A very controversial Best Picture Oscar winner is among the movies on TV tonight
Your Thursday evening movie menu has arrived!
For your Thursday evening, you could watch one of the very best movies of 2023 so far (just added to Disney+), or one of the best horror comedies of recent years (just added to Netflix), or one of 34 new movies just added to Prime Video (full list here). OR... here are all of the movies on TV to choose from this evening, starting with...
Gifted - FilmFour - 7pm
Chris Evans headlines this decent drama about a man who is helping to raise his prodigal niece, only to get drawn into custody battle over her with his own mother.
Taken - ITV4 - 9pm
The movie that helped us all re-evaluate Liam Neeson as a legitimate action story. He has a particular set of skills, etc.
A Fish Called Wanda - BBC Four - 9pm
The legendary comedy revolving around a series of people (Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese, Kevin Kline) all trying to pull off the ultimate heist, if only they could stop double-crossing each other for one minute...
Bohemian Rhapsody - FilmFour - 9pm
Winner of four Oscars (including Best Actor for Rami Malek), this sorta-biopic of the life and music of Freddy Mercury and his Queen bandmates isn't great, but the grand finale performance is worth the wait.
The King Speech - Sky Showcase - 10.15pm
Our main pick for the night is this actually very good retelling of the true story of King George VI (Colin Firth) and his unique relationship with speech and language therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), who is attempting to help the British ruler to cope with his stammer. With a score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, it is absolutely worth a watch...
HOWEVER, the movie went on the win four Academy Awards that year, including the Best Picture Oscar. Which, in and of itself, isn't controversial, except when you take into account the other nominees that it defeated to win that award that year: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and the True Grit remake. In hindsight, it is considered one of the least deserving Best Picture winners of all time... made all the more confusing considering it is actually a very decent film.
Blue Murder at. St Trinian's - BBC Four - 10.45pm
The 1957 comedy sees a master thief disguise himself as a woman to elude to local Italian police, before having to maintain the lie when he gets caught up with the school tour with the girls at St. Trinian's.
Hulk - ITV4 - 10.55pm
The director of Brokeback Mountain and The Life Of Pi made a movie about the big green Marvel hero, here played by Eric Bana. The end results are exactly as interestingly muddled as you might expect that combination to result in.
Darkman - FilmFour - 11.45pm
Horror maestro Sam Raimi, before he got into superheroes via Spider-Man and the Doctor Strange sequel, cast Liam Neeson in this hella-dark origin story for a hero he created himself when Hollywood wouldn't yet give him the rights to any already-created characters.
Slaughterhouse Rulez - FilmFour - 1.35am
Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Martin Sheen are some of the teachers who slowly discover that the boarding school they're working at is built on a portal into hell. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.
Buried - Channel 4 - 2.20am
Ryan Reynolds stars alone in this incredibly tense thriller about an American contractor who wakes up in a coffin, already buried alive, with only his phone (complete with dwindling battery) as a means of escape.
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