Sliding Doors, That’ll Be the Day, Layer Cake: films on TV today

ANDREW COLLINS: FILM OF THE DAY
Sliding Doors ★★★
11.45pm-1.20am BBC1

This is a Richard Curtis-style offering that would have benefited from a little of that Curtis fairy dust. It offers up the ambivalent prospect of California’s Gwyneth Paltrow flexing her posh English accent in a London-set “What if?” story with two separate courses, the outcomes hinging on whether or not Paltrow’s sacked PR exec catches a particular Tube train. In one version, she walks in on boyfriend John Lynch while he’s playing away, and dumps him in time to fall for John Hannah. In the other, well, I won’t spoil it for you. Although neatly written and unobtrusively directed by Peter Howitt, it does suffer from an uneven tone and, ultimately, there not being much of a difference between the two conclusions. But at least Paltrow does have different hair to help discern between the stories.

Olympus Has Fallen ★★★
9.00-11.20pm 5★

Terrorists are in da house (the White House, that is) so it falls to lone agent Gerard Butler to free President Aaron Eckhart as well as find his young son. You just can't get the staff these days.

That'll Be the Day ★★★★
9.00-11.00pm True Entertainment

David Essex was in his pomp when he made this gloriously nostalgic (even in 1973) musical about a kid who just wants to rock. Anyone for a chorus of Great Balls of Fire?

Layer Cake ★★★
10.45pm-1.00am Movie Mix

Before he was Bond, Daniel Craig made a big impression in this polished thriller, playing a London gangster. It didn't do director Matthew Vaughn’s career any harm, either, as he went on to X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass and Kingsman: the Secret Service.

Captivity ★★★
11.00pm-12.40am Horror Channel

Saw fans will be in their unpleasant element in this bleak. claustrophobic horror, which finds Elisha Cuthbert's supermodel imprisoned in a basement by an unknown captor.

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