The Christmas TV Strategy Guide 2020
It's a quiet day today, properly post Christmas with whatever decorations that have survived taking on a true tinge of melancholy. Time to get some more chocolates in!
1305 - BBC2
Two crackers for you right here, from the big budget 50s Hitchcock period. North By Northwest is probably the superior of the two films, a film that combines Hitchcocks themes of ordinary folk caught up in events beyond their control mixed with a proto-action thriller spy story. Both films are held together by Cary Grant's laid back charm in the lead roles, his later films for Hitchcock being much breezier than their earlier collaborations. A lovely way to spend the afternoon
1500 - Film4
Back in the 80s when everything was either Ninjas of Werewolves, this was probably the biggest mainstream man turns into a wolf film. This was, of course, down to the charms of Michael J Fox in what is, essentially, a pretty run of the mill high school teen comedy. Of course, all the cool people know that the cartoon version was better
1535 - BBC1
DreamWorks animated films always tended to pale when compared to Pixar films (Over The Hedge versus Cars in 2006, Shark Tale versus The Incredibles in 2004 as a couple of examples) but they did have a run of doing really good sequels. Like this one had no right to be as good as it was and is, and is probably the high point of the series
2235 - Channel 5
I remember this film being famous in the school playground growing up as it had Swayze ripping out a guy's throat with his bare hands. I mean, thats probably about as good as it gets but its still a bit of action fun based around how rough American bars can get when there's a corrupt rich person in charge of everything