Kids Like These (CBS Sunday at 9...
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Kids Like These (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.), a new TV movie about a family with a child who has Down’s syndrome, stars Tyne Daly, Richard Crenna and Martin Balsam.
The new two-part Billionaire Boys Club (NBC Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m.) stars Judd Nelson as Joe Hunt, recently convicted for the murder of Beverly Hills wheeler-dealer Ron Levin. It was directed by Marvin Chomsky from Gy Waldron’s adaptation of Sue Horton’s soon-to-be-published book.
Channel 13 is offering another Clint Eastwood double feature Sunday: Magnum Force, an excessively violent sequel to “Dirty Harry” (at 6 p.m.), and For a Few Dollars More (at 8 p.m.), the Sergio Leone Western that made Eastwood a star.
Breathless (Channel 9 Sunday at 8 p.m.), Jim McBride’s swift, high-style 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 New Wave classic, may lack the substance of the original but is entertaining all the same. Richard Gere and Valerie Kaprisky star.
The pickings are slim indeed on Monday evening when at 8 p.m. all you have to choose from is Chuck Norris’ Vietnam fantasy, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (Channel 5; repeats on Saturday at 8 p.m.), and a couple of ultra-violent juvenile horror pictures, A Nightmare on Elm Street (Channel 11), Friday the 13th, Part 3 (Channel 13).
Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (Channel 5 Tuesday at 8 p.m., to be completed on Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is a bold, daring landmark film that attempts to rework Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” as a saga of the Vietnam War. Although the film finally succumbs to the bewildering madness of war it so dazzlingly depicts, it is a rich, challenging experience. Martin Sheen stars as a burnt-out special agent assigned to travel upriver from Saigon to find the near-mythical Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a Special Forces officer driven mad apparently by the unique cruelty and appalling complexity of the war.
Slick and scarcely subtle but undeniably potent elementary entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) builds single-mindedly to its big, scary climax involving that awesome shark. Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss star.
Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (ABC Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 9 p.m.) stars an aptly cast Jacqueline Bisset and Armand Assante (pictured on the cover) in the oft-told tale of the Emperor of France and the beautiful aristocrat whom he divorced after 13 years of marriage.
Re-Animator (Channel 13 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is just about the best, funniest grand guignol horror picture to come along in ages. Directed by Stuart Gordon from an adaptation of a 1922 H. P. Lovecraft story, it stars Jeffrey Combs as a young genius teetering on the brink of madness and determined to conquer brain death. (Not recommended for small children or the squeamish.)
Alas, after Re-Animator, this week’s spate of horror pictures lapses right back to the routine and gratuitously gory with Friday the 13th (Channel 11 Thursday at 8 p.m.) and Halloween II (Channel 13 Thursday at 8 p.m.).
The original MASH is back (Channel 5 Friday at 7:30 p.m.). Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are doctors drafted into the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. Robert Altman’s rough, unique and stunning work is a black comedy on the absurdity of war (and much else) that is at once gruesomely gory and utterly hilarious.
That unalloyed delight, The Sting (Channel 13 Saturday at 8 p.m.) is also back. In this superbly crafted pure entertainment, Robert Redford is an up-and-coming con man who persuades Paul Newman, a legendary big-time man on the skids in Chicago, to help him get revenge on New York racketeer Robert Shaw.
Selected evening cable fare: Sugarbaby (Bravo Sunday at 8); Peggy Sue Got Married (Cinemax Sunday at 9); Smiles of a Summer Night (Z Monday at 7); Parting Glances (Bravo Monday at 8); The Seventh Seal (Bravo Tuesday at 8); Something Wild (Movie Channel Tuesday at 9, Cinemax Wednesday at 9, SelecTV Thursday at 8:30); Brazil (SelecTV Tuesday at 9); Stranger Than Paradise (Bravo Wednesday at 6:30); The Virginian (Z Wednesday at 6:30); Casey’s Shadow (HBO Wednesday at 7); Diner (WTBS Wednesday at 7:30); Down by Law (Bravo Wednesday at 8); Memphis Belle (Z Wednesday at 8); The China Syndrome (HBO Wednesday at 9); The Great Santini (Z Wednesday at 9, Cinemax Friday at 9:30); Over the Edge (HBO Thursday at 6); The Lost Patrol (SelecTV Thursday at 7); Variety Lights (Z Thursday at 7); Round Midnight (Cinemax Thursday at 9); True Stories (SelecTV Saturday at 7); Mona Lisa (Showtime Saturday at 8).
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