Including Get Low and Othello

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 26

Dr Dolittle: Tail to the Chief (Four, 6.30pm). Hugh Lofting would have kittens if he saw this. With Peter, er, Coyote as the President. (2007) 4

What a Girl Wants (TV2, 7.00pm). I can only think Colin Firth agreed to being in this ghastly teen-bait comedy to make some kind of in-joke that would go right over the heads of this film’s gum-chewing, midriff-baring audience. He plays a lord, Henry Dashwood, who shares his name with a character in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Colin Firth – Mr Darcy – Pride and Prejudice. Get it? I so don’t get it. Amanda Bynes is the (American) girl: Firth is her long-lost (English) dad. (2003) 5

Othello

Get Low (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). Keith Quinn keeps telling us we should plan our funerals while we’re still alive – and that’s what this guy did. Get Low is a sly, blackly comical drama about a Tennessee recluse called Felix Bush who emerged in the 1930s from decades in the backwoods to throw himself a monumental wake. The strangest thing: he really did exist and was no doubt a shotgun-totin’, wild-bearded raggedy man, as he’s brilliantly depicted here by Robert Duvall. It’s the first feature for cinematographer-turned director Aaron Schneider, and you can see his sense of artistry in every frame. Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black round out the cast. (2009) 7

Sorority Boys (TV2, 9.10pm). Some Like it Completely Stone Cold. (2002) 4

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27

Boy A (TV1, 8.30pm). TV1 makes a welcome move back to traditional Sunday Theatre fare with this UK TV movie that also got a cinematic release. Based on the 2004 novel by Jonathan Trigell, it is the harrowing tale of a young man who is released from jail after serving a sentence for taking part in the murder of a girl when he was just a child himself. Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) won a best actor Bafta and he’s so believable you’ll be praying he gets the second chance he needs to start his life again. (2007) 8

Zombieland (TV2, 8.30pm). The zomcom gold standard. Nerd specialist Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network again) is a shy student who learns a lot about life as he endures a road trip across America with a zombie-whacking good ol’ boy (Woody Harrelson) and two sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin). What a cast! What a lot of undead people! (2009) 8

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It’s Complicated (TV3, 8.30pm). A post-Mamma Mia! comedy-savvy Meryl Streep, a reinvigorated 30 Rock-ed Alec Baldwin and … Steve Martin. Should be a lovable riot and yet I’ve never liked any of them less than in this smug effort written and directed by Nancy Meyers, who showed us love in a middle-aged climate so much more eloquently in Something’s Gotta Give. (2009) 6

The Frighteners (Four, 8.30pm). Peter Jackson’s first US-backed movie, which combines his Braindead splatter-comedy tendencies, a big Hollywood star (Michael J Fox) and a rollicking Ghostbusters vibe. It’s no coincidence that this is also his first not terribly original film. (1996) 6

Goodbye Bafana (Maori, 8.30pm). Joseph Fiennes looks intense and “foreign” (born Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes in the UK), which means he seems as comfortable playing the young Shakespeare as he does a Russian officer. Here, his handsome European-ness is called upon for the real-life James Gregory, a deeply racist Afrikaner who hates black South Africans and is happy to work as a prison warden on Robben Island and spy on them. But – and here’s the heart-warming bit – he guards Nelson Mandela for 20 years and undergoes an ethical epiphany. Well, you’d have to write a book about it, wouldn’t you? Dennis Haysbert, as Mandela, has little to do except be dignified and prop up Gregory’s transformation. (2007) 6

Othello (Stratos, Freeview & Sky 089, 8.30pm). Stratos’ Orson Welles season continues with Welles as the miserable Moor. It’s a marvellous mess: Welles was so short of funds he had to make this piecemeal over three years, shooting a few scenes each time he had the money. Consequently, there are some howlers – Iago’s moustache keeps migrating around his face or disappearing altogether and much of the original dialogue was dubbed in later. (Suzanne Cloutier, who plays Desdemona, was the third actress to sign up for the role, and Welles got a more experienced Desdemona, Gudrun Ure, to record all her dialogue.) Welles’s daughter Beatrice had the film restored and it was re-released in 1992, all cleaned up but still with the essential rawness that makes it so compelling. But even back in the day it was a classic in the making, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1952. (1952) 8

American Psycho (TV2, 10.20pm). Welcome to the banker/psychopath interface where “I like to dissect girls” is a great pick-up line. Christian Bale does a great job of convincing us he’s just an ordinary Wall Street hotshot with a penchant for slicing up people he hardly knows. It’s less satirical than the Bret Easton Ellis novel on which it is based, but it still manages to mine some humour from the horror. (2000) 7

MONDAY NOVEMBER 28

X-Men 2 (TV3, 8.30pm). Aka “Return of the Freaky People with Silly Names”. But in a good way: this is a very decent sequel with a tight script, great performances and the fabulous Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler. He gets accepted into the X-Men fraternity (it’s very blokey, even though some of them are women), but Cumming couldn’t be fagged with the 10-hour makeup sessions and turned down the third movie. (2003) 7

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 29

Life or Something Like It (Four, 8.30pm). Annoying Lips (Angelina Jolie) versus Annoying Voice (Ed Burns) in a romcom about stopping to smell the roses, which is interesting because this is one aromatically unattractive movie. (2001) 5

FRIDAY DECEMBER 2

Assault on Precinct 13 (Four, 8.30pm). When good cops go bad: a passable remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 New Year’s Eve action classic that featured a cast of people you’ve never heard of (Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Gilbert de la Pena). This update by French director Jean-François Richet is chock-full of big names – Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne, John Leguizamo, Brian Dennehy – but fails to capture the original’s dark grittiness and pace. And in a PC cop-out, so to speak, the marauding street gang villains have been replaced by bent white police officers who want to keep their corrupt dealings secret. Not awful, just hard to justify. (2005) 6