The 1980 Foxes (KTLA Sunday at 6...
The 1980 Foxes (KTLA Sunday at 6 p.m.) shows four hip, loose L.A. teens, including the young Jodie Foster, and their dismally hedonistic adventures in a cityscape swirling with smoky lights, rock ‘n’ roll and joyless sex.
Death on the Nile (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.) is an elegant and suspenseful all-star 1978 Agatha Christie adaptation in which Peter Ustinov plays for the first time Hercule Poirot, who applies his famous “little gray cells” to solving a shipboard murder.
The best thing about the 1983 TV movie Legs (KCAL Sunday at 9 p.m.), about the Radio City Music Hall Rockette auditions, is a zesty Gwen Verdon as a choreographer.
Bang the Drum Slowly (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.), an outstanding 1973 release, is deeply affecting, often humorous but never morbid or maudlin in telling how a glib, fast-talking pitcher (Michael Moriarty) connives to ensure that a dim but appealing catcher (Robert De Niro) will be able to play until Hodgkin’s disease finally overtakes him.
Crimes of the Heart (KCOP Monday at 8 p.m.), a 1986 adaptation of the Beth Henley play about three kooky Mississippi sisters (Sissy Spacek, Diane Keaton and Jessica Lange), is somewhat more palatable on the screen than it was on the stage, but it’s still a tedious Southern Gothic caricature.
Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait (KCOP Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.) is a rousing, sophisticated update of the 1941 fantasy “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” that preserves the wonderful, amusing lyrical optimism of the original. In the 1978 release Beatty stars as a pro football quarterback whose death is untimely in every sense and who gets two more tries at earthly pleasures.
John Hughes’ 1985 The Breakfast Club (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) takes place in a suburban Illinois high school where five radically disparate kids, condemned to all-day detention, come to know each other.
In the 1980 The Stunt Man (KTTV Wednesday at 8 p.m.), a criminal (Steve Railsback) on the run takes the place of a movie company stunt man accidentally killed in a police chase. In some ways it’s an obvious allegory, but B-movie vet Richard Rush keeps it churning with energy and bravura movie tricks. And it has a show-stopping, John Barrymore-style grand ham performance by Peter O’Toole.
The outstanding 1988 Stand and Deliver (KCET Wednesday at 9 p.m.) has Edward James Olmos as Garfield High’s mesmerizing calculus teacher Jaime Escalante, who’s able to inspire a group of almost-dropouts and galvanize them, giving them pride in themselves and showing the road to earning it.
Saturday night brings both Billy Wilder’s sly and delightful 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (KCOP Saturday at 8 p.m.) and Howard Hawks’ 1948 classic Western Red River (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.) with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.
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