FILM FRENZY

Jaws (Photo: Universal)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

BRAZIL (1985). The botched release of Brazil, the dystopian satire directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown, is so fascinating that a book was even written about it (Jack Mathews’ The Battle of Brazil). In short: Gilliam made an uncompromising 142-minute movie; Universal head Sid Sheinberg hated it and ordered his underlings to rework it into a 94-minute feature with a happy ending; Gilliam and Sheinberg feuded publicly; Gilliam showed his version to critics behind Sheinberg’s back, leading the Los Angeles Film Critics Association to award it Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay; and a grumpy Universal agreed to let Gilliam release a 132-minute version. Criterion is offering the full 142-minute version, and as the U.S. continues to plunge into totalitarianism, now’s as apt a time as any to watch it for its entertainment value but heed its dire warnings of the shape of things to come. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, it stars Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, an insignificant government flunky living in the type of repressive society where the landscape is plastered with PSA posters spouting such slogans as “Don’t Suspect A Friend. Report Him.” Bureaucratic incompetence and inefficiency are daily staples of his existence, so it’s not surprising he’s drawn to two individuals (Robert De Niro and Kim Greist) who might be anarchists seeking to take down the system. This is unremittingly bleak, to say the least, but it creates a world so convincing and so complete (I can’t think of another film so beholden to ductwork) that it’s a marvel to behold. Brazil earned a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Gilliam; a piece on the release controversy; an interview with Gilliam, McKeown, and Stoppard; storyboards for unfilmed sequences; and the 94-minute cut with that happy ending.

Movie: ★★★½

DEEPSTAR SIX (1989). In water, no one can hear you scream. Yes, it’s yet another Alien retread, albeit one set under the sea. DeepStar Six was also the first in a rash of ’89 releases with a nautical bent, surfacing before James Cameron’s The Abyss (reviewed here), Roger Corman’s Lords of the Deep, George P. Cosmatos’ Leviathan, and two others that were seen only by their producers’ mothers. In this one, a motley crew is assembled to help construct a missile base on the ocean floor; instead, their mucking about leads to close encounters with a prehistoric sea creature that looks like a Dune (or Tremors) worm with appendages. DeepStar Six isn’t as bad as its reputation: While there are minimal surprises and even less scares, the cast members — among them Greg Evigan (TV’s BJ and the Bear) as the submarine pilot, Taurean Blacque (TV’s Hill Street Blues) as the captain, and, best of all, Miguel Ferrer as a jittery techie — bring a sizable amount of personality to their stock characters.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director Sean S. Cunningham and visual effects supervisor James Isaac; audio commentary by screenwriters Lewis Abernathy and Geof Miller; interviews with Evigan, co-star Nancy Everhard, and stunt coordinator Kane Hodder; isolated score selections accompanied by an audio interview with composer Harry Manfredini; a vintage EPK;  behind-the-scenes footage; and an image gallery.

Movie: ★★

DROP (2025). No, the title doesn’t refer to eye drops, lemon drops or (thank the Lord) Drop Dead Fred — instead, it refers to the type of messages sent anonymously to people’s cell phones. And more power to scripters Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach for taking this inkling of an inspiration and using it to create a sturdy thriller that largely delivers. Following the mysterious death of her physically abusive husband, Violet Gates (Meghann Fahy) has been raising her troubled little boy Toby (Jacob Robinson) with the help of her sister Jen (Violett Beane). Deciding that she’s finally ready to handle a social life, she agrees to a night out with Henry Campbell (Brandon Sklenar), a photographer she found on a dating app. They meet at a trendy sky-high restaurant called Palate, but their date gets interrupted by a series of drops to her phone. She quickly realizes that the offending party is someone in the restaurant, and she’s soon informed that unless she follows all instructions, Toby will die. And one of those instructions is particularly disturbing: To save her son, she must murder Henry at the restaurant. The critics who have described this as being in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock are stretching — it makes more sense to compare this to Brian De Palma, specifically in its use of circuitous tracking shots and its tinge of Paranoia Lite. The movie’s third act is awfully protracted — the tension would have been amplified had the climactic action remained at the restaurant — and the movie’s underlying theme of domestic abuse is treated in shallow (and ultimately silly) fashion. Overall, though, this works because of its twisty plotting, memorable characters, and a handy hockey puck.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition include audio commentary by director Christopher Landon; a making-of featurette; and a piece on the creation of Palate.

Movie: ★★★

I, MADMAN (1989). Tibor Takács staked his claim to fame as the director of the low-budget 1987 horror flick The Gate, which made headlines when it opened on the same day as the far more costly Ishtar (see From Screen To Stream below) and almost edged it out for the top spot on the weekend box office chart. Takács followed that feat with I, Madman, but despite his earlier success, this one barely received a theatrical release, with most of its audience later finding it on VHS. Jenny Wright (Rob Lowe’s wife in St. Elmo’s Fire) stars as Virginia, a bookstore employee whose fascination with a pair of sordid novels written by the disturbed — and deceased — author Malcolm Brand (Randall William Cook) leads to his return as a supernatural slayer of innocent victims. Nifty and draggy in equal measure, this finally goes off the rails but has a fun time getting there. Cook not only plays the killer but also created the visual effects (he receives billing as “artistic supervisor”); years later, he would win three consecutive Academy Awards for his effects work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Takács and Cook; a making-of featurette, featuring interviews with Takács, Cook, screenwriter David Chaskin, and co-stars Clayton Rohner and Stephanie Hodge; behind-the-scenes footage, with audio commentary by Cook; a visual essay; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other titles on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★½

JAWS (1975). Watching this masterpiece for the umpteenth time, it’s easy to see why it struck (and continues to strike) such an emotional response: In much the same manner as those “giant insect” sci-fi yarns from the 1950s, it offers a frightening picture of nature gone wild, specifically the deadly “what if” ramifications of a world in which another species manages to get the upper hand on us hapless humans. It also taps into that primal fear of being afraid of the dark — in this case, the dark being represented by a churning mass of murky liquid in which it’s impossible to see the (very real) boogeyman until it’s too late. It’s expected for filmmakers to mature over the course of a lengthy career, but I’d be hard-pressed to name many subsequent Steven Spielberg flicks that blow this one away in terms of its expert direction. Spielberg was working with thin material — Peter Benchley’s source novel is pretty lousy — and the potential for disaster was enormous (more so since the mechanical shark didn’t work most of the time). But the director, drawing from a screenplay by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb that vastly improved upon the book, fashioned an instant classic whose success owes as much to his superb orchestration as to the substantial jolts and the knockout performances by Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. This went 3-for-4 at the Oscars: A nominee for Best Picture, it won for Best Original Score (one of John Williams’ greatest), Best Film Editing, and Best Sound. It was also the all-time box office champ for two years, until Star Wars came along and usurped the throne. This formidable film was followed by 1978’s watchable Jaws 2 (★★½), 1983’s laughable Jaws 3-D (★½), and 1987’s abominable Jaws: The Revenge (★).

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition include the new documentary Jaws @ 50; a making-of piece; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★★★

MURDER, SHE WROTE (1984-1996). Anyone who had caught 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d (reviewed here) upon its original theatrical release already had the inside track on knowing that Angela Lansbury could be a splendid sleuth, given that the picture cast her as Agatha Christie’s unassuming amateur detective Miss Marple. So when Murder, She Wrote co-creators Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link (the latter two also the creators of Columbo, reviewed here, and the criminally short-lived Ellery Queen) found themselves in need of a leading lady after All in the Family’s Jean Stapleton turned down the role of Jessica Fletcher, it was Lansbury who accepted the part and quickly became one of television’s all-time favorite sleuths. Ms. Fletcher is a successful mystery writer living in a small Maine town, and whenever murder most foul is committed, she’s the one who invariably cracks the case. The episodes are lively, the identity of the killer is often not immediately apparent, and Lansbury remains splendid throughout. Lasting 12 seasons, Murder, She Wrote cracked the Nielsen Top 10 list eight times (peaking at #3 in its second season) and the Top 15 rankings 11 times. Unfortunately, after the 11th season (which ranked #8), CBS elected to move the series from Sundays to Thursdays for its 12th season, where it got hammered by the first season of Friends and ended up #58 for the year. Lansbury was nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series 12 times (a record), winning zero times (also a record). The show itself was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series for its first three seasons, and, despite such luminaries as James Coburn, Janet Leigh, Margot Kidder, Jerry Orbach, and LeVar Burton (among hundreds more),  the only guest star to earn an Emmy nom was Jean Simmons for a Season Five appearance.

The mammoth Blu-ray box set holds all 264 episodes as well as the four Murder, She Wrote TV movies Lansbury made between 1997 and 2003. Extras include the Magnum, P.I. crossover episode and interviews with Lansbury and various cast and crew members.

Series: ★★★½

OLIVER! (1968). It’s amusing to note that the first and last G-rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar (although the rating has been retroactively given to some earlier films made before the current MPA system) was followed a year later by the first and last X-rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. So while Midnight Cowboy (reviewed here) is definitely one not for the kiddies, Oliver! is perfect for children who can handle its length (153 minutes) without perpetual fidgeting. Based on the stage smash (itself adapted from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist), this musical primarily benefits from marvelous casting and its smooth employment of numerous classic tunes (“Food, Glorious Food,” “Consider Yourself,” “Who Will Buy?,” etc.). Mark Lester is the titular orphan, a meek lad who falls in with a group of youthful pickpockets in London. The most skilled of the bunch is The Artful Dodger (Jack Wild), and the adult overseeing their thieving shenanigans is the verbose Fagin (Ron Moody). Fagin is sometimes in cahoots with hardened criminal Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed), who’s as nasty as his girlfriend Nancy (Shani Wallis) is kind and caring. The director of The Third Man might not have seemed the likeliest choice to helm a big-budget musical, but Carol Reed manages to accentuate the grit and gravitas of the drama without breaking the mirthful musical mood. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Moody), Supporting Actor (Wild), and Adapted Screenplay, this won five: Best Picture, Director, Adapted Score, Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Sound; Onna White also earned an honorary Oscar for her choreography.

Extras in the 4K edition include film historian audio commentary; a behind-the-scenes featurette; interviews with Moody and Lester; and Wild’s screen test.

Movie: ★★★

RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945). Hollywood’s biopics of famous composers and musical performers during the 1940s and ‘50s often didn’t work not because they were more fictional than factual but because the fabricated fiction wasn’t always that interesting or entertaining. Rhapsody in Blue is among the dreariest, a fatally overlong drama that traces the life of George Gershwin from his early years as a boy living in an NYC apartment to his early death in 1937, felled by a brain tumor at the age of 38. At least Cole Porter was played by Cary Grant in 1946’s Night and Day — poor George gets stuck with Robert Alda, who provides no personality (either his own or Gershwin’s) to his staid performance. While the movie does include some episodes drawn from real life — his collaborations with brother Ira (Herbert Rudley); Al Jolson (playing himself) launching Gershwin’s career by performing his tune “Swanee”; his friendship with Oscar Levant (also playing himself) — much of the running time is spent on his less than scintillating romances with two (fictional) women, the scrappy Julie (Joan Leslie) and the hoity-toity Christine (Alexis Smith, who would go on to play Cole Porter’s wife the following year in the aforementioned Night and Day). Oh, well, at least the music’s good great. This earned a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Scoring of a Musical and Best Sound.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray release of Rhapsody in Blue adds back approximately 10 minutes of footage, an overture of Gershwin tunes not shown outside the film’s original New York and Los Angeles premieres and therefore never seen before by the general public. The only extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★

SABRINA (1954). One year after both overnight stardom and an Oscar win for Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn was back with writer-director Billy Wilder’s Sabrina, a winning comedy featuring typically sparkling Wilder dialogue (he co-wrote the script with Samuel Taylor, author of the source play Sabrina Fair, and Ernest Lehman). Audrey’s the daughter of the proper British chauffeur (John Williams) who works for the filthy rich Larrabee family at their Long Island estate. Sabrina’s in love with irresponsible playboy David Larrabee (William Holden), but he doesn’t notice her until she returns from a Paris pilgrimage in a refined state. Older brother Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart), an all-work-and-no-play sort, fears that this relationship might interfere with the family’s business assets, so he tries to remove Sabrina from the equation by wooing her himself. Hepburn’s typically effervescent while Holden exudes mischievous charm, but it’s Bogart’s atypical portrayal that stands out. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including nods for Best Actress, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, this won for Best Black-and-White Costume Design (Edith Head). An OK remake followed in 1995, with Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear fine in the Bogart and Holden roles but bland Julia Ormond no match for Hepburn.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of featurette; a piece on Hepburn’s costumes in the film; a look at the film’s supporting players; an examination of Holden’s career at Paramount; the retrospective featurette Paramount in the ‘50s; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

FILM CLIPS

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND (2025). Directed by James Griffiths and co-written by Tom Basden and Tim Key, the 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island finds a lottery winner (Key) paying a struggling folk singer (Basden) a fortune to come to his island home and perform a private concert. Griffiths, Basden, and Key have now elected to expand their short into a feature-length film, opening up the story to accommodate more characters. Chief among the newbies is Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), who used to perform with Herb McGwyer (Basden) as the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer before a messy breakup (both professionally and personally). Key has invited both of them to his Welsh island abode, leading to the resurfacing of all manner of feelings. This is a charming seriocomedy that examines the allure of nostalgia, the reawakening of the creative spirit, and the need to form connections among even the most unlikeliest of people.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★

RUMOR HAS IT… (2005). Scripter T.M. Griffin actually comes up with a clever premise: Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) learns through a series of events that Charles Webb’s bestselling novel The Graduate was based on the experiences of her own family — specifically, the mother (now deceased) and grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) who more than 30 years earlier had slept with the same man (Kevin Costner). The hook turns out to be the most entertaining aspect of the film, as Sarah strives to learn exactly how all the pieces of the Graduate puzzle fit together. But once she becomes romantically entangled with Costner’s character, the picture grinds to a halt, losing its comic conceit and getting bogged down in the mundanity of its older man-younger woman relationship. Director Rob Reiner then proceeds to make matters worse, repeatedly mistaking frantic for funny and basically turning these initially promising characters into gibbering idiots.

There are no DVD extras.

Movie: ★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM: Minority Opinions

FOLLOW THAT DREAM (1962). The lengthy middle stretch of Elvis Presley’s film career ran almost purely on formula, while the final years contained nothing but one prize turkey after another, cinematic stink bombs on the order of 1968’s Speedway, with Elvis’ race car driver wooing Nancy Sinatra’s IRS auditor right here at Charlotte’s own Motor Speedway, and 1969’s Change of Habit, with Elvis’ Dr. John Carpenter (ha) lobbing romantic Hail Mary passes at Mary Tyler Moore’s nun. The early going, on the other hand, featured a number of quality titles: Jailhouse Rock, of course, but also efforts like Kid Galahad, King Creole, and Flaming Star. Follow That Dream is my favorite of the non-Jailhouse flicks, and for a number of reasons. For starters, Elvis has never been more likable, playing a simple yet sweet-natured kid named Toby Kwimper. Then there’s the comedy quotient, which yields a sizable number of huge laughs. Finally, there’s the plot, which even today remains rather unique: Taken from Richard Powell’s novel Pioneer, Go Home!, it focuses on Pop Kwimper (Arthur O’Connell) and his (mostly) adopted kin — son Toby, budding teenage beauty Holly (Anne Helm), and various young’uns — as they elect to homestead on a prime piece of Florida property. Even though Pop’s land grab is technically within the letter of the law, a furious state flunky (Alan Hewitt) tries to figure out how to drive the clan away; also attempting to cause waves for the family are a pair of racketeers (Jack Kruschen and Simon Oakland) who stumble upon this lawless terrain and seek to set up a permanent gambling joint. The songs may not be topflight Elvis, but they’re catchy enough; at any rate, it’s the humor that takes precedent here, as it’s a riot watching Toby foil all antagonists without even realizing that they’re trying to trick — or, in the case of the gangsters’ goons, kill — him. More than in any other of his pictures, Elvis’ easygoing demeanor and sharp timing marked him momentarily as The King of comedy.

Movie: ★★★½

THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (1994). It’s easy to understand why this was a massive commercial flop upon its original release — unwieldy title, a limited release, and the status of creators Joel and Ethan Coen as relative unknowns — but it’s harder to ascertain why it was a critical dud. Even when I first caught it back in ’94, I felt it was an absolute delight, and it has perpetually provoked the same reaction over the decades. The Coens have always been dogged by clueless critics claiming that their movies are cold and display little sympathy toward their characters, and that same charge was levied with even more vigor against this picture. Nonsense. The siblings are clearly rooting for the saga’s protagonist: Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a rube who heads to NYC in 1958 in hopes of making it in the business world. Initially, he’s only able to snag a job in the mailroom of the conglomerate Hudsucker Industries, but with the suicide of founder Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), an opportunity presents itself. The board of directors — led by the ruthless Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) — decides the only way for them to keep controlling interest is to install a complete moron as president; Mussberger picks Norville, but his best laid plans to keep stocks down get upended when the naïve small-town boy introduces an invention that takes the country by storm (“You know, for kids!”). In their early pictures, the Coens delighted in paying homage to popular film genres, and The Hudsucker Proxy, co-written with The Evil Dead‘s Sam Raimi, particularly owes thanks to the populist fables that Frank Capra and Preston Sturges produced in the ‘30s and ‘40s. As a brash, fast-talking reporter who eventually falls for Norville, Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers a robust performance that’s patterned after such screwball stars as Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby; look also for Bruce Campbell as Leigh’s cocky colleague Smitty and Anna Nicole Smith as Norville’s arm-candy for a night.

Movie: ★★★½

ISHTAR (1987). The 1980s saw the release of so many truly atrocious films (Stroker Ace, Bolero, Shanghai Surprise, etc.) that it’s absurd “Ishtar” became shorthand for the worst of the worst and continues to be blasted by nitwits who haven’t even seen it. Case in point: The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson drew a panel showing that this was the only movie available in Hell’s video store; he later caught the film, greatly enjoyed it, and subsequently apologized for the cartoon. It was apparent then, and it’s become even more apparent with the passing of time, that the movie was shamefully reviewed by critics more for its exorbitant budget than anything actually on screen. The film cost a then-hefty $40 million, and this price tag, coupled with a paltry $14 million gross, left film reviewers sputtering at the waste of so much money. Clearly, the film isn’t a total success — and, yes, it doesn’t look like it should have cost $40 million — but those who actually bother to see it will discover some very funny material within. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are Lyle Rogers and Chuck Clarke, abysmal singer-songwriters (their deliberately awful songs were penned by writer-director Elaine May and Paul Williams) who figure that the only difference between them and Simon & Garfunkel is their lack of an agent. So they hire Marty Freed (Jack Weston), who books them at a Moroccan nightclub; that benign assignment leads to them being mistaken for CIA agents, and they’re soon on the run from all manner of assassins. It’s a nice touch having Hoffman play the suave ladykiller and Beatty the bumbling introvert, and there’s a choice supporting turn from Charles Grodin as a duplicitous CIA suit (Isabelle Adjani, alas, is largely wasted as a sympathetic freedom fighter). The film experiences more than its share of lulls, but it also contains many bright set pieces (the blind camel, the arms trading scene, etc.), and the script by May is actually very pointed — and accurate — in examining the shady way that the U.S. conducts its affairs abroad.

Movie: ★★½

THE WILD GEESE (1978) / ASHANTI (1979). As a lifelong movie buff, one of the highlights of spending my formative years overseas was the opportunity to see films that were successful internationally but, for various reasons, barely released stateside. Here are two such titles, action yarns that I caught numerous times during my teen years but only sparingly as an adult.

The Wild Geese was a global smash in 1978, but by the time its American distributor, Allied Artists, was ready to debut it here, the studio went bankrupt, leading to a dismally small launch for such an A-list project. And despite the film’s success elsewhere, it still had to deal with warranted controversy, as it was frequently derided for being filmed in South Africa (and thus providing ample profits for that country’s Apartheid government). Repugnant politics aside, the movie itself is a winner, relating the story of a group of 50 mercenaries who are hired to sneak into an African country and rescue an honorable (and deposed) president (Winston Ntshona) before he’s executed. The leader of the mission is Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton), flanked by his trusted friends Rafer Janders (Richard Harris) and Shawn Flynn (Roger Moore); their assignment appears to go smoothly until a betrayal forces the team to fight its way out of hostile territory. The widely reported stories of what happened off-screen are almost as memorable as what’s taking place on it — among other tidbits, noted boozehounds Burton and Harris both remained sober throughout the film’s shoot; Harris replaced Burt Lancaster after the latter was booted for demanding too many script changes; Moore squeezed this in between the productions of two James Bond flicks; the film’s London premiere, with the Duchess of Kent in attendance, was marked by anti-apartheid protesters; and Gene Siskel named it the worst film of 1978 (interestingly, another Richard Burton vehicle from 1978, the muddled horror yarn The Medusa Touch, was Roger Ebert’s pick as the year’s worst). But for fans of such (admittedly superior) men-on-a-mission flicks like The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, this is a gripping piece of entertainment, well-scripted by 12 Angry Men scribe Reginald Rose, manned with a supporting roster of seasoned British actors, and showcasing Harris in an unexpectedly poignant role. This was followed in 1985 by a barely related sequel, Wild Geese II (reviewed here).

Unlike The Wild Geese, Ashanti isn’t nearly as stellar as it seemed to me back in the day. Still, even now I clearly like it better than star Michael Caine, who once called this the worst movie he’s ever made. Considering Caine has also starred in sizable turkeys like Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, The Island, Jaws: The Revenge, Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground, and that misbegotten Sleuth remake, that statement should be taken with a few dozen grains of salt. Focusing on the subject of modern-day slavery, the movie isn’t as exploitative as it could have been, but neither is it as hard-hitting as the topic requires. Caine and African-American supermodel Beverly Johnson play David and Anansa Linderby, U.N. doctors working in Africa. Anansa is snatched by slave traders led by the notorious Suleiman (Peter Ustinov), and David is forced to team up with a revenge-driven Bedouin (Kabir Bedi) to locate and rescue his missing wife. An amusing Ustinov overacts with zeal, big-name stars like William Holden, Rex Harrison, and Omar Sharif pop up in colorless parts, and Indian actor Bedi (a childhood fave thanks to his starring role in the 1976 Italian miniseries Sandokan) makes a rare but welcome appearance in an English-language feature film (four years later, he would play the villainous henchman Gobinda in the 007 entry Octopussy). Aldo Tonti’s panoramic lensing (the movie was shot in gorgeous Kenya although the story is set further north) and Michael Melvoin’s fine score help turn this into a glossy guilty pleasure.

The Wild Geese: ★★★½

Ashanti: ★★½