Filled with amusing situations and clever lines,...
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Filled with amusing situations and clever lines, Dave (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.), a bemused 1993 look at what happens when a regular guy has to step into the Oval Office and run the country, succeeds because of the delicately pitched comic performances of its cast. Kevin Kline, almost unequaled as a farce actor, stars.
Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a 1987 comic book style sci-fi actioner about a automated cop (Peter Weller)--in a futuristic Detroit where private industry has taken over the police--has been assembled with ferocious, gleeful expertise. The script nastily parodies everything from vacuous TV commentators to dope dealers to cut-throat corporate warfare.
Cool Runnings (Fox Tuesday at 8 p.m.), a blithe, infectious 1993 comedy with serious underpinnings about a Jamaican bobsledding team competing in the Olympics and coached by John Candy, is a beautifully-crafted film for all ages.
Unforgiven (ABC Thursday at 8 p.m.) is simultaneously heroic and nihilistic, reeking of myth but modern as they come, a Western for those who know and cherish the form, a 1992 film that resonates with the sprit of films past while staking out a territory quite its own. It was produced, directed by and stars Clint Eastwood from David Webb Peoples’ exceptional screenplay. For “Unforgiven,” the story of a reformed killer (Eastwood) who re-confronts his past, is very definitely an old-guy Western, but because Eastwood is who he is, it is a dark and ominous goodby, brooding and stormy.
On the Saturday late show: KCET is airing the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock classic North By Northwest Saturday at 10 p.m., and KTLA has King of New York (11:30 p.m.), that stylish 1990 job by the virtuoso of grunge, Abel Ferrara. Christopher Walken plays a feared New York crime lord who, at the start of the 1990 film, is released from prison after five years, with detention having inflamed his do-gooder’s soul: He plans to strong-arm the city’s drug lords into redistributing their booty to the poor.
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