Best films on the box: June 23-29

HORROR TALE: Naomi Watts stars in The Ring.

Relevant offers

Film and television critic Philip Wakefield assesses the best movies on offer on the box this week, for Tuesday, June 23 to Monday, June 29.

Tuesday, June 23

Ballistic
2002, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
B-movie scribe Alan B McElroy (Wrong Turn, The Marine) scripted this obscure, incoherent shoot-‘em-up starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu as rival spies who stop trying to kill each other long enough to join forces to defeat a dastardly plot to inject people with a secret weapon that can trigger heart attacks and strokes. 

Wednesday, June 24

The Doors
1991, AO, 8.30pm, C4
Hollywood’s most prolific bio-dramatist, Oliver Stone (JFK, Nixon, Alexander, W), co-wrote and directed this ode to Jim Morrison, the leader of the ‘60s rock group, The Doors (Riders of the Storm, Light My Fire). It’s notable for boasting Val Kilmer’s most memorable performance, as the rock star who met a murky end, but it’s too long in the telling and verges on being a Stone valentine (Hello, I Love You might have been a more apt title). Indeed Stone’s son, Sean, plays a young Morrison. Meg Ryan and Michael Madsen co-star.

Thursday, June 25

The Cable Guy
1996, AO, 8.30pm, Prime
Funny but flawed dark comedy-cum-soft TV satire starring a lisping, lonely, loony cable-TV installer who uses tricks of the trade to make new friends, like single guy Matthew Broderick. But when his fraught friendship is rejected, he deliberately costs Broderick his job, freedom and any hope of reconciling with his girlfriend. As he says at the outset: "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy." Jack Black co-stars.

Friday, June 26

Legends of the Fall
1994, AO, 8.30pm, Vibe
Anthony Hopkins stars as the head of a headstrong clan in the wilds of Montana whose unity is wrecked by the coming of war and sibling rivalry over a breathtakingly beautiful woman. The outcome is tragedy writ so large that were it not for distinguished direction and performances, it would verge on the laughable. Much of it is overblown in scope and scale but as an old-fashioned potboiler about kith and kin, set against the staggering beauty of the Rockies and imbued with an intellectual virility that redeems its soap operatic lapses, Legends entertains grandly. Brad Pitt, Julia Ormond, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas co-star.

Saturday, June 27

Shakespeare in Love
1998, AO, 8.30pm, TV One
This witty, touching, Oscar-winning Elizabethan triumph about how history’s greatest scribe overcame writer’s block and found his real-life Juliet is packed with period puns, literary gags and showbiz barbs (and bards). Gwyneth Paltrow shines as the muse who melts Will’s heart and saves the world from Romeo & Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter. Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Ben Affleck, Colin Firth, Rupert Everett and Judi Dench co-star.

Superman Returns
2006, PGR, 8.30pm, TV2
Look who’s back to save not only the world but also a movie franchise that seemed to have died long before the Man of Steel’s last incarnation, Christopher Reeve. A more strapping successor than Brandon Routh is hard to imagine, and co-writer/director Bryan Singer springs enough surprises to keep the usual suspects fresh but still truthful to the Superman way. Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth co-star.

The Clearing
2004, AO, 8.30pm, TV3
This suspenseful, character-driven drama explores marital and corporate themes within the guise of a low-key but gripping kidnapping thriller. Robert Redford plays a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman who’s abducted from the driveway of the luxury home he shares with his wife of many years (Helen Mirren). The odd-couple relationship that develops between Redford’s epitome of the American Dream and Willem Dafoe’s economic casualty of his success is contrasted with an FBI investigation that uncovers troubling aspects of his marriage.

The Firm
1993, AO, 10.30pm, TV3
Tom Cruise plays a lawyer out on a limb when he learns the plush law firm where he works is a front for the Mob. Big on character, suspense and surprise, The Firm’s original pulp plot has been invigorated by fresh twists, which lend it nuance and complexity, and a class action supporting cast: Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris and Wilford Brimley.

Blade
1998, AO, 11.35pm, TV2
Here’s a vampire slayer who makes Buffy look like a big girl’s blouse. Wesley Snipes’ Blade is a techno-Zorro who slices-and-dices his way through a bloodsucker conspiracy with robotic bravado. The special effects are inventively bloodcurdling but their repetitiveness and a kung-fu overkill quickly turn this comic book adaptation into a gore bore that isn’t as sharp as it would like to think. Kris Kirstofferson co-stars.

Sunday, June 28

Beverly Hills Cop
2004, AO, 8.30pm, C4
The movie that made Eddie Murphy a top box office draw 25 years ago is still his best. He plays hip Detroit cop Axel Foley investigating a pal’s murder in Beverly Hills. These days it’s the death of his career he should be investigating, with his latest flop, Imagine That, prompting the New York Post to declare: “Eddie Murphy, It’s too late to save yourself from the bottomless pit of lame into which you have cast yourself.”

The Ring
2002, AO, 10.30pm, TV2
This spooky re-make of a Japanese horror stars Naomi Watts as a reporter looking for a videotape that gives new meaning to snuff movies: whoever views it dies seven days later after a telephone call. Despite rewinding elements of Scream, The Sixth Sense, Urban Legend and even The Blair Witch Project, The Ring falls short of being a scary movie yet still intrigues and unsettles with its freaky, surreal images and creepy, seductive premise. Martin Henderson co-stars.

Waist Deep
2006, AO, 10.20pm, TV3
Ex-Chicago Hope star Vondie Curtis-Hall, who played a clairvoyant in a recent episode of Criminal Minds, directed and co-wrote this familiar thriller about an ex-con who’s trying to go straight when his son is abducted during a car jacking. Death Race’s Tyrese Gibson and The Unborn’s Meagan Good star.

Monday, June 29

A Beautiful Mind
2001, AO, 8.30pm, Sky Movies Greats
Russell Crowe should have won his second consecutive Academy Award for playing John Forbes Nash jun, the schizophrenic-paranoid who received a Nobel Prize for Economics. It’s an amazing, true-life dramatisation that’s less concerned with glorifying Nash than illustrating love’s endurance within the context of a mental illness that could have crippled not only a brilliant mind but also an extraordinary marriage. Co-star Jennifer Connelly and director Ron Howard deservedly won Oscars as did the picture.

- © Fairfax NZ News