BASIC CABLE
“THE HUSTLER” ****
9 p.m., TCM
Nobody can play arrogant and scared like Paul Newman. Nobody besides Jackie Gleason could’ve played Minnesota Fats. Nobody could bellow about someone owing him money like George C. Scott, and nobody can play “haunted emotional invalid” like Piper Laurie. Robert Rossen’s direction is melancholy, and the story has to do with the sanctity, geography and metaphysical power of the pool table.
No MPAA rating
— Michael Phillips
“CARRIE”
*** 1/2
9:30 p.m., AMC
Brian De Palma’s 1976 shocker, from the Stephen King novel, about an unhappy high school girl (Sissy Spacek), persecuted by her classmates, who discovers she has telekinetic powers. Much copied in its day, this is one DePalma movie that doesn’t dissolve under scrutiny, a voluptuously shot horror show with fever-dream sequences of psychological torment and prom night carnage. With Piper Laurie as Carrie’s fanatically religious mom and some nasty teens played by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen and John Travolta.
MPAA rating: R.
— Michael Wilmington
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