dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, March 29, 3:45 a.m. The original Godzilla movie was recut and dubbed for American audiences, and it is wonderfully creaky, silly fun, with weak, even for the era, special effects, poor lip-synch, and spliced-in scenes of Raymond Burr as an American reporter to make the movie more palatable to…
dvr this On multiple Fox and National Geographic networks at various times Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts a sequel to Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking PBS series that Americans watched en masse 35 years ago. Tyson, arguably America’s greatest living public intellectual, is a brilliantly charismatic host and educator, and the narrative he and his producers craft to…
Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, March 15, 9 p.m. In one of Warren Beatty’s great roles (which is saying something), he plays George, a hair stylist to the more wealthy and fabulous women of Beverly Hills. He also spends of good deal of time sleeping with them, both the married and single ones, and he’s basically…
dvr this HBO, Sunday, March 9, 9 p.m. The season finale of this television season’s inarguably great drama is this weekend, and if you haven’t been watching, now is your time to catch up either on HBOGo or through other, less legal ways. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are detectives with the Louisiana state police…
dvr this The CW, Mondays, 8 p.m. While the CW is best known for soapy teen dramas, often with a supernatural twist, the also-ran network is not known for high quality. But it should be. The new sci-fi shows on TV this year have huge budgets on ABC and Fox, but they’re better written and…
dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 2:45 p.m., Friday, Feb. 28 Endlessly debated when it was released in 1994, Philadelphia is both an AIDS story sanitized for the masses and yet revolutionary in its depiction of the gay experience. Jonathan Demme’s direction is smooth and restrained, and Tom Hanks’ performance is legendary: so moving, so empathic…
dvr this On Hulu Easily the creepiest thing on network TV, Hannibal is a TV series prequel to Silence of the Lambs with Mads Mikkelsen as the titular character. He’s almost as good as Anthony Hopkins, but Hugh Dancy, as his FBI psychiatrist foil, is also excellent. But the real star of the show is…
dvr this HBO Signature, 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2 It is the middle of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest period, during the making of Psycho, that is the focus of Sacha Gervasi’s delightful movie about Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), a screenwriter with whom Hitchcock collaborated on every film he made, whether…
dvr this Lifetime, Saturday, Jan. 24, 8 p.m. By casting Christina Ricci as the ax-wielding 19th century murderess, I can only assume Lifetime is attempting to churn out more camp to accompany their Gina Gershon Donatella Versace biopic. Ricci, who is a very good actress, but who is still best known for playing Wednesday Addams,…
dvr this HBO, Sunday, Jan. 19, 10:30 p.m. The widely promoted new HBO show Looking is about three gay men in San Francisco looking for love. The men (Jonathan Groff, Frankie J. Alvarez, Murray Bartlett) are very good looking and the show is explicit, so I’m betting the ratings will be high. However, I’m particularly…
