HIGHLIGHTS

CRICKET NEW ZEALAND v INDIA Fifth ODI: Sky Sport 1, 2.30pm, Sunday (live); Prime, 12.30am, Monday First twenty20: Sky Sport 1, 7.30pm, Wednesday (live) Second twenty20: Sky Sport 1, 6.30pm, Friday (live) WOMEN’S: NEW ZEALAND v INDIA First twenty20: Sky Sport 1, 3.30pm, Wednesday (live) Second twenty20: Sky Sport 1, 2.30pm, Friday (live) AUSTRALIA v SRI LANKA Second test, days two to five Sky Sport 2, 11.20am, Saturday to Tuesday (live) SUPER SMASH Auckland Aces v Northern Knights: Sky Sport 1, 7pm, Saturday (live)

RUGBY SIX NATIONS France v Wales: Sky Sport 1, 8.50am, Saturday (live) Scotland v Italy: Sky Sport 1, 3.05am, Sunday (live) Ireland v England: Sky Sport 1, 5.35am, Sunday (live)

HOCKEY FIH PRO LEAGUE New Zealand v Great Britain TVNZ 2, 5pm, Friday (live)

FOOTBALL A LEAGUE Perth Glory v Wellington Phoenix: Sky Sport 4, midnight, Saturday (live) Newcastle Jets v Wellington Phoenix: Sky Sport 4, 9.45pm, Thursday (live)

BASKETBALL NBL: Melbourne United v NZ Breakers: Sky Sport 3, 7pm, Sunday (live) NZ Breakers v Adelaide 36ers: Sky Sport 3, 7pm, Thursday (live)

AMERICAN FOOTBALL NFL SUPER BOWL LIII Los Angeles Rams v New England Patriots: ESPN 1, 11.30am, Monday (live)

SATURDAY

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water

TVNZ 2, 7pm

Voices Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke. When a pirate steals the Krabby Patty formula, SpongeBob and his nemesis Plankton must team up to get it back. Not reviewed.

Once Upon A Forest M ori TV, 7pm Voices Michael Crawford, Elisabeth Moss. Vaguely reminiscent of FernGully: The Last Rainforest, although not quite as well-produced or as entertaining, this environmentally minded, animated family adventure should keep the littlies reasonably engaged. ★★★

Rugrats Go Wild Choice, 7pm Voices Lacey Chabert, Tim Curry. Second animated sequel based on the popular children’s cartoon. This time the adventurous toddlers meet the Wild Thornberrys in this colourful and amusing family film. ★★★

Midnight Sun Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Bella Thorne, Patrick Schwarzenegger. A girl with a severe allergy to sunlight has to wrestle with whether to tell her new boyfriend about her condition in this heartrending teen drama. If you are of a cynical disposition, you may well consider it all a bit manipulative but then, so was Love Story. ★★★

A Late Quartet M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken. A requiem for the baby boomers. A world-renowned but ageing string quartet has to come to terms with the fact one of its members has Parkinson’s disease. There are sexual complications, too, as the quartet prepares for its final concert. Excellent and understated. A top performance all round. ★★★★★

Dark Places Choice, 8.30pm Starring Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult. Years after testifying that her brother murdered her mother and sisters, Libby Day (Charlize Theron) begins to look deeper into what happened. True to the title, it visits some dark places but, ultimately, fails as a thriller as none of the characters engenders any emotional connection. ★★

The Bucket List

TVNZ 1, 8.35pm

Starring Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two very different terminally ill cancer patients who set out to complete a list of things to do before they die. It may sound schmaltzy, but the two leads make this comedy really hum along. ★★★★

Easy A

TVNZ 2, 8.45pm

Starring Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes. Stone scored her first main lead role here after memorable supporting turns in such films as Superbad and Zombieland. With nods to influences as divergent as The Scarlet Letter and The Breakfast Club, this is one smart and sassy teen comedy that is well worth a watch. ★★★★

Cloverfield Three, 8.55pm Starring Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas. A hand-held video camera captures an enormous creature of unknown origin running amok in New York City in this thrilling monster movie with monster special effects. It is a sort of Blair Witch Project crossed with Godzilla, but this thrill-ride is better than both of those. ★★★★

Panic Room

TVNZ Duke, 9.25pm

Starring Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker. While this Jodie Foster vehicle has a little less

depth to it than some of director David Fincher’s previous efforts, he still keeps suspense levels high with this extremely well-crafted thriller about a mother and daughter who lock themselves in their home saferoom when their house is invaded by bad guys. ★★★★

Now Add Honey

TVNZ 1, 10.25pm

Starring Robyn Butler, Lucy Fry. A suburban Melbourne couple have to look after their budding movie star niece after her mother is sent to rehab. Contrived Australian comedy and not that funny. ★★

To Have And To Kill Three, 10.35pm Starring Kelly Dowdle, Nikki Leigh. Stuck in a rut, two couples decide to switch partners for a night. But afterwards, unexplained events threaten to ruin relationships and plans. Not reviewed.

Good Luck Chuck

TVNZ 2, 10.40pm

Starring Dane Cook, Jessica Alba. Romantic comedy about a dentist who is cursed with the affliction of having the women he dates fall in love with the next guy they meet. Filled with graphic, sex-driven humour, but it is ultimately short on laughs. ★★

Grudge Match TVNZ 2, 12.50am (Sunday)

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro. The idea behind this farce of a boxing movie seems to have been, ‘What would it be like to see Raging Bull and Rocky together in the ring?’ Unfortunately, given that both the main protagonists are now officially senior citizens, this a question that should have been left wholly unanswered. ★★

SUNDAY Invisible Sister TVNZ 2, 8.15am

Starring Rowan Blanchard, Paris Berelc. A high school student turns her older sister invisible after a science project goes wrong in this Disney film. Not reviewed.

Yes, I Do TVNZ 2, 3.10pm

Starring Jessica Lowndes, Marcus Rosner. Busy chocolatier Charlotte has left helicopter mechanic James at the altar three times. She now needs to prove to him that she really does want to marry him. Not reviewed.

Life TVNZ 2, 8.25pm

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds. To coin a phrase, Life doesn’t boldly go where no scriptwriter has gone before. Indeed, the theme of being trapped on a spacecraft with a malignant, rapidly growing life force was a recurring Star Trek theme and has featured in movies such as Alien. In Life, the alien is called Calvin, but he’s not cuddly. Get over the lack of originality, and Life is a more than reasonable space thriller. ★★★

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard. A fun-filled ride that fails to live up to both the original Jurassic Park and the well-put-together reboot Jurassic World – yet still manages to be a good vehicle for the always likeable Chris Pratt. There’s nothing new here but is serviceable with several nice twists and turns and a sprinkling of humour. The sequel tries to up the stakes with an attempt to rescue the dinosaurs from a dying Isla Nubar. Forget the obvious plot flaws and try not to take the whole thing too seriously. ★★★

The Martian Three, 8.30pm Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastin. A smart and funny space epic based on Andy Weir’s

self-published book in which astronaut and botanist Mark Watney is given up for dead and abandoned on Mars following a dust storm. Quickly realising that the key to survival lies in science, he proceeds to grow potatoes in his own poo. It’s the first of many challenges that the upbeat Watney faces in his Robinson Crusoe-like world, cheered along by re-runs of Happy Days. Damon shines as Watney but the astonishing visual affects certainly deserve their own award. A rare treat and a quality sci-fi movie that treats the audience with respect. ★★★★★

Cocaine Godmother Bravo, 8.30pm Starring Raul Mendez Catherine Zeta-Jones. Pablo Escobar has been the go-to in movies about the cocaine trade, but Griselda Blanco’s story made it to Hollywood only in 2018 and as a TV movie. Oddly, Catherine Zeta-Jones, of Welsh origin, was chosen to play Blanco, a Colombian woman, and she doesn’t emerge with much credit. But the story about a bisexual female drug dealer who pioneered using attractive women as drug mules and putting assassins on motorbikes is interesting enough. ★★ Manhattan Nocturne Choice, 8.30pm Starring Adrien Brody, Yvonne Strahovski. Porter Wren is a New York City tabloid writer with an appetite for scandal. At home he is a model family man, devoted to his loving wife. But when a seductive stranger asks him to dig into the unsolved murder of her filmmaker husband Simon, he can’t resist. Reasonable noir thriller. ★★★

The Darjeeling Limited M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman. Three estranged brothers set off on an enlightening train trip across India in this off-beat and whimsically entertaining comedy from Wes Anderson, director of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic. Quirky, but affecting, if you persevere through some slow patches. ★★★

A Nightmare On Elm Street TVNZ 2, 10.35pm

Starring Jackie Earle Haley. Unfortunately for Freddy fans, what was supposed to be an edgy, darker, more sophisticated reboot of an iconic horror series that has fallen into parody ends up as nothing more than a largely lifeless facsimile of the 1984 slasher classic, albeit with a few slight twists on the original. ★★ MONDAY My Blind Brother Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Nick Kroll, Adam Scott. The disabled guy isn’t really the hero in this oddball romantic comedy of sorts. Robbie is blind and fiercely ambitious, but has somewhat selfishly used his brother Bill as a springboard. Now Bill has a dead-end job while Robbie is being lauded for beating his disability. Lingering ill feelings come to the surface when they both fall for the same woman. ★★★★

Resolve TVNZ 1, 8.30pm

Starring Pana Hema-Taylor, Ella Becroft. Dramatised story of Chris Crean, the New Plymouth father who stood up to the Black Power gang in a bid to make his suburb a safe place for his kids and paid with his life. A fitting tribute to a brave man. ★★★★

Monterey M ori TV, 8.30pm Locally flavoured doco about the Monterey Cafe in Auckland’s Grey Lynn. It’s a nice slice-of-life story about real people doing a real job. ★★★★

The Accountant

TVNZ 2, 8.55pm

Starring Ben Affleck, JK Simmons. Affleck plays Christian Wolf, a borderline autistic savant who uses his mathematical gifts to provide accountancy services for criminal groups. But a seemingly respectable client who he takes on, in a bid to cover his tracks, gives him much bigger problems. Enjoyable with some neat twists. ★★★

Rush Prime, 9.30pm Starring Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl. The theory is that every great sportsman needs a great rival. Back in the 70s, James Hunt and Niki Lauda filled those roles in Formula One racing. Rush tells the story of these two legendary drivers as they slug it out for the 1976 championship. But both also made the headlines for other reasons – Hunt for a marriage meltdown, Lauda for a horrific crash. The action footage also does a near-perfect job of accurately capturing the thrills and danger of Formula One. ★★★★

TUESDAY

5 Weddings Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Nargis Fakhri. Rajkummar Reo. There is more ‘Holly’ than ‘Bolly’ in this Indian-American romantic comedy that dips its toes delicately into transgender issues. Indian-American journalist Shania Dhaliwai (Fakhri) goes to Chandigarh to do a once-over-lightly piece on over-the-top Bollywood weddings, but goes off at a tangent when she meets a dancing eunuch, part of the ritual of such marriages. That should have been important, but the script skims over any substance, rendering that element, and the movie, pretty meaningless. ★★

Rambo: First Blood

TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm

Starring Sylvester Stallone. Tortured Vietnam War veteran John Rambo finds himself run out of a small Oregon town when he tries to track down an old comrade. Taunted by the local redneck sheriff, he goes berserk and begins a game of cat and mouse in the mountain woods. Based on David Morrell’s explosive novel, this is the best – not to mention the most credible – of the Rambo series. ★★★★

The Wedding Date TVNZ 2, 8.55pm

Starring Dermot Mulroney, Debra Messing. Debra Messing hires Dermot Mulroney to pose as her new boyfriend to make her ex jealous in this blandly familiar romantic comedy. ★★

WAITANGI DAY No. 2 TVNZ 2, 7.30pm

Starring Ruby Dee, Miriama McDowell. African-American actress Ruby Dee is utterly convincing as an ageing Fijian matriarch who gathers her family together for a last hoorah in this quintessentially New Zealand drama. Beautifully filmed, well-scripted and capably acted, this is an endearing, feel-good tale that should particularly appeal to anyone with any kind of Pacific Island connection. ★★★★

The Black Butterfly Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Don’t think too hard and you might just accept the premise of this drama about a secluded writer who becomes involved with a tense, edgy drifter near a mountain town grappling with a series of abductions and murders. It owes any success to some tight direction from director Brian Goodman but more straightforward storytelling would have worked much better

than the somewhat bizarre plot twists. ★★

Kiwi TVNZ 1, 8.30pm

Starring Alison Bruce, Patrick Carroll. This is the enthralling story of Kiwi, the horse a farmer’s wife bought for $1000 that went on to win the Melbourne Cup in 1983 with an 18-year-old jockey called Jimmy Cassidy in the saddle. If not for the horse’s name, the Aussies would probably have claimed it as one of their own. ★★★

THURSDAY Pain & Gain TVNZ 2, 8.30pm

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson. A (mostly) true story about a group of Californian bodybuilders who formed an organised crime ring, this action caper is bombastically shot, ludicrously violent and unashamedly sexist. Yet this is a restrained outing by Michael Bay’s usual standards. The actual crime was horrific and yet much of the plot is a comic take on it. Poor taste. ★★

Oblivion Three, 8.30pm Starring Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman. Cruise plays a security drone repairman on an Earth abandoned after a war with aliens. Just as he’s about to end his stint on the planet, a spacecraft crash lands and he rescues a mysterious survivor, played by Olga Kurylenko. It is an intelligent thriller with the bonus of an excellent soundtrack. ★★★★

FRIDAY

Thor: Ragnarok Sky Premiere, 8.30pm Starring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo. Just when everyone was getting a little sick of the Thor franchise, along came 2017 New Zealander of the Year Taika Waititi who changes the Lord of Thunder forever. Thor: Ragnarok is the third standalone Thor movie and one of the best in the 17-strong Marvel franchise. Funny, clever and bold, with the usual over-the-top special effects, this has everything a superhero movie needs from Cate Blanchett’s venomous Hela and zombie armies to a spooky canine and a macho hero at his gleeful best. Suspend belief and go along for the ride. ★★★★★

Double Jeopardy M ori TV, 8.30pm Starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones. A rather predictable vengeance-is-mine tale that is a guilty pleasure to watch. Ashley Judd is wrongly convicted of murdering her husband, but on discovering that the cad faked his death, she decides to track him down and kill him anyway. It also features Tommy Lee Jones – basically reprising his role from The Fugitive – as the parole officer in pursuit. ★★★

The Mummy Bravo, 8.30pm Starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz. Comical and special effects-laden Indiana Jones-style romp in which Egyptologist Rachel Weisz hires a go-getting Brendan Fraser to find a lost city. ★★★

Hudson Hawk TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm

Starring Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello. A pastiche of good ideas but disparate approaches sinks this frenzied and bewildering action comedy in which a cat burglar is forced to steal three Da Vinci works of art. ★★

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol TVNZ 2, 8.45pm

Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner. Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and the team go rogue after they are implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin. The fourth in the movie franchise spun off from the TV series is another slick effort and possibly the best to date. ★★★★