KSPS to screen ‘Guns of Navarone’ on Saturday

Going to the movies is a great way to spend your free time. Sometimes, though, you'd rather just stay home, pop your own popcorn and watch something in the comfort of your own living room.

And with all the streaming options available these days, that option is more popular then ever.

Still, even with all the services such as Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV and Amazon Prime (among others), some of the more traditional ways of watching movies remain viable. Even, at times, essential.

One of those ways is "Saturday Night Cinema," the weekly movie show offered on Saturday nights by Spokane's Public Television station KSPS. The show revels in presenting a variety of motion pictures, of all genres, for anyone who cares to tune in.

At 8 p.m. on Saturday night, for example, the featured movie is "The Guns of Navarone," J. Lee Thompson's 1961 study of a desperate World War II mission to destroy a German gun emplacement. Among the stars are Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and Irene Pappas.

Presenter Shaun O’L. Higgins will host Saturday's screening and will no doubt say something about Carl Foreman, the author of screenplays for "High Noon" and "Bridge on the River Kwai," who produced the film from a script that he adapted from Alistair MacLean's novel.

"Say this, too," wrote the sometimes priggish New York Times critic Bosley Crowther. "Even though the picture runs more than two hours and a half, it moves swiftly and gets where it is going. J. Lee Thompson has directed it with pace and has seen to it that the actors give the impression of being stout and bold."

What was it I was saying about tradition?