James Farentino stars in NBC’s action-drama In...
James Farentino stars in NBC’s action-drama In the Line of Duty: A Cop for the Killing (Sunday at 9 p.m.) about the brutal murder of an undercover narcotics policeman and the devastating effect it has on his partners.
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman star in Indiscreet (Channel 9 Sunday at 11 p.m.). The 1958 film, directed by Stanley Donen and written by Norman Krasna is polished, witty, but not always inspired. It benefits enormously from its makers’ impudence and its stars’ peerless elegance and charm.
Superman II (Channel 13 Monday at 7:30 p.m.) offers Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane and Gene Hackman as super-villain Lex Luthor in a sequel to the 1978 hit that many thought superior. It wasn’t, but director Richard Lester, taking over in midstream from Richard Donner, gives it some of the dry Keatonesque slapstick he loves so well.
High Concept attacks TV in Working Trash (Channel 11 Monday at 8 p.m.) as janitors George Carlin and Ben Stiller find a fortune in stock tips while sweeping up a brokerage house.
Night of the Fox, Part One (Channel 5 Monday at 8 p.m.) is based on Jack Higgins’ book and has George Peppard and Michael York--in a dual role, as Gen Erwin Rommell and his double--hunting down a shipwrecked wanderer whose secret knowledge may imperil D-Day.
The Stranger Within (CBS, Tuesday at 9 p.m.) is a TV movie about a widow (Kate Jackson) who has a 19-year-old stranger (Rick Schroder) come to her house and claim that he is her son who was kidnapped years before.
Gone With The Wind (5 p.m. Wednesday, TNT; concludes Thursday, 5 p.m.) is David O. Selznick’s cherished 1939 production of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War saga starring Clark Cable and Vivien Leigh.
Once again, in The Unholy (Channel 13 Thursday at 8 p.m.), the Catholic Church does battle with the Devil (Nicole Fortier) who has popped up in New Orleans looking sexy. Ben Cross stars. Director Carmen Vila and writer Phil Yordan, grope for inspiration and find none.
The underrated 1986 Nutcracker: the Motion Picture (Channel 5 Friday at 8 p.m.), the movie version of Tchaikovsky’s immortal “Nutcracker Suite,” admittedly has a very silly title. The dancing, by the Pacific Northwest Ballet, is less than superb. It’s also, strangely, a set-driven movie: made to preserve the magically droll designs and settings by illustrator Maurice Sendak. Given all that, Sendak and director Carroll Ballard make a visual feast, sugarplums and all.
In 1948, The Red Shoes (Channel 5 Saturday at 5 p.m.) was the monster art-house hit of its day, enthralling audiences with its story, its ballet, its offbeat cast (ballerina Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook and Robert Helpmann) and wild visual imagination. Today, it enthralls them still. It’s one of those marvelously excessive movies which amuse and overpower you.
Capitalizing on the previous year’s hit, “A Man Called Horse”, the 1971 Man in the Wilderness (Channel 13 Saturday at 8 p.m.) once again puts Richard Harris in the Western wilds, this time at the mercy of grizzlies, the elements and John Huston.
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