The best films on the box: October 7-13

DON'T PANIC: Jodie Foster stars in Panic Room on TV2 on Sunday night.

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Film and television critic Philip Wakefield assesses the best movies on offer on the box this week, for Tuesday, October 7 to Monday, October 13.

Tuesday, October 7

The Forgotten
2004, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
An unusually fine cast and suspenseful storytelling distinguish this creepy abduction thriller until an ending that’s best forgotten. Julianne Moore plays the anguished mother of a youngster killed in a plane crash who, after 14 months of therapy, is told she’s delusional. It seems she’s had a miscarriage and that her motherhood was a dream. But driven by extraordinarily powerful intuition, she discovers the truth is far more disturbing … The Wire’s Dominic West and CSI: New York’s Gary Sinise co-star.

Wednesday, October 8

Fargo
1986, AO, 8.30pm, MGM
Breathtakingly offbeat best-picture Oscar-nominee about a Minnesota car salesman (William H Macy) who hires two goons to kidnap his wife so he can collect the ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. But the perfect get-rich-quick scheme falls apart when the dangerously-dopey kidnappers trigger a triple homicide investigation led by a seven-months pregnant police chief (Oscar-winner Frances McDormand) whose smorgasbord cravings and Scandanavian sing-song inflexion belie the brains behind the bulk. Richly funny, luridly violent and flawlessly-executed, Fargo is a motion picture masterpiece from Joel and Ethan Coen.

Thursday, October 9

Black Knight
2001, PGR, 7.30pm, TV3
Knockabout, time-travel romp starring Martin Lawrence as a theme park worker who winds up in the Middle Ages. Tom Wilkinson co-stars in a comedy notable more for its anachronisms than paroxysms of laughter.

Friday, October 10

Daddy Day Care
2003, PGR, 7.30pm, TV2
Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin (TV's Curb Your Enthusiasm) play sacked cereal copywriters who dare to open an unconventional crèche in the same neighbourhood as an elite day-care centre run by the scheming Anjelica Huston. Murphy is one of the most charismatic stars of his generation but here has none of the snap-crackle-pop needed to energise a humdrum script and a juvenile cast that’s almost as bland as the adult leads (the one grown-up exception is Steve Zahn's Trekkie).

Brotherhood of the Wolf
2001, AO, 11.15pm, TV3
Atmospheric French frightfest that combines creature-feature thrills with costume-drama splendour and an 18th century political conspiracy. Partly based on fact, it stars Samuel Le Bihan as a Louis XV-dispatched naturalist and Mark Dacascos as his Mohican sidekick on the bloodsoaked trail of the mysterious "la bete du Gevaudan". Wolf's cinematography is sensational, and there’s a sumptuous grandeur about Christophe Gans’ direction, but both are undermined by a patchwork screenplay that never fulfils its creepy promise.

Saturday, October 11

Little Nicky
2000, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
Adam Sandler comedy about a family gone to hell. When Satan falls out with two of his malevolently prodigal sons, he sends his third - a good kid without a bad bone in his body - to retrieve them before Hades freezes over. As tasteless as it is tedious. Patricia Arquette and Harvey Keitel co-star; Drillbit Taylor’s Steven Brill directs.

2 Fast 2 Furious
2003, AO, 8.30pm, TV3
Four Brothers’ John Singleton takes the wheel of this surprisingly sluggish joyrides-and-the-‘hood sequel about disgraced cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) infiltrating Miami’s street racing underworld. We Own the Night’s Eva Mendes co-stars

Desperate Remedies
1993, AO, 9pm, Maori TV
An irreverent, rip-roaring, unabashedly flamboyant homage to melodramatic malarkey that’s a poke-in-the-eye at both our past and our notions of sexuality and cinema. The purple plot - a mix of overripe Mills & Boon romanticism and stunning Peter Greenaway-ish visuals - revolves around thwarted passion and colonial drug trafficking, and has as its motif Verdi’s Force Of Destiny. Peter Wells and Stewart Main direct with lush extravagance while Jennifer Ward-Lealand gives Remedies more merit than mere lusty looniness. If only it boasted one character to give a toss about ...

Sunday, October 12

Panic Room
2002, AO, 12.10am, TV2
In this David Fincher thriller, Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart are a divorcee and daughter fleeing from three intruders in their Manhattan mansion. Their refuge is a "panic room", a secret hi-tech sanctuary wired for security and surveillance with just one snag: it's where several million dollars that belonged to the previous owner is hidden. Consequently, the thieves want in but they don't want out. It’s a vicarious cat-and-mouse contest that made for thrilling, ingeniously mounted, big-screen escapism but lacks the depth of character and plot to satisfy or enthral on the small screen.

Snakes on a Plane
2006, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
Anaconda meets Airplane in this beaut B-grade hoot that lives up to its title - and then some. Yet it took producer Craig Berensen nine years to uncoil his pet project on the big screen, in spite of the foolproof pitch: "Two of the biggest fears people have: Fear of flying and fear of snakes. Throw them together at 30,000 feet and see what happens." Samuel L Jackson, Julianna Margulies and Nathan Phillips star.

The Godfather: Part II
1974, AO, 8.30pm, C4
Oscar-winning sequel that’s as good, if not better, than the original. Deftly mixing past and present, Francis Ford Coppola explores both Vito Corleone's Mafia beginnings and his son Michael’s handling of the expanding family business. Most of the original cast reprise their roles while newcomer Robert De Niro plays the young Corleone.

The Sixth Sense
1999, AO, 10.40pm, TV2
Supernatural blockbuster starring Oscar-nominee Haley Joel Osment as an ostracised youngster who equally-troubled child psychologist Bruce Willis learns has a terrifying secret - he can see and talk to ghosts. Shot in a gloomy, dislocated style apt for the in-limbo dilemmas of the ghosts who waft in and out of Osment’s purgatory, The Sixth Sense hauntingly builds to a startling climax that turns a good movie into a great one - and makes a second viewing mandatory. Toni Collette co-stars.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
1988, PGR, 11.30pm, TV3
Dirty rotten fun starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine as French Riviera shysters trying to swindle a visiting soap queen. Caine is the urbane, elder statesman of the confidence trickster fraternity, Martin the loudmouth newcomer who reads Mad magazine with a bookmark. Frank Oz (Death at a Funeral) directs their uproarious contest of con-upmanship.

Monday, October 13

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
2005, AO, 8.30pm, TV3
Mk III is set in the underworld of Japanese drift racing. Lucas Black takes over the driving seat from Paul Walker, who will return with the original’s Vin Diesel (who has a cameo here) and Michelle Rodriguez for next year’s Fast & Furious, which Tokyo Drift’s Justin Lin has also directed.

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