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Our movie guy, James Finnegan, with a selection of movies to enjoy on the box today and tonight…
Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny de Vito return in The Jewel of the Nile (Saturday 3.40pm RTE1), the comedy sequel to ‘Romancing the Stone’.
Novelist Joan Wilder (Turner) is held hostage by a sheik who wants her to write his biography.
However all is not as it seems with this offer, as the sheik is not quite the gentle ruler he claims to be.
This is not quite as sharp as the original, but does have a lot more action scenes, and is very similar in spirit. It’s typical Saturday afternoon viewing.
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In The Croods 2: A New Age (Saturday 7pm RTE1), Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds lend their voices to this animated sequel.
A prehistoric family continue their search for a place to settle down in the great unknown.
Patriarch Grug (Cage) is hoping for the best in an increasingly dangerous world, while still trying to come to terms with Eep (Stone) and Guy’s (Reynolds) developing romance.
When he stumbles across a place that has everything they are looking for, there is only one stumbling point – their ideal spot already has occupants!
A depressed and anti-social loans approval bank official, Carl Allen (Jim Carrey), attends a self-improvement course.
His normal professional default position is to say No, an attitude that has continued on into his social life.
However, following the course, he learns of the power of saying yes to everything, hence Yes Man (Saturday RTE2 9pm).
This leads to a transformation in his life – he gets promoted and even finds romance with Allison (Zoey Deschanel). However, too much of anything, even positivity, can bring its own problems.
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It wouldn’t be a Saturday without a Clint Eastwood film. Flags of our Fathers (Saturday 9.35pm TG4) is directed, co-produced and scored by the multi talented Clint, and is centred on the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima.
More specifically, it is based on the men, five marines and one Navy corps man, in the famous photograph of the raising the US flag. They become heroic symbols to a war weary nation.
However, their return home leads to increasing struggle to adapt to everyday life.
Starring Adam Beach, Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Jamie Bell and Paul Walker, this film is from the American point of view of the battle, while its companion film, “Letters from Iwo Jima”, also directed by Eastwood, and is from the Japanese viewpoint.
On a much lighter note, Tootsie (Saturday 11.50 RTE2) stars Dustin Hoffman as a New York actor, Michael Dorsey, who has a difficult reputation, making him unemployable.
However, when a television soap opera has a part available for a female role, he disguises himself as a woman for the audition – and gets the part!
Also starring as Jessica Lange, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, Terri Garr, Bill Murray, Geena Davies and a wonderful cameo by Director Sydney Pollack as Michael’s long suffering agent, this is a pure joy. Enjoy!
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