Really? (Getty Images)

— Oh yeah, Chris Brown and Rihanna are definitely back together. He even dumped his girlfriend the night before going to a Jay-Z concert with his ex. At this point, we just hope for the best for these two, or at least that there's a good laser tattoo removal place nearby.

-- That letter in The New York Times was no coincidence: Jerry Seinfeld is touring in New York again. (For a better letter to the paper, read his 1999 defense of the Upper West Side.)

-- Liam Neeson pulled a Richard Belzer on ESPN yesterday. Can you blame him? He just wants his daughter/wife back!

-- In a really weird/exploitative/not-very-smart publicity bid, the Kids Wish Network has started posting to Reddit all these photos of sick children getting their big wish ... to visit the set of NCIS, Extreme Home Makeover and Charmed. Also, all the blog posts are at least a year old, (the Linkin Park one is from almost a decade ago) but are being put on Reddit by the official account now.

-- The legend of Creed front man Scott Stapp just keeps getting better and better. Not only did he announce on Fox & Friends (to the caring of everyone, we're sure) that he just can't vote for Obama in good conscience, but yesterday he told VH1 that T.I. saved his life after he jumped 40 feet in a hotel suicide attempt.

(Was the rapper just hanging outside the lobby of the Del Monico, waiting for drug-crazed rock dudes to fall out of the penthouse? How does one "take care of the situation" when it involves a 40-foot drop and a fractured skull? Was this before or after T.I. went to jail on all those gun charges? SO MANY QUESTIONS!) Also: Steven Tyler begged him to write a book? Next thing you know, Stapp will be telling the other kids in class he's a cutter just to get attention.

'Battleship' star Rihanna (Getty Images)

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) March 23

Your children have been refreshing Fandango daily to see if tickets are available yet for the movie based on Suzanne Collins’ kiddie novels—think of them as Twilight, except with actual murder instead of benign vampirism. Games promises a chaste love triangle and lots of angst for the tween set, but what’s in it for adults? Potentially, some solid acting. Jennifer Lawrence, last widely seen in her Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone role, hopefully turns in another subtle and edgy performance as a young woman fighting to survive, and she’s accompanied by some tried-and-true character actors, like Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Donald Sutherland.

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) March 30

The long-absent Terence Davies returns with an adaptation of a play by another Terence—the late Rattigan, who wrote about the subtle emotionality of the British upper crust. This work is no exception, featuring as it does Rachel Weisz (and where has she been?) as the wife of a judge who is engaging in a dangerous liaison with a pilot. The cast also includes Tom Hiddleston, who was in just about every movie last year, of brows high and low (War Horse, Midnight in Paris, and Thor), but we’re more excited about the return of Mr. Davies, whose last narrative film, the moody The House of Mirth, came out way back in 2000.

Titanic 3D (James Cameron) April 4

To paraphrase Céline Dion, “It’s here—there’s nothing we fear.” Just in time for the centenary anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes the rerelease of the multiple Oscar winner. It’s been converted into 3D, too—so it’ll feel like Kate Winslet is throwing her diamond necklace right at you! Surely director James Cameron hopes he’ll break his own record by getting this film back to the #1 all-time box-office spot, but we suspect that, nearly 15 years after Titanic’s release, we’ll be among the rather limited number of Kate-and-Jack die-hards who simply can’t ever let go.

Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman) April 6

Whit Stillman, who was hiding out with Terence Davies, is back too, with a drama that proves he’s still interested in what the kids are up to. The director who blew the lid off deb parties and disco dancing now examines a suicide-prevention mission undertaken by a WASPy queen bee whose idea of “It Gets Better” is introducing her classmates to tap dance. Sure, the notion of frolicsome young beauties put in “distress” by the men in their lives seems a bit fainting-couch-y, but, given that his previous films were all more or less period pieces, one exactly doesn’t go to Mr. Stillman for insights on the way we live now.

Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan) April 20

Every one of our favorites unites in a project that might be the Avengers of 1980s Oscar-ceremony attendees. Diane Keaton tries on a new Chico’s scarf-and-blazer combo as a woman who loves her dog a bit too much, and Kevin Kline is the husband who misplaces that dog. Throw Dianne Wiest and Sam Shepard into the mix, and you have a winner. We’re not sure why there’s so much hue and cry—it’s not like the dog is played by Uggie—but if there was ever an actress who seems like she’d be a little too into animals, it’d be Annie Hall herself!

The Five-Year Engagement (Nicholas Stoller) April 27

Jason Segel, tired of speaking to Muppets, has returned to romantic comedies about human beings. His Forgetting Sarah Marshall follow-up  costars Emily Blunt as a fiancée who has taken her sweet time making it to the altar—hey, it’s hard to plan a wedding! Between choosing a venue and bridesmaids’ dresses … Also featured are NBC Thursday-night comedians Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, the inescapable Mindy Kaling, and, for some reason, Oscar-nominated Aussie spitfire Jacki Weaver. We’re not sure why Mr. Segel keeps getting cast as a romantic lead—perhaps because he writes the parts for himself? (Aspiring actors who don’t resemble Channing Tatum, take note.)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden) May 4

An all-star cast of Britain’s actors most likely to cluck “Well, I never!” trade their manor houses and cozy flats for India in this tale of white people encountering brown people. Characters played by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, among others, decide to retire to the subcontinent before realizing that “exotic” is an unalloyed positive only when applied to the term “dancer.” It is likely, though, that they will all learn, like, three lessons before dying—perhaps some of them taught by Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel!

The Avengers (Joss Whedon) May 4

The most anticipated film of the year among circles too young or too cool to remember Titanic unites Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and a bunch of less popular and less charismatic superheroes in a quest to save the world from threats of an unclear nature. Scarlett Johansson is the lady who kicks and punches, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are the slabby studs, and moody blue Mark Ruffalo is the Incredible Hulk. (You wouldn’t like to see Mark Ruffalo when he’s angry—he brews some Kombucha to cool down then talks passionately about hydrofracking!). Unlike this summer’s noirish Dark Knight reprise, this promises to be big and bright and dopey—just what we want as rainy winter changes to overheated spring.

The Dictator (Larry Charles) May 11

Sacha Baron Cohen is back in character; apparently Bruno didn’t sate his appetite for foisting upon audiences a goulash of an accent and nightmarishly draggy scenes of his imposing himself upon unsuspecting people. The Dictator has him playing the Qaddafi-esque ruler of the fictitious nation Wadiya, one who gets to do fun things like shoot his subjects onscreen and seduce Megan Fox. We’re pretty sure that for all the Americans who were unaware of the Arab Spring, this will be a bit too insider-y, but who knows—everyone loves to laugh at Mr. Cohen when he impersonates an ethnic.

Battleship (Peter Berg) May 18

Rihanna makes her acting debut in a film about robotic aliens sent to destroy Earth—and despite her singing voice, she plays one of the humans defending us! This adaptation of the numbered-grid board game promises to be anything but B-9, with a cast that also includes the ever-more-grizzled Liam Neeson, Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, and Brooklyn Decker, who just finished playing Ophelia at the Old Vic (just kidding, she’s a bikini model!). We hope this one is successful—not due to partisanship for any of its stars, but because the deadline headlines about “sunken Battleship” are just too predictable.

Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson's wolfy action flick The Grey has PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) snarling and snapping at film producers. In a post published last Thursday in PETA's official blog, blogger Michelle Sherrow first expressed anger that the filmmakers had not kept their word to PETA representatives:

PETA met with a producer of The Grey and explained how animals used in movies often spend most of their time confined to chains or cages when they are not performing and may be beaten or deprived of food in order to force them to perform. The producers assured us that they would use only computer-generated imagery and animatronic wolves—but we've now learned that they reneged on their promise.

Calling The Grey's director Joe Carnahan "Joe Carnage," Ms. Sherrow cited reports that Neeson and fellow cast members had eaten wolf meat to immerse themselves in the desperate situation portrayed in the film and compared The Grey's potential impact on wolves to the demonizing effects Steven Spielberg's Jaws had on sharks in the late 1970s:

The Grey portrays these intelligent, family-oriented animals the same way in which Jaws portrays sharks. The writers paint a pack of wolves living in the Alaskan wilderness as bloodthirsty monsters, intent on killing every survivor of a plane crash by tearing each person limb from limb.

Audiences are not running from The Grey. Nikki Finke reported Friday that it was projected to be "the No. 1 movie at the North American box office," scoring a projected $17.6 million in box office receipts.

[PETA.org]

Neeson.

Prepare to be devastated. Films of hair-raising terror about people doing unspeakable things to each other are a dime a dozen, usually with a built-in hole in their armor (people can always outsmart people). But movies about helpless humans versus uncontrollable nature are rare. A new one called The Grey, about the survivors of an airplane crash in the frozen wastes of Alaska at the mercy of carnivorous wolves, is the movie equivalent of a wet finger in a hot socket.

This is the scariest wilderness survival movie about men stalked by animals since Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins landed on the menu of a bloodthirsty, 10-ton grizzly in Lee Tamahori’s 1997 thriller The Edge, written by David Mamet. Liam Neeson stars as a decent man doing a tour of duty in an isolated oil refinery in the Alaskan wilds with a crew of ex-cons, drifters and other rejects from society with whom he has nothing in common. Haunted by memories of better times, a woman who left him and a small ray of hope that when he gets back to civilization he’ll play a better hand of poker, he boards a plane home that crashes in an explosion of flames with only six survivors. Cut off from cell phone signals and every other form of communication, the men are wounded, suffering from frostbite, understandably pessimistic, pondering suicide and surrounded by howling wolves. As the men crawl away from the wreckage to search for a sign of life, the sound of a helicopter overhead or the curl of smoke from a remote cabin chimney, the wolves get closer. I’ve read that wolves get a bad rap; they’re not aggressive and run from people. These wolves are different. They’re ravenous, territorial timber wolves—carnivorous, bloodthirsty, hungry for meat. While the dwindling handful of survivors search for a way to defend themselves, scenes filled with nerve-frying suspense build steadily, paralyzing you with anxiety. If possible, wear gloves or your nails could get chewed to the quick.

With a lack of oxygen to the brain in the altitude, the men suffer from hallucinations and wander away from the fire into harm’s way. Without weapons and unable to run because they’re up to their knees in snow, they’re tough alpha males, but before they can even formalize their strategy they get picked off, one by one, torn limb from limb and devoured by killers with molars like fangs. There’s graphic gore, but miraculously, the writers also find humor in the men’s natural coarseness. When they cook one wolf to stay alive, the gruffest man says, “I’m more of a cat person myself.” The word harrowing doesn’t begin to cover it. You can’t avoid wondering, “What would I do if this happened to me?” One last rant at the sky, one final plea for help, one more challenge to the Almighty to prove His existence, and escape remains impossible. All the more reason for men with nothing in common to turn their conflicted tensions into a sustained interdependence to stay alive.
Alaska is played by the wilds of Canada. The men who support leader Liam Neeson are played by actors with more brawn than beauty, including Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney, unrecognizable with long, matted hair and a white beard, as one of the more pragmatic survivors. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan (The A-Team), it’s basically a one-note narrative with nowhere to go except straight into the jaws of tragedy, but the film manages to give each man enough room for character development to make you feel like you’re living through this white-knuckle experience with them. It’s one of the most captivating studies of shared peril. The Grey avoids smug clichés, takes you to places you least expect and settles for no comfortable solutions, while it explores the dark shadows of the male psyche and finds more emotional fragility there than you find in the usual phony macho myths from Hollywood.

rreed@observer.com

THE GREY

Running Time 117 minutes

Written by Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

Directed by Joe Carnahan

Starring Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney and Frank Grillo

3/4

Batman versus Anonymous

It just keeps rolling in today: first MTV decided that when seven strangers get together and stop being polite and start being real, at least one of them should be protesting in Zuccotti Park. Now a tipster "involved in the production" of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises has leaked to The LA Times that Liberty Plaza would be a great backdrop in Gotham.

But are these the smelly hippies that are city deserves? Would the Batman tolerate the General Assembly? Let's discuss!

We do know that the latest Batman film will be shooting in New York, because we went to the auditions. But could a high-budget movie really use all those protesters in a scene without their consent? That's a boring hypothetical question! Here's a more interesting hypothetical: if transplanted in Gotham, would OWS immediately start picketing outside Bruce Wayne's mega-mansion, or wait a couple days? And as for the Dark Knight himself, what side of the picket line would the vigilante fall on?

In Batman Begins, we are introduced to the Wayne family by way of Bruce's father's contribution to the city... a buzzing transportation system. Never mind that the union of this train would probably be on strike with the Occupiers, since Batman himself  destroyed it in his epic battle with Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul at the end of the first film. So now a mother of three with two part-time jobs and no health insurance will have to walk to work instead of taking the Wayne Monorail (or whatever)? Thanks, Batman. Point: 1 %

On the other hand, Batman hates corporate greed, as evidenced by the fact that he fires Rutger Hauer as the head of Wayne Enterprises and replaces him with Morgan Freeman. Point: 99 %

But wait, doesn't he actually use most of Wayne Enterprises - most likely a publicly traded company - as cover to buy and expense all his "wonderful toys"? Point: 1%

Add to that his George Bush-era surveillance tendencies as well as a complete disregard for the laws that govern society, and you basically have a Tony Balogna-on-steroids situation. One thousand points: 1 %

Batman may protect Gotham from itself, but he's a moral grey area when it comes to tourists who don't contribute to the city's economy. Occupy Wall Street could even make a good villain for Batman in the form of "Anonymous Man," who would wear a Guy Fawkes mask at all times and speak in an annoying computer voice, of course.

Unknown is a bad movie that starts out as a good movie, then plunges steadily downhill in a pile of head-scratching mush.  In the warp-speed world of contrived thrillers, this one moves along satisfactorily for close to an hour, sucking us into an alternate-reality case of mistaken identity, until it chokes on its own red herrings. In the second hour, there are so many holes in the script it looks like a New York street after a snowplow. Mr. Neeson plays a noted scientist from New Hampshire named Dr. Martin Harris who arrives in snowy Berlin with his lovely wife, Liz (January Jones from TV's Mad Men), to address a global summit on bio-technology. While they are getting into a taxi at the airport, the briefcase containing Dr. Harris' speech is left on the curb. While Liz is checking them into the posh Kempinski Hotel, he remembers the missing bag and without telling his wife simply grabs another taxi to the airport that plunges from a bridge into an icy river. When he awakens in the hospital after a four-day coma without any memory or identification, a sympathetic nurse tries to help. Arriving at the hotel, he finds Liz with another man (Aidan Quinn) who has claimed his identity. "Liz, I'm sorry, I was in an accident, they didn't know who I was," he pants, to which his wife coldly replies, "Excuse me ... do I know you?" Returning to the hospital, his kind nurse recommends a friend who specializes in finding missing persons, and is then murdered by the mysterious figure who has been stalking him in the subway.       

Now Martin is not only a man without a passport, but a hunted murder suspect in a strange country. (He doesn't know his name, but he knows the foreign dialing codes, always has the correct change and never runs out of money in either American dollars or German marks.) To prove his identity, he turns to the person whose address is scrawled on a piece of paper in his coat--a former member of the East German secret police--and the Bosnian cab driver (Diane Kruger, from Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds) who pulled him from the river and is now hiding from the police as an illegal immigrant. Enter Dr. Harris' best friend from New Hampshire (Frank Langella), who brutally murders the retired Communist agent (huh?), as well as a gang of villains straight out of an old Nazi picture starring the Bowery Boys. It's amazing how everyone in Berlin suddenly speaks fluent English. When the terrorists (who knock off half of Berlin for unexplained reasons) burst into Ms. Kruger's apartment, where Mr. Neeson is hiding out, he's in the shower naked, but by the time they burst into the bathroom, he's climbing over the roof in the snow, apparently wet and barefoot, but unfazed. By now, Unknown has turned inadvertently into a comedy. Careening through the traffic in a city he's never been in, but knowing exactly where he's going, the doctor discovers there is no such person as Dr. Martin Harris, his enigmatic wife and the man who has stolen his identity are both imposters and even the confused doctor himself is ... never mind. Just rest assured that each time you think you've got it all figured out, there's always another preposterous plot twist on the way.

I can fully understand why gorgeous January Jones would want to parlay her success on Mad Men into a big-screen career, but Unknown is not the movie that is going to do it. Lamely directed by Spain's Jaume Collet-Serra from a script by Hollywood hacks Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell that borders on dementia, this scrambled  chaos has not one two-minute segment that holds up under even the most basic scrutiny. No movie stops making sense in postproduction--jabberwocky begins with the screenplay. Unknown makes no sense at all, so you not only worry about Liam Neeson's judgment in movies, but you begin to wonder if he's forgotten how to read. 

rreed@observer.com   

UNKNOWN

Running time 106 minutes

Written by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones

1/4

And while the 2,300-square-foot corner apartment sold for slightly less than the listing price of $1.375 million, it only lingered on the market for a measly five days, according to Streeteasy. Mr. Neeson and his late wife, actress Natasha Richardson, bought the apartment for $1.4 million in 1994.

Mr. Neeson, who recently starred in The A-Team and is slated to guest star in the Showtime series The Big C, lives with his two teenage sons in an 1810 farmhouse in Millbrook, N.Y., where he wed Richardson the same year they bought the Central Park West apartment. Richardson died tragically in March 2009 from an epidural hematoma sustained while skiing in Canada.

Buyer Alan Holtz, a corporate restructuring expert at Alix Partners, told The Observer that he and his wife, Jill, looked at apartments "for a few months" before stumbling upon the Love, Actually actor's Lincoln Square co-op, which turned out to be "just what we were looking for."

The Holtzs' New Jersey home will remain the family's home base--the couple has two daughters--with the CPW abode functioning as a pied-à-terre. The co-op, which Mr. Holtz called "a beautiful apartment in a beautiful building in a beautiful neighborhood," boasts high-beamed ceilings and oversize windows, and was listed with Plaza Real Estate Group's Amy Himes, who declined to comment. Giorgio Armani is an upstairs neighbor.

Was it exciting to buy the apartment from Oskar Schindler?

"It's interesting, but it wasn't a factor in our decision," Mr. Holtz replied demurely.

What is Mr. Holtz's favorite Neeson film?

"I would say Taken. It was required watching for our teenage daughters before traveling."

cmalle@observer.com

Christina Ricci plays a pretty Jersey City elementary school teacher named Anna who is killed in a horrible car accident in a rainstorm, pronounced dead by the coroner and sent to the care of Eliot Deacon, the psychotic, soft-spoken local mortician (would you believe Liam Neeson in a role Boris Karloff was born to play?), in preparation for an open-casket viewing. There’s only one problem. Anna is still alive. Or at least she thinks she is. Eight hours after being declared dead, she opens her eyes and insists it’s all been a mistake. Totally nonchalant about carrying on a conversation with a dead body, the undertaker hovers over her, locks the exits and refuses to admit Anna’s boyfriend, Paul (Justin Long), when he demands to see her one last time. Deacon tells Anna she’s a corpse, albeit a reluctant one. Maybe she is. “I’m not dead,” she protests. The funeral director retorts, “That’s what you all say.”

Anna wanders through the dark shadows of the mortuary, yelling, “Let me out!”; the only person who sees her through the window is one of her 11-year-old students, but who listens to a child with an overactive imagination and a morbid fascination with cemeteries? Refusing to believe she’s worm bait even after the funeral director produces her death certificate, she tries every key she can find to escape, and the movie plods on, as Mr. Neeson prepares embalming fluid and babbles on about his special talent for conversing with the dead in their “transition” period awaiting their own funerals—a “gift” shared by the little boy, who hyperventilates when it comes time to lower the casket into the grave. A cop eventually shows up, but all he wants to do is cop a look at Ms. Ricci’s breasts under the shroud.

So just what is going one here? Is she a corpse who won’t play by the rules, resisting her inevitable date with the graveyard? Or is she the prisoner of a raving lunatic who decorates the walls of his home with photos of all the people he’s buried? Is the setting, with its clanking doors and rooms filled with cadavers, really an insane asylum? Do you care? Everyone is curious about what happens after death, but you won’t learn anything here. I’d like to say it’s riveting, but unfortunately, I found it quite repetitious and boring. Mr. Neeson tries hard to reveal a rarely seen aspect of his artistic versatility, as a gruesome Dr. Caligari (I guess horror flicks can also be fun for distinguished actors on occasional slumming expeditions), and against cinematographer Anastas Michos’ odd-angle shots through shattered glass or scanned across darkly lit slabs of blue, bloodless bodies, Ms. Ricci plays the whole movie slashed with cherry red lipstick, in either a red satin slip or totally nude. Very little is shown, including the accident. Before rigor mortis sets in, you are, however, treated to the detailed work of the undertaker—close-ups of darning needles sewing stitches through the wounds, draining blood into buckets, sewing the mouth closed with threads thick as shoelaces, foot-long hypodermics jammed into jugulars to give the flesh more color, taking measurements to select the correct coffin—and finally, not one but two people buried alive six feet under.

I have no idea what the significance of After.Life is, or to which market it aims to appeal. It’s too dull for grown-ups and too nightmarish for children. It makes Nip/Tuck look like a Mel Brooks musical.

After.Life
Running time: 95 minutes
Written by: Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk
Directed by: Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
Starring: Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, Justin Long

1 Eyeball out of 4

rreed@observer.com

3D or not to 3D?

Trying to capitalize on the boon of 3D releases—the only non-3D films to lead the box office in 2010 are Dear John, Shutter Island and Valentine's Day—Warner Brothers decided to do a postproduction 3D conversion on Clash of the Titans. The result? Not good. Critics have piled on the way the film looks (among other problems), meaning you might as well save your extra buck and see it in good, old 2D.

To Sir With Love

You probably remember the original Clash of the Titans from watching it on Saturday afternoons, but did you realize that Sir Laurence Olivier co-starred as Zeus? Because we never did. Liam Neeson takes the role in the remake.

Louis Leterrier, Director for Hire

The 30-something Parisian director (and protégé of Luc Besson), who previously helmed The Incredible Hulk, has his eyes on an even bigger prize for his next project: Marvel's sprawling superhero epic The Avengers. That planned film—which would bring together everyone from the Hulk (Edward Norton) to Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)—could be one of the biggest comic-book undertakings to date. Whether or not Marvel wants to leave it in the hands of the dude who directed Clash of the Titans, though, is a different story.

A Star is Born

Sam Worthington is officially the go-to leading man for Generation 3D. As the story goes: before being tapped by James Cameron to star in Avatar, Mr. Worthington was sleeping in his car; after, he was such a hot commodity that he got cast as the lead in Clash of the Titans. We're pretty sure he's got a new car now—and he sleeps in a real bed.

"Release the Kraken!"

Mr. Neeson only appears in Clash of the Titans ever so briefly as Zeus, but he's still responsible for the biggest marketing tool the film has in its favor: "Release the Kraken." Mr. Neeson's reading of that line (which was featured heavily in the trailer) has become a genuine Internet meme. Even if you don't see Clash of the Titans, just drop a few "release the Krakens" around the office on Monday and you'll be covered.

Also opening this weekend: Miley Cyrus stretches her acting muscles in the Nicolas Sparks adaptation, The Last Song; Tyler Perry wonders Why Did I Get Married Too?; and Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan stars in the heartbreaking new film The Greatest.

You won't find Garden State on many Best of the Decade lists, and with good reason: Zach Braff's film nearly suffocates you with hipster twee. But, still, has anything been more influential on the latter half of the aughts? Without Garden State, (500) Days of Summer and a host of other 20-something ennui fests wouldn't even exist. Sure, it has become a punch line—and a litmus test; if someone truly loves Garden State, we immediately raise an eyebrow—but it's easy to see why this film struck such a chord initially: it's funny, it has some great music cues and it features Peter Sarsgaard. What more could any indie-lover want? [IFC, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: Planet of the Apes

Flipping around the channels a couple of weeks ago, we stumbled upon Tim Burton's ill-advised remake of Planet of the Apes, and, to our surprise, we were oddly transfixed. Not because this film is any good—spoiler alert: it's not—but because a remake of Planet of the Apes actually happened! We would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the pitch meeting when Mr. Burton sold 20th Century Fox executives on not only Mark "Talks To Christmas Animals" Wahlberg in the Charlton Heston lead role, but also Estella Warren as the female lead (non-ape edition). Say hi to your mother for us. [Cinemax, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Taken

Three reasons to watch Taken, the surprise sleeper hit from this past February: 1.) Liam Neeson, who combines Jason Bourne with the tenacity of a great white shark in the name of saving his daughter from being sold into sex slavery. 2.) The plot, which can literally fit inside a fortune cookie (see: man saving daughter from sex slavery). 3.) Did we mention how much ass Mr. Neeson kicks, all within the safely re-edited confines of a PG-13 rating (Taken was much more violent when it made the rounds through Europe)? Seriously, this movie is a load of fun because it's as simple as a cheeseburger. Just make sure to check cognizant thought at the door. [HBO, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: It's a Wonderful Life

Enough has been written (and re-written) about It's a Wonderful Life, that, at this point, finding some virgin snow to intellectually play around in is borderline impossible. So we'll just say this about our favorite holiday movie: it's so dark and weird and twisted and sad that parts don't feel like a Christmas movie at all. But then the third act happens—replete with Zuzu's petals and "Auld Lang Syne"—and we're a puddle of tears and hope. 63 years later and George Bailey is still the richest man in town. [NBC, 8 p.m.]

Friday: Till Death

Because it isn't officially the holiday until you watch four consecutive episodes of Till Death, Fox is kind enough to air (read: burn off) a marathon of the sit-com on Christmas night. We doubt you'll decide to watch Brad Garrett crack wise about how miserable married life is over putting on the Season Five DVD of Lost Santa Claus brought you, but Till Death is somewhat compelling. Think about it: this is a show that no one watches and yet it still airs. Do you think that worries the cast and crew, or, like so many others, do they just have the "eh, a job is a job" mentality that is so prevalent in America right now? More important, has anyone ever put this much thought into Till Death? Probably not. [Fox, 8 p.m.]