West Side Story

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Turner Classic Films, Monday, May 7, 7 p.m.

Easily one of the two or three greatest movie musicals of all time, West Side Story is also my favorite. Stunningly shot, directed and choreographed, it is not just so beautiful to look at, but as affecting as any production of Romeo & Juliet, which it is, of course, based on. The rival Italian families of Shakespeare’s play are replaced by rival ethnic gangs in modern New York City, with Maria (Natalie Wood) falling in love with Tony (Richard Beymer) before tragedy strikes. The songs and the score are among the most indelible of 20th century music. Not to be missed.

Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams in The Vow

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Channing Tatum has suddenly become a very bankable star. The thriller Haywire landed with a soft thud that no one heard, but a couple weeks later the saccharine love story The Vow was a surprising hit. Both are out right now, and they’d be a good double feature. Because he’s so damn good-looking. And it turns out he’s not that bad of an actor either. (The Vow also has Rachel McAdams, who can make any movie ten times better. And Haywire was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who can’t make a bad movie.)

Fran Drescher and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic in UHF

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While ‘Weird Al’ has recorded parody songs that make an 8-year-old squeal with laughter, the idea that he could write and star in a movie that keep an adult laughing for an hour and a half is somewhat preposterous. But UHF is so balls-out absurd, so relentless in its physical comedy and so broad in its parody of low-budget local TV, the movie succeeds where it shouldn’t. It helps that ‘Weird Al’ is supported by a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards, pre-Nanny Fran Drescher and pre-wingnut Victoria Jackson. Yes, it’s a stupid movie. But it’s also hilarious.

Lena Dunham and Allison Williams in Girls

HBO’s latest dramedy is about three twentysomething women navigating love, sex and adulthood in New York City. If it was only about clothes and hair and putting men into categories like “rugged” or “wears a suit,” then it would be Sex and the City for a new generation, as some clueless TV critic wrote this week. But it’s not: Girls is about sex, but it is naturalistic and not always cheerful and not always about how sex is a weapon used for conquest. The rapturous reviews may lead to a backlash, but before that happens, DVR and enjoy.

Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot

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Arguably the funniest movie ever made, Billy Wilder’s movie about cross-dressing musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) and the most amazing ditz to ever grace the screen (Marilyn Monroe) was shot at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado and has as many quotable lines as Casablanca, Wizard of Oz and Star Wars combined. On NBC’s Smash, about the making of a fictional Marilyn Monroe musical, half of the clips that the Monroe wannabe’s watch to get into character are from Some Like It Hot. And rightfully so; it is her iconic role. And Lemmon and Curtis were at top form. A must see.

Jon Hamm in Mad Men

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Season premiere, AMC, 9 p.m., Sunday, March 25

The best show on television, and one of the best ever, Mad Men returns after almost a year and a half. In case you’ve been living under a rock: It is the story of the private and professional lives of New York advertising executives in the early 1960s, and it plays with sexism, consumerism, politics and alcoholism. While the impeccable cast is led by John Hamm and Elizabeth Moss and the insanely perfect art direction is a marvel, the stars of the show are the writers, who craft episodes like John Cheever short stories or Broadway one-act plays.

Rita Tushingham and Paul Danquah in A Taste of HoneyRita Tushingham and Paul Danquah in A Taste of Honey

A movie way, way, way before its time, Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey tells the story of a young white English woman (Rita Tushingham) who has an out-of-wedlock baby with a black sailor, and her gay roommate (Murray Melvin) is determined to be the stand-in father. In 1962. A classic of British “kitchen sink realism,” it dealt with homosexuality and interracial relationships with a sensitivity no American film would approach for decades. It won a host of British Academy Awards.

Jason Isaacs and Wilmer Valderrama in Awake

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I hope that NBC’s third attempt in six months to find a drama on Thursday nights works out with Awake, a high-concept brain twister about a detective who seems to be living in two realities, one where his wife died in a car crash and another where his son died. It comes from the creator of the quickly and sadly departed Lonestar, and it stars, among others, the great Jason Isaacs and gay icons Cherry Jones and BD Wong as his parallel therapists.

Michael Cudlitz and Ben McKenzie in Southland

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One of the best cop shows on TV, Southland is the only one that features a gay beat cop, Officer John Cooper, played with awesome anger and arrogance by Michael Cudlitz. In the season premiere, Cooper has just returned sober from medical leave (thankfully, since his painkiller addiction was not the greatest pilot), and his new partner is played by Lucy Liu. Hotty McHotteron Ben McKenzie (from The OC) is still trying to be a hero and not taking his shirt off often enough. And one of the great characters on TV, Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King), is still wise, funny and smooth, and her love life is still a mess.

James Stewart, Donna Reed and Thomas Mitchell in It’s A Wonderful Life

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NBC is showing the holiday classic on Christmas Eve. I’m one of the few people who loathe this movie and its terribly conservative love-your-boring-life message, but I know that this may just be my cold, Grinchy heart speaking. So, curl up with some hot cocoa or some mulled wine, snuggle up with whoever you met under the mistletoe and brace yourself for the crying jags. James Stewart, Donna Reed, and Frank Capra will be there for you.