Robert De Niro won an Oscar as...

Robert De Niro won an Oscar as Jake La Motta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull (KTLA Sunday at 8 p.m.), one of the best American films of recent decades. De Nero’s much-reported weight gain for the role helps, but his portrayal of the boxing champion is created deeply from within. An impeccable period piece.

Written by Naomi Foner and directed by Sidney Lumet, the 1988 Running on Empty (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.) effectively plays its taut portrayal of ‘60s radicals still on the run against a warm evocation of family life and first love. With River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, Jonas Abry and Martha Plimpton.

Michael Chapman made his 1983 directorial debut with All the Right Moves (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.), a fine, largely overlooked 1983 Tom Cruise movie that casts him as a blue-collar high school senior who sees football as the only way out of his dying hometown.

Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein’s 1988 Oscar-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (KCET Monday at 8 p.m.) confronts us with the reality of AIDS with such simplicity and directness that it is hard to imagine how the enormous tragedy of this disease could be expressed with greater impact.

Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers’ 1984 Irreconcilable Differences (KCOP Monday at 8 p.m.) is one of the wittiest Hollywood movies of the ‘80s. Ryan O’Neal and Shelley Long star as a struggling director and screenwriter-wife whose lives spin out of control to such an extent when success arrives that their 11-year-old daughter (Drew Barrymore) sues them for divorce.

You could not ask for more sensitivity, subtlety or perception in the appreciation of high school students and their emotions than Lucas (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.), a 1986 film written and directed by David Seltzer and starring Corey Haim as a brilliant 14-year-old who nevertheless fails to anticipate how crucial the age difference can be between him and his 16-year-old girlfriend (Kerri Green).

Penelope Spheeris, director of the exhilarating “Wayne’s World,” made The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (KCAL Saturday at 1 p.m.), a 1981 documentary on the world of punk rock that is engaging and dynamic as it is revealing.

KCET’s Saturday night double feature: Blithe Spirit, starring Rex Harrison (at 9 p.m.), and Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Alec Guinness (at 11).