HDTV Movie Premieres: April 23-29

Bridget Jones’s Diary: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday.

Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) is in her early 30s and fed up with being single when she seduces her smooth publishing boss (Hugh Grant), only to discover her silver-tongue soulmate is a soulless womaniser while her real Mr Right (Colin Firth) is the haughty, tactless boy-next-door from childhood whom she’s spurned for all the wrong reasons. Zellweger is winningly winsome as the fragile, hapless, overweight but not-quite over-the-hill singleton. But everything else is too obvious, protracted and stereotyped. (2001)

A Good Year: TV3, 10.35pm Saturday.

This Ridley Scott-Russell Crowe collaboration feels like a year in Provence, a trite, clumsy comedy about an Englishman abroad – a loathsome workaholic who has an epiphany about what matters in life after he inherits a vineyard in the south of France. More surprising than the scenario is the botch Scott makes of this Peter Mayle adaptation, turning what should have been a lighthearted pleasure into a heavyhanded chore that won’t improve with age. Albert Finney, Rafe Spall and Freddie Highmore co-star. (2006)

Bee Movie: TV3, 7pm Sunday.

Even Jerry Seinfeld’s biggest fans will find it hard to wax lyrical over this movie he co-wrote with a couple of his TV show collaborators. He also provides the voice of the hero, an annoying bee who breaks free of his fate in the hive to befriend a New York City florist. The humour is Seinfeld-lite, the characterisations bland and the screenplay shambolic – but there are some funny sight gags and the animation’s anything but B-grade. Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman and Kathy Bates also lend their voices. (2007)

Slumdog Millionaire: TV3, 8.30pm Sunday.

This Oscar top dog – it won eight Academy Awards, including best picture – became a worldwide phenomenon by using another global pop culture sensation, the TV game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, to ingeniously frame a rousing rags-to-riches fable about three orphans from India’s Mumbai slums. Director Danny Boyle’s best film since 1996’s Trainspotting stars Dev Patel, Nil Kapoor and Freida Pinto; 127 Hours’ Simon Beaufoy wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay. (2009)

Smokin’ Aces: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Sunday.

What if Ol’ Blues Eyes wanted to be a Mob boss? That’s the guts of this grotesque, gonzo gangster gorefest that unfolds like an unhinged Ocean’s Eleven meets Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Writer/director Joe Carnahan (Narc) based it on Frank Sinatra’s fascination with the Mafia. Ray Liotta, Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Peter Berg,  Entourage’s Jeremy Piven and Martin Henderson star. The 2010 sequel, Assassin’s Ball, was even more dire. (2006)

Valentine’s Day: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

Garry Marshall, who’s only ever directed two decent movies (Pretty Woman, The Other Sister), assembles a megastar cast for two hours of cheesy, clichéd, stupid Cupid comedy that’s more predictable than the price of roses on Valentine’s Day. Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Kathy Bates, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, Anne Hathaway, Patrick Dempsey, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Bradley Cooper, Queen Latifah, Eric Dane, Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine star. (2010)

Youth In Revolt: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Michael Cera plays a sensitive 16-year-old with white-trash parents and a Frank Sinatra bent who’s so desperate to lose his virginity to the sophisticated daughter of conservative Christians (Portia Doubleday) that he invents an evil doppelganger to help lure her from her fraud of a boyfriend. The first half-hour is exquisitely funny, coming-of-age angst to cherish and although the rest of the movie meanders, the characters’ idiosyncrasies and inspired casting keep Youth fresh and intriguing. (2009)

Alien vs Predator: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Friday.

Humans are the meat in the sandwich of this horror franchise hybrid that’s been made with more bytes than bite. Despite its over-familiarity, it’s a better monster mesh than Freddy vs Jason and can still put the frighteners on thanks to ferocious computer-generated effects. Starring a largely obscure cast, apart from Alien vet Lance Henricksen and Ewen Bremner, it’s set in a bizarre pyramid beneath the Antarctica ice where members of an archaeological dig become fodder in a turf war between the sci-fi foes. (2004)