BC Pires

A great film choice start to May leaves two of the best West­erns ever made in the al­so-rans to­day (The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, 8 pm Enc3, The Good, the Bad and the Ug­ly, 10 pm TCM) as well as a com­e­dy cho­sen as one of the top five DVD re­leas­es of last year by BC on TV in both the "African-Amer­i­can" and "Com­e­dy" cat­e­gories (Think Like a Man, 3.15 pm HBOC and again 4.45 pm Fri­day HBO), a strong Ben Kings­ley dra­ma (House of Sand and Fog, mid­day HBOC and again 10 pm Wednes­day MaxW), what many fans con­sid­er the best Lord of the Rings film (The Two Tow­ers, 10 pm MaxW) and a pow­er­ful pro-women film that might be treat­ed as a com­e­dy in an age where drunk­en Amer­i­can frat boys chant "No means Yes! Yes means anal!" with­out shame (The Ac­cused, 10 pm TCM). Lovers of the who­dunit thriller shouldn't miss to­mor­row a film that, as­sum­ing it's the Jim Caviezel and not the Liam Nee­son one with the same name, blends per­plex­i­ty and sat­is­fac­tion even­ly (Un­known, 7 pm HBOC).

To­day's best film:

Taxi Dri­ver (Mar­tin Scors­ese/1976/ USA/Dra­ma-Thriller/113 mins/ Rat­ed R), 10.40 pm Max. BEST FILM OF THE WEEK. Watch this if you liked The French Con­nec­tion, Dog Day Af­ter­noon or No Coun­try for Old Men. Mar­tin Scors­ese's best film, for many–and one of the great New York movies–al­so fea­tures what is Robert De Niro's best role for most: Travis Bick­le, the yel­low cab dri­ver go­ing slow­ly in­sane who, by sheer bizarre luck, ends up on the shiny side of the Amer­i­can Dream. Stun­ning cin­e­matog­ra­phy, a great sound­track and Har­vey Kei­t­el, Cy­bil Shep­herd–and Jodie Fos­ter's amaz­ing de­but as a child pros­ti­tute–make this a great Amer­i­can film, though the AFI ranks it on­ly at 47. Few things ap­proach­ing mid­dle age stand up so well.

Rest of the week:

Dark Wa­ter (Wal­ter Salles/2005/ USA/Hor­ror-Dra­ma-Thriller/105 mins/Rat­ed PG-13 for ma­ture the­mat­ic ma­te­r­i­al, fright­en­ing se­quences, dis­turb­ing im­ages and brief lan­guage) 8 pm Wednes­day Max West. Watch this if you liked Ringu (re­made as The Ring in the USA), Ju On (re­made as The Grudge) or Shut­ter (re­made, to the eter­nal con­fu­sion of DVD sup­pli­ers, as Shut­ter). Per­haps the on­ly Amer­i­can re­make of a Japan­ese hor­ror that might be bet­ter than the orig­i­nal, the Amer­i­can ver­sion's su­pe­ri­or pro­duc­tion val­ues make the film much eas­i­er to fol­low, which adds sub­stan­tial­ly to its creepy vibe. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the far more lit­er­al Amer­i­can ap­proach that usu­al­ly an­ni­hi­lates the essence of the hor­ror ac­tu­al­ly adds to spook­i­ness. This is both good dra­ma and a hor­ror for peo­ple who don't like hor­rors.

Sev­en (se7en) (David Rinch­er/ 1995/USA/Crime-Mys­tery-Thriller/ 127 mins/R for gris­ly af­ter-views of hor­rif­ic and bizarre killings and strong lan­guage) 10 pm Fri­day Turn­er Clas­sic Movies. Watch this if you liked Gone Ba­by Gone, Me­men­to or Fall­en. Ex­treme­ly grue­some but just as good, this taut thriller about a re­tir­ing cop and his rook­ie re­place­ment fac­ing a de­ment­ed se­r­i­al killer fea­tures ex­cel­lent per­for­mances from Mor­gan Free­man and Brad Pitt (yes, Brad Pitt). Worth watch­ing twice: once for the sto­ry, once for the per­for­mances. The se7en in ques­tion are the dead­ly sins, il­lus­trat­ed by mur­ders.

Best of the rest: Mon: Hom­bre, 3.30 pm TCM; Tues: The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man, 5.30 pm HBOC; Wed: Wag the Dog, 5.20 pm TCM; Thurs: *Har­ry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Se­crets, 9 pm HBOF; Fri: Cape Fear (Gre­go­ry Peck/ Robert Mitchum ver­sion), 3.35 pm TCM; Sat: Pol­ter­geist, 4 pm TCM.

* Starred films have been cho­sen in the last three months. Sched­uled In­ter­net times of­ten vary on the day, par­tic­u­lar­ly around month-end.