Syndicated (Check local listings)
C
In 2257, a space station run by the Earth Alliance is playing host to a peace conference among the four major alien governments. But there are saboteurs on board.
The technological and set designs in this sci-fi movie are superior. (The ship dockings are spectacular.) But the acting is terrible, and the alien makeup is less than impressive. In fact, judging by one alien ambassador (played by Peter Jurasik), there's a planet out there somewhere inhabited by people who look like overmoussed versions of Larry on The Three Stooges. And be sure to hold on to that tacky polyester leisure wear from the '70s. Apparently it will be coming back into fashion in about three centuries.
The interplanetary setting is. as always, diverting, but the plot's dull, derivative intrigue is the movie's black hole. As they say, in space no one can hear you scream. They can't hear you yawn either.
HBO (Sat., Feb. 20, 8 p.m. ET)
B+
This docudrama depicts the ordeal of six Western hostages—Brian Keenan, John McCarthy, Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland, Frank Reed and Terry Waite—held in Lebanon during the '80s by Hezbollah terrorists. They are played by, respectively, Ciaran Hinds, Colin Firth, Jay O. Sanders, Josef Sommer, Harry Dean Stanton and Conrad Asquith.
This British-American production intercuts new-footage with a disturbingly grim (and thankfully compressed) re-creation of men trying to maintain their humanity in the most brutal and debasing of circumstances.
Natasha Richardson, Kathy Bates, Ruth McCabe and Rosaleen Linehan play the relatives and lovers back home tirelessly campaigning for the captives' release.
TNT (Sat., Feb. 20, 10 p.m. ET)
C+
An ambitious New York reporter (Eric Stoltz) is looking into the murder of a novelist (Dennis Hopper) who is a chronicler of society's upper crust. It would appear that Hopper's latest roman a clef may have cut a little too close to the bone to suit the paranoid scion (Dermot Mulroney) of a wealthy family. The mystery's impressive cast includes Jennifer Connelly, Harris Yulin, William Macy, Kurt Fuller and, in a cameo, Vincent Price.
Stylish direction by Bruno Barreto battles down to the wire with a terribly glib, pretentious script. The bad script win.
CBS (Tues., Feb. 23, 9 p.m. FT)
C+
In this fact-based movie, Robert Blake plays List, a New Jersey accountant who in 1971 murdered his wife, mother and three children, then disappeared. Assuming a new identity, he went undetected for 18 years until a segment on the TV show America's Most Wanted led to his arrest.
The film's choppy shuffling of flashbacks can't disguise the fact that it just doesn't have enough of a story to go around. Blake, his face an oft-folded map of baffled anguish, is sometimes chilling, more often wildly over the top as a henpecked man clinging to religion and a compulsion for orderliness in a futile attempt to hold his demons at bay. David Caruso, Alice Krige, Beverly D'Angelo, Melinda Dillon and Carroll Baker costar.
