Best films on the box: November 3-9

Film and television critic Philip Wakefield assesses the best movies on offer on the box this week, for Tuesday, November 3 to Monday, November 9.

Tuesday, November 3

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
2003, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
Whether you regard T3 as in homage to its forerunners or a cynical rip-off depends on your ambitions. If they’re no higher than high-octane escapism laced with deadpan wit, fantastic f/x and supreme production values, then you’ll be delighted he’s back and virtually the same as ever. Many of the machine-versus-machine setpieces are overfamiliar but the execution is so slick and exciting that you can’t wait to see what’s around the corner of the next chase.

Wednesday, November 4

Maid of Honour
2008, AO, 8.30pm, Sky Movies
The title of this romantic comedy hints at how strained a spin it is on My Best Friend’s Wedding. This time it’s the bride’s best friend, a Big Apple Casanova, who tries to sabotage her wedding to a Scottish millionaire after she makes him her “maid” of honour when he’d rather be the groom. Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey and Eagle Eye’s Michelle Monaghan are smartly cast but the hi-jinks are laboured.

Thursday, November 5

Valkyrie
2008, AO, 8.30pm, Sky Movies
Director Bryan Singer’s most adult movie since 1994’s The Usual Suspects suspensefully dramatises the last of 15 known attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life with a best-of-British cast (complete with accents) and all the precision of German engineering. It’s a remarkable feat given everyone knows the outcome but what will surprise many is just how extraordinarily close the coup came to ending World War II a year early. Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh and Bill Nighy star.

Friday, November 6

Fracture
2007, AO, 8.30pm, Sky Movies
Fracture is a glossy, gripping, ingenious courtroom thriller about what seems like the perfect murder. It stars Anthony Hopkins as a rich, cuckolded engineer who constructs an elaborate plot to kill his wife, then uses her LA-cop lover (Billy Burke) to outwit an ambitious, reckless prosecutor (Ryan Gosling). Gregory Hoblit, who cut his teeth on TV’s LA Law, largely directs the John Grisham-style shenanigans with sleek precision but surprisingly fumbles a denouement that needs better execution to convince.

Saturday, November 7

The Village
2004, AO, 8.30pm, TV One
M Night Shyamalan’s eerie fairy tale about a remote farming community, and the creatures that keep it from civilisation, startles, bewitches and moves in equal measure. The cast, which includes Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt Sigourney Weaver and Brendan Gleeson, is outstanding, the cinematography and score sublime, and the storytelling languid and lyrical.

Daddy Day Care
2003, PGR, 8.30pm, 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).

Along Came a Spider
2001, AO, 8.30pm, TV3
Morgan Freeman reprises his Kiss The Girls role of criminal profiler Alex Cross in this middling cat-and-mouse thriller directed by Lee Tamahori. About the ingenious abduction of a senator’s young daughter, the first half is suspenseful and teasingly intriguing but the second hour is preoccupied with cleverness rather than content.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
2005, AO, 10.35pm, TV One
“Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half!” So bawls one betrayed British fan about the 1966 concert where the Woody Guthrie-wannabe was heckled, called a traitor and seemed bound for hell for electrifying his folk roots. The controversial turning point frames this masterful three-and-a-half hour account of Dylan’s first 25 years, from growing up in small-town Minnesota to becoming an icon of his generation in New York City. It’s a mesmerising mix of interviews, archive material and concert performances that’s as revealing about Dylan -  "I didn’t really know that [Blowin’ in the Wind] had any kind of anthemic quality" - as it is a paranoid Cold War America in civil rights turmoil. Martin Scorsese directs.

Sunday, November 8

Kung Fu Hustle
2004, AO, 1.25am, TV2
The high-faluting martial arts malarkey of films like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gets its comeuppance with this kick-ass kung fu spoof that also does proud the legacy of the Shaw Brothers, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Set in pre-revolutionary China, it dramatises with dazzling smarts, energy and effects a Gangs of New York-style war between the residents of a Canton slum called Pig Sty Alley and the fearsome Axe Gang. Director/star Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer) fearlessly embraces everything from Looney Tunes to West Side Story to pull off a gung-ho, chop-socky homage that’s funny, ferocious and genre-defying.

RV
2006, AO, 8.30pm, TV2
Two great talents - Robin Williams and director Barry Sonnenfeld - give the National Lampoon Vacation formula a spin with this mediocre comedy about an overworked Dad who takes the family on a road trip when they’d rather go to Hawaii. It’s not just the kids who struggle to have a good time. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines and Dumb & Dumber’s Jeff Daniels co-star.

The Fog
2005, AO, 10.30pm, TV2
Competent if undistinguished re-make of John Carpenter’s 1980 horror, which wasn’t that startling to begin with. It stars Smallville’s Tom Welling, Lost’s Maggie Grace and Hellboy’s Selma Blair as residents of a small town that’s targeted for retribution by a cursed fog from its past. Silly, slight but sporadically spooky.

Monday, November 9

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
2001, AO, 8.30pm, TV3
Think not so much Indiana Jones-lite as Indiana Jones-trite for this big-screen computer game whose soulless mechanics can’t mimic real life. Angelina Jolie plays a photojournalist-cum-archaeological adventurer searching for two halves of an ancient triangle that, if re-joined, will be catastrophic for the free world. The leggy-lippy-libidinous Jolie may have fans of Tomb Raider the game reaching for their joysticks but her allure as Lara never transcends the physical.

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