In Only the Lonely (CBS Sunday at...

In Only the Lonely (CBS Sunday at 9 p.m.), writer-director Chris Columbus (making his first film after “Home Alone”) gets caught in a limbo between archetypal comedy and TV drama naturalism. The casting of John Candy as a bachelor Chicago cop and Maureen O’Hara, in her first film since 1971, as his domineering, opinionated mother, is really inspired. It’s not the gem it wants to be, but this 1991 release is not just a movie only a mother could love.

At its best, the 1992 hit The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.) is a nasty psychological thriller with a joker up its sleeve. As a demented nanny, Rebecca De Mornay has a perfect prettiness. So does the rural Tacoma location, which director Curtis Hanson uses for its Norman Rockwell overtones. Amanda Silver’s script, although predictable, is onto something: The upwardly mobile parents, hoping to enrich their lives, unwittingly bring the danger of the unknown into their home.

Thelma & Louise (NBC Monday at 8:30 p.m.), that 1991 feminist love-on-the-run thriller, finds two Arkansas chums (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) forced into a Peckinpah-style flight to Mexico, when one of them shoots and kills a would-be rapist. Their flight is goofy and mistake-ridden but as they keep going, their grasp at freedom makes them wilder and more joyous. The cast is an ensemble knockout and director Ridley Scott’s visualization of Callie Khouri’s script crackles. It’s a gorgeous, exhilarating movie that carries you right over the edge.

The hyperventilating 1989 thriller Dead Calm (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.) is a smart, seductive piece of real movie making. Directed by Philip Noyce, it has every loophole covered--almost--and a superlative cast: Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane.