Your night in: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight - rated and slated

Whether you’re into rom-coms, si-fi or Australian films, there’s plenty of excellent viewing on TV tonight. Here’s what to watch and what to avoid.

Actors Channing Tatum, Dennis Quaid, Said Taghmaoui, Rachel Nichols and Marlon Wayans in a scene from film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

G.I. JOE : RISE OF THE COBRA (M)

*

8.30pm GO!

Hup! Two! Three! Snore. This ultra-violent, incoherent and utterly underwhelming action flick - based on a line of little boys’ toys - cost more than 300 million bucks in today’s money to produce. Most of the money was pumped into the movie’s special effects, which were indeed top-of-the-line for the time. The script, however, is sub-bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, a cheap’n’blasty celebration of the worst cartoon warfare imaginable. You’d think it would be impossible not to extract some fun from a tale climaxing with a nuclear attack on the Eiffel Tower. But the filmmakers found a way. Stars Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller.

Greta Gerwig (R) and Ethan Hawke in the film Maggies Plan.

MAGGIE’S PLAN (M)

***1/2

7.35pm WORLD MOVIES

An American rom-com blessed with sincere charm and subtle sophistication, factors which have been in short supply in Hollywood for such a long time now. Greta Gerwig is Maggie, a cosmopolitan college administrator who can good-naturedly scheme her way out of most tricky situations. So when she accidentally falls in love with a married man (Ethan Hawke) and later sees it as a mistake, Maggie figures it would be a good idea to return her lover to his wife (Julianne Moore). This isn’t the only plan Maggie will be enacting during this vibrantly talky, oh-so-New-York-y affair (she’s also exploring ways to have a baby, sans a father) and there is real pleasure to be drawn from the way the movie conveys what is going on inside her unconventional mind. Performances of the three leads are uniformly strong, but the lion’s share of the plaudits must go to Gerwig, who is developing with each film into a shrewd and telling comic presence.

STILL ALICE (M)

***1/2

9.30pm WORLD MOVIES

Julianne Moore delivers a heartbreaking, emotionally astute portrayal of a woman disappearing in full view of her nearest and dearest. Alice (Moore) is a linguistics professor who has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, a rare strain of the debilitating disease that strikes much younger and swifter than usual. Moore’s faultless (and Oscar-nominated) read of her character - particularly when interacting with a wide family circle who react to the news in wildly varying ways - is like watching a canvas being painted in reverse. Moment by moment, all colour and life is slowly fading from view. Based on the best-selling 2007 novel by Lisa Genova. Co-stars Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart.

Actor Ethan Hawke in a scene from the 1997 film Gattaca.

GATTACA (M)

****

8.30pm VICELAND

A clever and sly slab of sci-fi, depicting a future where the superior race will be people genetically assembled from the edited highlights of their parents. These ‘purebreds’ will get all the best jobs with all the accompanying trimmings. Meanwhile, anybody conceived the old-fashioned way will be consigned to life as an ‘invalid’, doing menial tasks for their clever clones. The protagonist of Gattaca is Vincent (Ethan Hawke), an invalid who has been cheating the system, an arrangement that may not hold for too much longer now he has been wrongly implicated in a murder. Co-stars Jude Law, Uma Thurman.

CODE 46 (M)

***

10.25pm VICELAND

Unusual thriller set in the not-too-distant future, where health is the new wealth for anyone owning a ‘clean’ set of genes. Tim Robbins stars as a psychic investigator who falls for the prime suspect (Samantha Morton) in his latest case. High on atmosphere and big on ideas, but quietly goes about its business otherwise.

THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL

Actors Toni Collette (R) and David Wenham in 1998 film The Boys. Picture: Supplied

THE BOYS (MA15+)

*****

ABC iVIEW

Wow. This just might be the best Australian movie you have never seen. It definitely houses one of the greatest performances by an Australian I have seen. Drawing on select elements of Sydney’s notorious Anita Cobby murder case of the mid-1980s, The Boys trails petty crim Brett Sprague (David Wenham) through the 24 hours following his release from jail. Reunited once more with his family - brothers Stevie (Anthony Hayes) and Glenn (John Polson), and mother Sandra (Lynette Curran) - it soon becomes clear that Brett is a very unpleasant piece of work. Littered among the low-rent events of Brett’s first day out are sudden flashes forward into the future. It is here we learn that Brett’s potential for pure evil will be horrifically realised by the end of the film. A stunning piece of work that took the temperature of a chilling criminal psyche over a decade before Animal Kingdom and Snowtown did so to great acclaim.

NOISE (MA15+)

****

ABC iVIEW

This abruptly challenging local drama looks, feels and sounds like no other Australian production before or since. While Melbourne reels from a shooting rampage on a suburban train, a police constable (Brendan Cowell striking a high career peak) experiences a debilitating loss of hearing. Tough going at times, but the atmosphere is totally immersive, and the performances are tremendously focused.

Heidi, played by Abbie Cornish, in a scene from Cate Shortland's feature film Somersault Picture: Supplied

SOMERSAULT (MA15+)

***1/2

ABC iVIEW

“Am I your girlfriend? ... I think you’re just too scared to say it.” In what was her first lead role, Australian star Abbie Cornish anchored the most confronting coming-of-age film shot within these borders. Her portrayal of a troubled teen coming to terms with both her sexuality and identity is raw, moving and utterly authentic. Though the movie itself can be a bit of a riddle, Cornish comes up with her own powerful statement about the fragility of youth.

Originally published as Your night in: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight - rated and slated