Well, do ya? Hello, and welcome to Films on TV, as seen in the Harrogate Advertiser (unless they cut out the news-in-brief item when I wasn't looking). What we offer here is a hurtle through the week's listings, in our figurative tour bus. Unfortunately the fact that it's fictional doesn't mean that it doesn't smell. It smells of wet hair and gum.

Still, there's plenty to see ("Oh look, there's Rita Hayworth over to the left, making Orson Welles' life hell"; "And on your right, Robert De Niro being forced to play Russian Roulette by a nasty Vietnamese man") and I'll be on hand to provide some teeth-achingly inane asides.

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A new movie game. I was watching an advert on our DVD copy of The Payoff the other day, which seemed to have been compiled by someone who had never seen any of the actors they were talking about. Listing the stars featured in their film catalogue, they applied increasingly bizarre adjectives to them.

John Carradine, the long-faced character actor of the 1930s best-known for his bit as Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, is apparently "irresstible" (not to me). And the plump bumbler who played Watson in the '40s Sherlock Holmes movies was billed as "fascinating Nigel Bruce". The most inappropriate adjectives to describe movie stars, please.

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FROM THE MAILBAG:

Thanks to those who got in touch last week, particularly the ones I haven't made up. Top of your agenda was a spirited defence of O Brother Where Art Thou, served up by three of you. All operating under shadowy pseudonyms, darjeeling_myworld argued that it was a "wonderful" movie (s)he had enjoyed a fair few times, while The Dude Abides had this to say: "It definitely isn't amongst the Coens' strongest work, but their outstanding dialogue is on full show here, and George Clooney is excellent."

As well as querying the O Brother-bashing, elab49 was disappointed by the criticism dished out to The Ladykillers and Porridge. She likes Red River, though.

Professor Moriarty, a regular correspondent (not in the 1930s sense), had nothing but praise for Emily Watson, who was in last week's Breaking the Waves, and recommended The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, which is apparently "a bit of a mess overall, but I still think a little gem".

Please keep the comments coming, the address for all your thoughts (obviously not all your thoughts), reviews and haikus is rick.burin@ypn.co.uk.

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I suppose we should get started...


SATURDAY, JUNE 20

The Lady From Shanghai (1948, BBC2, 2pm) was director Orson Welles' third excursion into the crime genre, after Journey Into Fear, which he was sacked from, and The Stranger. Taken out of his hands as per usual by over-zealous (i.e. stupid) studio execs, it suffers from atrociously heavy-handed editing that renders some of it incomprehensible. Though perhaps not as incomprehensible as Welles' Irish accent. He plays an easygoing mercenary who's hired to go on a cruise by a shady millionaire (Everett Sloane), and falls head over heels for the man's leggy wife (Rita Hayworth, whose legendarily luscious auburn locks were hacked off prior to filming, then dyed blonde, reportedly enraging Columbia's publicity department). After that I got a bit lost. Still, while the fragmented narrative makes the story a little hard to follow, it unwittingly adds to the feeling of disorientation created by Welles' bravura direction, complete with wonderful tracking shots and bizarre camera angles. And that hall of mirrors climax is just sublime. (3/5)

Sunset (1988, Five, 4.40pm) is one of my least favourite films. A 15-certificate, it's presumably showing in heavily-edited form, which is – for once – a blessing. Bruce Willis is cast as Tom Mix, the star of '20s westerns, who teams up with legendary marshal Wyatt Earp (James Garner) to solve a murder. From that terrific premise comes a film that's not only utterly witless – Willis smirks and gurns his way through the film, saying "Amigo" at the end of every sentence – but also unbelievably offensive. Never have I seen a film that's so blasé about rape, throwing it in as a plot catalyst no fewer than four times. Sunset also features that rarity: an awful performance from Malcolm McDowell. He plays an evil silent clown (imagine a cross between Chaplin and Satan), with bleached spiky hair and a really unconvincing stunt double. The film's two virtues, Garner's affable turn and Henry Mancini's excellent score, barely register. I'd advise you to avoid this one, today and then forever. (1/5)

What Women Want (2000, BBC3, 9.30pm) is another "high-concept" offering, but this one just about makes the grade. Mel Gibson is yer typical chauvinist until some quirk of nature gives him the ability to hear women's thoughts. At first he uses the power in unchivalrous ways, but then he meets business rival Helen Hunt, and love blossoms... This has the stock romantic comedy format – including the familiar melancholy passage that goes on too long – and a few too many dramatic subplots, but enough good lines and likeable characters to make a good film out of a good premise. (3/5)

FILM OF THE WEEK
Don't watch that though, watch this! Metropolitan (1990, BBC2, 0.15am SUN) is, quite simply, the greatest romantic comedy of the last 50 years – and I've seen at least four. Eschewing the rigidity and predictability that dominated (and still dominates) the genre, writer-director Whit Stillman instead created a semi-autobiographical slice-of-life drama that's hilarious, enchanting and utterly true. Edward Clements (in one of only two film roles) plays Tom Townsend , a young man of limited means who enters New York's upper class social scene by accident and spends the festive period with his new friends – among them the suspicious Charlie (Taylor Nichols), Jane Austen buff Audrey (Carolyn Farina) and acerbic Nick (Chris Eigeman), who is the funniest film character I've ever come across. His broadsides at philandering bully Rick Von Sloneker (Will Kempe) – "one of the worst guys of modern times" – are just magnificent, though everything he does is absolutely hilarious. Scattering a trail of telling details throughout the film, Stillman provides not only the laughs, but also the emotional punch required, climaxing with a scene that's both doggedly unconventional and extremely satisfying. He went on to make the excellent Barcelona and the fitfully appealing Last Days of Disco, but this is his masterpiece. (5/5)


SUNDAY, JUNE 21

Hope and Glory (1987, ITV3, 9pm) is a brilliant Home Front memoir from director John Boorman, dealing with his childhood amidst the raids and ruins of wartime London. It's personal, sometimes whimsical and often very moving. Three sequences in particular stand out in my memory: the lost love between the child's mother and his father's best friend; the cricket scenes in the countryside; and the image of the boy, in tears, hitting his former playmates as they search for trophies amidst the rubble of his bombed-out home. (5/5)

Also on at nine is Rushmore (1999, Film4, 9pm), among the best comedies of the '90s. This was only director Wes Anderson's second film - he's since created The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited - but it's astonishingly sure-footed, smart and offbeat. Jason Schwartzman is the lovesick teenage polymath who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a divorced industrialist (Bill Murray) as the two pursue sweet-natured schoolteacher Olivia Williams. Anderson's unique blend of absurdist humour and understated pathos is much in evidence. Just magnificent. (5/5)

Minority Report (2002, BBC1, 10.20pm) is one of my favourite Spielberg films, though it's saddled with his twin Achilles' heels – cloying sentimentality and the usual nine endings. The year is 2054 (in the film; it's still 2009 outside). By the time the film has finished scoffing its cakes whilst attempting to keep them, it will probably be 2154. Tom Cruise plays an elite cop who arrests people before they commit crimes, thanks to three naked, androgynous psychics wired up to a super computer. When he's pre-emptively accused of a revenge-killing, he goes on the run with one of the clairvoyants (Samantha Morton, who's typically superb) in an effort to get to the truth. Spielberg creates a fascinating, complete universe where the gripping thriller plot can really thrive, and punctuates the story with smartly-handled action sequences. Added to that, he draws a memorable early performance from Colin Farrell, and in Morton has a fantastic actress at her considerable best. It's just a pity he has no idea when to quit: by the time we relocate to the country for a fuzzy-focus coda, any semblance of interest has left the building. (4/5)


MONDAY, JUNE 22

King Kong (2005, ITV2, 9pm) is the second big-budget remake of the '33 "classic", though everybody kindly pretends they've forgotten the one where Jessica Lange calls Kong a "male chauvinist ape". This time Jack Black is the obsessive film director who goes to Devil's Island for location shooting and comes back with a giant gorilla. Adrien Brody plays a taciturn screenwriter, while Naomi Watts is the shrill love interest. I'm not overly enamoured of the original Kong: an important and inventive movie that's terrific when it's in New York, but repetitive and a little bit silly when it's on the island. This retread from fan Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings, Heavenly Creatures) follows much the same pattern, though it somehow contrives to be a whole 80 minutes longer. Perhaps that's how long it took to crowbar in the unwelcome gross-out sequences. As unlikely as this may seem, Jack Black's fine dramatic performance emerges as the film's main virtue, along with the fine presentation of Depression-era America. (3/5)

Z-grade production values do in Hoodlum Empire (1952, C4, 4am TUE), which I had rather high hopes for. A thinly veiled account of contemporary racketeering hearings at the US Senate, it features not only Brian Donlevy – a memorable heavy in films of the 1930s, a great anti-hero throughout the '40s and later Professor Quatermass in the first two movie adaptations of Nigel Kneale's classic serial – but also noir titan Claire Trevor and Forrest Tucker, but it never really gets going. Hollywood worked wonders with low-budgets throughout its Golden Era (just catch a Fox Charlie Chan or a Boston Blackie for evidence of that), but here the whole thing looks and sounds fleabitten, with artificial sets and intrusive voiceover that render its promising plot pretty damn dull. Sorry. (1/5)