This Weekend On Cable: War, What Is It Good For?

The long Memorial Day weekend's at-home movie choices begin and end for some people with days' worth of big, bloated war epics of yesteryear on TCM -- with a few notables tossed into the dip like chili peppers. Beyond that, eccentric choices are everywhere, more fitting with the summer-launch BBQ than thoughts about Arlington Cemetery...

Paisan (TCM, Sunday, 2:45 PM)

Forget the brouhaha of American war movies -- this Roberto Rossellini omnibus, released in 1946, glorifies nothing as it follows the Allied forces from their landing in Sicily and their northward ascension up the peninsula, liberating the country one story at a time, until they're in the infamous Po Valley. For non-Rossellinians, it can be a tentative experience with some poor dubbing, but it is unarguably the first war film that tilts away from outrage, and toward wondering what life will be like when peace settles.

Birdy (TCM, Saturday, 1:15 AM)

Not many knew what to make of this supremely odd 1984 Alan Parker version of the William Wharton novel, in which two Philadelphia teens in the '60s -- hunky goombah Nicolas Cage and withdrawn bird-obsessive Matthew Modine -- are wrecked by Vietnam, one physically, the other mentally. You may not know what to make of it now, either, but seen a certain way it's a daringly poetic and utterly unique film, the kind of movie that can inspire irrational devotion.

Thirteen Days (Starz, Saturday, 8:25 AM & 4:50 PM)

Cynicism is the only healthy approach to both Hollywood and politics, of course, and yet this big-budget 2000 treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- with Kevin Costner in an inflated supporting role as White House advisor Kenneth O'Donnell -- stays one step ahead of your expectations. For one big thing, the sanctified Kennedy legend is given a good dress-down; the most innocent-seeming of 20th century presidents (played by Bruce Greenwood) is seen here as a living, breathing, deeply flawed politician, susceptible to backroom dealing and virtually free of high principles. But if we're thinking of military costs and benefits, it's a grown-up antidote to most war-genre cinema.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Encore Western, Saturday, 11:35 PM)

The self-loathing underworld demon-king of masculine angst (and the world's first genuine action craftsman), Sam Peckinpah was also a backyard liquor too strong for most people to drink, and his proper ascension to the auteurist pantheon's high shelves may take a few more years. In the meantime, look again at this 1974 rumbum, which was loathed when it was released and still hasn't been appreciated for the life-cheapening neo-noir it is. You trail after Warren Oates's waste-case roadhouse piano player across a Mexican wilderness in search of reward, salvation and a severed head in a sack, and you don't look back.

Jesus' Son (Showtime Next, Friday, 8:00 PM)

Has everyone forgotten this oddball, too? Alison Maclean's chilly, mopey materialization of Denis Johnson's story-cycle might be the supreme screen portrait of '70s drug culture. The lovable dopenik, referred to only as F*ckhead and embodied in a guileless trance by Billy Crudup, spends the movie of his life between places, waiting for something, waking up in the dead center of nowhere or wandering rain-sodden highways. The vignettes have a hilarious integrity, particularly the hang-out with a Stetson-sporting hot dog (Denis Leary on fire) who takes our easy-going hero to rip out an empty house's wiring and sell the copper for a fix, and the unforgettable sketch-comedy of F*ckhead and a pill-scarfing buddy (Jack Black) working as very stoned hospital orderlies the night a man calmly wanders in with a hunting knife buried in his eye.

The Escapist (Showtime, Friday, 3:00 PM)

This 2008 British prison-break yarn is so old-fashioned it has the air of a rocker-sitting old man spinning sordid stories, but mainly it has a raft of awesome character actors all stuck in a decrepit big house and all with their own motives for trying to bust out. Namely, sick old cynic Brian Cox, boxing sociopath Joseph Fiennes, wizened vet Liam Cunningham, newbie Dominic Cooper, smuggler Seu Jorge (the Brazilian musician that played Knockout Ned in City of God), and so on.

Angels & Insects (Encore Love, Saturday, 2:50 AM)

Another discombobulating literary adaptation. Philip Haas takes A.S. Byatt's neo-gothic novella and turns it into a Darwinian death song for the Ivory-Merchant period romance. Set entirely on a huge, slightly decaying estate, the movie follows a meek, middle-class naturalist (Mark Rylance) as he navigates the very strange, possibly interbred aristo-Brit family there. Strangest is the clan's marriageable daughter (Patsy Kensit), a limpid, mysterious beauty pining away after a failed romance, wooed by the newcomer with a graceful snowstorm of live butterflies. In fact, there are bugs everywhere, as if Britain itself is what you find in the moist dirt under a moved rock.

The Invisible Man (Outermax, Sunday, 3:15 AM)

What's this old chestnut doing amid the '90s eardrum-splitters that fill up the Cinemax docket is not a question I can answer, but here it is: 1933, H.G. Wells's original tale, director James Whale, Claude Rains' first film (his voice's first, anyway; you don't see his face until the end), crude visual effects (a famous gaffe: the naked unseeable one leaves shoe prints behind), and a sweet late-night visit to the scratchy, creaky gray heaven of early-talkie genre film.

Osama (Showtime Women, Sunday, 2:35 PM)

The first all-Afghan feature to be made since the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Siddiq Barmak's movie has a primitive feel, but the story is eye-glue: a girl (12-year-old non-pro Marina Golbarhari) must to masquerade as a boy in order to find work in a Muslim world. Under the Taliban, the punishments for cross-dressing - for deceptively penetrating the masculine world - could be capital, and the heroine botches her efforts until she is simply shanghaied into Bin Laden's Islamic corps, surrounded by gun-toting boys and Nero-like Talibs.