Movie Spotlight

Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (ABC Sunday at 7 p.m.) is an old-fashioned 1995 boy-and-his-dog buddy movie, with an un-Lassie-like twist: It goes for gritty wilderness realism over fantastic feats of canine anthropomorphism. Not just that, but--despite the pooch’s singular billing in the subtitle--it’s the boy (Jesse Bradford) actually pulling off more of the derring-do than his labrador, when as shipwrecked strandees they journey together through the vast, inhospitable Northwestern wilderness. Bradford’s 14-year-old Angus is about to make a food run up the Canadian coast in an ocean vessel with his father (Bruce Davison), when a beatific four-legged visitor, Yellow Dog (Dakotah), mysteriously shows up at the ranch. The timing proves more than fortuitous when said dog is shortly washed ashore alongside his young master after a storm separates them from Dad, and these two finally head treacherously inland after days of waiting in vain to be sighted along a remote beach. Mimi Rogers plays Angus’ mother.

The River Wild (NBC Sunday at 8:30 p.m.) takes your breath away two times over. And if the excitement of its climactic scenes of white-water rafting is not a surprise, the thrill of seeing Meryl Streep give a rip-roaring performance is. This 1994 release, crisply directed by “L.A. Confidential’s” Curtis Hanson, stars Streep as wife (of David Straitharn) mother (of Joseph Mazzello) and former white-water guide.

Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film Philadelphia (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) took hits from critics for both its sentimentality and the chaste romantic relationship of its protagonist, but Tom Hank’s Oscar winning performance and a strong central struggle for personal rights connected with enough audience members to become a sizeable box office success. Denzel Washington, Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas and Joanne Woodward make up a stellar supporting cast. The film also garnered an Oscar for Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia,” which bested fellow nominee Neil Young’s title track.

By all rights Boys on the Side (NBC Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.) should be a howler. It has the kind of high-low concept that sounds like a parody of a post-”Thelma & Louise” bond-a-thon. Whoopi Goldberg is a lesbian and struggling club singer; Mary-Louise Parker is a prim, gravely-ill real-estate agent; Drew Barrymore is a little love dumpling on the run from her abusive boyfriend. The 1995 film is about how they form a kind of family on a coast-to-coast journey. The characters and situations are as sudsy and manipulative as any daytime soaper. But the three women are so spirited and funny--so emotionally keyed into all the hearts and flowers--that they give the movie their own kind of truth.