HDTV Movie Premieres: May 14-20

In Her Shoes: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday.

Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette play estranged sisters in a ‘chick flick’ that flies higher than most. Their superbly empathetic performances (along with Shirley MacLaine’s terrific turn as their mother), the sensitive but telling screenplay by Susannah Grant (The Soloist, Erin Brockovich) and Curtis (8 Mile, LA Confidential) Hanson’s sturdy direction could scarcely be a better fit. Desperate Housewives’ Richard Burgi and Grey’s Anatomy’s Brooke Smith co-star. (2005)

American Pie 2: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Saturday.

This second helping of the bawdy teen comedy isn’t as half-baked as it could have been. It reunites the original protagonists after their first year in college, when they’re renting a summer beach house and still trying to get laid. So far, so familiar. But unlike other T&A teen comedies, American Pie 2 is a good-natured lark whose licentiousness is leavened by refreshing honesty, sweet performances and likable characters. Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott and Alyson Hannigan again star. (2001)

Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction: TV3, 11.05pm Saturday.

Deep Throat’s notion of a clitoris in the larynx seems more likely than this dire, pseudo-noir sequel’s opening sequence: having sex at 180 kilometres an hour. If only the rest of Basic Instinct 2 flew by as fast. In reprising her role as crime scribe-cum-murder suspect Catherine Tramell, Sharon Stone looks as if she’s just stepped off the Nip/Tuck set while David Morrissey, as her Scotland Yard shrink, makes a career of top TV turns (Holding On, State of Play, Blackpool) seem like a mere fluke. (2006)

Clash of the Titans: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

Louis Leterreir, who directed the first two Transporter movies, dusts off the Ancient Greek gods dust-up with full-throttle gusto in the kind of computer-generated adventure where nothing has to be left to the imagination. Kids will love the mythical monsters and action-driven narrative while such is the creature-feature sophistication that adults won’t feel as if they’ve been to Hades and back. Sam Worthington, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Flemyng, Gemma Arterton and Liam Neeson star. (2010)

She’s Out of My League: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Can an average guy in a dead-end job sustain a relationship with a beautiful woman? Jay Baruchel (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and Alice Eve (Sex and the City 2) star in a screenplay by Hot Tub Time Machine’s John Morris and Sean Anders. USA Today thought it “short on clever humour and big on convention and formula” while The Hollywood Reporter argued what could have been “another routine exercise in raunchiness instead turns outs to be a sweet, charming, hilariously funny love story”. (2010)

Lost in Translation: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Somewhere’s Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this suffocatingly solemn but visually sublime art house darling starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. They play alienated Americans — one a jaded movie star reduced to pitching scotch, the other a relative newlywed yet to find herself — who discover common ground in their relationship woes while holed up in a Tokyo hotel. The result is atmospheric, absorbing and acutely observational — but also acutely self-conscious and anti-climactic. (2003)

Taxi: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Friday.

Horrendous Hollywood re-make of Luc Besson’s French hit, with Queen Latifah behind the wheel. She plays a Big Apple cabbie who nurses NASCAR ambitions while in hot pursuit of four supermodel bank robbers. The screenplay sounds like something Reverend Jim would have cooked up. Tim Story (Fantastic 4) directs; US talk show host Jimmy Fallon, NYPD Blue’s Henry Simmons, Samantha Who’s Jennifer Esposito and Ann-Marget co-star. (2004)