HDTV Movie Premieres: November 6-12

Catch Me If You Can: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday.

This true-life caper about a teenage con man (Leonardo DiCaprio) who charmed and scammed his way through $2.5 million of counterfeit cheques while impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer and a professor became director Steven Spielberg’s most frivolous film since Always in 1989 and the first movie in which Tom Hanks hasn’t been top-billed since 1988’s Punchline. (2002)

Case 39: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Saturday.

Case 666 would have been a more apt title for this creepy supernatural thriller starring Renee Zellweger as the foster mother of an abused youngster (Jodelle Ferland) who makes Rosemary’s baby look like Shirley Temple. It’s far from a textbook example of the genre but Ferland is fiendishly good as the brat from hell, the special effects are sparing but startling, and the touches of wicked wit inspired. (2009)

Steel Magnolias: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Saturday.

Steel yourself for this slick, superficial but not-without-merit soap-operatic comedy about six women in small-town Louisiana. It opens with a wedding, closes with a funeral and in-between tries to tickle your ribs and tug your heart with a gabfest-overkill. Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field, Julia Roberts, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton and Daryl Hannah star; Herbert Ross (The Goodbye Girl) directs. (1989)

Julie & Julia: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Sunday.

Writer/director Nora Ephron’s most enchanting movie since Michael seamlessly blends celebrity chef Julia Child’s rise with that of wannabe scribe Julie Powell, whose blog about trying to cook 564 of her idol’s recipes in 365 days became almost as big a publishing sensation as Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Sweet, funny, soufflé-light. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams star. (2009)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Monday.

Douglas Adams’ cult sci-fi comedy survives the voyage to the big screen relatively intact, albeit with an ending that won’t be familiar to fans of the book. Amusing rather than uproarious, it would have benefited from more intellect and less slapstick. The stellar cast includes The Office’s Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman and the voice of Stephen Fry. (2005)

Capote: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Tuesday.

Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing flamboyant literary icon Truman Capote in this rich, troubling, complex dramatisation of how he researched In Cold Blood, the groundbreaking non-fiction novel about a Midwest murder that made him “the most famous writer in the world”. Was his manipulation of the convicted killers as cold-blooded as their crime? (2005)

Did You Hear About the Morgans: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Wednesday.

In this fish-out-of-water comedy, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play city slickers hiding out in Brokeback Mountain territory from a hit man who wants to see them sleeping with the fishes. The stars amuse as quintessential New Yorkers getting to grips with local customs and their crumbling marriage but the screenplay, by director Marc Lawrence (Music and Lyrics, Two Weeks Notice), is as creaky as Sam Elliott’s geriatric lawman. (2009)

Snatch: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Thursday.

How Brad Pitt fits into this EastEnd gangland picture is one of its many delights – and one that doesn’t bastardise its true-Brit grit and wit. Big names they may be but none overshadows the double-crossing, pig-fattening, prize-fighting mayhem that makes Snatch both deliriously funny and profoundly bloodcurdling. Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and Dennis Farina co-star. (2000)

2 Fast, 2 Furious: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Friday.

Shaft’s John Singleton takes the wheel of this surprisingly sluggish joyrides-and-the-‘hood sequel about disgraced cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) infiltrating Miami’s street racing underworld. Tyrese Gibson and Eva Mendes co-star in the first movie screenplay of Derek Haas and Michael Brandt (3.10 to Yuma, Wanted). The fifth in the franchise, Fast Five, recruits Dwayne Johnson and opens in June 2011. (2003)