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Our movie guy, James Finnegan, says there is a heady mix of period drama, music biography and a speed chase in today’s films on RTE and TG4…
In Far from the Madding Crowd (Saturday 2.40pm RTE1), Julie Christie and Terence Stamp head the cast of John Schlesinger’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel about a woman’s rival suitors in ninetieth-century rural Dorset.
Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie), a beautiful, independently-minded woman inherits her uncle’s farm and decides to manage it herself. She employs a former beau Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates) as a shepherd.
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Bathsheba impulsively sends a Valentine to a neighbouring gentleman farmer, William Boldwood (Peter Finch), who, misreading the situation, proposes to her. However, in the interim, Bathsheba falls for a dashing Cavalry sergeant Frank Troy (Terence Stamp).
With stunning cinematography by Nicholas Roeg, and a Richard Rodney Bennett soundtrack, this is one of the most influential films of British sixties cinema.
Based on a true story, Zoo (Saturday 6.35pm RTE1) is set during the 1941 German air raids on Belfast.
An awkward youngster Tom (Art Parkinson) with some misfit friends become the protector of a baby elephant, Buster, after Tom’s zoo-owning father is called up for war duty.
Written and directed by Colin McIvor and with a cast including Penelope Wilton and Toby Jones, this is an utterly charming story and, by the end, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.
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La Bamba (Saturday 9.30pm TG4) is the story of Rock and Roll Star Ritchie Valens (Lou Diamond Philips) and how his rise to fame also influences the lives of his family, notably his thwarted romance with Donna Ludwig (Danielle von Zerneck) and his rivalry with his older step brother, Bob (Esai Morales).
Directed and written by Luis Valdez, the story ends with the fatal plane crash that also claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.
Renee Zellweger is in superb Oscar Winning form as another Showbiz legend Judy Garland in Judy (Saturday 9.30pm RTE1).
Crippled with debt, and embroiled in an acrimonious split with Sidney Luft and custody battle for their children Lorna and Joey, Judy reluctantly agrees to a run of London shows.
Unfortunately, among her other concerns, her fiancé Mickey continually distracts her when she should be rehearsing.
Jan De Bont’s high-octane thriller Speed (Saturday 10.50pm RTE2) is the epitome of 1990’s action thrillers, with Keanu Reeves as Jack Tavern, an LAPD cop out to stop a mad bomber, Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper), who has rigged a bus to explode if its speed falls below fifty miles an hour.
Lucky, plucky Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) is a passenger on hand to assist. Enjoy!
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