For director Louis Malle and writer John...

For director Louis Malle and writer John Guare, Atlantic City (Channel 13 Sunday at 8 p.m.) is America’s Cinderella city, just saved from the pumpkin patch by the magic wand of legalized gambling. Malle and Guare tell the stories of the dreamers that the resort attracts as if they were fairy tales. The amusing, enchanting result is one of the key films of the 1980s. Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon star.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ABC Sunday at 8 p.m.) was the first of the big-screen Trekkie reunions but not the best. For all of the spectacular Douglas Trumbull-John Dykstra special effects, the film is sluggish and lacks stirring action. Anyway, it seems there’s a large mysterious cloud of destructive energy zipping toward Earth and only the Starship Enterprise may be able to stop it.

A Rumor of War (Channel 11 Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a harrowing four-hour 1980 TV movie based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip J. Caputo’s book about his experiences as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. Brad Davis stars as Caputo.

Silly rather than romantic, Thief of Hearts (Channel 13 Monday at 8 p.m.), a 1984 theatrical release, cries for the lushness of old-fashioned movie melodrama but plays like a routine TV movie. Steven Bauer is wasted as a sleek San Francisco thief who falls for a high-tech interior designer (Barbara Williams) when he reads the drivel in her diaries.

Standard action fare, the 1987 TV movie Island Sons (Channel 7 Monday at 9 p.m.) stars Timothy, Joseph, Samuel and Benjamin Bottoms as four brothers struggling to preserve their family’s dynasty when the father disappears after an indictment for bribery.

A Death in Canaan (Channel 13 Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is a fine and urgent 1978 TV movie about a teen-ager (Paul Clemens) accused of his mother’s murder. Adapted by the late Thomas Thompson and Spencer Eastman from Joan Barthel’s book and directed with understated eloquence by Tony Richardson.

Little Fauss and Big Halsy (Channel 11 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) pairs Robert Redford as a spineless drifter on the motorcycle circuit with Michael J. Pollard as his dim pal. This 1970 film is so synthetic it never comes alive.

The Compleat Beatles (Channel 28 Thursday at 9:05 p.m., again on Saturday at 9:30 p.m.) may not be the ultimate documentary on the Fab Four, but it’s a good introduction.

The inglorious, cruelly ironic end of General George S. Patton provides great poignancy to The Last Days of Patton (CBS Friday at 8 p.m.), a fine 1986 TV movie that is a fitting sequel to the 1970 “Patton.” George C. Scott again plays Patton, and Eva Marie Saint is his wife of 35 years. Delbert Mann directed.

A Town Like Alice (Channel 9 Saturday at 8 p.m.) is apparently a two-hour movie culled from the Australian miniseries set in Malaysia during World War II. Helen Morse and Bryan Brown star.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Channel 13 Saturday at 9 p.m.) is Richard Brooks’ powerful if uneven 1977 film starring Diane Keaton as a saintly teacher of deaf children by day and an insatiable, bar-hopping swinger by night.

The ratings checks on movies in the TV log are provided by the Tribune TV Log listings service.