The Man From Snowy River (KTLA Sunday...
The Man From Snowy River (KTLA Sunday at 6 p.m.), a broad but vigorous 1982 Australian Western, stars Kirk Douglas in a dual role.
The Quiet Man (KCAL Sunday at 9 p.m., TBS Wednesday at 7:05 a.m.), John Ford’s glorious 1952 romantic comedy, is set in Ireland and stars John Wayne as a champion Irish-American boxer who has returned to his birthplace and is beguiled by fiery Maureen O’Hara, whose red-haired beauty was perfect for Technicolor.
In the 1988 Betrayed (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.), an “expose†of white supremacists, overkill cripples the message of danger from the radical right. Tom Berenger stars as a Midwestern bigot, and Debra Winger as a none-too-swift undercover FBI agent.
In the slick but improbably written 1987 Stakeout (ABC Monday at 8:30 p.m.) a detective (played by Richard Dreyfuss with impeccable comic timing) falls in love with a woman (Madeleine Stowe) he has under surveillance.
It’s Burt Reynolds week on KTLA. The 1988 Rent-a-Cop (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is pleasant, by-the-numbers genre fare which finds endangered Chicago hooker Liza Minnelli hiring ex-cop Reynolds to protect her.
In the title role of the underrated 1987 Malone (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.) Reynolds plays a mysterious stranger, strong and silent, who happens upon some decent, ordinary folk in need of a larger-than-life good guy to defend them from a big-deal bad guy.
Unfortunately, Switching Channels (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) is a frenetic, misfired 1988 attempt to update “The Front Page†to the cable business, trapping Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeve in an enervating, joyless endurance course.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) remains one of the best and most ambitious films Clint Eastwood ever directed--and that’s including “Unforgiven.†In this handsome 1976 Western, Eastwood plays a farmer living along the Kansas-Missouri border who turns avenging outlaw when his family is massacred by a band of Northern guerrillas during the Civil War.
In Ernst Lubitsch’s great Ninotchka (KCET Friday at 11:35 p.m.), Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas staged their own version of glasnost in a satiny MGM backlot Paris--she as a Soviet envoy extraordinaire, he a suave playboy-deceiver. Co-written by Billy Wilder, this 1939 film all but defines the high-style Hollywood romantic comedy of the ‘30s.
Grand Hotel (KCET Saturday at 11 p.m.), one of the first and best of the all-star movies, with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore and more in MGM’S memorable 1932 version of the Vicki Baum novel.
More to Read
Only good movies
Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.