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Our movie guy, James Finnegan, says there are lots of fine award-winning films on today, so without further ado…
Emma (Saturday 2.30pm RTE1) has been filmed on a number of occasions, and this 1996 version of the Jane Austen novel is very entertaining.
A privileged young woman, the aforementioned Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow), spends her time busy playing matchmaker for her friends, while being unaware that she has already met her own soul mate
Directing his own screenplay, Douglas McGrath updates the character interaction without losing the tone and style of the original material.
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It’s also helped by a wonderful cast including Toni Collette (Harriet), Alan Cumming (Reverend Elton), Ewan McGregor (Frank Churchill) and especially Juliet Stevenson (Mrs Elton) and Sophie Thompson and Phylida Law as mother and daughter (Miss and Mrs Bates) with fiction following their real life relationship.
An especial call out to composer Rachel Portman who won the Academy Award for Best Score, the first female composer so to do.
In Jack Frost (Saturday 6.35pm RTE1), a dead musician’s sprit takes over the body of snowman made by his son so they can spend one last Christmas together.
Starring Michael Keaton and Kelly Preston, this is a really sad film and one where you wonder where the premise came from, but I know a number of people who think it a work of genius, although I am not among them.
Clint Eastwood directs and stars in Unforgiven (Saturday 9pm RTE2). He plays William Munny, a widower with two young children who has retired from being an outlaw and gun for hire.
However, he receives an offer for a bounty hunting job, and despite initially refusing, he takes up the chance – but he is not the man, or the killer, he was before.
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Also starring Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris and Frances Fisher, this superior Western won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman) and Best Editing Academy Awards as well as numerous other awards.
Life is Beautiful (Saturday 9.30pm TG4) is a Holocaust drama where an eccentric Italian Jew and his son are sent to a concentration camp during World War Two, while his wife is held prisoner in another area.
Determined to shield his son from having to cope with the horrors around them, he convinces the boy that it is all a game.
Directed and starring Roberto Benigini as Guido, it treads a very thin line between comedy and utter tragedy in a moving and life affirming way, winning Best Actor, Best Foreign Language and Best Music Score Academy Awards.
Just time to mention another Classic Western in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Saturday 11.50pm RTE1) telling the story of two Wild West outlaws, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, on the run from a crack US posse after a series of train robberies.
Winning Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (William Goldman) Best Cinematography and Best Original Score and Song (Bert Bacharach), this is great fun, if perhaps an over romanticised version of history.
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