Movie Spotlight

Between 1922 and 1944, producer Hal Roach turned out countless “Our Gang” comedies, featuring the antics of a beloved bunch of youngsters engaged in everyday exploits that were as endearing as they were hilarious. The series received new life with the advent of TV, where they were shown as “The Little Rascals.” In 1994, The Little Rascals (KABC Sunday at 7 p.m.) became a feature film again, stylistically venturesome with sophisticated affection, thanks to director Penelope Spheeris. But it’s also uneven and not as funny as it ought to be. Even so, it is unmistakably the work of a distinctive filmmaker whose work is always worthy of attention.

It Could Happen to You (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.) is a 1994 romantic comedy about the consequences of doing the right thing. It’s slight but sweet. Charlie Lang (Nicolas Cage) is a New York cop with an overdose of decency. When Charlie finds himself in a diner short of a tip, he makes a pie-in-the-sky promise to his waitress (Bridget Fonda) to give her half of any possible winnings on his just-purchased lottery ticket.

Thelma & Louise (KTLA Thursday at 7:30 p.m.), that 1991 landmark feminist love-on-the-run thriller, finds two Arkansas chums (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) forced into a Sam Peckinpah-style flight to Mexico when one of them shoots and kills a would-be rapist. Their flight is goofy and mistake-ridden, but as they keep going their grasp at freedom makes them wilder and more joyous. Look, of course, for the now-legendary appearance of Brad Pitt as a hitchhiker who gets more than their attention.

Moonstruck (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.), one of the juiciest romantic comedies of the ‘80s, is the film that provided Cher a role that let her comic sensibilities out for a romp--earning her a best actress Oscar--playing a young widow whose dull life suddenly shifts 180 degrees under the spell of an extraordinarily full moon. Written by John Patrick Shanley and featuring Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, and Olympia Dukakis as Cher’s clear-eyed mother. Dukakis also won an Oscar under Norman Jewison’s direction, never better.

In Delmar Daves’ 1947 Dark Passage (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.) a framed convict on the lam has his face altered by plastic surgery; amazingly, he winds up looking exactly like Humphrey Bogart. The first 30 minutes boast a fascinating use of the subjective camera; the rest is good, standard film noir, set in San Francisco. With Lauren Bacall and Agnes Moorehead.