SATURDAY
Seven Days in May (1964)
TVO, 8 p.m. When you think Rod Serling, you think small-screen paranoia. But Ser-ling also wrote feature screenplays, including Requiem for a Heavyweight, Planet of the Apes and Seven Days in May, which, respectively, deliver some paranoia, some more paranoia, and lots of paranoia. Seven Days, one of several Burt Lancaster films directed by John Franken-heimer (whose Manchurian Candidate was another tour de force of political paranoia), is the intriguing and handsomely produced story of an attempted coup by the U.S. joint chiefs of staff. Of course, the plot it-self is technically preposterous, depending as it does on our ability to believe in such things as a self-serving Congress, a pliant media, and an electorate that would put bloodlust before genuine freedom. As if.
SUNDAY
Patch Adams (1998)
Bravo!, 1:30 p.m. More painful than surgery in the Middle Ages, Patch Adams should have been spelled Patch Addams; the good doctor is right out of some weird world more properly belonging to Gomez and Cousin It. Of course, if anyone but the sickly sweet Robin Williams had played the lead role, it would have been at least a little easier to take. But he's so darned convinced of his own treacly comic strengths, that whenever Patch - a doctor who was once a mental patient, and so knows that being human and warm and sucky is the real key to recovery - opens his mouth you want to put . . . a patch on it. Some people probably found this movie heartwarming, and if you did, the more power to you, and to your subsequent battle with diabetes.
MONDAY
Alive and Kicking (1996)
Bravo!, 9 p.m. "You know what? This wasn't the way it was supposed to be," says Tonio, a British dancer succumbing to AIDS, who wants to dance one last great performance, but who is also dealing with the loss of both his lover and best friend, and the fact that his body doesn't always want to do what his choreographer demands of it. While dealing with all that, into his life steps Jack, an imperfect man who loves him deeply, despite Tonio's best efforts to push him away. ("I'm hard work," as he puts it, "if you can get it.") Funny when it's not sad, this nice little film is ultimately about facing the fact that we are completely alone in the universe, and about the role of art in saving us from despair in the face of that fact.
TUESDAY
Sudden Death (1995)
Citytv, 3:05 a.m. So that's where Dick Cheney's been hiding for the past several years: a hockey arena. It's the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals, and if you already thought the game had gotten a tetch violent, hold onto your toque - it's not just in overtime that the sudden deaths happen here. Jean-Claude Van Damme is at centre ice, cinematically speaking, as a former firefighter who is now fire marshall at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, where a meany played by Powers Boothe has taken the VP hostage in the owner's box, and packed the arena with bombs. He also goes after Van Damme's little girl, which of course demands a full-strength face off from our hero. Look for Penguins star Luc Robitaille among the real NHLers on the ice.
WEDNESDAY
Showgirls (1995)
TNN, 9 p.m. Watching this movie is like watching the Operation Channel on eye-tumour-removal night, when you have to keep switching to Friends reruns for a squirm break. To be fair, Showgirls does offer the possibility, however distant, of being read as pastiche. While the movie's tagline was "Leave your inhibitions at the door," you're well advised to leave your critical faculties there, too. Nomi (badly acted so famously by Elizabeth Berkley), is a young woman who wants nothing more in life than to be a Vegas star, but has to work as a stripper, and push people down flights of stairs to get there. Berkley's horrible theatrics fit the rest of the film perfectly. Paul Verhoeven's direction is obtuse even by his standards, the plot is stupid, the characters' motivations insipid, and the dialogue lame. The result, oddly, is a movie you just might enjoy.
THURSDAY
Scalpers (1999)
Showcase, 1:25 a.m. One (obviously female) friend once asked me if men ever share a urinal when a public restroom is full. While this movie never answers that adorably stupid question, it does devote an entire scene to discussing the etiquette of how many vacant urinals must be left between occupied ones when a bathroom is sort of full. Seinfeldian riffs on that and other daily conundrums (bar mitzvahs, popcorn lines, pool boys) are interwoven with the story of a young man at loose ends, his love for his grandparents, the odd friends he meets scalping tickets in Winnipeg, and an underworld scalper boss, played by a hilariously greasy Robert Huculak.
FRIDAY
Henry & Verlin (1994)
Bravo!, 3:45 p.m. Henry is a grown man outside and an imbecile inside. Verlin is a little boy outside, and a mystery inside. He may be autistic, but it's only 1935, and it's rural Ontario, so no one's made much of a diagnosis. What everyone does know is that Henry and Verlin connect. Which makes the villagers gossip about sexual impropriety, and Verlin's mother worry that her son will "grow up like Henry." It's true the childlike Henry continually prods Verlin to do outrageously dangerous things, all of which look potentially bone-breaking. But whatever Henry's shortcomings, when he is finally taken from Verlin, the two must conspire to get back together again. Beautiful cinematography tops up this successfully heartwarming tale.