SPARKLEThis is a vivid, unjustly neglected 1976...

SPARKLE

This is a vivid, unjustly neglected 1976 movie about a Supremes-like trio. Philip Michael Thomas, Irene Cara and Lonette McKee are featured.

Thursday at 1 p.m. Saturday at 11 a.m. A&E;

EDUCATING RITA

In between the jokes, there’s real substance and sharp perceptions in this 1983 British comedy about a bright, brassy hairdresser (irresistible Julie Walters) who enrolls in a venerable university’s free evening program and draws an alcoholic literature professor (Michael Caine, in top form) for her weekly tutorial.

Wednesday 8 p.m. KCOP

WINGS

You can watch either before or after the Academy Awards this very first winner of the best picture Oscar, a 1927 silent World War I aerial epic that may seem a trifle corny today but nonetheless retains tremendous verve, thanks to the lusty direction of William Wellman. Charles (Buddy) Rogers, Richard Arlen and Clara Bow star.

Monday 5 and 10:30 p.m. AMC

BABETTEUS FEAST

This 1987 Oscar winner is an exquisite and subtle fable, beautifully aaapted by Danish director Gabriel Axel from an Isak Dinesen tale, concerning a singular and selfless expression of love and gratitude. Stephane Audran has the role of her career as a Frenchwoman seeking refuge with two sweetly devout spinster sisters in JJtland.

Friday at 6 and 11 p.m. Bravo

DARK EYES

Marcello Mastroianni enjoyed a career high as an architect who sells himself short in this lush, brooding 1987 film set in Italy and the Soviet Union, derived from some Chekhov short stories and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov.

Saturday 5 p.m. and midnight Bravo

RAN

Akira Kurosawa’s glorious re-working of King Lear in feudal 16th-Century Japan. At once brisk and vital, elegiac and contemplative, intimate and epic, tragic yet shot through with humor, it encompasses all of human nature in all its folly and grandeur in images as beautiful and terrifying as any ever captured on film. Tatsuya Nakadai stars.

Saturday 9 p.m. KCET