Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon (ABC Sunday at...
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Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) brought the Vietnam War home at last with a fiery implacability impossible to ignore or forget. Charlie Sheen stars as a Vietnam vet, Stone’s young alter ego, caught between the brutal Tom Berenger and the humane William Dafoe. However, even though Forest Whitaker is a co-star, the contributions of African-Americans are slighted.
Something Wicked This Way Comes (KCAL Sunday at 9 p.m.) is Disney’s eerie 1983 film of Ray Bradbury’s short story in which he cast a childhood memory of the coming of a carnival in a sinister light, its various temptations testing the townspeople--two boys (Vidal Peterson, Shawn Carson) and Peterson’s father (Jason Robards) in particular.
The Last Dragon (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.) is a ludicrous but entertaining 1985 martial arts movie starring Taimak as a black Bruce Lee.
The Eiger Sanction (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.) is a splendid 1975 high adventure that finds Eastwood--who also directed--scaling a virtually perpendicular mountain in the Swiss Alps as part of an international team of climbers, one of whom is a spy with a stolen formula for germ warfare.
The 1986 Tough Guys (KTLA Friday at 8 p.m.) is a rousing tribute to Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, cast as a pair of veteran bank robbers, but it’s nothing much else.
Jaclyn Smith, in one of her better performances and better TV movies, plays a rookie detective in the sturdy 1992 Manhattan mystery In the Arms of a Killer (NBC Friday at 9 p.m.).
Jan-Michael Vincent has the title role in Disney’s enjoyable 1973 comedy fantasy-adventure The World’s Greatest Athlete (KTLA Saturday at 6 p.m.). Vincent is discovered in Africa by coach John Amos.
Ladyhawke (KCOP Saturday at 6 p.m.), an enchanting, handsomely produced 1985 medieval fantasy, finds lovers Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer separated by the black arts of a jealous bishop. Matthew Broderick plays their unlikely ally, a scruffy, endearing pickpocket.
A Man and a Woman (KCET Saturday at 11:20 p.m.), Claude Lelouch’s lush, jazzy 1966 art-house hit, stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee.
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