UPDATED - Films on TV - May 23 to 29

STEVE McQueen, The Wizard of Oz II and Mel Gibson duffing up a kung fu master in the film guide that's got about six weeks to catch up on.

Hi, I'm Rick and this is Films on TV. First up, an apology. After 12 unforgettable (actually, make that "relatively harmless") weeks, Films on TV was forced to take an unexpected break. Sorry we left you hanging, and thank you for the emails questioning our disappearance. I should have been there to guide you away from Mean Girls; I feel like Idi Amin when he turned up late on Blue Peter and let all the kids down (please check this, subs). I trust the following dramatisation, filmed at huge expense, will make it up to you.

EXT. HARROGATE COUNCIL OFFICES – NIGHT

Capt Renault (Claude Rains) and Rick Burin (Humphrey Bogart) are sitting on a bench.

RENAULT

I often speculate on why the column disappeared for six weeks. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run away with the tips tray from Bettys? I like to think that you killed a man, it's the romantic in me.

BURIN

It was a combination of all three.

RENAULT

And what in heaven's name brought you to Harrogate?

BURIN

My health, I came to Harrogate for the desert.

RENAULT

The desert? What desert? We are in a spa town.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

***

I also want to share this with you, namely the plot summary to In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, starring Jason Statham. It contains spoilers, but I like to think that's an act of mercy. Thanks to news editor Tom Hay for the link.

And on page three, there'll be another ill-fated attempt to stretch this column beyond the parameters defined by its name: DVD of the Week. This week there's jazz in them thar hills.

***

As always, please send any email correspondence to rick.burin@ypn.co.uk. We also accept carrier pigeon, text message (text Radio Five Live on 85058 and then ring me if they read it out on air and tell me what they said) and even post! Here's the guide:

SATURDAY, MAY 23

In line with my previously diva-ish behaviour, I'm only reviewing films today that begin with the letter 'B'.

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998, ITV1, 3pm) is an inconceivably awful follow-up to the excellent 1980 film. Dan Ackroyd reprises his role, while the much-missed John Belushi is replaced by hefty character actor John Goodman and a really annoying kid. The movie's thoroughly witless, with a particular nadir being reached in the Jamaican zombie number. A few soul greats pop up in welcome cameos (B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin), but that's not enough reason to tune in. (1/5)

Bullitt (1968, C4, 10.50pm) has an undeserved reputation as a great film, so let's take that apart. Sure Steve McQueen is hip, uttering the immortal line "Look, you work your side of the street, and I'll work mine", Lalo Schifrin's score is aces and there's that oft-referenced car chase through the streets of San Francisco. But the story is horrendously convoluted and poorly explained to boot (arf), to the extent that all one can really be sure about is that McQueen is playing a cop, he's protecting a witness and, oh what just happened to that guy, and who's he, and what's that chap with the briefcase doing and ooooouueeuuurgh. Just put the soundtrack CD on and drive around in your car, I'm sure you'll be able to craft a more coherent narrative. (2/5)

And then be sure to watch Brick (2005, C4, 1am SUN). This devilishly clever little pastiche translates the patter and the quirks of classic film noir to contemporary American high school life, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of Third Rock From the Sun fame) looks into his ex-girlfriend's disappearance and uncovers a few uncomfortable truths. It's one of the best films of the last 10 years, with idiosyncratic language (including some sublime made-up slang) that recalls the cult crime movie Force of Evil, and smart performances by a cast of virtual unknowns. Gordon-Levitt is simply superb. The only bum note is some absurdist comic relief that is funny but lessens the film's impact – which is still considerable. (5/5)

Oh go on, I'll review something starting with 'D', as well. Donnie Darko (2001, BBC2, 10.30pm) is one of the decade's major sleeper hits, a genre-hopping mix of sci-fi, thriller, comedy and rabbit film (a much neglected genre, considering how good Harvey and Watership Down were) that sees Jake Gyllenhaal scrambling to make sense of an apocalyptic warning imparted by a giant bunny called Frank. It's not always on-target, with stabs at social comment that seem muddled and out-of-place, and an archness that can grate, but there's something about it that's undeniably exciting. Music buffs should enjoy the inspired use of Echo and the Bunnymen's 'The Killing Moon', while film bores (myself included) are pretty fond of the mesmerising tracking shot at the school. Some big laughs too. (3/5)

And I'll even chuck in a 'G'. The Goonies (1985, Five, 5.55pm), which is one of those films beloved of '80s nostalgia fiends, sees a bunch of kids tackling some nasty pirates. It starts well, but goes awry. (2/5)

SUNDAY, MAY 24

Five serves up a trio of treats today, which must be a first. Let's hope they're back to showing '80s TV movies starring Farrah Fawcett-Majors tomorrow, as this feels odd.

Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951, Five, 1pm) is up first, in which slightly intense rail passenger Robert Walker meets tennis pro Farley Granger, and gets it into his head that he's supposed to murder his acquaintance's girlfriend (I hate it when that happens). He goes through with it, then starts nagging Granger to keep his end of the bargain and off Walker's father. This was a change of pace for the doomed Walker, who had previously been a weedy (though likeable) leading man, and he's terrific. Hitch's movies were starting to get really nasty around this time, but the cruelty is offset by a surefootedness and inventiveness that's positively dazzling. The fairground set-pieces are the stuff of legend. The tennis sequences are not. (4/5)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Five, 3pm) - David Lean's epic vision remains as marvellous as ever: a bold and brilliant film, at once grand and personal. It marries character study and spectacle, drama and wonder like nothing before or since. Peter O'Toole gives the performance of a lifetime: a compelling, intense, daring, human turn that shakes with indignation, doubt, righteousness, rage and self-pity, as he turns from bold adventurer to callous, murderous wreck. Alec Guinness, Claude Rains, Omar Sharif and Anthony Quinn are all fine, but one can barely find time to watch them. (5/5)

The Wild Bunch (1969, Five, 11.05pm) is just great, as William Holden's dying breed of bank robbers, well, die. Some hold this as Sam Peckinpah's greatest film, and you can see where they're coming from. All the director's hallmarks are here, from alpha males with crippling psychological defects to blistering action sequences. The climactic shoot-out is in a league of its own. Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson (more of whom below), Warren Oates and Bo Hopkins shine in a super supporting cast. (5/5)

MONDAY, MAY 25

Channel 4's John Ford season begins with Rio Grande (1950, C4, 1.25pm), which was the third part of the director's Cavalry Trilogy (following Fort Apache and the incomparable She Wore a Yellow Ribbon). It's a gentle, lyrical little film that places domestic drama in the forefront, throws in some stunt-riding and a heap of music, and climaxes with a crisply-shot shoot-out. It's pure Ford and I think it's fantastic. Lots of people can't stand it, but hey, who likes people? John Wayne – reprising his Fort Apache role – is Lt Col Kirby Yorke, who experiences some strange emotions when his estranged wife and son turn up at his post. The stunt-riding by Ben Johnson, a former cowboy and future Oscar-winner, has to be seen to be believed. (5/5)

Five continue to accidentally show good films this evening with the screening of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996, Five, 6.15pm), a middling work from their '90s renaissance. There are no surprises, but the gargoyles are a good laugh and there's a certain flavour to it. Tom Hulce and Demi Moore head the voice cast. I got a figure of Esmerelda in my cereal. I quite fancied her when I was 12. (2/5)

Sky Classics delves into the back catalogue of Alfred Hitchcock today and unearths all manner of great things. And Marnie, but let's not dwell on that. As critics (or spoilsports, as we like to call them) have delighted in pointing out, the plot of Notorious (1946, Sky Classics, 4.45pm) doesn't really bear close scrutiny, but there are compensations, such as it being thoroughly fantastic. Cary Grant is the intelligence officer who gets Ingrid Bergman to cosy up to Nazi sympathiser Claude Rains (who's magnificently appalling), then betray him. They think they've got him, but Rains is onto them. This starts off as a romantic comedy, with tons of sparkling banter, then the Master piles on the dread. (5/5)

For TUE to FRI listings, please click on the link, below right.TUESDAY, MAY 26

FILM OF THE WEEK 1

Film4 has a season of Frank Capra films on at the moment, and if you only know him from It's a Wonderful Life, you're in for a treat. Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939, Film4, 11am) is one of his best, a sensitive, passionate and right-minded defence of democracy starring James Stewart, the wonderful Jean Arthur and as good a cast of supporting players as Hollywood ever assembled – Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey, H. B. Warner, Charles Lane, Porter Hall and Jack Carson. Phew. Stewart is a young senator who's sent to the capital to act as a patsy for big business interests, but finds strength through bolshy Arthur and the legacy of Lincoln. His filibustering sequence is one of the great set-pieces in American cinema. (5/5) Capra's Platinum Blonde (4/5) screens tomorrow at the same time and is immediately followed by The Bitter Tea of General Yen (which I haven't seen). For more, check yer listings tome.

The Quiet Man (1952, C4, 1pm) is boisterous Blarney from the most Irish of all directors, second-generation immigrant John Ford – or Sean Aloysius O'Fearna, as he liked to pretend he'd been christened. Ford's favourite leading man, John Wayne, plays an American boxer who kills a man in the ring and quits, travelling to Ireland in search of his roots. As so often in his later films, Ford delights in treading the line between idealism and cynicism, as he presents an Emerald Isle that's lushly imagined, but not quite the utopia of Wayne's imagination. The cinematography and music are just perfect, though you might object to the film if you're a) Irish, b) a feminist, c) watching Loose Women by mistake and can't follow the story. (5/5)

The Day of the Jackal (1973, ITV4, 10.20pm) is a cold but meticulously made, utterly gripping thriller, starring Royal Hall champion Edward Fox (if you're reading this outside Harrogate, the Royal Hall is like Wembley, but better and made of gold. The fantastic Mr Fox did a wildly successful fundraiser there). He's an assassin out to nail Charles de Gaulle, and we get to watch every step of his preparations. This one's a real slow burner, with tension mounting layer by layer. I wish the characters were fleshed out a bit more, though. (4/5)

Jet Li is the world's leadest wushu practitioner, a gifted martial artist who won numerous awards on his way to becoming his generation's Bruce Lee. Mel Gibson is that guy out of Mad Max. Which one of them would win in a fight? Surprisingly, the answer is Mel Gibson, and the evidence is on your screens tonight in the flaccid shape of Lethal Weapon 4 (1998, Five USA, 9pm), a threadbare fourth instalment of a series that was never that good to begin with. (2/5)

Worth setting the video (or sacrificing your sleep) for tonight is Wild Strawberries (1957, Film4, 1.20am WED), the most accessible – and best – Ingmar Bergman film I've seen. Victor Sjostrom plays a cantankerous professor en-route to receive an honorary degree. Via flashback – and a miraculous, much-imitated device by which we join him as he strolls through scenes from his life – we learn his story. This is a one-of-a-kind work that exudes a quiet, reflective melancholia but has moments of warmth and humour that seem atypical of the director's work. It's fantastic. (5/5)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27

FILM OF THE WEEK 2

A left-field favourite this morning, as BBC2 screens the marvellous Return to Oz (1985, BBC2, 11.15am), a belated sequel that was slaughtered by critics upon release, and seems to have traumatised an entire generation of children (though if all the people who say so really saw it, how come it only grossed about four shillings and eight pence?). Fairuza Balk, arguably the most interesting movie star of the age, if only she'd get her act together, is Dorothy, back from Kansas and embarrassing her folks. She keeps going on about her mates – one of whom's made out of straw, another out of tin, and a third who seems to be some sort of camp lion – so her parents decide to give her electro-shock treatment. Yes, really. They ship her off to the sanitarium (can you see yet how this failed to become a family-orientated crowd-pleaser?) and she's strapped to a bed... but before the doctors can administer the treatment there's a thunderstorm and Dorothy manages to escape, aided by a mysterious girl from Oz (Sophie Ward, who appeared in another terrific, oft-overlooked '80s kids' film, Young Sherlock Holmes). Then things get really weird. This breathtaking, hypnotic fantasy includes rocks that come to life, cross-dressing baddies with wheels for legs and a terrifying sequence in which hundreds of disembodied heads scream at Dorothy. And a talking sofa with the head of a moose. It's not really for kids, but it is utterly brilliant. The director, Walter Murch, had been the soundman on Coppola's The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. They never let him helm another movie. (5/5)

More Ford this afternoon with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, C4, 1.05pm), which is one of the best 20 movies I've ever had the good fortune to see. It's a heady blend of mythology and revisionism, with Ford both subverting and paying homage to the genre he did more than anyone to define. James Stewart is the eastern lawyer who needs gunman John Wayne's help to tame the West – and see off Lee Marvin's snarling outlaw. A mood of quiet sadness pervades this glorious film, while Woody Strode leaves an indelible mark as Wayne's right-hand man. (5/5)

THURSDAY, MAY 28

Two Thousand Women (1944, C4, 1.40pm) is another wartime flick made for propaganda purposes. It has the same writer-director combo (Frank Launder and Sydney Gilliat) and star (Patricia Roc) as Millions Like Us, but can't come close to matching that wonderful picture. Roc plays a nun, holed up in a former-hotel with a bunch of other exiled ex-pats at the mercy of the Jerries. With hindsight, the film makes for slightly uncomfortable viewing, depicting life as a Nazi PoW as a slight inconvenience, rather than a process of dehumanisation ending most probably in execution. Still, that probably wasn't what the punters wanted in 1944, and the movie is pretty well done. Forget the slack plotting and stock characters and revel instead in the writer-directors' evocative perpetuation of our national identity. If you don't sob during the finale, you're a cold, unpatriotic so and so. Roc's character appears a possible blueprint for Deborah Kerr's in Black Narcissus. (4/5), because when it's good, it's sensational.

You know how great Beverly Hills Cop is? Well Beverly Hills Cop II (1987, Sky Modern Greats, 6.10pm) really isn't. I'm not sure they should be allowed to show it on Modern Greats, though they have Rocky V on this morning as well, so the channel title might be ironic. I only watched the film six months ago and I'm struggling to remember the story, so that's probably not a good sign. I do recall Ronny Cox getting shot up by Brigitte Neilsen, but after that everything goes cloudy. It's still better than the third instalment, though. (2/5)

FRIDAY, MAY 29

I Was a Male War Bride (1944, C4, 1.30pm) is an unexpectedly great comedy. Not that director Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Twentieth Century) and star Cary Grant (The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday) don't have considerable form, just that the famous image from the film - Grant in drag - looks so thoroughly unpromising. Thankfully the cross-dressing is limited to 10 minutes near the end; instead we get tons of zingy exchanges between Grant and Ann Sheridan (who's surprisingly funny) and an amusing, extended sequence in which Grant tries to find a bed for the night. So long as you can remember that he's supposed to be French - which does require some suspension of disbelief - this is excellent stuff. (5/5)

And there's yet more Capra goodness on Film4, who are really spoiling us at present. You Can't Take It With You (1938, Film4, 12.35pm) is akin to the director's 1941 film Meet John Doe in that it's massively persuasive while you're watching it, but afterwards you're not quite sure what it was about. Apparently it's a bowdlerised version of the hit Kaufman and Hart play – though screenwriter Robert Riskin penned most of Capra's classics, he could be long-winded and preachy when he wasn't reined in. Lionel Barrymore (who was positively hateful as Mr Potter in It's a Wonderful Life, but usually played grouchy, loveable father figures during this period) is the eccentric head of an eccentric household. When his daughter (the ever engaging Jean Arthur) hooks up with the son of a snobbish businessman, a major culture clash ensues. (3/5)

Starship Troopers (1997, BBC1, 11.40pm) is a good satire masquerading as a big stupid action movie about giant cockroaches. Casper Van Diem, Dina Meyer and Denise Richards (Keith's mum*) are the college contemporaries who become key weapons in the waging of war. Their adversaries are "the other" – faceless, inhuman and impossible to reform or even understand. Well I didn't say it was subtle. Paul Verhoeven's career was hurtling towards the toilet (Showgirls can do that to a person) when he somehow pulled this one out of the bag, and he handles the action sequences with the requisite bombast. I liked it. (4/5)

I hear The Beguiled (1971, ITV1, 10.35pm) is very good, so I'll be watching that too.

*Not really

Thanks for reading. Please use the link below right to have a look at our DVD of the Week.DVD of the Week

#1 - Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)

A spellbinding portrait of the jazz musician Chet Baker, shot in freeform style by former fashion photographer Weber. The film was made in the last year of the musician's life (he died after falling from a hotel window in Amsterdam), by which time the smouldering, sweet-voiced upstart of the '50s had morphed into a hollow-cheeked, broken down, toothless junkie.

Though there are some valuable talking head contributions - including memorable interviews with several of Baker's lovers (most of whom are still besotted with him) - the film is at its best when it's at its least conventional. Incredible archive footage, culled from Italian B-Movies and TV spots, is mixed with Weber-shot passages of the 57-year-old Baker smoking, recording, moaning, or just wandering around.

And while the director is clearly in love with his subject, he still asks the tough questions: of Baker, of his third wife (who is extraordinarily level-headed and ordinary... except in devotion to Chet) and of his mother. "Would you say he has been a disappointment as a son?" Weber asks. "Yes," she replies, softly.

Sumptuous monochrome photography and Baker's timeless music only add to the overall impact of the film, which shows the brilliant, seductive, appalling maestro in all his glory. This is a must for jazz fans, documentary buffs or anyone in search of something a little different to watch this bank holiday weekend.

Let's Get Lost is available on Region 2 DVD (which work on standard UK players), priced around 8.99.

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