HDTV Movie Premieres: January 1-6

The Time Traveler’s Wife: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Saturday.

Quantum leaps of logic are required to swallow this sci-fi romance about what it’s like to be married to a man who travels back and forth in time without warning. Nothing makes sense, least of all the characters’ attraction for one another — or Ghost screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin thinking he was destined to pull off two loony tearjerkers about a one-true-love who keeps coming back from the past. Robert Schwentke directs Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana and Ron Livingston. (2009)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs: Sky Movies, 5.15pm Sunday.

It rains baps and hot dogs when a nerdish misfit creates a machine that pours food from the sky on to a washed-up small town hitherto synonymous with sardines. Why and how are just part of the recipe that makes Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs unabashedly brilliant, especially in high definition. The audio and video maximise the eye-popping splendour of the animation while the characterisations and storytelling are deliciously clever. (2009)

The 6^th Day: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Sunday.

Shades of Total Recall – Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a pilot in the near future who comes home one night to find he’s been cloned. Thus ensues a conspiracy that instead of living up to its promise declines into yet another noisy, glass-shattering shoot-’em-up that leaves you exhausted rather than exhilarated. Even so, the special effects are nifty, the initial action’s exciting and suspenseful, and there are some amusing touches in the screenplay by National Treasure scribes Cormac and Marianne Wibberley. (2000)

Fantastic Mr Fox: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

The Fantastic Mr Fox opens with the frustrated Mr Fox: a decade of domestic drudgery with the wife and kid has made him restless for the old days of chicken stealing, but to scratch that itch he has to bet the farm … This enchanting and endlessly surprising stop-motion romp brilliantly cross-pollinates the twisted storytelling genius of Roald Dahl with the filmmaking idiosyncrasies of Wes Anderson. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray and Michael Gambon lend their voices. (2009)