1)

An '80s boyband bounce onto stage. They're wearing transparent pink-tinted visors a la Rod Stewart in the 'Hot Legs' video. The singer looks like Morten Harket out of A-Ha, but with more prominent cheekbones and a bigger pout. He's wearing a flat cap and wellies, and carrying a bucket of slop. Gyrating wildly to shrieks of delight from the (all male, middle-aged) audience, he bounds to the centre of the stage and starts to sing:

It's Friday morning,
What you gonna do?
Your boss is yelling,
And looking for you,
You missed a deadline,
And forgot one shoe,
Your hair's on fire,
You've smeared your notes with stew…

So go to Films on TV,
It's really good,
Your online film guide,
Written largely in mud.

It's Friday morning,
You've lost your car,
You left it in Norway,
Outside a bar,
Your TV exploded,
Halfway through The Bill,
You're living alone,
With a pheasant called Phil,

But go to Films on TV,
And everything is alright,
Your Friday's now perfect,
Though your hair's still alight.

The world blows up.

(Lyrics © Pete Waterman (not that one), 1984)

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The pre-amble (2)

"Do you like movies about gladiators?" I don't; not really, or at least not many of them. There are other genres I can do without too: slasher movies (Mark Kermode likes them enough for everybody), the bulk of modern action fare and anything starring Charlton Heston. So I was surprised how much I enjoyed that one where Heston played a gladiator who turned into Jason Voorhees whilst engaging in buddy-movie banter with Martin Lawrence and gunning down some peroxide blonde terrorists. Ben-Hur, I think it was called.

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but you're now trapped inside Films on TV and that tedious spiel above is indicative of the kind of high-concept, low-intellect shenanigans that go on in here. My name's (Films on) TV's Rick Burin, and aside from being one of the highly-trained, highly-strung reporters swanning about Ackrill Towers, notebook in hand, I'm also a complete film geek. Some people have suggested that since the breadth of my knowledge is largely restricted to Hollywood films of the '30s and '40s I might be ill-suited to the kind of accessible, family-friendly film guide required of a regional newspaper's website. Well as far as I'm concerned, they should heed the advice Harold Huber gave to Richard Clarke in Charlie Chan in City in Darkness. Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Oh, I see.

Still, this week's guide covers 24 movies from 1940 to 2006, including a Julia Roberts romcom, a Jason Statham actioner and a bona-fide Western classic. There's also some correspondence from our motley crew of followers (you're now a member, welcome) and our regular DVD of the Week feature.

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From the Mailbag

We've had plenty of top quality contributions over the past couple of weeks, and some of the best came from the inestimable Scott McHarg. He's got a bone or three to pick with a few of the ratings dished out in the Jul 25 to 31 guide, and he doesn't care who knows it.

Five Easy Pieces, hailed in these pages as a masterpiece is "frightfully dull", he says, kicking off with the kind of outrageous proclamation we always enjoy. "I also think you have been unduly harsh on Being John Malkovich and The Matrix, giving them the same rating as Rush Hour!" he continues. In our defence, they do occupy the opposite ends of the 3/5 spectrum.

"Yes The Matrix has too many fight scenes and, well, Keanu Reeves, but the effects are groundbreaking and the story, while not particularly original, is brilliantly executed." As he points out, Chris Tucker is also mercifully absent.

Still, his was one of two missives we received corroborating the fact* that The Birds is kind of, err, bad. "I am delighted you have given The Birds a kicking," says Mr McHarg, proving his cleverness and rugged good looks. "You should have gone the whole hog and given it 1/5! It is a complete mess, Tippi Hedren is absolutely shocking and it has a grand total of zero scares/thrills. Rubbish!" Well, quite.

Correspondence welcome as always at rick.burin@ypn.co.uk

*not technically a fact

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Well all that took a while, didn't it? Here's the main thing:

Films on TV
Aug 8 to 14 – Your one-stop shop for the best in films on the box:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8

Doctor at Large (1957, More4, 11.15am) was the third in Rank's Doctor series. Dirk Bogarde returns once more (in the role he hated) as kind-hearted doctor Simon Sparrow. Following the excellent Doctor in the House and the harmless Doctor at Sea, the writers turn down the dial marked 'pathos', throw out the box reading 'may contain real human emotion' and tip in the contents of two large sacks labelled 'bawdiness' and 'jokes about boobs'. This is still streets ahead of the follow-up, Doctor in Distress, with an engaging story and a few good lines. (3/5)

My Best Friend's Wedding (1997, E4, 9pm) does the job, despite a faintly appalling climactic sing-along to 'I Say a Little Prayer For You'. Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney have a platonic pact to marry one another if neither is hitched by age 28. Three weeks before Roberts' 28th birthday, her would-be groom announces that that's off, as he's marrying student Cameron Diaz. So, armed with her gay best friend (C. Aubrey Smi- no of course it's Rupert Everett), Roberts hotfoots it to up/down/over to Chicago to disrupt the nuptials. That this one succeeds is largely thanks to appealing performances from the four leads, with Roberts doing good work in a role that's not obviously sympathetic. It can't rival romantic comedies of the Golden Age like Libeled Lady and Remember the Night, nor more offbeat recent additions to the canon (Metropolitan, The Royal Tenenbaums), but as a middle-of-the-road genre entry it's not half bad. (3/5)

What's the worst film you've ever seen at the cinema? Despite having seen the 2003 Italian Job remake on the big screen, I might still plump for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001, BBC1, 10.15pm), released back in the days when I still went to the cinema and just saw whatever happened to be on. And it was Grand Central in Stockport, so half decent movies were rather thin on the ground. Anjelina Jolie (she's the one who well no way lured Brad away from Jen, the bitch) plays the titular tomb raider, whom we're statutorily required to label as "pneumatic" (Aldous Huxley's word, not mine). The plot, in the vein of The Da Vinci Code, is impressively inane, with Jolie and roguish Daniel Craig battling the Illuminati (not them again!) for the future of the planet. There's a particularly terrible bit where Jolie meets her (on and off-screen) father Jon Voight in an alternate reality. I think that was the moment when my teeth started aching from the sheer awfulness of it. It really is just complete rubbish. (1/5)

The best bits of Explorers (1985, E4, 10.35am) seem to have been created by accident, en route to the most poorly conceived comedy sequences ever burped onto a cinema screen. Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix are gawky small-town kids who develop a space craft. The first half is a real treat, positively stuffed with wonder and charm. Then the wheels fly off, and it turns out that it was just a ruse to get them – and us – into space, so as to introduce us to annoying prosthetic aliens obsessed with old American sitcoms. What?! If they wanted to peddle that particular strain of idiocy, why bother getting our hopes up? The film is just about worth it for those enchanting opening reels, but it remains one of the most frustrating movies I've ever seen. Incidentally, this one doesn't have a proper ending, because the makers ran out of money, so Hawke and Phoenix just fly around a bit, then the credits roll. (3/5)

Just as the BBC has a remit to educate (err, yes) and C4 is designed to cater for minority groups, channel Five has a role as the mouthpiece of the commie-baiting, witch-hunting House of Un-American Activities Committee*. Why else would it be showing the notorious Big Jim McLain (1952, Five, 3.45pm)? Still, I'll be tuning in for the curio value, as HUAC investigators John Wayne and James Arness track down reds in Hawaii. That's the hope, anyway, but since the film was released in some European countries with the baddies transformed into drug dealers (courtesy of some quick dubbing), we might be getting that version. I can't wait, frankly.

*technically untrue


SUNDAY, AUGUST 9

FILM OF THE WEEK
"Thrilling as love born amid a thousand fabulous adventures!" screamed the posters for Only Angels Have Wings (1939, BBC2, 1pm), and that just about covers it. It's an unstintingly exceptional action yarn from director Howard Hawks, filled with the tough women and tougher men who typically populated his films. Jean Arthur is a bolshy broad who turns up at a South American airmail depot, where she falls, heels over head, for taciturn, fatalistic pilot Cary Grant. His is a hard living, with death lurking forever in the shadows, and his friends plagued by tragedy or disgrace - brooding mechanic Thomas Mitchell, spurned, mysterious flyer Richard Barthelmess and his leggy, desperate wife Rita Hayworth. It's masterful stuff, packed with action, suspense, romance and comedy, and with an ensemble cast in peak form. Grant never delivered a more dynamic performance, and there's a superb, complex supporting turn from former silent screen superstar Barthelmess. The "Who's Joe?" sequence still packs an emotional wallop too. (5/5)

"The English Patient (1996, BBC1, 10.20pm) - my kind of film, very long and very, very boring." That was the verdict of Graham Norton in Father Ted, give or take the odd word that I've forgotten. It's my kind of film too, with a thrilling sweep and a central romance that's thoroughly affecting - and really bloody miserable. Epics only really work if they can mix the grand with the personal, and this one strikes just the right balance. Director Anthony Minghella is aided by a pair of great lead turns, as horrifically burned Hungarian cartologist Ralph Fienners (the misnomered title figure) recounts the story of his doomed romance with married Englishwoman Kristin Scott-Thomas against the backdrop of wartorn Egypt. A subplot concerns the romance between his nurse (Juliette Binoche) and a British-Indian lieutenant (Naveen Andrews), and there's a showy supporting part for Willem Dafoe - *slight spoiler*he's got no thumbs*end of slight spoiler*. There are flaws - a greater explanation of the situation in Egypt would have been nice, while the Binoche-Andrews relationship is a bit undernourished - but impassioned performances and spellbinding imagery lift it way out of the ordinary.(4/5)

So I imagine you might want to tune into that, rather than The Stone Killer (1973, Five, 11.05pm), one of six trashy action movies directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson. It's pretty much par for the series, as cop Bronson arrives in Los Angeles to track down some mafia guys who are playing dirty. Their nefarious scheme? They're forming a private army of Vietnam vets. If you're expecting some sort of political comment, then I'm afraid that's out, but there is a fight in a quarry. It's dated, stupid, and sometimes almost fun. Bronson's singular brand of police brutality makes Dirty Harry look like Dixon of Dock Green. (2/5)

Over on Freeview there's a dazzling Arabian Nights adaptation: The Thief of Bagdad (1940, Film4, 3.10pm), where the hand of Michael Powell is evident among the six directors (three of them credited on screen). *SOME SPOILERS* The film sees the King of Bagdhad (John Justin) team with young thief Abu (the appealing child star Sabu) to fight the evil Jaffar ('20s leading man Conrad Veidt) for control of the city. This colourful, riotously enjoyable yarn has one classic scene after another as Abu lets a genie out of a bottle on the beach, battles a sea-storm, fights a giant spider and then rides to the rescue - atop a flying carpet. *END OF SPOILERS* It's just tremendous fun, dazzlingly designed and directed with style and panache. The groundbreaking special effects still look pretty good too. (5/5)


MONDAY, AUGUST 10

The Gunfighter (1950, C4, 1.35pm) is perhaps the best of the "reformed gunslinger" genre, where a world weary pistol packer tries to reform, but can't escape the violence he's always lived by. Gregory Peck plays Jimmy Ringo, who arrives in a small Western town to see his girl, schoolteacher Peggy Walsh. The marshal wants to drive him out of town - and the townsfolk? Well they just want to kill him, if they can stop shaking first. Peck, sometimes wooden but unjustly maligned, is perfect in the lead (he played a similarly interesting character in the neglected classic Yellow Sky the previous year), and there are arresting supporting characterisations from Walsh, Skip Homeier, Millard Mitchell and Karl Malden. This one is built on an intelligent, thoughtful, elegiac script and gets a big boost from its crisp monochrome photography - moodier lighting might have made it look more fatalistic, but it works great this way too. This is the film repeatedly referenced in the great 1986 Bob Dylan song 'Brownsville Girl' (which contains strong spoilers). (5/5)

*SOME SPOILERS*
The Matrix Reloaded (2003, ITV1, 10.35pm) is, and I await your brickbats with open arms and a kind heart, probably my favourite of the trilogy, a big budget sequel that delivers on the promise of the first while throwing in a few eye-popping action sequences. You might remember that in the original film it emerged that the world was an illusion devised by hyper-intelligent machines and that Keanu Reeves was going to have to fight a lot of bad guys in order to get them to just stop it. Well, that's what he does here. The freeway chase, derided as pointless excess, is anything but, and ups the ante from that one in Lethal Weapon 4. There's also good use of the stock "choose humanity or your girlfriend" situation, and if proceedings sometimes descend into impenetrable talkiness, that's the price you have to pay for a blockbuster that thinks for itself. Seeing as you'll all have seen this, I thought I'd do an unacceptably shoddy, informal review, as opposed to a proper one. Is that OK? (3/5)

Clashing with the amazingly awesome ending of The Gunfighter (I don't want to sway you at all) is Lover Come Back (1962, Sky Classics, 12.40pm), the second of the three chic, unpretentious romantic comedies starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. As with their first teaming, Pillow Talk, the set-up is this: the pair hate each other, but have never met. Hudson pretends to be someone else and Day falls in love with him, with the inevitable unmasking hanging over them. Here they're rival advertising executives: she a strait-laced workaholic and he a complete cad. It's great fun, with some nice barbs aimed at the ad industry, a few big laughs and an excellent performance from Tony Randall as Hudson's spineless boss. The only shortcomings are Hudson's character - rather too much of a heel to side with completely - and the rushed ending. Still, recommended... when it isn't clashing with The Gunfighter. (4/5)


For TUE to FRI picks, please click on the link below right.