HDTV Movie Premieres: May 28-June 3

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday.

As The Washington Post observed of this uneven dramatisation of a British intellectual’s Big Apple baptism in celebrity journalism: “The movie based on [Toby] Young’s 2002 memoir is a good bit blunter. One early laugh comes at the expense of a pig urinating on a woman’s feet at the BAFTA awards, the British equivalent of the Oscars. And it doesn’t get much better, or much smarter, than that.” Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst and Megan Fox star; Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Robert B Weide directs. (2008)

Hot Fuzz: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Saturday.

Every crime scene investigation cliché you could throw the book at is fodder for this star-studded send-up from Shaun of the Dead scribes Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. The latter plays a big-city cop investigating baffling mid-summer murders in a sleepy hamlet that would send even Inspector Barnaby barmy – as would the movie’s schizophrenic satire. What starts as an hilariously quaint take on British cop shows and English eccentricities winds up a less funny, more extreme, splatterfest spoof of Hollywood shoot-‘em-ups. (2007)

The Blind Side: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

Did Oscar voters have a blind side when they awarded Sandra Bullock the best actress trophy over Precious’ Gabourey Sidibe? She’s great as the sassy, swanky Memphis businesswoman whose unlikely fostering of an abused black youngster from the wrong side of town helps him to become a gird iron hero. But her performance doesn’t even begin to compare to the intensity and complexity of Sidibe’s, largely because The Blind Side, despite treading similar territory, is only half the movie. (2009)

Hulk: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Sunday.

Hulk is a comic-book bonanza of brawn and brain from Ang Lee, a filmmaker renowned more for artful humanity than hi-tech heroics (Brokeback Mountain, Taking Woodstock). His fusion of King Kong and Frankenstein is such an enthralling mix of muscular sci-fi, psychological depth, cutting-edge editing and special effects that Marvel rivals Spider-Man, X-Men and Daredevil look puny by comparison. Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte star. (2003)

Extract: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Tuesday.

Justin Bateman plays the owner of a flavour extract factory under siege from his disloyal wife and staff in an off-kilter comedy/drama written and directed by King of the Hill creator Mike Judge. The Philadelphia Inquirer summed it up best: “A mix of coolheaded cultural satire and anxiety-inducing workplace and marital shenanigans, Extract is an odd project. It’s smarter than most of the comedies out there right now, but that doesn’t necessarily make it funnier.” Kila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck and JK Simmons co-star. (2009)

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Wednesday.

Critics murdered this mystery-thriller re-make of the 1956 Fritz Lang film noir, about a top criminal lawyer whose political ambitions are thwarted by a pesky investigative reporter who tries to expose his penchant for evidence tampering by framing himself as a homicide suspect. Peter Hyams (End of Days, Narrow Margin) directs Michael Douglas, Jesse Metcalfe and Amber Tamblyn in what Empire magazine says “comes across as more ‘80s TV movie than ‘50s period piece”. (2009)