Hello and welcome to Films on TV, where your vote counts. Graham Chalmers, our chief sub and the Keeper of the Key to the Gates of Gig Scene, has suggested I change the name of the column to 'Burin on the Box'. Despite my protestations that this new moniker doesn't mention films at all, he's adamant. And he looks cleverer than me.

Other ideas hatched inside my tiny mind include 'Burin in the Box' - which sounds a little restrictive - 'Burin in the Bix' (the entire thing is written as I eat a box of 24 Weetabix) and 'Burin on the Blocks', which I'd pen whilst preparing to run the 100m. 'An Idiot's Guide to the Week's Films' has a certain ring to it too, though it isn't clear whether I'm insulting myself or you. I think it's me, but I'm too stupid to know for sure.

I did toy with the possibility of calling the guide 'Films on Friday' for a while ("Nice alliteration", "Thanks"), but given its staggering appeal to people of all ages, races and creeds on each and every day of the week, that seemed a bit closed-minded. If it sounds like I'm taking this too seriously, then that's because - you guessed it - I'm an idiot.

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Launched in last week's runaway hit column (four Harrogatonions and a nice couple from Ripon can't be wrong), the "inappropriate adjectives" game drew a full seven responses, all of them from me. So here's the definitive list.

Boy-next-door Peter Lorre
Gorgeous Red Skelton
Subtle Mickey Rooney
Refined Jean Harlow
Girly Spencer Tracy
Clean-cut Mickey Rourke
Talented Michael Madsen

Your submissions are still welcome at rick.burin@ypn.co.uk. There's a slight change to the rules though, because no-one got involved this week. If you do want to send in your suggestions, you have to write them on the wall of your house in eight foot letters, take a photo and then email the pic with a facsimile of your birth certificate to your son (if you don't have a son, a daughter will do. If you don't have either a son or a daughter, any pet or parent is fine), who should then print it out and post it to us at the usual address.

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This is our last column before the summer hols. We return on Friday, July 17.

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Imagine a guide to the week's films featuring Franchot Tone and Eli Wallach? Imagine no longer...

SATURDAY, JUNE 27

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)

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992, ITV1, 10.15pm) really shouldn't work. It's no surprise then that it doesn't. Even given my weakness for buddy movies than no-one else seems to like (Stakeout, Running Scared, Rush Hour – look, I'm sorry), this series is pretty thin, with stale characterisations, duff jokes and by-the-numbers action sequences. There's nothing terribly offensive about the film, and I've sat through all of them once, but there's a better film over on BBC1. I think this is the one when the bomb goes off while Danny Glover is on the toilet. (2/5)

Enemy of the State (1998, BBC1, 10.35pm) is a fine surveillance thriller, something like a popcorn update of Coppola's '74 film The Conversation, and with that film's star (Gene Hackman) in a key supporting role. Will Smith plays a lawyer who runs afoul of government officer Jon Voight and finds his life under threat. As shadowy agents draw near, surveillance expert Hackman rides to the rescue. There are occasional lapses in credibility, but this exciting, emotionally compelling movie is still one of the best blockbusters of its decade. (4/5)

... and clashing with those two is The Last Detail (1973, Five USA, 11.10pm), an excellent counterculture drama scripted by Robert Towne (Chinatown) and helmed by director – and editor supreme – Hal Ashby (Being There). Jack Nicholson is the cocky, foul-mouthed sailor charged with bringing in kleptomaniac youngster Randy Quaid. Regarding it as a bum rap, Nicholson and comrade Otis Young resolve to give Quaid a good time on his way to prison. Everything about this anti-establishment state-of-the-nation drama is first-rate, from Towne's foul-mouthed dialogue to the searing performances. Nicholson's star burned brightly before he traded in his talent for celebrity and identikit mugging. He's at his considerable best here. (5/5)

And over on satellite there's an opportunity to see an oft-overlooked gem from Hollywood's Golden Age. Playing like a cleaned-up retread of the notorious Jean Harlow vehicle Red-Headed Woman (which was released before the censorship restrictions of 1934), in which she slept her way to the top, The Girl From Missouri (1934, TCM, 9.25am) features Harlow as a girl who wants to snare a millionaire the right way – if only people would believe her. Franchot Tone is the man she loves, crusty old Lionel Barrymore the magnate she'll settle for, and the brilliant sardonic comedienne Patsy Kelly plays her man-crazy sidekick, gobbling up the majority of the best lines. Among Kelly's conquests is the popular character actor and former wrestler Nat Pendleton, probably best known as the inspector in The Thin Man. While the movie can't quite maintain the momentum of the first half hour, with too much talkiness centred on the minutiae of '30s social rules and an excess of "down time" (i.e. gloominess before the inevitable happy ending), it's still a great deal of fun, with a typically fine MGM cast. And Harlow, who died tragically three years later, and Tone are a great match. For another fine film featuring the pair, check out Bombshell. (4/5)


SUNDAY, JUNE 28

"Doo doo, krish, doo doo… doo doo doo doo doo doo…" I've put the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire (1981, Film4, 4.50pm) on to inspire me. This atmospheric account of two British sprinters confronting their personal demons at the 1924 Olympics is one of the key homegrown films of its period, and often bracketed with other so-called 'white flannel' dramas – ITV's Brideshead Revisited (still the finest thing to grace a screen of any size) and The Jewel in the Crown. Ben Cross plays Harold Abrahams, a Jewish Oxbridge student, with Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell, his great rival and a devout Scottish Protestant from a missionary family. A fine evocation of the period, a multi-layered script and some exhilarating race scenes are undermined only by a certain inability to flesh out supporting characters and develop interesting subplots. I'm sure I just wish it was 11 hours long like Brideshead. Vangelis' famous score is, of course, a major plus. Why not rent Riefenstahl's Olympia and Charlie Chan at the Olympics (the greatest B movie of all time, of course) and make an Olympics-themed day of it? (4/5)

In a shameless attempt to appease the Coen Bros fans outraged by the "dissing" (I believe this is a term used by youngsters to mean 'criticism') of O Brother Where Are Thou two weeks back, I'm encouraging all-comers to check out the Coens' second finest work: Miller's Crossing (1990, Film4, 11.15pm). Gabriel Byrne is a gangster whose singular code of ethics cause him no shortage of trouble in this stylised, compelling crime picture. This is a great story filled with unforgettable moments – Byrne being terrorised by a roomful of hoods, Albert Finney's revenge on his would-be murderers (to the strains of Danny Boy), gangsters who are flummoxed by a child's prank and the image of John Turturro on his knees in the woods, pleading for his life. Unusual, funny and wonderful to look at, it's just a notch below Blood Simple. in the rundown of the writer-directors' best work. (5/5)


MONDAY, JUNE 29

I haven't seen Very Important Person (1961, C4, 1.35pm) but it looks fun. Cinema's finest blowhard, James Robertson Justice, plays a pompous scientist whose fellow PoWs are keen to see the back of him. So they help him hatch an escape plan.

A 'Cockney' kid with a cut glass accent and a subplot about wrestling can't sink A Kid for Two Farthings (Film4, 12.35pm), which has perhaps the best premise I've ever come across. A downtrodden kid wishes for a unicorn, then stumbles across a goat with a single, twisted horn. Never quite as transcendent as one would hope, but pretty good. David Kossoff steals the show as a kind-hearted tailor. (3/5)

The Departed (2006, Film4, 9pm), showing as part of a crime movies series on the channel, is worth a look, though I'm baffled by those holding it up as an all-time classic thriller. It's enjoyable but a little shallow, with nothing to justify its epic running time except a succession of diverting twists and turns. Leonardo Di Caprio plays a police mole who's in tight with gangsters; Matt Damon a closet hood rising fast through the police ranks. They circle one another endlessly, their superiors each looking to catch the spy. The leads are ideally cast and there's decent support from Martin Sheen, but it's Mark Wahlberg who strolls off with the film, playing Sheen's sarcastic, combustible right-hand man. Jack Nicholson – officially not good on screen since 1975 – fails to puncture this reviewer's preconceptions. If you enjoy The Departed, it's worth keeping an eye out for its inspiration, the Hong Kong actioner Infernal Affairs. (3/5)

Amongst today's offerings on satellite is How to Steal a Million (1966, Sky Classics, 6.45pm), one of a string of delightful '60s crime-comedies featuring sharp-suited men, pencil-skirted women and a plethora of flashy visuals – Charade, Gambit and Arabesque being among the others. Here Peter O'Toole is a debonair burglar who teams with the daughter (Audrey Hepburn) of a brilliant art forger to attempt an elaborate heist. Charles Boyer (himself an outrageously suave leading man, in the 1930s), Eli Wallach and Hugh Griffith head a stellar supporting cast. (4/5)


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