Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (TV2, 7.30pm). No one had thought about pirates for years until this came along: a zombie-ridden ghost ship out of nowhere (well, out of Disneyland, actually). But trust Johnny Depp to turn a camp, half-cut hippie pirate into an international smash-hit phenomenon. He now plays all his characters this way: sometimes an eccentric chocolate factory owner, sometimes a mincing Mad Hatter … Depp is aided and abetted by Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, who gets the best line: “You like pain? Try wearing a corset,” as she thwacks some poor sod over the head. Gore Verbinski directs the best of the four … so far. (2003) 8
Ruth Jones in Hattie
Lethal Weapon 2 (TV2, 10.30pm). Like the second killer shark of Jaws 2 (see Sunday), Mel Gibson’s bite is worse than his bark, but he did succeed in carrying a sequel that dodged and dived as quickly as the first one. This time, white South Africans are in the gun and Gibson’s character, Riggs, keeps comparing them to
the Nazis. Interesting, in hindsight. (1989) 7
I Am Legend (TV2, 8.30pm). A sole survivor picks over the remains of a city years after some disaster has wiped out most of life on Earth. He meets another robot and together they watch Hello Dolly on VHS … Sorry, wrong Armageddon. If that was WALL-E, this is WILL-E: Will Smith’s fearless performance as a scientist who spends his days scrounging for food and fighting off infected zombies. If this is your bag, you may also enjoy The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, The Road and even Night of the Living Dead. Come on, admit it. Things could be worse! (2007) 7
Jaws 2 (Four, 8.30pm). If “jumping the shark” kills a TV series, replicating the shark – and producing a virtually identical movie in the process – will leave you with a great white … elephant. And elephants
can’t swim. (1978) 6
Dinner for Schmucks (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). Jemaine Clement made it into the cast of this underseasoned US remake of Francis Veber’s 1998 French comedy, The Dinner Game, and you might like it for this reason alone. You might also like Steve Carell’s brand of agonised deadpan humour or appreciate the fine nuances of another identical loser performance by Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover, Due Date). But even a full-on French farce has more subtlety than this excuse for overdoing things: the parade of stuffed mice, a blind fencer and a crazy ventriloquist pour an entire salt cellar over the original, simple idea: who
can bring the biggest idiot to a dinner party? (2010) 6
Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (TV3, 8.30pm). Minor superhero stuff that had its first life as a Marvel comic: maybe we should call them middlingheroes? Anyway, two of them – the invisible one and the “Fantastic” one – are just about to say “I do” when a psycho alien arrives in Manhattan, so the flaming one and the weird lumpy one get on board to save the world. A dumb, dreary collection of special effects that’s only the teensiest bit better than the first one. (2006) 5
Hattie (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). Carry On in the bedroom! This warm and witty British TV movie reveals the amount of carrying on actress Hattie Jacques got up to in real life. She was less the bossy matron and more the Rubenesque femme fatale who broke the heart of husband John Le Mesurier (Sgt Wilson in Dad’s Army) when she installed her younger lover in the marital boudoir and sent poor John upstairs. Eager to avoid scandal – this was the 60s – up he went. It stars Ruth Jones from TV’s Gavin & Stacey, with Robert Bathurst (Cold Feet) and Aidan Turner (Mitchell the vampire from Being Human). You may find it useful to know “Hattie Jacques” is Cockney rhyming slang for “shakes”. 7
TUESDAY OCTOBER 11Miss March (Four, 8.30pm). A guy wakes from a coma to discover his high-school sweetheart has become a Playboy centrefold, so he and his sex-maniac mate go on a road trip to win her back. Oh, this sounds promising. Hugh Hefner features in this long ad for that most venerable of men’s mags. Robert Wagner was cast to play him and shot all his scenes, but Hef insisted on playing himself because he found the whole project so amusing. Unless you are a hormonal boofhead, you probably won’t. So moronic and inept, many reviewers bypassed “worst movie of the year” and went straight to “worst movie ever”. (2009) 2
FRIDAY OCTOBER 14Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (TV2, 7.30pm). TV2 seems to be playing the entire Harry Potter series on random select but not one every week. Grabbed out of the bag this week is the third instalment, considered one of the best. The eponymous prisoner is Sirius Black, played with ghoulish gusto by Gary Oldman. (2004) 7
Alien: Resurrection (Four, 8.30pm). So many questions. Why would you revive Ellen Ripley with an alien embryo on board 200 years after her death? Why did Sigourney Weaver get on the space bus again? Why was quirky French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amélie) chosen? And why resurrect the best sci-fi series anyway? As Ripley says, as her new, human/alien hybrid self, “It’s a queen. She’ll breed. You’ll die.” And Alien fans will be, on the whole, disappointed. (1997) 6
When We Were Kings (Maori, 9.30pm). Leon Gast’s magnificent documentary about the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle that’s as much about politics, race relations and marketing as it is about boxing. There’s the fledgling wide-boy promoter Don King, who talked Zaire’s President, Mobutu Sese Seko, into allowing the fight to take place in his country; an international consortium of companies that financed the $5 million winner’s purse; and BB King, James Brown and Bill Withers, who played at the three-day music festival before the event. And right at the centre, there’s world heavyweight champion George Foreman and former champion and underdog Muhammad Ali, seven years his senior at 32. Charisma went a long way with Ali but hitting Foreman hard was what was needed on the night. “We’re gonna get it awn because we don’t get alawng,” he drawled in the run-up to the fight. Norman Mailer, George Plimpton and Hunter S Thompson were all part of the press corps, but Thompson was a no-show. While the fight was on, he was floating in his hotel pool nursing a bottle. Knockout. (1996) 8
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