Your Night In: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight – rated and slated

Your Monday night movie options are sorted with a Mark Wahlberg action flick, an Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller double act, or a Stephen King classic we don’t recommend watching by yourself.

Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler in Anger Management.

LONE SURVIVOR (MA15+)

***1/2

8.30pm 7MATE

Looking for fresh intel on why the American military picked a fight with the Taliban? Keep moving. Looking for the hard lowdown on how the American military fought the Taliban? Stay right where you are. And brace yourself. There are no politics, nor polite niceties here. Only logistics. The basic rules of background and characterisation are swiftly saluted, then dismissed. This is the true story of a tragic 2005 firefight in rural Afghanistan that pitted four navy SEALs stranded on a hilltop against the fully-armed might of a ruthless war lord. Like no war movie ever before, director Peter Berg captures the sensory overload that must swirl around a soldier under the most extreme duress. Narrative cohesion is not the film’s strong suit, but battlefield authenticity most certainly is. Stars Mark Wahlberg.

THE SHINING

****1/2

11.05pm 7MATE

Directed by the great Stanley Kubrick, The Shining is a work of maximum-impact minimalism based on a slender, yet searing story by King. If you’ve never seen it, I won’t spoil what few stunning surprises it has in store. However, once the mind of Jack Nicholson’s writer-turned-hotel-caretaker finally snaps, you better not be watching this by yourself.

Actors Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in The Shining.

ANGER MANAGEMENT (M)

**1/2

7.30PM GO!

Adam Sandler is Dave Reznik, a downtrodden working stiff entrusted into the care of a shonky shrink named Buddy Rydell (Nicholson) when wrongly diagnosed as a human time bomb set to explode. As we come to learn during Dave’s first group therapy session, this shy and introverted guy could actually use plenty more aggression to fix what ails him. What follows is a loose, but likeable grab-bag of set pieces designed to showcase the unlikely alliance of Sandler and Nicholson as a comedic force to be reckoned with. There are moments when the laughs come thick and fast, but just as many where the dream team just aren’t connecting at all.

TOWER HEIST (M)

***

9.35PM GO!

Those in the market for think-nothing pulp should be putting Tower Heist at the top of their to-gawp-at list. The set-up could pass muster as an Ocean’s Eleven caper. Though a majority of the crooks are rank amateurs, the high-stakes burglary they plan – and also, their motivation for doing so – churns up plenty of pro-level thrills. Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy (both in solid form here) spearhead a team of first-time crimes looking to get square with the crooked tycoon that ripped them all off. The particulars of the smash’n’grab are so ridiculous – just how do you swipe a priceless car from a 50th floor apartment? – you just have to keep watching to see how they are going to pull it off. Co-stars Gabourey Sidibe, Alan Alda.

Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller in Tower Heist.

NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON (M)

*

9.30PM WORLD MOVIES

Here’s the kind of role Jeremy Irons could do in his sleep: a well-read man who is hard to read. Intellectually gifted. Socially constipated. Impossibly articulate. Frustratingly remote. In this particularly tedious case, Irons is indeed asleep on the job for the entire film. Either that, or he was drugged, hypnotised and pushed in front of a camera without his knowledge or consent. He plays a super-sombre Swiss scholar who becomes obsessed with an obscure Portuguese author after saving a young lady from jumping off a bridge. Irons tag-teams the plentiful pretentiousness with a flock of familiar-ish European actors (Charlotte Rampling, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin etc.), all of whom seem as semi-sedated as he is.

THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL

21 BRIDGES (MA15+)

***

rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES

A solid pulp crime thriller set across a single night on the streets of New York City. Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) stars as Andre Davis, a complicated NYPD detective with an unfair rep for being a bit too trigger-happy on the job. Almost as soon as Davis is advised to stop with the pumping of lead into crooks, two mysterious gunmen start wasting cops left, right and centre. Our hard-pressed hero is given a single night to hunt down the perps and halt the carnage, courtesy of an unprecedented sealing off of the whole of Manhattan by city authorities. Co-stars J.K. Simmons, Sienna Miller.

Tina Fey, Corey Stoll, Jane Fonda, Jason Bateman and Adam Driver in This Is Where I Leave You.

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU (M)

***

FOXTEL, NETFLIX

This is one of those broad ensemble displays forged from a familiar narrative template: the cracked family unit temporarily reglued together after the death of a loved one. Imagine a better-behaved, white-collar journey into August: Osage County territory. Jane Fonda plays Hilary, a domineering matriarch using her late husband’s recent passing as a power play on her grown-up kids. Though their dead dad was hardly the religious type, they are forced by Hilary to observe a ritual where they must remain at her side for a week. It doesn’t take long for the clan to divide into the same factions – and rail against the same ructions – that drove them all apart in the first place. Co-stars Jason Bateman and Tina Fey are the true standouts here and the best reasons to keep watching.

THE REPORT (M)

***

AMAZON

In the years following the terrifying and tragic 9/11 attacks, the CIA tore up the rule book on the code of conduct regarding the interrogation of terrorism suspects. By the time this brutal crusade was exposed and halted, not a single shred of actionable intelligence had been acquired. Nothing. As a feature film centred on such a contentious topic, The Report needs to be about something. So it focuses on the efforts of Senate-appointed investigator Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) to shine a light on this black mark on America’s record as an honourable defender of the free world. What follows is a wordy, worthy paper chase of a movie, albeit one that ultimately chases its own tail to an mildly frustrating end. A lot of data is dumped on the viewer throughout, and only Driver’s shrewdly calibrated performance lightens what can often fell like a very heavy load. Co-stars Annette Bening.

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@leighpaatsch

Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on Melbourne TV tonight – rated and slated