TCM Highlights: December 29-January 4 & Full January 2026 Calendar

It’s the last week of the year, and TCM is sending 2025 off with a bang, with the final week of the channel’s tribute to Merle Oberon, a marathon of films from Hud director Martin Ritt, and a New Year’s Eve tribute to new beginnings featuring Sleepless in Seattle. Plus, kick off 2026 with a Frank Capra mini-marathon, a sci-fi Saturday that includes a screening of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and airings of Citizen Kane, Sophie’s Choice, and more.

Just looking for the full January calendar for the month? Scroll to the bottom to download.

Monday, December 29

Directed by Martin Ritt

Beginning at 6am

The day is devoted to seven movies directed by Martin Ritt, including Paul Newman‘s Western Hud (1963), the inspirational Sounder (1972) with Cicely Tyson and the Hollywood blacklist drama The Front (1976), led by Woody Allen. Two of Ritt’s other films are making their debut on TCM. The Molly Maguires (1970) pits a leader (Sean Connery) of an Irish American coal-miner gang secretly battling their bosses in the late 1800s against an undercover agent (Richard Harris) infiltrating their organization by pretending to be sympathetic to their cause. Right after Maguires, Kirk Douglas headlines The Brotherhood (1968) as a reluctant mafioso hiding out in Sicily after taking revenge for his assassinated father. Rounding out the lineup are The Outrage (1964) and Paris Blues (1961).

Tuesday, December 30

Star of the Month: Merle Oberon

Beginning at 8pm

Everett Collection

Turner Classic Movies’ monthlong salute to legendary actor Merle Oberon concludes tonight with five of her films. The lineup kicks off with the noir thriller Berlin Express (1948) and finds Oberon in an almost unrecognizable role as a French secretary to an influential peacemaker (Paul Lukas); followed by the romance Night Song (1947), where she plays a socialite impressed by a nightclub pianist (Dana Andrews); and 1939’s The Lion Has Wings, where every class of Britain bands together to repel the German Blitz. Concluding the marathon are Deep in My Heart (1954) and Hotel (1967).

Wednesday, December 31

New Beginnings (New Year’s Eve)

Beginning at 8pm

Out with the old, in with the new! There’s no better way to ring in the new year than with films that represent fresh starts. Catch Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary, the 2001 romantic comedy film starring Zellweger as a 32-year-old single British woman who, on New Year’s Eve, makes a vow to turn her life around. The result? Affection from two men: childhood friend Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and publishing company boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Immediately following, watch Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. in 1994’s Only You, where a young woman’s search for her soulmate leads her to Italy — and a surprising destiny. Other films in late night include Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Diner (1982) and Metropolitan (1990).

Thursday, January 1

Star of the Month: Jean Arthur

Beginning at 8pm

Jean Arthur, who was once quoted as saying, “I guess I became an actress because I didn’t want to be myself,” plied her talent at pretending under the direction of some of Hollywood’s most notable filmmakers, including John Ford, George Stevens and Frank Capra. TCM features many of Arthur’s finest performances in a retrospective all five Thursday nights this month, beginning on New Year’s Day with an Arthur/Capra film marathon of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and You Can’t Take It With You (1938).

Friday, January 2

TCM Spotlight: Flashback Fridays

Beginning at 8pm

Everett Collection

In a clever take on the Flashback Friday theme, every Friday on TCM in January is devoted to films whose story is told in flashbacks. Tonight, viewers are treated to the tale of Citizen Kane (1941), in which fictional newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane’s dying word sets a reporter on a search for clues in Kane’s life story that would uncover the word’s meaning. Next is the Japanese classic Rashomon (1950), in which a samurai warrior’s murder is told from different perspectives, including that of his wife, the bandit who likely killed him, and the spirit of the samurai himself. Sophie’s Choice (1982), starring the film’s Oscar winner Meryl Streep, reveals in flashback a heart-wrenching decision forced upon a woman in Nazi Germany. 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful stars Kirk Douglas as an abusive movie producer who calls back the three people he treated the worst to make one more film. Finally, in Penny Serenade (1941), a woman (Irene Dunne) relives her now-troubled marriage while playing records that remind her of its highs and lows.

Saturday, January 3

’50s Sci-Fi

Beginning at 8pm

Everett Collection

It was the Cold War era, and what better way to manage real fears about terrifying objects hurtling out of the skies than to replace them with imaginary fears about space invasions? In tonight’s offering, TCM presents three sci-fi films from the 1950s that are highly reflective of America’s mood and terrors of the time. The evening begins with When Worlds Collide (1951), in which a star and its accompanying habitable planet are on a collision course with Earth. A chosen few are selected to rocket to the new planet to save humanity, but will they make it there before our own terra is blasted to smithereens? 1956’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers features the work of special effects master Ray Harryhausen, whose depictions here of extraterrestrial spacecraft were imitated in even more films and on TV for decades to come. Lastly, brace yourself for The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). An encounter with aliens allows Nancy (Allison Hayes) to assume gargantuan proportions. In her empowered state, she is now the perfect size for exacting revenge on her no-good husband.

Sunday, January 4

Barry Levinson Double Feature

Beginning at 8pm

The film that did much to raise public consciousness about a then-little-known condition called autism, Rain Man (1988) is the first of two features by Oscar-winning director and writer Barry Levinson presented by TCM tonight. The story of two brothers who barely knew each other growing up — one a much older autistic savant (Dustin Hoffman), the other a young and unscrupulous financial wheeler-dealer (Tom Cruise) — who embark on a life-changing road trip garnered four Oscar wins. More dear to his heart than big projects like Rain Man, however, is Baltimore-born Levinson’s lesser-known semiautobiographical films about his home city. One of these, Avalon (1990), the second of tonight’s films, relates the generational tale of a Polish-Jewish immigrant family from the arrival of several brothers in Baltimore in the early 20th century through to the lives of their children and grandchildren in the 1940s. Stars Armin Mueller-Stahl as the family patriarch, Aidan Quinn as his son, Jules, and Elijah Wood as grandson Michael (aka the young Barry Levinson).

Click here to download the printable December 2025 TCM schedule.

Click here to download the printable January 2026 TCM schedule.

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