The late writer Roald Dahl might not...

The late writer Roald Dahl might not have appreciated The Witches (KCOP Sunday at 6 p.m.), the 1990 adaptation of his saga of a witch convention at a British seaside resort, opposed by a dauntless Norwegian grandmother (Mai Zetterling) and a boy-turned-mouse. But anyone starved for a good, literate, imaginative children’s film, done with wit and flair, may disagree. The Jim Henson puppets are marvelous, Anjelica Huston makes a nauseatingly delightful head witch, and director Nicolas Roeg, in a rare PG foray, gives the movie magic, tone and amusing frenzy.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (KABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) poses the question: Are two Terminators better than one? They are when James Cameron, the most gifted action director of his generation, is in charge. Equally at home in small-scale skirmishes and complex, bravura effects, Cameron flamboyantly underlines (with a lot of help from Arnold Schwarzenegger) why the pure adrenaline rush of motion is something motion pictures can’t live for long without.

In the 1985 Demolition Man (KTTV Tuesday at 8 p.m.) Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone battle it out in a future that is clearly not big enough for both of them. Unable to decide about whether it should be a loud movie or a dopey movie, director Marco Brambilla and a trioof screenwriters have ended up with a loud movie and a dopey movie, not the best of compromises.

Moscow on the Hudson (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) is Paul Mazursky’s sweet and affecting 1984 tale of a Soviet saxophonist (wonderfully played by Robin Williams), who defects in the middle of Bloomingdale’s--and then finds his dreams of freedom, jazz, sex and Calvin Klein jeans going sour and curdled on Manhattan’s dirty streets.

Bat 21 (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) is a standard 1988 war movie enlivened by Gene Hackman as an Air Force colonel shot down over enemy territory during the Vietnam War and by Danny Glover as the incredibly brave and courageous captain who sustains Hackman’s spirits via radio contact while plotting his rescue.

Beau Geste (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.), the 1939 William Wellman remake of the 1926 silent, is a vigorous tale of three brothers (Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston) in the Foreign Legion who confront a nasty commander (Brian Donlevy).

Meet John Doe (KCET Saturday at 11 p.m.) is one of Frank Capra’s strangest films: an explosive political subject, which somehow fizzles into befuddled amiability. The premise: A newspaper, and the shadowy tycoon behind it, manipulate a circulation gimmick--a phony “common man” protesting by suicide--into a national populist movement, which quickly gets out of hand. Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Brennan star.