Movie Spotlight

Making Something to Talk About (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.), set in Southern horse country, happen is an enviable creative team, starting with “Thelma & Louise” screenwriter Callie Khouri and Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?,” “My Life as a Dog”). Each has a perfect understanding of the comically eccentric, and their collaboration gives the 1995 film a welcome off-center feeling, a human tempo and pacing that emphasize character whenever possible. Its fine cast includes Julia Roberts, Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Kyra Sedgwick and Dennis Quaid. They work so well together that it takes a while to realize that underneath their success is a schematic story line that is weaker and more familiar than it should be. The film’s title refers to the gossip surrounding Quaid’s infidelity and whether or not Roberts, his wife, should forgive him.

A Few Good Men (NBC Monday at 8 p.m.) is a brisk and familiar 1992 courtroom drama that is as pleasant to watch as it is predictable. More than anything else, it is a tribute to pure star power. Like “The Caine Mutiny” before it, it is centered around a trial in a military courtroom and would like you to think about such weighty topics as the misuse of power and a young man’s struggle to find himself. But its true reason for being is to give Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson the kind of juicy roles they do best.

With his 1990 Eating (Bravo Tuesday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday at 8 a.m. and 2:10 p.m.) independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom continues his intimate, spontaneous, but always compassionate observations of compulsively neurotic human behavior--and reveals his ongoingfascination with women. In essence, “Eating” is “The Women “of the ‘90s: An attractive Hancock Park matron (Lisa Blake Richards) throws a 40th birthday party for herself and for a friend turning 30 (Mary Crosby) and one turning 50 (Marlena Giovi). The only woman among 38 not obsessed with food and dieting is played with radiance and wit by Frances Bergen, one of Hollywood’s enduring beauties (and mother of Candice.)

Maverick (NBC Friday at 8:30 p.m.) is smart-alecky without being very smart. It’s full of spoofy, har-dee-har-har ribaldries--this 1994 film practically winks at you. As sophisticated Western comedies go, it’s somewhere between “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” Crammed with such big-name crowd-pleasers as Mel Gibson, who as Maverick, spends most of the movie trying to con his way into a high-stakes poker game, Jodie Foster, as a con woman, and James Garner, the original Maverick as a lawman, the film reaches for that Feel Good feeling. It settles for Feel OK.