Including Get Smart and Funny People

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12

Scary Movie (TV2, 8.30pm). The Scream series of films introduced us to the idea of horror parodies, and just in case we didn’t get it before here’s another cycle of gross-out spoofery. If you’re not familiar with the teen slashers in question, your head will be spinning – and not because you are a child of Satan. (2000) 6

Get Smart

Lakeview Terrace (TV1, 8.30pm). Welcome to the new TV1, folks: home of US thrillers on a Saturday night and excruciating cooking shows throughout the week. Who do they think watches the channel now? How apt, then, that this drama should be about not fitting in: a bigoted black cop (Samuel L Jackson) monsters his interracial neighbours (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) in a posh suburb of LA. Intelligent writer/director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) presents another sociopath alive and well and living right under our noses, and forces us to ask ourselves whether he would be more outrageous if he were white. (2008) 6

Max Payne (TV3, 8.30pm). A nasty violent crime drama that’s the long version of an equally nasty video game. Exactly the sort of glamorised blood-spilling with big weapons and sexy chicks that young blokes get their jollies from. Also a pretty bad movie. It doesn’t help that the eponymous lead (Mark Wahlberg) has a name that makes him sound like a headache pill. (2008) 4

After the Wedding (Maori, 9.30pm). Big ups once again to Maori TV for its thought-provoking menu of foreign-language films. Tonight, a tense yet restrained Danish drama about an altruist (Mads Mikkelsen) who has devoted his life to helping India’s poor and must return to Denmark to secure a very large donation for his orphanage. But the routine visit takes an unexpected turn when he learns why the benefactor wanted to see him in person. Director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, Things We Lost in the Fire) follows the “Danish Dogma 95” style of austere film-making but this was internationally appealing enough to score an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. On the other hand, two reels were apparently switched by mistake at a showing at a film festival in Estonia, and hardly anyone noticed. (2006) 8

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Glory Road (TV2, 10.15pm). Another Jerry Bruckheimer underdog sports team drama screening just three weeks after Remember the Titans on TV1. The only difference is this one’s about basketball, not American football. But: fact-based – check; set in the recent past – check; black team fighting prejudice – check; inspirational coach – check; happy ending – you betcha. Plucky team leader du jour – Josh Lucas. (2006) 6

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13

Get Smart (TV2, 8.30pm). Da de daaaaaaaaaaa da. Da de daaaaaaaaaaa da, etc … If Don Adams and the sliding doors, the shoe phone and the Cone of Silence are more familiar to you than your own dear mother then you probably wouldn’t want Steve Carell or anyone else muscling in on your cherished memories of the most inept spy ever. But someone at the Remake Authority signed this off and this is what you get – plus Anne Hathaway filling Barbara Feldon’s styley 60s stilettos as Agent 99. Bumbling aplenty and young things will giggle away, but true believers will probably think this is a -travesty. Sorry about that, Chief. (2008) 6

Funny People (TV3, 8.30pm). How’s this for irony? Judd Apatow goes for maturity in a film about a comedian who can’t utter a straight sentence. Adam Sandler (Apatow’s old roommate) deadpans his way through a crisis that would make most people grow up, and then Funny People seems to move onto another film altogether. (At nearly two-and-a-half hours, it just about is.) But you’ll probably enjoy both of them if Sandler doesn’t make you want to run screaming from the room. He’s aided and abetted by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, a gang of famous US stand-up comedians and most of the Apatow family (wife Leslie Mann and daughters Maude and Iris also appeared in Knocked Up). (2009) 6

Hardball (Four, 8.30pm). Oh, not another American fact-based sports drama. Oh, yes. This one’s got baseball and Keanu Reeves. (2001) 5

Séraphine (Maori, 8.30pm). Big ups … Yolande Moreau will break your heart as a dowdy cleaning lady turned primitivist painter in this biopic about Séraphine Louis, who was “discovered” by a German art collector just before the outbreak of World War I. Quiet, gentle, beautiful and ultimately sad – just what you expect from a French art house movie. It won seven César awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), including best film, best director (Martin Provost) and best actress. (2008) 8

MONDAY NOVEMBER 14

I, Robot (TV3, 8.30pm). Electronic evil: in the future, fed-up robots are taking over. Yes, even the ones that wear pinnies and do your vac-uuming. Will Smith is the guy to sort it out. (2004) 6

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15

The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Four, 8.30pm). It turns out I liked this film more than Janeane Garofalo, who starred in it. She usually plays the hardbitten cynic – a role she made her own in 1994’s Reality Bites – and she thought this fresh and rather charming romcom was a sell-out, calling it soft and corny and anti-feminist. It’s a gender-reversal version of Cyrano de Bergerac, in which Brian (Englishman Ben Chaplin) falls for smart, funny radio vet Abby (Garofalo) who pretends she is her gorgeous blonde cliché of a neighbour, Noelle (Uma Thurman). It feels like a small-budget independent film but that’s not enough for the tough little lady who, like Chaplin, is now working in TV (Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, a kill-by-numbers crime show that recently played on TV1. Chaplin is in Mad Dogs, currently screening on TV1). Choose your corner or just enjoy the great dane on rollerskates. (1996) 7

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18

Rambo III (Four, 8.30pm). For a Buddhist (yeah, really), Rambo certainly does like to be around wars. In this third effort, his commanding officer from ’Nam is kidnapped by the Russians in Afghanistan and Rambo – siding with the Mujahedin – has to rescue him. With meditation and chanting, presumably. Oh no, make that a bow and exploding arrows. Sly Stallone made a surprisingly good fourth film, Rambo, in 2008, about the Burmese civil war and a fifth, Rambo: Last Stand, is rumoured to be in production, although Stallone is being coy. The war on Mexican drug traffickers has been mentioned. Perhaps the public could write in with suggestions: there are plenty of conflicts to go around. Rambo III mindlessly misses its target, however. (1988) 5