edge
Stacks Image 81738

A Trifecta of Today’s Best Films on the Box

A mini-Spike Lee festival runs on Cinemax, starting with Mo’ Better Blues (8.55am) and including He Got Game (1.25pm), Get on the Bus (3.45pm), Chi-Raq (5.50pm) and the film that almost got today’s top spot, Clockers, (8.55am). One of the men who inspired him – Woody Allen – also has a mini-fest of his own on the DirecTV channel, starting with Sleeper (3pm) and Love and Death (4.30pm) before ending with his magnum opus, Manhattan (6pm), which also almost got today’s top slot, as did Penny Marshall’s own masterpiece, **Big (11.15am FoxFam), which was passed up only because it was picked last month and shares a theme with today’s second choice. Opera lovers shouldn’t miss Andrea Bocelli performing songs from his new album Cinema (12 midday DirecTV channel).

Today’s number one film:


This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner/ 1984/ USA/ Comedy-Music/ 82 mins/ Rated R/ 9.25pm ISat BEST FILM OF THE DAY. Watch this if you liked Monty Python’s Life of Brian, The 40-Year-Old Virgin or There’s Something About Mary. Rob Reiner’s rip-off of/homage to Meet the Rutles (created by members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) is an hilarious parody of a heavy metal hair band done so well the less clever or inattentive may think it’s a real documentary. Few American films reach this level of satire and even fewer deliver a truckload of barrel laughs along the way. Christopher Guest is hilarious as brainless lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (a London neighbourhood near Clapton) and Michael McKean as singer David St Hubbins steal the show, as real rock band front men would, but the rest of the group, including the always doomed and often replaced drummer, are all a scream. More than 30 years later, this wicked dissection of the music business still goes to 11.

Also watch:

Freaky Friday (Mark Waters/ 2003/ USA/ Comedy/ 97 mins/ Rated PG). 2.19pm Max. Watch this if you liked Big, All of Me or Groundhog Day. For BC on TV to rank a Disney film at all, it would have to be pretty good; to rate one starring Lindsay Lohan highly, it would have to be exceptional; Freaky Friday is. The old body-switching formula (with mother and daughter swapping bodies for a day) is far less inane than you might reasonably expect, and is worth watching just for Jamie Lee Curtis pulling off the teenaged girl poses while pushing 50. Like the films it’s compared to, there’s nothing new at all in it, but it’s all handled so very well, you might even get a little weepy at the predictable end. Mark Waters went on to make a couple o’ other strong films from weak premises in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Mr Popper’s Penguins.

2 Days in New York (Julie Delpy/ 2012/ France-Germany-Belgium/ Indy Romantic Comedy/ 96 mins/ Rated R for language, sexual content, some drug use and brief nudity) 7.25pm Fox Cinema. Watch this if you liked 2 Days in Paris, Take This Waltz or Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight. Not a film for the average Trini – or, indeed, the average Americans we do our best to copy – but a bit of a treat for anyone with the patience to discern the comedy in a situation instead of having it spoon-fed to them through a laugh-track. It lacks some of the spark of the first film, 2 Days in Paris, but that is more than made up for by a terrific straight man performance from Chris Rock that foreshadowed his lead role in Top Five. The cynic might ask, “How do you say, ‘Woody Allen Light’ in French?’ – for the French Delpy is clearly imitating Woody, who was himself initially imitating the French grandmasters – but there is far more to delight than dismiss in it.

JUST NOSED OUT:

Warm Bodies (Comedy-Horror) 7.04pm Edge; Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Action-Adventure-Thriller), 9pm FoxClas; Mad Max 3 (Action-Sci-fi-Thriller), 7.45am HBOC; Death Rides a Horse (Western), 1pm FoxClas; The Hobbit 3 (Action-Adventure-Fantasy), 12.50 midday FoxMov; Ted 2 (Adult Animated Comedy), 2pm HBOC.

ALSO RAN:

Action/Adventure: Changing Lanes, 12.30 midday, Film

Art House/Independent: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Comedy), 7.10pm ISat

Children/Family: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Animated), 10am HBOS; Horton, 9.55am FoxMov

Classic: Arthur (Comedy, Dudley Moore version), 10.05am MaxU

Drama: The Belier Family (French drama), 3.20pm CnCl

Foreign: Little White Lies (French), 11.30am FoxCin

Horror:

Sci-Fi/Fantasy: *LOTR 1, 11.45am HBOP; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 7am TCM

Thriller: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Crime), 8.50am MaxP

Western: For a Few Dollars More, 10.45am FoxClas

*Starred films have been chosen in the last two years. ** Double-starred films have been chosen in the last two months.

Scheduled Internet times often vary on the day, particularly around month-end.

The selected content is not available.