Dead Poets Society, 1989

Wednesday, 1 a.m., VH1

This charming, inspiring and sometimes even funny story of an English teacher at a boy’s prep school is my all-time favorite Robin Williams (left) movie (OK, my only favorite Robin Williams movie). Todd (Ethan Hawke) is a painfully shy boy who is sent to boarding school where he rooms with Neil (Robert Sean Leonard), an unpopular kid who has always been dominated by his father. From their teacher they learn a new way of living and a passion for learning. With Josh Charles.

Inception, 2010

Thursday, 12:30 a.m., HBOe

A heist caper for the intelligentsia. Leonardo DiCaprio (right, with Ellen Page) is an internationally wanted thief. He doesn’t steal jewels — he steals ideas from people’s brains as they sleep. With his life in ruins, he is given a chance at redemption — if he and his team of crooks can implant ideas as opposed to extracting them.

The Sterile


Cuckoo, 1969

Thursday, 2 a.m., TCM

This heartbreakingly sweet tale of Pookie, a lonely, neurotic girl in an upstate NY college, who pursues a shy student named Jerry (Wendell Burton) is my all-time favorite Liza Minnelli (left) movie (OK, my only favorite Liza Minnelli movie). Misfit Pookie tries to keep Jerry to herself, and away from everyone else — the “weirdos” — while inadvertently driving him toward them.

Midnight In Paris, 2011

Saturday, 9:40 a.m., Starz

Woody Allen’s tale of Gil (Owen Wilson, right), a Hollywood hack who is desperate to write a novel. When he travels to Paris with his fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams, far right), he falls for the city and expounds on its romantic golden age in the 1920s. While she goes dancing with friends, he walks the city and steps back in time to, yes, the golden age. On his nightly forays he meets and hangs out with the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Picasso. Great, but what about his real life with Inez?