Sweet Smell of Success (TMC Wednesday at...

Sweet Smell of Success (TMC Wednesday at 2:45 a.m.). Alexander Mackendrick’s superb 1957 film from Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman’s script from Lehman’s short story remains among the most corrosive of American movies. Burt Lancaster, as a Walter Winchell-like Broadway columnist, and Tony Curtis as an ambitious press agent, are dazzling.

Two by Juzo Itami on Bravo Thursday: The Funeral (at 6 and 11 p.m.) is Itami’s scathing social comedy about a family funeral coming apart at the seams, while in Tampopo (at 8:05 p.m., Friday at 1:05 a.m.) Itami has fun with movie genres as a Clint Eastwood-like trucker blows into a grungy Tokyo noodle shop; a comment on the connection between food and sex is made with comic lustiness. Tsutomu Yamazaki and Nobuko Miyamoto star in both.

Roger & Me (Cinemax Thursday at 10 p.m.). Michael Moore does such a splendid job of finding outrageous humor in the plight of the folks of Flint, Mich., in the wake of plant closures by General Motors that it’s too bad he needlessly plays fast and loose with the facts (which probably cost him an Oscar). Even so, he succeeds in making serious points by inciting laughter.