HDTV Movie Premieres: August 13-19

Knocked Up: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Saturday.

In this frequently coarse but sometimes considered romantic-comedy, Seth Rogen plays an addled pothead with adolescent dot com ambitions (Flesh of the Stars) who has a drunken one-night stand of unsafe sex with a knockout E! Channel presenter (Katherine Heigl). Pending parenthood tests not only their tolerance of one another but also their perceptions of what men and women want. Writer/director Judd Apatow leavens the bawdy blokish bonhomie with smart battle-of-the-sexes banter. (2007)

Thank You for Smoking: TV3, 11.20pm Saturday.

Scorching smoke-and-mirrors satire about a tobacco industry lobbyist who’s a self-proclaimed “merchant of death” with “a moral flexibility that goes beyond most people”. Although more than a decade’s passed since the novel was published, the timing of this witty and subversive poke at politicians and the PR industry couldn’t be more relevant. Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) directs his own screenplay; Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, JK Simmons and Cameron Bright (The Twilight Saga) star. (2005)

The Other Guys: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay (Step Brothers) reunite for a manic, moronic action-comedy about aspiring odd-couple cops that’s neither funny nor exciting. It peaks in the first five minutes with a clumsy Lethal Weapon spoof that seems Chaplin-esque compared to the meandering shambles that follows. Mark Wahlberg and those ‘other guys’ — Steve Coogan, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Damon Wayans Jr (TV’s Happy Endings) — co-star. (2010)

Iron Man: TV3, 8.30pm Monday.

Iron Man was one of those rare superhero movies that wrought reviews as fantastic as its box office – despite having four credited screenwriters. The trailer made it look as dire as Transformers but the movie is much smarter and not as hardware-heavy, the overkill of explosions, shoot-outs and ear-thumping sound effects notwithstanding. Jon Favreau (Cowboys & Aliens, which Iron Man’s Mark Fergus and Hank Ostby scripted)) directs Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges. (2008)

The Joneses: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Critics were divided over this consumerism satire about a seemingly perfect family that turns out to be marketers in disguise. The New York Observer thought it “surprising, inventive and crisply, merrily written” but The Hollywood Reporter lamented: “What could have been a biting black comedy taking product placement to the logical extreme instead is so obviously predictable that even a savvy cast led by David Duchovny and Demi Moore can’t sell it.” Gary Cole (The Good Wife) co-stars. (2009)

Training Day: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Denzel Washington won an Oscar for this mesmerising, mean-streets thriller, in which he plays a rogue narcotics cop who takes a rookie (Ethan Hawke) under his bent wing and shows him the tricks of the trade on his first day on the job. A fearsome, suspenseful psychological contest unfolds as the viewer is left wondering whether Washington’s vet is irredeemably corrupt or a street justice crusader in the tradition of Dirty Harry. Antoine Fuqua (Brooklyn’s Finest, Tears of the Sun) directs. (2001)