Hi, and welcome to Films on TV, which appears to be getting shorter. Sorry about that, it's because there are so few films on this week. Still, we've managed to pull together around 20 to tell you about, including a little-seen WWII classic, the best British film of the past 20 years and Marlon Brando's screen debut.

If you watch all of them you win a prize, namely the satisfaction of having seen 20 movies in a single week. I haven't done that since I was at university (hard to believe they let me in, I know). Also in this week's column are our DVDs of the Week, featuring a pair of Universal horrors starring two familiar faces.

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I'd been hoping to write something about the peerless Lee Tracy, the razor-sharp, motormouth '30s screen star whose career nose-dived after he – allegedly – drunkenly urinated on the Mexican army... but Imogen Sara Smith has got there first. Even more annoyingly, she's done it better than I ever could. This is a great introduction to the man, but even ardent fans will find it an insightful read.

Should you want to investigate further, I'm sorry to say that Tracy's films are REALLY difficult to get hold of, though well worth the effort, of course. Dinner at Eight, in which he has a key supporting role, is on Region 1 (American) DVD and The Pay Off has had a release over here, but the rest are either only on NTSC (American) VHS or entirely out of reach. And they never crop up on UK telly. Pah. My favourites are Turn Back the Clock, The Nuisance and Blessed Event - which for me is the greatest comedy ever made.

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A film guide? A poke in the eye with a sharp stick? Take your pick.

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

First up is family comedy, in the shape of Twins (1988, ITV1, 3.35pm). If you like your laughs with side helpings of both mawkish sentimentality and bone-crunching violence, you're in luck. Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the mismatched twins taking on dodgy doctors and, err, crooked crooks as they search for their long lost ma. It's a bit of a mess, but good fun. (3/5)

Blue Velvet (1986, ITV1, 11.15pm), in which it turns out there's a severed ear lying in the grass behind the white picket fence, is another of David Lynch's odes to weirdness, with wet-behind-the-ears Kyle MacLachlan stumbling into a vortex of sexual and moral corruption. Isabella Rossellini is fine as a nightclub singer, matched by Dennis Hopper (playing perhaps his finest psycho) and one of my favourites – former '40s child star Dean Stockwell – as a lip-synching drug dealer. This is dizzying, confrontational and frequently knocks on the door marked 'Sublimity - enter here', though every so often it lapses into self-conscious pecularity. It's also really horrible, but the bold-hearted should take a look. The use of music is superb. (4/5)

FILM OF THE WEEK – 1
Overlord (1975, BBC2, 0.15am SUN) – To make this D-Day film (shown to mark today's 65th anniversary), director Stuart Cooper went back to the original footage, screening 20,000 hours of newsreel and War Office material at the Imperial War Museum. Constructing his narrative around the most potent passages, he crafted a WWII movie that's at once realistic and dreamlike, the energy, immediacy and simplicity of the genuine wartime film mixed with starkly shot, almost hallucinatory sequences dealing with one young (fictional) recruit's experience. At first the effect is slightly jarring, but ultimately it works. Many images live long in the mind – recruits burning their effects before going into battle, the protagonist's first kiss outside a makeshift dancehall, and the laying of tracks in the sea via The Great Panjandrum, a flame-powered spinning wheel. Overlord isn't perfect (I'm still not quite sure why Cooper chose to end the film as he did), but it's unique, and a must-see for history buffs and war film fans who think they've seen everything. Kubrick loved it. (5/5)

Office Space (1999, Film4, 0.25am SUN) is consistently hilarious up until the final 20, when writer-director Mike Judge (the man behind Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill) runs out of things to say and manufactures a contrived, slightly stupid Hollywood ending. Ron Livingston plays an office nobody who undergoes an epiphany during a hypnotherapy session and decides to stop going to work. "So you're gonna quit?" girlfriend Jennifer Aniston asks. "Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh... I'm just gonna stop going." "What about bills," she asks. "You know, I've never really liked paying bills. I don't think I'm gonna do that, either." There's brilliant support from Gary Cole as the last word in slimy bosses, and a barrage of jokes that range from the observational to the satirical and the surreal. It's just a shame about the wrap-up. (4/5)


SUNDAY, JUNE 7

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984, Film4, 11am) is among the best of the Muppets' movies, as the gang attempt to conquer Broadway. The scenes with Kermit as an advertising executive are a treat. Elsewhere, the usual jumble of good jokes, bad jokes and colourful characters keep things lively. (3/5)

Also on this afternoon is Disney's saccharine retread of The Parent Trap (Film4, 6.35pm), starring a young Lindsay Lohan, alongside Dennis Quaid and the late Natasha Richardson. It's sentimental, calculating and really rather bewitching. (4/5)

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988, ITV1, 4.50pm) has been unjustly maligned as the worst film ever made. It's probably about fifth. (1/5)

And in the evening, The Machinist (2004, Film4, 11.25pm), featured on the newly resurgent Manic Street Preachers' latest record, appears worth a look. No review, as I haven't seen it. An emaciated, confuddled Christian Bale stars.


MONDAY, JUNE 8

Millions Like Us (1943, C4, 1.30pm) may be my favourite of all the Home Front dramas made during the Second World War (I'm not sure A Canterbury Tale counts, since it defies easy categorisation). Neither as frightening nor as transcendent as Went the Day Well? (which provides the most heightened evocation of what it means to be British), Millions Like Us has a stoicism, a restraint and a sense of humour that's pretty well unique - though as has been observed elsewhere, its gentle lyricism makes it something of a piece with the spellbinding wartime documentaries of the great Humphrey Jennings. Patricia Roc is a young woman who works in a munitions factory. She bonds with her colleagues - from all strata of society - whilst falling in love with pilot Gordon Jackson. A touching subplot deals with Eric Portman's tentative romance with spoiled Anne Crawford, while there's stirling support from the writers' recurring national treasures (Charters and Caldicott, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne). Moore Marriot's evaluation of a prospective son-in-law who's just joined the service is particularly moving. Don't miss this one. (5/5)

I caught the first 10 minutes of Because of Winn Dixie (2005, Film4, 4.40pm) a while back and have been waiting for it to come on again ever since. It looks like familiar, but superior indie fare.

Boogie Nights (1997, TCM, 9pm) was the second film from Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), and it's arguably his best. Mark Wahlberg plays Dirk Diggler, who becomes a major porn star after being taken under the wing of producer Burt Reynolds. His rapid rise and pitiful, prolonged fall are traced in impressive detail, complete with Scorsese-inspired "film within a film" sequences, faux-documentary inserts and a set of superbly-etched supporting characters, like William H. Macy's seething wronged husband and – the best of the lot – Philip Seymour Hoffman's lovelorn cameraman. Pure class from start to finish, though it rather spoiled Ricky Springfield's 'Jesse's Girl' for me. I can't hear the song now without thinking of a stoner in skimpy pants dancing around a penthouse. (5/5)

For TUE to FRI picks, click on the link below right.