When Sky Movies made some major changes to their film channels about a year ago, I had a little moan. The main alteration was to promise five new movies per week on the so-called Premiere Channel, with virtually no premieres whatsoever on the remaining eleven channels; there are a few exceptions on the so-called Indie Channel, but nothing notable. At least they are now moving the timings about each week which results in some choice during the peak viewing hours and saves having to set the films being screened at unsocial hours.
The choice this week is a fairly typical one, consisting of one crummy animation which I shall skip (one of the innumerable Scooby Doo spin-offs), one film that I have seen previously (the pretty watchable "Night at the Museum"), and three movies new to me. One of these was a welcome surprise -- "Stranger than Fiction" which I have discussed below. The other two were watched on principle but with no great expectations. The first of these called "Grounded" here is actually called "Unaccompanied Minors" (2006) in the States and has an incredibly low IMDb rating. I knew about it vaguely: a no-name cast deals with the problem of unaccompanied children when an airport is forced by snow to shut down on Christmas eve. It started off as a nightmare of unruly children misbehaving abysmally and I thought that I might have to give up. However it soon focused on five very different kids who find themselves bonding during the night's adventures; perhaps I am getting soft in the head, but I thought it had an acceptable sweet core and that it was nearly a "feel good" picture. Mind you, it is absolutely typical of Sky that they should premiere a Christmas movie some three weeks late.
The other film new this week is "Harsh Times" (2006) which has a much, much higher IMDb rating but which is something of a hard watch. We all know by now that Christian Bale is a most versatile actor who will undertake any challenging role, and since he was one of the producers here, he must have willingly accepted the part of a totally amoral, damaged, sociopathic ex-soldier. This was a character that one could only hate and one knew from the start that there would be tears before bedtime. The other main roles were taken by the hispanic undertaker from 'Six Foot Under' (Freddy Rodriguez) and the hispanic housewife from 'Despearate Whatsits' (Eva Longoria), playing a married couple with definite commitment problems. If you get your jollies by watching out-of-control people robbing and killing, you might warm to this movie. Otherwise you can only sit back and admire the acting skills and then move on to something rather more appealing.
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