The Cowboys (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.)...

The Cowboys (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.) is one of the last (1972) yet most controversial of John Wayne’s films. Wayne plays a Montana rancher who, because of a gold strike, has to turn to schoolboys to help drive his 1,500 head of cattle to market 400 miles away. Inevitably, the experience becomes a rite of passage for the boys.

The 1990 Loose Cannons (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.) is yet another mismatched buddy-buddy cop movie, in which Gene Hackman’s shaggy realism rubs nicely against Dan Aykroyd’s nervous artifice, but the picture itself is like another race at the dog track, with the script as the mechanical rabbit.

The 1981 Bustin’ Loose (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.), with Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson, is a highly uneven comedy, but it’s so ingratiating at times you may be able to forgive it for falling apart two-thirds of the way through. Pryor plays a convicted thief whose parole dictates that he do a good deed--specifically, to drive a busload of eight emotionally disturbed children cross-country, accompanied by their teacher (Tyson).

The 1984 Country (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) is worthy but not very compelling. Jessica Lange, who also co-produced, and Sam Shepard star as a farm couple caught up in a bewildering and unrelenting downward slide as they struggle against the ravages of a tornado and an uncaring bureaucratic agency, the Farmer’s Home Administration.

The Christmas Stallion (KCOP Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a new family film in which Daniel J. Travanti must decide whether to sell a horse-breeding farm in Wales or to leave it in the hands of his young niece (Sian McLean).

The 1985 Sweet Dreams (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) tells the scrappy story of country singer Patsy Cline’s hard and desperately short life like a country love song, joyful and mournful by turns. With Jessica Lange as Cline and Ed Harris as her husband.

Set in the seamy underworld of Times Square strip joints, Abel Ferrera’s 1984 Fear City (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) is an audacious urban shocker in which a vicious psychopath takes aim at topless dancers; Melanie Griffith stars as a 42nd Street club’s featured stripper. With Tom Berenger and Billy Dee Williams.