FILM FRENZY

Jenna Ortega in Death of a Unicorn (Photo: A24)

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.)

BARRY LYNDON (1975). Stanley Kubrick made his fair share of controversial conversation starters — everything from Lolita and 2001: A Space Odyssey to A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut — but his three-hour adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon fosters heated debate not so much for its narrative content but rather for what many perceive as its lack thereof. So while many consider it brilliant (including Martin Scorsese, whose own excellent period drama The Age of Innocence was obviously inspired by it), others find it about as exciting as folding socks. Ryan O’Neal stars as the title character, an 18th century social climber whose life takes a series of unexpected turns. Over the years, circumstances cast him as a callow youth, a soldier, a gambler, a spy, an aristocrat, a family man, and, finally and irrevocably, an utter failure. O’Neal’s performance has been faulted as bland, yet he’s the perfect receptacle for the character’s many facades (not unlike Woody Allen’s Zelig, he’s able to adapt to any situation), and his character furthermore fits snugly into Kubrick’s repeated theme of the corruptibility of man. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, Barry Lyndon earned four: Best Cinematography, Art Direction-Set Decoration, Costume Design, and Music Adaptation.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of featurette; a look at the great production designer Ken Adam; and a pair of pieces on the film’s visual opulence.

Movie: ★★★½

DEATH OF A UNICORN (2025). Of all the shows enjoyed by our 6-year-old daughter over the years, the best is by far (repeat, by far) Australia’s animated Bluey. Placing second would be My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (the 2010-2019 series, not the inferior MLP shows that came before and after), which to my surprise holds great appeal for adults as well as kids (and, no, I’m not a “brony”; I don’t want to have sex with the toon unicorns and horses seen in the series). Heaven forbid our kid ever stumbles across Death of a Unicorn, which takes the gentle, loving creature of folkloric fame and turns it into Jason Voorhees. The film piles on the gore, placing it in service of a yarn in which widower Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are traveling to a mountain retreat when their car strikes a unicorn. Once it’s dead, Elliot continues to the retreat and hands it over to his boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), a contemptible millionaire with an equally loathsome wife (Téa Leoni) and equally despicable grown son (Will Poulter). Learning that the unicorn has recuperative powers, Odell has his team of scientists experiment on it, planning to make millions off its healing abilities — unfortunately for him and the other humans, the unicorn is actually a baby, with the far more imposing mommy and daddy unicorns on their way to kill everyone. Debuting writer-director Alex Scharfman’s satiric potshots at the one-percenters are obvious swipes at easy targets, and the CGI work is shaky — nevertheless, the unique premise and some effective set-pieces make this worth a glance.

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Scharfman; a making-of featurette; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★½

EXECUTIVE SUITE (1954). An all-star cast populates this entertaining drama that makes a skyscraper boardroom seem as filled with conflict, combat, and open wounds as any WWII battlefield. The president of a leading furniture manufacturing company has just dropped dead, and his five VPs are left wondering who should succeed him. Fred Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) isn’t aggressive enough, Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas) isn’t bright enough, and Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger) is planning to retire. Loren Shaw (Fredric March), the type of businessman who values the dollar above all else, covets the position and seems likely to get it, but complicating his ascendancy is Don Walling (William Holden), an idealistic sort who might be too young for the role but decides to go for it anyway. Before the final vote by the board of directors — the five VPs plus unscrupulous stockholder George Caswell (Louis Calhern) and Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), the late founder’s daughter and the late president’s mistress — various characters will resort to cajoling, castigating, and even blackmailing to produce their desired result. June Allyson co-stars as Walling’s wife while Shelley Winters appears as Dudley’s secretary/mistress. Like last year’s Conclave, Executive Suite bears the structure of a murder-mystery, replacing whodunnit? with whogetsit? This earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Nina Foch (quite good as the late president’s faithful secretary).

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Wall Street director Oliver Stone and the 1954 Tom & Jerry cartoon Hic-Cup Pup.

Movie: ★★★

GET CARTER (1971). Michael Caine is more than able in this excellent Brit crime flick from writer-director Mike Hodges (adapting Ted Lewis’ novel Jack’s Return Home). Caine is coolly collected Jack Carter, a low-level London gangster who returns to his Newscastle stomping grounds to investigate the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death. His bosses back in London don’t want him stirring up trouble and the Newcastle mobsters warn him to leave town, but he ignores all of them and makes his way through a seedy assortment of thugs, alternately questioning them and pummeling them depending on what the situation requires. Caine is terrific as the ruthless hoodlum with an oddball sense of humor and a slashing way with words (“I had almost forgotten what your eyes look like,” he tells another bloke. “Still the same. Piss-holes in the snow.”), and Hodges and cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky stage the proceedings in a manner that’s appropriately gritty and occasionally flamboyant (love the overhead shot of the car-and-foot chase). A useless remake followed in 2000, with Sylvester Stallone in the Caine role (insert LOL here) and Caine also on board in a small role (insert sad-face emoji here). Caine, Hodges, and producer Michael Klinger reunited the very next year for the cheeky Pulp, co-starring Mickey Rooney (and reviewed here).

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Caine, Hodges, and Suschitzky, and three theatrical trailers.

Movie: ★★★½

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (1965). Nineteen-sixty-five saw the release of not one but two dramas in which a small plane goes down in an African desert and the survivors are forced to contend with each other as well as the elements. From Hollywood came The Flight of the Phoenix, which, while a box office underachiever, did sport a great cast (James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, George Kennedy, and more), earned two Oscar nominations and three Golden Globe noms (including Best Picture, Drama), and is fondly remembered today by many film fans. From Britain came Sands of the Kalahari, which was also a box office failure and also featured a solid cast. But it had zero presence on the awards circuit and is mostly forgotten today. In this one, the plane is hit by swarming locusts, resulting in a crash that kills the co-pilot and leaves the captain (Nigel Davenport) and the five passengers stranded. The only American (Stuart Whitman) is a macho hunter who’s willing to sacrifice everyone else to ensure his own survival; the only woman (Susannah York) is weak-willed and afraid; and the captain is rough and rapey — there’s also an alcoholic engineer (Stanley Baker, who also produced), an amiable doctor (Theodore Bikel), a sensible German (Harry Andrews), and lots of threatening baboons. This is an extremely frustrating film, with a storyline that takes the least interesting path at every turn, capable actors playing characters who are only half-formed, and every cathartic moment badly bungled.

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other films on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★

SHANE (1953). A simple story embellished with astute character observations and majestic moviemaking, this Western classic finds Alan Ladd portraying the titular figure, a former gunfighter who helps a homestead family (Van Heflin as the dad, Jean Arthur as the mom, Brandon de Wilde as the young son) against the cattle ranchers trying to swipe their land. When Shane proves to be too much to handle, the cattlemen hire a cold-blooded gunslinger (Jack Palance, oozing menace from every pore) to do their dirty work. It’s the attention to the individual relationships Shane enjoys with each family member that really makes this work — that and the portrait-worthy shots captured by lenser Loyal Griggs. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (both de Wilde and Palance), Director (George Stevens), and Screenplay (A.R. Guthrie Jr.), this won Griggs the statue for Best Cinematography, Color. Shane has influenced countless motion pictures, including 1985’s Pale Rider (reviewed here) with Clint Eastwood’s measured homages and 2017’s Logan with its ham-fisted namedropping. Mostly lost to history is the fact that a short-lived TV adaptation appeared in 1966 — starring David Carradine as Shane, it only lasted 17 episodes.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by author/film historian Alan K. Rode (the upcoming monograph Shane); audio commentary by the director’s son, George Stevens Jr., and associate producer Ivan Moffat; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

THE SILENT SCREAM (1979). I guess this ultimately is neither here nor there, but I (and pretty much everyone else) have gone 45 years — ever since the movie’s wide release in 1980 — believing the title to be Silent Scream. No jury would convict me for my assumption, as every single poster, newspaper ad, trailer, TV promo, reference/review book (including Leonard Maltin’s essential Movie Guide and John Stanley’s popular Creature Features), and VHS/DVD/Blu-ray box copy have tagged it as such. It was only last week, when watching the film for the first time, that I saw its official onscreen title is The Silent Scream. I have to wonder if even cast and crew members ever knew the actual moniker. At any rate, this is a dog under any name, with an interesting assortment of aging has-beens merging with a dull collection of young never-weres to produce an increasingly dopey chiller. Cameron Mitchell and Avery Schreiber (now there’s a team made for an inane ‘80s sitcom!) are cast as detectives investigating the strange goings-on at an oceanside mansion that’s been turned into a boarding house for college students. When one of the kids gets murdered, it’s possible that the owner (The Munsters’ Yvonne De Carlo) might be involved. And what’s up with that nutty lady (horror icon Barbara Steele) living within the walls? Silent Scream — excuse me, The Silent Scream gets worse as it stumbles along, with too much filler material (the cop and college kid stuff) and not enough thriller elements.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Steele; audio commentary by leading lady Rebecca Balding and writers Jim and Ken Wheat; and an audio interview with director Denny Harris.

Movie: ★½

ULTIMATE GANGSTERS COLLECTION: CLASSIC (1931-1949). Back during Hollywood’s Golden Age, MGM boasted that it had more stars than there were in Heaven. Maybe so, but the studio whose lineup was truly celestial was Warner Bros. — its stable included Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, and Errol Flynn. While MGM focused on musicals, Universal produced horror movies, and everyone made Westerns, Warner opted to put its muscle behind crime flicks, many centering on powerful gangsters who were eventually brought down not only by their own egos or their double-crossing associates but also by the era’s fearful censors, those moral watchdogs who insisted that crime should never pay — at least not on movie screens.

The lineup kicks off with Little Caesar (1931), in which gangster Caesar Enrico Bandello rises through the ranks of the mob underworld with alarming speed and plummets almost as quickly. Mervyn LeRoy’s creaky direction dates this early talkie, but Edward G. Robinson’s sensational performance in his star-making role has never lost any of its power. Robinson was absurdly denied an Academy Award nomination for his forceful turn (indeed, he remains the greatest actor never to have received an Oscar nomination for anything), but the film did score one for Best Writing, Adaptation.

The formula was repeated with The Public Enemy (1931), which similarly earned a bundle of money and likewise shot its leading man into the cinematic stratosphere. Here, it’s James Cagney, whose charismatic turn as violent criminal Tom Powers perfectly lines up with William A. Wellman’s inventive direction and a risqué, pre-Production Code script that includes Cagney’s famous smackdown of Mae Clarke with a grapefruit in the kisser. Cagney was absurdly denied an Academy Award nomination for his vibrant turn (unlike Robinson, he at least went on to earn three career nominations and one win), but the film did score one for Best Writing, Original Story.

The Petrified Forest (1936) is the atypical film of the bunch. Based on Robert E. Sherwood’s stage hit, it casts Leslie Howard as a philosophical writer who stumbles across a desolate Arizona eatery and proceeds to alternately debate and woo waitress Bette Davis. Plenty of screen time passes before Humphrey Bogart’s murderous Duke Mantee even shows up at the café and takes everyone hostage, but the two dissimilar parts of the film coalesce nicely to form a riveting whole. (On a side note, this was the first time I noticed a sign in a movie that read, “Tipping Is Un-American. Keep Your Change.” The reason was not that customers were encouraged to be cheap but because there was a fear that restaurant owners would use this in place of fair wages and workers’ rights. Being the U.S., though, that’s exactly what happened.)

White Heat (1949) is the pinnacle of the pack, with Cagney delivering his best performance this side of his Oscar-winning work in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He’s Cody Jarrett, a psychotic killer plagued by crippling headaches, burdened with a scheming wife (Virginia Mayo), and loved by an elderly mom (Margaret Wycherly) who can be just as ruthless as her baby boy. The explosive “Top of the world, Ma!” climax has long been an acknowledged staple of classic cinema, although the scene that always sticks with me is when Jarrett “helpfully” adds some airholes to a car trunk with a man trapped inside. Like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, White Heat earned a solitary Oscar nomination for its words (Best Writing, Motion Picture Story) but nothing for its leading man’s mercurial turn.

Each movie in this collection arrives complete with film historian audio commentary, an incisive featurette detailing the history of the film (naturally, Martin Scorsese is among the knowledgeable talking heads), and Leonard Maltin hosting “Warner Night at the Movies,” which, emulating the moviegoing experience from decades past, includes a newsreel, a short film, a cartoon, and a theatrical trailer before the main attraction. The set also includes a bonus DVD that contains the feature-length 2008 documentary Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film as well as several gangster-themed cartoons.

Little Caesar: ★★★½

The Public Enemy: ★★★½

The Petrified Forest: ★★★½

White Heat: ★★★★

WARFARE (2025). Teaming up with director Alex Garland (Civil War, Annihilation), former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza turned to his memories to forge this harrowing picture about a specific skirmish that took place during the Iraq War. In 2006, in the city of Ramadi, a platoon of Navy SEALs finds itself trapped inside an apartment building as the enemy closes in. Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai portrays Mendoza, while other familiar faces belong to Will Poulter (also in Death of a Unicorn), Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn, and Riverdale’s Charles Melton. Some scribes and publicists have stated that this picture places the viewer in a you-are-there position more than any past war flick, but I wouldn’t say that’s exactly accurate (1917, for one, instantly springs to mind). Nevertheless, the film works as a visual and aural assault on our senses as well as a tribute to those who serve their country. No mention of the politics behind the war are mentioned, which is wise, but there’s also little to distinguish one soldier from the next, with each man painted with the most minimal of strokes. The first half is by far the strongest stretch, with the men observing and strategizing as they hunker down in the house; the second part, which revs up the action to 11, doesn’t stand apart in any discernible way from similar scenes in other modern-warfare movies (e.g. Black Hawk Down).

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Garland, Mendoza, and military consultant Brian Philpot, and a making-of featurette.

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940) / RAWHIDE (1951). Before Robert Redford came along later in her life, my mom’s go-to Hollywood hunk was Tyrone Power. She was hardly alone in her swooning — although she one-upped many of her fellow fans by actually getting to meet him and obtaining his autograph … and then meekly having to ask him to please return her pen, which he had absentmindedly pocketed. A dashing matinee idol and sex symbol, Power was a popular draw in various types of films during the late 1930s and the 1940s, including such hits as 1939’s Jesse James and 1946’s The Razor’s Edge. Unfortunately, his life was cut short by a heart attack in 1958, at the young age of 44. Here are two of his starring features — the first is justly famous, while the second could use a little more exposure.

The character of Zorro, created in print by Johnston McCulley, has been at the center of over 50 films and television productions, including the 1920 silent smash The Mark of Zorro (starring Douglas Fairbanks), the popular Disney TV series from the 1950s (with Guy Williams), and the 1998 hit The Mask of Zorro (Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins). Equally adored is the spirited 1940 production The Mark of Zorro, with Power cast as Don Diego Vega, the seemingly fey aristocrat who dons a black mask and fights against injustice as the swashbuckling El Zorro (“The Fox” in Spanish). Power is excellent as both fop and fox, and his swordfight with Basil Rathbone (as the dastardly Captain of the Guard Esteban) is just one of the many highlights in this exciting adventure yarn. Alfred Newman’s robust score snagged an Oscar nomination.

A vastly underrated Western, Rawhide benefits from both a taut scenario and a top assembly of actors. Power ably handles the role of Tom Owens, a worker at a stagecoach rest stop that’s overtaken by escaped desperado Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) and his three accomplices. Zimmerman plans to rob the coach due to pull into the station the following morning — to coerce Owens into helping him, he threatens the life of a woman (Susan Hayward) who’s stranded at the stop with her infant daughter. Rawhide plays as much like a thriller as a Western, and character actor Jack Elam lands one of his best roles as the most evil of Zimmerman’s crew.

The Mark of Zorro: ★★★½

Rawhide: ★★★½

THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS (1958). Inspired by 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, this low-budget chiller similarly finds a murderous sea dweller making life miserable for the hapless humans who cross its path. In this case, it’s the residents of a small coastal town, including the grumpy lighthouse keeper (John Harmon), his grown daughter (Jeanne Carmen), her boyfriend (Don Sullivan), and the local doctor (Les Tremayne) and sheriff (Forrest Lewis). A couple of gory moments are particularly shocking for the time, and I personally found the monster design a bit more impressive than did the film’s many detractors. Still, some clumsy plotting (especially toward the end) and an overly familiar template render this no more than average. Spoiler Alert: The dog dies, for those who want to steel themselves ahead of time.

Movie: ★★

SMART MONEY (1931). Only one time did Hollywood legends James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson share the screen, and it was in the same year that The Public Enemy and Little Caesar (both reviewed above) respectively made them overnight successes. Premiering a few months after both gangster flicks, this finds Robinson clearly essaying the larger role — he plays a small-town barber who becomes a big-city gambling lord. Cagney lends sporadic support as his assistant. This was also the year in which Boris Karloff achieved screen immortality for Frankenstein, and he pops up in an uncredited part as an underhanded gambler. Smart Money earned an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story, thus pitting it against The Public Enemy (both lost to The Dawn Patrol).

Movie: ★★★

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) One of Walt Disney’s earliest live-action pictures still remains one of the best, with top-flight production values and a standout cast adding clout to this classy adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel. James Mason tackles the iconic role of Captain Nemo, the mad genius who picks up three shipwreck survivors — a harpooner (Kirk Douglas), a French professor (Paul Lukas), and the latter’s assistant (Peter Lorre) — and proceeds to hold them captive aboard his futuristic submarine, the Nautilus. A huge box office hit in its day, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is fondly remembered for the climactic battle with the giant squid. This earned a pair of Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, with an additional nomination for Best Film Editing.

Movie: ★★★½

WILD IN THE STREETS (1968). Wild in the Streets certainly didn’t lack for success: It was a box office winner, it later became a cult favorite, it earned an Oscar nomination (a rarity for an AIP production) for Best Film Editing, and it led to both a hit soundtrack and a hit single (“Shape of Things to Come”). But even acknowledging it as a sign of the times, it comes off as awfully obvious in its satiric implications, making easy points while limping its way toward a daft denouement. Christopher Jones plays rock star Max Frost, who teams up with a U.S. Senator (Hal Holbrook) in order to pursue his own goals of having the voting age lowered to 14 and everyone 30 and over deemed irrelevant. Shelley Winters appears as one of her patented harridans (in this case, Max’s mom), while Richard Pryor turns up in only his second film appearance, co-starring as drummer Stanley X.

Movie: ★★

YELLOW SKY (1948). Like Rawhide above, here’s another Western that’s ripe for rediscovery. After nearly perishing while crossing punishing salt flats, a gang of bank robbers led by Stretch Dawson (Gregory Peck) finds itself in the once-prosperous town of Yellow Sky, now deserted except for an old prospector (James Barton) and his granddaughter Mike (Anne Baxter, seriously sexy in tomboy mode). The smartest member of Stretch’s gang (Richard Widmark) wants the gold that the pair are hiding; the vilest member (John Russell) wants the gold and the girl. For his part, Stretch tries to remain a hardcore criminal but finds himself increasingly attracted to Mike. From its nod in the direction of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to its imaginatively staged final gunfight, Yellow Sky takes some unusual detours that allow it to stand out from the pack.

Movie: ★★★

YOU’LL FIND OUT (1940). This slender but likable comedy serves as a showcase for wildly popular bandleader-radio star Kay Kyser, who even manages to include his famed “Kollege of Musical Knowledge” routine into the proceedings. The plot finds Kay and his band members, including comedian Ish Kabibble (referenced in a classic episode of All in the Family) and singer Ginny Simms, journeying to a secluded mansion for a birthday gathering. There, they encounter a dapper judge (Boris Karloff), an oily medium (Bela Lugosi), and a fake psychiatrist (Peter Lorre), all of whom possibly have murder on the mind. Despite the presence of Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre, this can hardly be deemed a horror flick, but it’s great to see these three legends sharing the same screen as cohorts in crime. This earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (“I’d Know You Anywhere”).

Movie: ★★½