TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Today TCM salutes the movies of Warren Oates – and while Oates may be considered a relatively minor star in the Hollywood constellation, he’s still turned in some very impressive performances in a wide range of Hollywood films. Among them is this 1973 character study by the enigmatic director Terrence Malick, a gorgeously shot film based on an actual crime spree across the Midwest by a young psychopath and his seemingly willing young female accomplice. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star, and, as young actors, turn in almost unbelievably believable and unmannered performances as impulsive young killers.
Starz!, 9:00 p.m. ET
This 2001 film stars Johnny Depp as real-life drug dealer George Jung, whose rise to the top of the cocaine trade in the U.S. in the 1970s. But it’s Penelope Cruz, as his volatile girlfriend, who manages the rare feat of stealing scenes from Depp. She plays a much less likable role here than in most of her films, and she seems to relish the opportunity, sizzling and snarling as Depp’s Jung gets more and more connected, and more and more reckless.
PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET
There must be easier ways to seek excitement and advance your wannabe film career. In 2006, a young man named Matthew VanDyke got off his suburban couch, grabbed his film camera and shipped himself off to the Middle East, with plans to join some dangerous civil or military conflict and film himself doing something heroic. He ended up in the middle of the civil war in Libya, and Point and Shoot is built, in part, around the footage he shot there. Meanwhile, those around him were shooting other things than footage. Check local listings.
TNT, 10:00 p.m. ET
SEASON FINALE: It’s the end of the Dustin Maker trial, and the end of the season, but not without another suspect surfacing at the last moment in this season-long murder case.
TCM, 2:00 a.m. ET
As one of the final entries in today’s salute to Warren Oates, TCM at 2 a.m. ET presents one of the more infamous movies of the 1960s: Sam Peckinpah’s gritty Western The Wild Bunch, which in 1969 was widely derided, and just as widely hailed, for its slow-motion “ballet” of violence. Today, the gunplay in The Wild Bunch wouldn’t even register as extreme, much less spark a national debate. But times and tastes change, and this is one of the films that helped change them. William Holden, Robert Ryan star.