Film picks

8pm, Sky Movies Premiere

(JJ Abrams, 2006) Much the same as before, except that this time Tom Cruise's agent Ethan Hunt has to accomplish the unbelievable with a bomb ticking away in his head. And this time it's personal - toadlike villain Phillip Seymour Hoffman having the temerity to kidnap Ethan's new wife (Michelle Monaghan). It rarely lets up, and there's a stunt up a Shanghai skyscraper that'll make you whistle.

Article continues

---

---

9pm, Film4

(Anthony Minghella, 1999) Minghella's stylish adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's thriller has Jude Law as playboy Dickie Greenleaf and Matt Damon as the young chancer Tom Ripley, who decides he really deserves his friend's extravagant lifestyle and his girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow). An intelligent and gorgeously photographed (by John Seale) dissertation on what the utterly amoral can achieve.

Bob le Flambeur

1.40am, Film4

(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1955) This classic of the final-heist genre has a lightness of tone far removed from, say, Huston's brutal Asphalt Jungle. Roger Duchesne is 50-year-old gambler-cum-thief Bob, who decides to relieve a casino of millions of francs: it's a gripping thriller laced with Gallic absurdity, a superb character study - and the tantalising Montmartre locations will have you on the first Eurostar out of St Pancras.