SATURDAY
Touch of Evil (1958)
CBC, 1:30 a.m. Like a disturbing nightmare in which nothing really adds up, your enemy's motivations aren't entirely clear, and everything moves to its own rhythm, a Touch of Evil is both far-fetched and deeply affecting. The action takes place in a creepy Mexican border town where Charlton Heston is going head-to-head with a nutty Texas cop played by Orson Welles, while doing his best to keep his newlywed bride (Janet Leigh) out of the clutches of local hoodlums (in retrospect, it's clear that Leigh should have made a professional vow to stay away from seedy roadside motels). Welles also directed, and the movie is memorable not only for its spooky plot but for the way he decided to shoot the proceedings -- using menacing lighting and long, wide shots, especially the one that opens the film. Keep an eye out, too, for Marlene Deitrich. Say what? Like I said, nothing here really adds up.
SUNDAY
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Bravo!, 11 p.m. Why, when Bobby woke up after a season of Dallas only to reveal the previous 24 episodes were a dream, did viewers get so mad, but when Dorothy wakes up after an entire trip to Oz, we just feel relieved to see her back in that depressing bedroom, surrounded by what were probably sex-starved farmhands only too glad to see she couldn't remember what it was that knocked her unconscious? I mean, if you somehow ended up with a pair of sour relatives on a black-and-white pig farm in the American midwest, would you really be referring to that place when you said "There's no place like home," or would you be secretly telling the audience that you'd do anything to get the hell out of Kansas? Those minor questions aside, Dorothy's Excellent Adventure, a tale of dreams coming true for those who believe in themselves, should be taken as harmless, innocent fun, with no subtext whatsoever.
MONDAY
Beautiful Thing (1996)
Showcase, 12:30 a.m. If this movie were made in America, it would star Meredith Baxter Birney and end with her founding a local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. If it were made in Canada, it would air on Studio 2 and conclude with a roundtable discussion called Coming Out: How Young is Too Young? Thankfully, it was the Brits who made this innocuous but fun story of two teenage boys who meet and fall in love in a South London housing project. Being British, it also weaves in elements of class and soccer. And this being an American world, there's a soundtrack of songs not by Dusty Springfield or Lulu but Mama Cass, which -- from Dream a Little Dream of Me to Make Your Own Kind of Music -- sound as if they were all written with this very movie in mind.
TUESDAY
The Rapture (1991)
Showcase, midnight We've made it through two Y2Ks now with no appearances by anyone from the Book of Revelations. But there's always some new loony out there able to convince a few dozen followers that the end is nigh, which makes this movie continuously topical. Mimi Rogers (ex-wife of Scientologist Tom Cruise) stars as a telephone operator who fights boredom by having group sex. At one of her mini-orgies she meets David Duchovny, who ends up fathering her child and sharing her growing belief that there is Something Out There. No, not extra-terrestrial beings hidden away in X-Files; it's the Lord Himself, right there in The Bible. It's hard to tell if this movie is a spoof, a serious attempt to examine fundamentalist faith, or something in between -- like, say, purgatory, which frankly was my own experience watching it.
WEDNESDAY
The Lotus Eaters (1993)
Bravo!, 9 p.m. For anyone who really thinks Quebec will be the undoing of us all, The Lotus Eaters presents for our consideration Anne-Marie Andrews (Michele-Barbara Pelletier), a hip and sexy young replacement teacher who blows into a small British Columbia town in the early '60s and proceeds to wreak superb and utter havoc with the sleepy inhabitants. The next thing self-satisfied headmaster Hal Kingswood (R.H. Thomson) knows, his younger daughter is imitating the vamp, his older daughter is getting pregnant out of wedlock, and he's having the kind of extra-marital affair that gets chalk dust in your private areas. Sheila McCarthy also stars in this made-for-TV flick, and won a best-actress Genie.
THURSDAY
What About Bob? (1991)
Family, 9 p.m. Anyone who's ever gone to an analyst knows who the really crazy people are in this world, and that they all bill $120 an hour. So it's hard not to cheer for Bob Wiley, played with unstoppable tenacity by Bill Murray. A whacked-out, hyperphobic dude (he fears, among other things, exploding bladders) who can't live without the constant advice of his psychiatrist, he follows the doctor on vacation to a woodsy New Hampshire retreat, ingratiates himself with the man's long-neglected family, and won't take "You're stark, raving mad" for an answer. Richard Dreyfuss, an actor who even in Jaws came across as officious and pretentious, is for once perfectly cast as the besieged and beleaguered doctor trapped in a Play Misty for Me comedy. By the end of it all, needless to say, it's him who needs the shrink.
FRIDAY
Stand By Me (1986)
Bravo!, 9 p.m. Almost 20 years ago, Stephen King wrote the four-novella book, Different Seasons, and over the years three of the stories have gone on to become movies. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption became The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins; Apt Pupil became a movie of the same name in 1998; and The Body became Stand By Me. While the plot could easily have been classic creepy King -- it's the story of four boys in search of the missing dead body of a fifth -- this movie delivers what its title promises: a feel-good buddy story. Neophyte actors Wil Wheaton (pre-Star Trek: TNG), Corey Feldman (pre-teen heartthrob), Jerry O'Connell (pre-Sliders) and River Phoenix (pre-overdose) are all good; the always pug-faced Kiefer Sutherland plays a great bully.