| Video pick of the week—find it in your video store The Brothers McMullen (1995)—In the suburbs of New York City, three brothers, temporarily living in the same house, struggle to make sense of their relationships with the women in their lives. This small, independent film is strong on character and full of well-written, often funny dialogue, primarily about sexual relationships, family, love and the Catholic Church. The brothers are played by Edward Burns (who also wrote and directed), Mike McGlone and Jack Mulcahy. (MJ) |
Asterisk indicates a film of exceptional interest. All times are EDT.
A&E=Arts & Entertainment, AMC=American Movie Classics, FXM=Fox Movie Channel, HBOF=HBO Family, HBOP=HBO Plus, HBOS=HBO Signature, IFC=Independent Film Channel, TCM=Turner Classic Movies, TMC=The Movie Channel, TNT=Turner Network Television
Saturday, September 4
6:00 a.m. (FXM)— At Long Last Love (1975)—Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd can neither sing nor dance—they are definitely not Astaire and Rogers. Still, it's fun to watch them mangle Cole Porter's beautiful music and lyrics. Peter Bogdanovich's glitzy, expensive film proves that a warm affection for 1930's film musicals is not enough. One of the great bombs. With Madeline Kahn (often funny, despite her material) and John Hillerman. (MJ)
6:30 a.m. (Cinemax)— Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)—Melodrama set in Hong Kong during the Korean War, with Jennifer Jones as a Eurasian doctor who falls for William Holden. Directed by Henry King. (DW)
8:00 a.m. (FXM)— Unfaithfully Yours (1948)—Not Preston Sturges at his best, but still amusing. Rex Harrison is a symphony conductor convinced of his wife's (Linda Darnell's) infidelity. (DW)
*8:00 a.m. (TCM)— Gabriel Over the White House (1933)—A political oddity, made in the early days of the Depression, with fairly sinister overtones. Walter Huston is a crook who becomes US president, experiences a mysterious transformation and assumes extraordinary powers. (DW)
*10:30 a.m. (AMC)— Sunset Boulevard (1950)—Billy Wilder's classic about illusions hanging on, and the old Hollywood versus the new. A once-glamorous star of the silent screen living in a gothic Hollywood mansion takes a younger, cynical screenwriter as a lover. One of the great films. With Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Eric von Stroheim and Buster Keaton. (MJ)
12:00 p.m. (IFC)— Gray's Anatomy (1996)—One of actor Spalding Gray's filmed monologues. This time he describes his efforts to find alternative treatments for an eye ailment. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. (DW)
1:00 p.m. (Showtime)— Young Frankenstein (1974)—One of Mel Brooks's funnier and more successful parodies, this time of the classic horror film by James Whale. Particularly effective because it uses many of the original sets. With Peter Boyle (as the monster) and Gene Wilder (as Dr. Frankenstein). (MJ)
2:45 p.m. (Showtime)— Saturday Night Fever (1977)—A hardware store salesman in Brooklyn becomes a champion disco dancer at night. This is the film that launched John Travolta's film career, and he is a marvel as a dancer. Music by the Bee Gees. Directed by John Badham. (MJ)
5:40 p.m. (Encore)— Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)—Steven Spielberg's special-effects-filled take on UFO sighting as a religious experience. Starring Richard Dreyfuss. (MJ)
6:30 p.m. (HBOP)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—Peter Fonda gives a strong, sensitive performance as a Florida beekeeper who struggles to keep his troubled family from spinning apart. The film is weakened by a neat, uplifting ending. Directed by Victor Nunez. (MJ)
*8:00 p.m. (TCM)— Limelight (1952)—Chaplin is a washed-up music hall comic who saves Claire Bloom from suicide in this exquisitely painful look at the art of performance. Chaplin and Buster Keaton, two immortals, team up in one memorable scene. (DW)
8:00 p.m. (FXM)— The Hustler (1961)—Basically a boxing film, but set among serious pool sharks. Robert Rossen's movie is beautifully shot and capably acted, but the dialogue is full of stagey, pseudo-profound, high-proletarian language. With Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason. MJ)
9:00 p.m. (Sundance)— Sliding Doors (1998)—Charming, likable light comedy hinges on a gimmick that works well: the film shows the two paths the main character's life could take depending on whether or not she misses her train. A vehicle for the talented Gwyneth Paltrow, performing with a flawless British accent. (MJ)
*10:00 p.m. (Family)— Lost in America (1985)—Yuppies, played by Albert Brooks (who also directed) and Julie Hagerty, give up their good corporate jobs to tour the country in an RV, with disastrous (and funny) results. (MJ)
10:30 p.m. (HBOF)— Heaven Can Wait (1978)—Warren Beatty stars as a football player who dies before his time and returns to earth in another body, that of a millionaire businessman. Julie Christie is a social activist who awakens his conscience. With Jack Warden. Directed by Beatty and Buck Henry. Good-natured, but not extraordinarily insightful. (DW)
10:30 p.m. (TCM)— Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power and Charles Laughton in Billy Wilder's filming of an Agatha Christie courtroom potboiler. Power's last film. (DW)
*12:30 a.m. (TCM)— Ride the High Country (1962)—Sam Peckinpah directed this anti-Western, with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, as two aging gunfighters guarding a gold shipment shipped from a remote mining town. (DW)
12:55 a.m. (TMC)— American Gigolo (1980)—Paul Schrader wrote and directed this flawed but fascinating study of an upscale male prostitute. Starring Richard Gere. (MJ)
4:00 a.m. (AMC)— Don't Bother to Knock (1952)—Marilyn Monroe, in an early role, is a demented baby-sitter who threatens to kill the child in her care. With Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, Jim Backus. Directed by Roy Ward Baker. (DW)
4:15 a.m. (Sundance)— Sliding Doors (1998)—See 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 5
6:00 a.m. (AMC)— You Can't Take It With You (1938)—Frank Capra's version of the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy about the antics of an eccentric during the Depression. Starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur. (DW)
8:00 p.m. (IFC)— Gray's Anatomy (1996)—See Saturday at 12:00 p.m.
*8:15 a.m. (AMC)— Band of Angels (1957)—A remarkably complex look at black-and-white relations in Civil War America. Clark Gable plays a Southern gentleman with a past as a slave trader, Yvonne DeCarlo is a Southern belle who discovers she has black ancestors and Sidney Poitier is an educated slave. Directed by Raoul Walsh, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren. (DW)
10:00 a.m. (FXM)— Carousel (1956)—Hollywood turned a great dark Broadway musical into a perky feel-good film. Most of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are intact, however. Starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. Directed by Henry King. (MJ)
*10:00 a.m. (TCM)— The Maltese Falcon (1941)—John Huston classic, based on the Dashiell Hammett novel, with Humphrey Bogart as private detective Sam Spade. Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor and Peter Lorre brilliantly co-star. (DW)
12:00 p.m. (Bravo)— Fahrenheit 451 (1966)—Franois Truffaut's adaptation of the Ray Bradbury dystopian science fiction story about a world in which firemen are sent around to set fire to books, which are banned items. Oskar Werner plays a fireman who rebels; with Julie Christie. (DW)
1:00 p.m. (AMC)— 12 Angry Men (1957)—Gripping film that takes place in only one room as 12 jurors struggle to reach a verdict. During the process each reveals his character. Great cast headed by Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb and E.G. Marshall. Directed by Sidney Lumet. (MJ)
1:15 p.m. (Showtime)— Reds (1981)—Warren Beatty's account of the life and times of John Reed, American socialist and author of Ten Days that Shook the World, the authoritative chronicle of the October Revolution of 1917. With Diane Keaton and others. (DW)
1:40 p.m. (TBS)— Spaceballs (1987)—Mel Brooks's send-up of the Star Wars saga. Rick Moranis is Dark Helmet and Daphne Zuniga is Princess Vespa. Other characters include Pizza the Hut. (DW)
1:45 p.m. (IFC)— Gray's Anatomy (1996)—See Saturday at 12:00 p.m.
3:00 p.m. (HBOS)— The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)—Woody Allen combines Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Fellini's The White Sheik to come up with a satisfying tale about a drab housewife (Mia Farrow) romanced by a character (Jeff Daniels) who literally steps out of the movie screen. (MJ)
*5:00 p.m. (A&E)— Rio Bravo (1959)—Classic Howard Hawks western, with John Wayne as a sheriff, Angie Dickinson as a dance-hall girl, Dean Martin as a drunk and singer Ricky Nelson joining forces to thwart a jail-break and other crimes. Much first-rate dialogue by Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman. (DW)
*6:00 p.m. (TCM)— Cat People (1942)—The first of the Val Lewton-produced horror films, directed with considerable elegance by Jacques Tourneur. Extraordinary moments of psychological terror. (DW)
8:00 p.m. (Cinemax)— American Gigolo (1980)—See Saturday at 12:55 a.m.
8:00 p.m. (IFC)— Living in Oblivion (1995)—Sometimes amusing look at the making of a (relatively) low-budget film, with Steve Buscemi as the harassed director. James Le Gros as a spoiled, self-important rising star (allegedly based on director Tom DiCillo's experiences with Brad Pitt) is the highlight of the film. (DW)
*8:00 p.m. (TNT)— Hamlet (1996)—Kenneth Branagh starred in and directed this long, unabridged film of Shakespeare's play. It is exciting and lucid, and it dispenses with the oedipal nonsense of other recent versions. Branagh is strong in the part, and Derek Jacobi is the definitive Claudius. Also starring Julie Christie and Kate Winslet. (MJ)
10:00 p.m. (FXM)— Heaven Can Wait (1943)—Don Ameche stars as a dead man seeking entry to hell, who recounts in flash back what he thinks has been a life full of sin. With Gene Tierney and Charles Coburn. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (DW)
10:15 p.m. (TCM)— King Kong (1933)—Beauty and the Beast story, with Fay Wray as the former and an animated ape as the latter. Last ten minutes are worth waiting for. Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. (DW)
11:45 p.m. (IFC)— Living in Oblivion (1995)—See 8:00 p.m.
12:00 a.m. (FXM)— Carousel (1956)—see 10:00 a.m.
Monday, September 6
*6:00 a.m. (TCM)— Key Largo (1948)—A brutal gangster (Edward G. Robinson) holds a group of people hostage in a hotel during a hurricane. Humphrey Bogart is a returning veteran. Based on Maxwell Anderson's play, script by John Huston (who directed) and Richard Brooks. With Claire Trevor. (DW)
6:00 a.m. (IFC)— Living in Oblivion (1995)—See Sunday at 8:00 p.m.
*6:45 a.m. (HBOS)— Strangers on a Train (1951)—Hitchcock classic, with Farley Granger as a callow tennis player and Robert Walker as a psychopath, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, co-scripted by Raymond Chandler. (DW)
*8:00 a.m. (TCM)— Dark Passage (1947)—Bizarre film, with Bogart as an escaped convict who undergoes plastic surgery and then tries to uncover a murderer. Directed by Delmer Daves. (DW)
8:30 a.m. (HBOS)— The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)—Cold War melodrama of double- and triple-agents, based on the John Le Carre novel, with Richard Burton as the embittered British agent and Oskar Werner. Directed by Martin Ritt. (DW)
*10:00 a.m. (TCM)— The Big Sleep (1945)—Howard Hawks's version of Raymond Chandler novel, with a script again by Faulkner. Detective Philip Marlowe (Bogart) becomes involved with wealthy girl (Bacall) and her spoiled, irresponsible sister. Don't bother to figure out who did the murders, the director reportedly wasn't certain. (DW)
11:30 a.m. (HBO)— John Grisham's the Rainmaker (1997)—Francis Coppola took a John Grisham potboiler and made it into an engrossing but pedestrian film. Nonetheless, it is rich in characters, with particularly good work by Danny DeVito and Mickey Rourke (in a surprising stand-out performance as an ultra-sleazy lawyer) Also starring Matt Damon, John Voight and Claire Danes. (MJ)
*12:00 p.m. (TCM)— To Have and Have Not (1944)—Howard Hawks classic, based (very loosely) on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, with Bogart as an apolitical fishing boat captain who gets dragged in to French Resistance efforts. Lauren Bacall is outstanding in her debut. Dialogue by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman. (DW)
*2:00 p.m. (TCM)— High Sierra (1941)—Wonderful, hard-boiled Raoul Walsh film about an ex-convict (Humphrey Bogart) and the two women in his life, a lame girl, Joan Leslie, whose treatment he pays for, and the tough, no-nonsense Ida Lupino. Final chase sequence in the mountains captures something essential about America. Written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett. (DW)
3:00 p.m. (USA)— Dazed and Confused (1993)—Richard Linklater's evocative, unsentimental portrait of the last day of school at a suburban Texas high school in 1976. A variety of narrative strands, too many to mention. With Jason London, Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, among others. (DW)
4:00 p.m. (HBOS)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—See Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
*4:00 p.m. (TCM)— Casablanca (1942)—The Michael Curtiz classic about life and love in wartime Morocco, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. (DW)
*6:00 p.m. (TCM)— Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)—Michael Curtiz directed this story of gangsters and slum kids. James Cagney is the gangster who pretends to be a coward on his way to the electric chair to scuttle his reputation with the kids. (DW)
8:00 p.m. (HBO)— John Grisham's the Rainmaker (1997)—See 11:30 a.m.
11:00 p.m. (Bravo)— The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)—The tall tales of the German baron are retold by Terry Gilliam in his typical brilliant but sprawling style. With John Neville and too much Robin Williams. (MJ)
1:35 a.m. (Encore)— The Wanderers (1979)—Philip Kaufman's film is an excellent adaptation of Richard Price's fine novel about youth gangs in the Bronx in 1963. With Ken Wahl. (MJ)
4:05 a.m. (HBOS)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—See Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday, September 7
12:00 p.m. (HBOS)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—See Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
12:30 p.m. (Bravo)— The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)—See Monday at 11:00 p.m.
8:00 p.m. (Comedy)— History of the World—Part I (1981)—An example of Mel Brooks's scattershot humor. Many jokes are forced and lame, and most routines just limp along, but the Spanish Inquisition sequence, staged as a Busby Berkeley water ballet, is hilarious and worth staying for. (MJ)
9:00 p.m. (AMC)— A Night to Remember (1958)—Well-made film about the sinking of the Titanic, directed by Roy Ward Baker. With Kenneth More, David McCallum, Jill Dixon, Laurence Naismith. Novelist Eric Ambler wrote the script based on the book by Walter Lord. (DW)
9:00 p.m. (HBOS)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—See Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
2:00 a.m. (AMC)— A Night to Remember (1958)—See 9:00 p.m.
*3:30 a.m. (HBO)— Miller's Crossing (1990)—The Coen Brothers do their version of the Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett) story: gangsters wage a civil war for control of a city. Overblown and self-conscious, but it holds one's attention. With Gabriel Byrne and Albert Finney. (DW)
Wednesday, September 8
6:05 a.m. (HBOS)— The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)—See Sunday at 3:00 p.m.
8:00 a.m. (FXM)— Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)—Gregory Peck is a writer who pretends to be Jewish to gauge anti-Semitism. Moss Hart wrote the relatively tame script; Elia Kazan directed. (DW)
12:15 p.m. (HBO)— Heaven Can Wait (1978)—See Saturday at 10:30 p.m.
2:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Party (1968)—Peter Sellers is an Indian actor attending a fashionable Hollywood party in this uneven film by Blake Edwards. With Claudine Longet. (DW)
3:00 p.m. (Sci-Fi)— The Invisible Man (1933)—Claude Rains made his film debut as the mad scientist who discovers a method of being invisible and terrorizes a British village. James Whale directed this version of the H.G. Wells story. (DW)
4:00 p.m. (Comedy)— History of the World—Part I (1981)—See Tuesday at 8:00 p.m.
*4:30 p.m. (AMC)— My Darling Clementine (1946)—John Ford directed this Western about the lead-up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Henry Fonda is Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature Doc Holliday. With Ward Bond, Tim Holt, Walter Brennan. (DW)
6:15 p.m. (AMC)— The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)—Vincent Price stars in this very strange, baroque horror film about a man who devises imaginative forms of revenge. Price's character has been injured in an accident, so he speaks but never moves his lips—an eerie touch. Directed by Robert Fuest. (MJ)
7:00 p.m. (Sundance)— Vanya on 42nd Streeet (1994)—Louis Malle directed this film, his last, about a group of actors rehearsing an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Andre Gregory is the director; writer Wallace Shawn plays the lead character. (DW)
9:00 p.m. (TMC)— Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)—See Saturday at 5:40 p.m.
9:00 p.m. (HBOS)— The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)—See Sunday at 3:00 p.m.
*9:05 p.m. (Encore)— Last Action Hero (1993)—Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle that proves to be a delight. A boy goes to a movie theater and meets his idol—an action hero—who steps out of the screen and takes him back in. A good action film that spoofs the genre and plays with the tension between movies and reality. It also includes hilarious send-ups of Olivier's Hamlet and Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Directed by John McTiernan. (MJ)
10:10 p.m. (TBS)— Rio Lobo (1970)—Howard Hawks's last film (he died in 1977), something of a disappointment. John Wayne is an ex-Union colonel who discovers a gold shipment and uncovers a traitor. Jennifer O'Neill was not up to the task in this film. (DW)
11:00 p.m. (Bravo)— Love and Anarchy (1973)—One of Italian director Lina Wertmuller's first misguided efforts, with Giancarlo Giannini as a bumpkin who attempts to assassinate Mussolini. (DW)
*12:35 a.m. (HBOS)— North by Northwest (1959)—One of Alfred Hitchcock's wondrous late 1950s color pieces, with Cary Grant as an ad executive turned into a wanted and hunted man. (DW)
12:40 a.m. (TBS)— The Horse Soldiers (1959)—Another classic John Ford western, with John Wayne as a cavalry officer leading Union troops into Confederate territory during the Civil War. (DW)
2:30 a.m. (HBOP)— The Devil's Advocate (1997)—Satan (portrayed in an over-the-top performance by Al Pacino) runs a white-shoe law firm in New York City. Keanu Reeves, as an ambitious young lawyer, makes a Faustian bargain and suffers for it. A very funny horror film that trades on the public's distrust of the legal profession. (MJ)
2:45 a.m. (TNT)— High Plains Drifter (1973)—Clint Eastwood directed (and stars in) this excellent spaghetti western tale of revenge, into which he poured everything he learned from his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. (MJ)
Thursday, September 9
5:30 a.m. (Sundance)— Vanya on 42nd Streeet (1994)—See Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.
8:00 a.m. (HBO)— Super Mario Brothers (1993)—Underrated, highly imaginative film version of the popular video game, to which it bears only a slight resemblance. The two plumber brothers (Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo) visit an alternate universe in which evolution took a different course, leaving dinosaurs as the dominant species. Dennis Hopper overacts wonderfully as the dinosaur dictator of this world. (MJ)
9:15 a.m. (AMC)— Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)—Underrated film about a jazz band in the 1920s and its fight against being taken over by the mob, as told by the trumpet player (Jack Webb, who also directed). Excellent jazz score. Director Webb made good use of the wide screen, so the film is best seen in letterbox format. With Peggy Lee (who won an Academy Award). (MJ)
9:30 a.m. (Sundance)— Sliding Doors (1998)—See Saturday at 9:00 p.m.
10:00 a.m. (FXM)— The Hustler (1961)—See Saturday at 8:00 p.m.
11:00 a.m. (TNT)— High Plains Drifter (1973)—See Wednesday at 2:45 a.m.
12:00 p.m. (IFC)— Gray's Anatomy (1996)—See Saturday at 12:00 p.m.
12:15 p.m. (AMC)— Band of Angels (1957)—See Sunday at 8:15 a.m.
12:30 p.m. (Bravo)— Love and Anarchy (1973)—See Wednesday at 11:00 p.m.
5:30 p.m. (Sundance)— Sliding Doors (1998)—See Saturday at 9:00 p.m.
6:00 p.m. (AMC)— The Long Voyage Home (1940)—Sentimental, murky, but enormously moving account of sailors at sea, adapted by screenwriter Dudley Nichols from four short plays by Eugene O'Neill. John Ford was the director, Gregg Toland (who shot Citizen Kane the following year) the cinematographer. (DW)
6:00 p.m. (IFC)— Gray's Anatomy (1996)—See Saturday at 12:00 p.m.
8:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Set-Up (1949)—Dull Robert Wise directed this story about a washed-up fighter refusing to give up or throw a fight. Robert Ryan, an underrated actor, is excellent as the boxer. With Audrey Totter, George Tobias and Wallace Ford. (DW)
*8:00 p.m. (AMC)— The Grapes of Wrath (1940)—John Ford's version of the John Steinbeck classic novel, about the Joad family, driven from their home in the 1930s "Dust Bowl." Henry Fonda plays Tom Joad. With Jane Darwell, John Carradine. (DW)
9:30 p.m. (TCM)— Kid Galahad (1937)—Classic hard-boiled, no-nonsense Warner Bros. film of the 1930s. Edward G. Robinson is the boxing promoter, Wayne Morris is the fighter on the rise, Bette Davis is the girl who comes between them. Michael Curtiz directed with his customary efficiency and flair. (DW)
10:50 p.m. (TMC)— American Gigolo (1980)—See Saturday at 12:55 a.m.
12:00 a.m. (FXM)— The Hustler (1961)—See Saturday at 8:00 p.m.
1:00 a.m. (Sundance)— Sliding Doors (1998)—See Saturday at 9:00 p.m.
*2:00 a.m. (AMC)— The Grapes of Wrath (1940)—See 8:00 p.m.
3:00 a.m. (TNT)— Play Misty for Me (1971)—Clint Eastwood directed and starred as a jazz-playing disc jockey who jilts a woman (Jessica Walter) and is then stalked by her. With Donna Mills. (DW)
Friday, September 10
*7:30 a.m. (Cinemax)— The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)—Jacques Demy's masterpiece of both color and music. A young couple (Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo) pledge lasting love to each other though he must go off to the Algerian War. He returns to find she has married someone else. The emotional musical score (by Michel Legrand, with lyrics by Demy) is sung through, with no spoken dialogue. Every frame of this film is perfect. Look for the recently restored version. (MJ)
*8:00 a.m. (TCM)— White Heat (1949)—Not-to-be-missed crime drama about criminal with a serious mother complex. James Cagney is unforgettable in Raoul Walsh's film. (DW)
10:00 a.m. (FXM)— Julia (1977)—Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her performance as the anti-fascist Julia based on Lillian Hellman's autobiographical work, Pentimento. With Jane Fonda, Jason Robards; directed by Fred Zinnemann. (DW)
*10:00 a.m. (TCM)— D.O.A. (1950)—Rudolph MatŽ directed this film noir about a man (Edmond O'Brien) who discovers he has been poisoned and attempts to find out why and who has done it in the time he has left. With Pamela Britton, Luther Adler. (DW)
10:30 a.m. (HBOP)— Ulee's Gold (1997)—See Saturday at 6:30 p.m.
11:00 a.m. (TNT)— Play Misty for Me (1971)—See Thursday at 3:00 a.m.
12:30 p.m. (Bravo)— A Face in the Crowd (1957)—Andy Griffith, in his film debut, as country boy made into a huge television star. With Lee Remick, also in her debut. Directed by Elia Kazan, script by Budd Schulberg (same team as On the Waterfront). (DW)
1:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Barefoot Contessa (1954)—A trashy effort by Joseph L. Mankiewicz that pretends to tell some hard truths about Hollywood. Great fun, though, and some memorable lines. With Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart and Edmond O'Brien. (MJ)
2:00 p.m. (HBO)— John Grisham's the Rainmaker (1997)—See Monday at 11:30 a.m.
6:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Cincinnati Kid (1965)—Norman Jewison directed this film about a big poker game in New Orleans. The performances of Steve McQueen, Tuesday Weld and Edward G. Robinson are the best things in the film. (DW)
6:00 p.m. (Cinemax)— American Gigolo (1980)—See Sunday at 8:00 p.m.
2:45 p.m. (Showtime)— Saturday Night Fever (1977)—See Saturday at 2:45 p.m.
8:00 p.m. (FXM)— Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)—See Wednesday at 8:00 a.m.
*8:00 p.m. (TCM)— Rashomon (1950)—Well-known work by Japanese master Akira Kurosawa. In medieval Japan, four people give differing accounts of violent attack by a bandit on a nobleman. With Toshiro Mifune. (DW)
*11:00 p.m. (HBOS)— Strangers on a Train (1951)—See Monday at 6:45 a.m.
12:00 a.m. (FXM)— Julia (1977)—See 10:00 a.m.
2:25 a.m. (HBOS)— The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)—See Sunday at 3:00 p.m.