Big screen

Opening Friday

Zero Dark Thirty (R) Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal ( The Hurt Locker) unite for this tense procedural focusing on a CIA agent (Jessica Chastain) who participated in the post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade. Already controversial for claiming the CIA’s use of water boarding torture led to useful information (something the agency denies), the movie is also destined to be an Oscar magnet, especially for Chastain, who is the one to beat for Best Actress.

The Impossible (PG-13) Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star as a married couple vacationing with their three sons in Thailand when the 2004 tsunami hit. Based on an incredible true story.

Promised Land (R) Gus Van Sant directed this low-key drama about two representatives of a natural gas company (Matt Damon and Frances McDormand) who try to convince the denizens of a small town to let them drill in their land. John Krasinski is one of the locals opposed to the idea. Damon and Krasinski also co-wrote the screenplay.

Hyde Park on the Hudson (R) Bill Murray is President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Olivia Williams plays his wife Eleanor as they host the King and Queen of England during a weekend in June 1939. Laura Linney plays the distant cousin having an affair with the President.

Not Fade Away (R) Sopranos creator David Chase makes his big-screen directorial debut with this semi-autobiographical story of three best friends growing up in suburban New Jersey who decide to form a rock band in 1964.

Rene Rodriguez

Small screen

Them! (8 p.m. Sunday, Turner Classic Movies) That whole Maya end-of-the-world thing was kind of disappointing. See what you missed with this 1954 film in which giant ants take over the world, or at least the Los Angeles sewer system, and eat everybody. The first of an entire genre of films in which giant bugs, birds and even bunnies (honest — Night Of The Lepus, 1972) wreak havoc on humanity.

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (9:30 p.m. Tuesday, WPBT-PBS 2) Joel Grey narrates this documentary on the role of Jewish composers and lyricists played in the creation of the modern American musical.

Shark Tank (9 p.m. Friday, ABC) Christmas may be over, but Internet zillionaire Mark Cuban gives a pretty convincing imitation of It’s A Wonderful Life’s Mr. Potter as he slaps around contestants trying to get him to invest in their fledging companies on this hardball business-competition show.

True Justice (9 p.m. Friday, Reelz) As the second season debuts, badges?-we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-badges cop Elijah Kane (Steven Seagal) has joined the CIA. U.S. foreign policy will never be the same.

Glenn Garvin

Let Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin program your TiVo! Just click on his best bets for the week at http://www3.tivo.com/tivo-tco/mix/index.do