FILM FRENZY

David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider (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.)

COBRA (1986). Coming off a potent 1985 in which Sylvester Stallone starred in the second and third highest grossing films of the year (the $150 million hit Rambo: First Blood Part II and the $127 million earner Rocky IV, both topped only by Back to the Future‘s $210 million), it was expected that his next project would yield similarly gargantuan grosses. Instead, Cobra was pummeled at the box office by Top Gun, earning only a disappointing $49 million (as expected, its global take was more sizable). The punchline is that, frightened by the immediate success of Top Gun (which opened first), Stallone demanded that Cobra be brutally edited down from 120 minutes to 87 minutes to allow an extra show a day — the plan didn’t help with its financial gains but it sure helped in serving up a choppy and disjointed movie. In what basically amounts to a cut-rate Dirty Harry rip-off (complete with two Dirty Harry actors in Reni Santoni and Andrew Robinson), Stallone stars as Lieutenant Cobretti, a maverick cop out to stop an army of psychos set on establishing a new world order by killing a few random strangers here and there (their mission statement must have gone MIA during the editing process, since none of this really makes sense). Sly’s attempts at humor land with the force of an anvil, although there are enough unintentional guffaws to make up for it: The performances are as overripe as past-their-prime melons, and there’s also some glorious ‘80s cheese on tap in the scenes in which a model (Brigitte Nielsen, Stallone’s then-wife for 19 months) poses with some oversized robots during a kitschy photo shoot. I’m sure it was movies like Cobra and Rhinestone that led Redneck-in-Chief Donnie Trump to make Stallone a Kennedy Center honoree, but I digress.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director George P. Cosmatos and a vintage making-of featurette.

Movie: ★½

DARK VICTORY (1939). “Who wants to see a dame go blind?” bellowed studio head Jack Warner when Bette Davis asked him to produce Dark Victory as her next vehicle. Fortunately, Bette got her way, meaning that Warner Bros. in turn got a sizable box office hit and film fans got one of the finest weepies ever made by Hollywood. Davis is nothing short of magnificent as Judith Traherne, a wealthy socialite suffering from a brain tumor that might take first her sight and then her life. George Brent rises to the occasion as the attending doctor who becomes Judith’s true love, and Geraldine Fitzgerald is excellent as her best friend. Then there’s Humphrey Bogart, miscast as Judith’s Irish stablemaster (his accent comes and goes), and Ronald Reagan, perfectly cast as a shallow, self-absorbed plutocrat. Dark Victory earned three Academy Award nominations, for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Original Score (three-time Oscar winner Max Steiner, earning two of his 24 career nods in 1939 for this and Gone With the Wind). This was remade theatrically in 1963 as Stolen Hours (Susan Hayward and Michael Craig as the patient and the doc) and for television in 1953 (Sylvia Sidney and Christopher Plummer) and 1976 (Elizabeth Montgomery and Anthony Hopkins).

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary; the featurette 1939: Tough Competition for Dark Victory (this was, after all, the year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and countless other Oscar-contending classics); a 1940 radio adaptation starring Davis and Spencer Tracy; “Warner Night at the Movies,” which, emulating the moviegoing experience from decades past, includes a newsreel, a short film, a cartoon, and a trailer before the main attraction; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

KNIGHT RIDER: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1982-1986). In 1965, NBC introduced My Mother the Car, a sitcom in which a man (Jerry Van Dyke) purchases an automobile that, possessed by the spirit of his late mom (Ann Sothern), talks to him through the blinking dashboard radio. The series only lasted one season and is occasionally brought up in articles regarding the worst television shows of all time. It was doubtless a coincidence that the same network would greenlight another program about a talking car 17 years later, but this time the result was far more successful. Knight Rider was never a ratings bonanza — it peaked at #25 in the Nielsens for its second season — but it was popular enough to last for four years on NBC and 39 years and counting in the hearts of its diehard fans. Created by the prolific Glen A. Larson (Magnum, P.I., The Fall Guy, Battlestar Galactica), it stars David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, a former police officer who now serves as a crimefighter for the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG). He’s paired with KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand), a supercharged Pontiac Trans Am with an impenetrable exterior and plenty of helpful accoutrements (infrared vision, fireballs, and the like). And because it’s also equipped with cutting-edge AI, it also has the ability to talk (William Daniels did the yakking), and it enters into a mutually respectful relationship with its driver. It’s a silly and narratively limited series aimed at children, although the presence of heartthrob Hasselhoff doubtless expanded its audience.

The 4K box set contains all 90 episodes from all four seasons as well as the 1991 TV movie Knight Rider 2000. Extras include audio commentary on the first two episodes (originally shown together as the pilot) by Hasselhoff and Larson; a retrospective documentary; the 2006 half-hour piece The Great 80’s TV Flashback, which looks at several of the decade’s hit series, including Knight Rider; and a photo gallery.

Series: ★★

POSEIDON (2006). This remake of The Poseidon Adventure is as impersonal as movies get. Foregoing the blood, sweat, and characters that made the 1972 disaster-flick fave come to life, this one’s all about running cardboard cutouts through the CGI paces. Scrapping the characters from Paul Gallico’s book and director Ronald Neame’s film, helmer Wolfgang Petersen and scripter Mark Protosevich instead serve up all-new players. Petersen described them at the time as “original, contemporary characters,” which I guess is some sort of doublespeak for one-dimensional dullards rendered uncomplicated for modern audiences. Josh Lucas is cast as a professional gambler who acts tough but really sports the requisite heart of gold toward single moms and their pint-sized spawn, Kurt Russell portrays a saintly, sin-free father who’s also a retired firefighter and the former mayor of New York, and Richard Dreyfuss plays a suicidal homosexual who learns to love life. As protagonists, each character is as hopelessly square as the next. The sets are lazily conceived — unlike the detailed work in the first film, these don’t accentuate the topsy-turvy quality of the ship and would look like so much clutter no matter what the angle. And the effects, while competently realized, all too often look exactly like what they are: computer-generated imagery. The best segments in the picture, then, are the ones shot in tight close-up, when the characters must break through a grate or navigate an air duct before the water rises above their nostrils. Petersen, who knows all about filming in confined quarters (Das Boot, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm), finally gets to display his directorial chops in these segments, mustering what little suspense the film has to offer. Alas, it’s not nearly enough to salvage this soggy endeavor.

4K extras include new interviews with various crew members.

Movie: ★½

WHEN WE WENT MAD! (2025). Anyone not weaned on MAD magazine might want to lower the rating for this documentary a half-star or so, but those who are more than familiar with such names as Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Don Martin, “The Lighter Side of…” and “Spy vs. Spy” will be fascinated by this look at the history of the publication that revolutionized comedy with its irreverent look at, well, everything. That definitely includes me: As someone whose humor was largely molded during the formative years by Mel Brooks and MAD, I found this to be a real treat. Subtitled The Unauthorized Story of MAD Magazine, this employs various contributors as well as celebrity fans (among them Bryan Cranston, Judd Apatow, Quentin Tarantino, and “Weird Al” Yankovic) to discuss various aspects of the rag, including its inception (the first issue hit stands in 1952); its conversion from a comic book into a magazine in 1955 (which ended up protecting it from the heavy thumb of the Comics Code Authority); the confrontation with the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (during which a psychologist opines, “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry”); such movers and shakers as editors Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein and publisher Bill Gaines; the history behind “mascot” Alfred E. Neuman; the popular movie and television parodies; the political digs at both the Left and the Right (though the Right naturally always provided more fodder); the terrible, MAD-backed 1980 film Up the Academy (at the time, I thought MAD should have sponsored 1980’s Airplane! instead; numerous folks state the same thing here); the circulation highs (over 2 million in the early 1970s) and lows (less than 150,000 in the 2010s); and the cancellation of the print edition in a changing world in which its satiric tone can now be found everywhere.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★½

WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART (1990). In the early 1950s, director John Wilson and writer Peter Verrill head to Uganda to begin work on a movie called The African Trader. If that plotline sounds eerily reminiscent of that time in the early 1950s when director John Huston and writer Peter Viertel headed to Uganda to begin work on a movie called The African Queen, it’s because it’s the same story with the names changed to protect the guilty. Based on Viertel’s 1953 book, and with Viertel penning the screenplay alongside veteran Western filmmaker Burt Kennedy and The China Syndrome writer-director James Bridges, this remains one of director-producer-star Clint Eastwood’s more unusual — and thus most interesting — pictures. Clint casts himself as Wilson, and it’s a wonderful performance, with the actor even attempting to emulate Huston’s drawl (it’s also probably the most dialogue the often taciturn Eastwood has ever spoken in a film). Jeff Fahey plays Verrill, just one of the many people frequently frustrated at the manner in which Wilson will ignore his filmmaking obligations, as in his mind the main reason for the trip is so he can shoot an elephant. More than a simple adventure yarn or a film about filmmaking, this is an intelligent work that examines such issues as colonialism, bigotry, self-entitlement, and rampant masculinity. This wasn’t a great year for Eastwood at the movies, as White Hunter, Black Heart was greeted with decent reviews but disastrous box office — Warner Bros. inexplicably never gave it a wide release, resulting in a $2 million gross against a $24 million budget — while his holiday offering The Rookie, a stupid cop flick opposite Charlie Sheen, earned blistering reviews and underperformed at the box office ($30M budget, $21M gross). But no worries, as his next picture, released two years later, was Unforgiven.

The only DVD extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

FILM CLIPS

THE PENGUIN LESSONS (2025). Here’s one of those movies that’s (as the ads trumpet) “Based On A True Story,” although some parts ring more true than others. It tells the story of Tom Michell (Steve Coogan), a British teacher who accepts an assignment at an Argentinian all-boys school in 1976. A grumpy guy, Michell eventually loosens up after he rescues and bonds with an adorable penguin. So far, so sweet. But 1976 was in the midst of Argentina’s Dirty War, when tens of thousands of civilians were murdered by the military regime. The Penguin Lessons tries to punch across the horrors of this period, but they’re repeatedly softened by the more sentimental aspects of the story. Coogan’s performance and some smart dialogue make this worth watching, but don’t be misled by the critic’s blurb on the DVD case that states this is “hyper-funny” and “delightful.”

DVD extras consist of a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Movie: ★★½

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2014). A look at the life of celebrity physicist and A Brief History of Time author Stephen Hawking, this film explores his professional achievements and physical debilitation but spends even more time examining his marriage to Jane (the movie is based on her book Travelling to Infinity — My Life With Stephen). It’s an affecting love story, so strong that a third-act wrinkle arrives out of the blue and plays out in the blink of an eye, as if director James Marsh and scripter Anthony McCarten were afraid to let reality step on the fairy tale romance they had so carefully cultivated. Despite the clumsiness, it’s hard to blame them: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are both excellent, providing the humor, strength, and emotion essential in any marriage. Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score (Jóhann Jóhannsson), this won Best Actor for Redmayne.

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Marsh; a behind-the-scenes featurette; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

ABSENCE OF MALICE (1981). If 1970s cinema was uncharacteristically kind toward the media — toppling Nixon from his perch would understandably generate such warm’n’fuzzy feelings — the 80s offerings frequently proved to be less charitable toward members of the Fourth Estate. Therefore, projects like The Parallax View and All the President’s Men gave way to movies like The Right Stuff, which portrayed reporters as shameless hucksters, and Absence of Malice, which indicted journalism’s untouchable attitude. Written by former reporter Kurt Luedtke, this intelligent and emotionally charged drama charts the tensions and tragedies that arise when Miami Standard reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) is fed misleading information by an unscrupulous government employee (Bob Balaban) hoping to crack a case involving a missing union leader. The Standard prints Carter’s story, which erroneously states that Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman), an honest liquor salesman who just happens to have family members in the Mob, is under investigation by the Justice Department. The scandal all but destroys Gallagher’s business as well as upsets his already unstable best friend (Melinda Dillon), but although it initially appears as if all involved parties are protected — journalists and bureaucrats alike — Gallagher devises a way to take everyone down while clearing his name. Crisply directed by the frequently underrated Sydney Pollack, this features sterling star turns by Newman and Field, although it’s Wilford Brimley, turning up during the final act as a high-ranking official who doles out proper justice, who leaves a lasting impression. A decent-sized box office hit, this earned three major Oscar nominations, for Best Actor (Newman), Supporting Actress (Dillon), and Original Screenplay.

Movie: ★★★½

CRIMINAL (2016). When an outlandish, take-it-or-leave-it premise works thanks to compelling characters, nifty plot twists, and exciting action sequences, the result is something like Face/Off; when an outlandish, take-it-or-leave-it premise offers none of these key ingredients, the result is something like Criminal. A grunting Kevin Costner plays Jerico Stewart, a death-row inmate who’s chosen by Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) to have the memories of Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds), a dead CIA agent, injected into his brain. The operation is conducted at the request of Pope’s superior, Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman), as he’s attempting to locate a computer hacker (Michael Pitt) who’s also being sought by psychotic entrepreneur Xavier Heimdahl (Jordi Mollà, awful as always). The procedure is successful, but while the heartless Jerico initially uses his newfound knowledge for his own personal gain, he eventually discovers that the memories of Pope’s wife (Gal Gadot) and daughter (Lara Decaro) are turning him into a big ole softie. For a movie that hinges on a soulless man developing feelings, Criminal is noticeably lacking any of its own, what with its roster of repellent characters and the chilly approach taken by director Ariel Vroman (whose previous feature, The Iceman, was similarly, uh, frosty) and scripters Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. Note, as but one example, that the death of a highly sympathetic character (and played by a highly billed performer) is treated as an aside, completely ignored by the person’s friends and colleagues and, by extension, the filmmakers themselves. Costner tries hard in a losing effort, Jones is completely wasted, and Oldman allows some of his vintage ’90s overacting to sneak into the margins.

Movie: ★½

THE GONG SHOW MOVIE (1980). Back in the day, The Gong Show was the sort of faddish television program watched by the same types of morons who later would make hits out of such low-IQ fare as Duck Dynasty, Fear Factor, and The Apprentice. Its creator and MC was Chuck Barris, who allowed all manner of novelty acts to perform on the show, even the racy ones which caused the censors to sweat. After a four-year run, the series was cancelled in 1980, around the same time that Barris (as star, director, and, with Robert Downey Sr., writer) foisted this big-screen version onto the public. Rated R to accommodate the nudity and profanity that couldn’t be seen and heard on TV, it was a critical and commercial disaster, and no wonder: Following Barris around as he deals with folks clamoring to be on the show, it’s less A Hard Day’s Night and more a hard day’s watch. The navel-gazing premise is workable, but The Gong Show Movie is crammed with so many desperate gags and anchored by Barris’ suffocating woe-is-me routine that its only worth is as a relic of its time. Gong Show panelists like Jamie Farr and Jaye P. Morgan are on hand as themselves; Rip Taylor appears as a fussy maître d’; Tony Randall, Phil Hartman, and Rosey Grier appear in bit parts; and there are uncredited cameos by Danny De Vito and Kitten Natividad. But very little makes any impression, as the acts are idiotic and the acting is insincere. Barris also contributes a handful of songs for which he wrote the music and lyrics himself — the one used during the grand finale, “Don’t Get Up,” is actually clever, but by that point, the picture has long been gonged into irrelevance.

Movie: ★

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (1983). This World War II drama ignores battlefield skirmishes for culture clashes, and in doing so, it carves out its own niche as one of the most atypical POW films ever made. The setting is a Japanese-run prison camp during 1942, with British captive Col. Lawrence (Tom Conti) the only one on either side making an effort to understand both the history and the mindset of the enemy. The only bilingual prisoner in the joint, he strikes up an interesting relationship with Sgt. Hara (future superstar Takeshi Kitano, here billed only as Takeshi), who can unexpectedly veer from brutal soldier to cheerful conversationalist. Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) rules the camp with a firm but usually unobtrusive hand, but everything changes with the arrival of Maj. Jack Celliers (David Bowie). An ace soldier captured after he parachuted into enemy territory (The Man Who Fell to Earth?), Celliers stirs feelings in Yonoi — homosexual longing? identity envy? — but refuses to play along, doing his best to disrupt the carefully established order. Director Nagisa Oshima creates a very specific mood in his first English-language picture, while he and co-scripter Paul Mayersberg take care to make sure every character, whether British or Japanese, is humanized rather than demonized (one great scene explains how one culture can believe suicide is honorable while the other thinks it’s cowardly). All of the performances are fine (including pop star Sakamoto, who also composed the film’s score), although it’s Takeshi who steals the picture. This proved to be a banner year for the movie’s two British leads: Conti also starred in Reuben, Reuben, earning himself a Best Actor Oscar nomination, while Bowie appeared in the cult vampire flick The Hunger and released the smash album Let’s Dance.

Movie: ★★★

9 TO 5 (1980). Second only to The Empire Strikes Back as the top-grossing film of 1980 (just edging out the Wilder-Pryor comedy Stir Crazy for the place position), 9 to 5 remains as topical — and as funny — as ever, even nearly a half-century down the timeline. With writer-director Colin Higgins and co-scripter Patricia Resnick working from an idea proposed by star Jane Fonda, the movie hardly seems dated when viewed through the prism of the contemporary workplace, where incompetent men often reap the glories even while the intelligent women under them are doing most of the hard work (and for 83 cents to their dollar, at that). That serious subject is given a lively comic sheen in this picture, as three women — new hire Judy Bernly (Fonda), office manager Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), and secretary Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton) — grow increasingly tired of the behavior of their doltish boss, the “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” Mr. Hart (an all-in performance from Dabney Coleman), and end up holding him prisoner after a series of outlandish escapades. Fonda is fine as the buttoned-down divorcée (I chuckled when she naively refers to S&M as “M&M’s”), but her co-stars are even better, with Tomlin delivering her salty barbs with the right spin and Parton proving to be an utter delight in her film debut. Speaking of Dolly: Country songs don’t usually find favor with the Academy, but her smash single “9 to 5” earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, competing against another excellent country tune: Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” from Honeysuckle Rose (both lost to the title track from Fame).

Movie: ★★★

ONLY THE VALIANT (1951). Out of the 53 theatrical features Gregory Peck made over a 47-year span, he considered the worst to be Only the Valiant. Many critics might debate that assertion — 1959’s Beloved Infidel, in which he’s cast as F. Scott Fitzgerald, is reportedly a bona fide turkey (it’s one of only two titles starring my favorite actor that I’ve never seen, though both of them, this and 1949’s The Great Sinner, reside in my collection) — and they might have a point, as it isn’t awful so much as it’s awfully indifferent. Part of the trouble is that it comes across as a routine B-level Western rather than the sort of prestige project this A-list actor always headlined, with the most interesting aspect of this cavalry-vs.-Indians yarn being its diverse roster of supporting actors. Peck stars as Captain Lance, a martinet who’s competing with his best friend, the dashing Lieutenant Holloway (Gig Young), for the hand of another officer’s daughter (Barbara Payton, a Hollywood cautionary tale who would die 16 years later at the age of 39, after descending into alcoholism and prostitution). Lance volunteers to deliver a Native American prisoner (Michael Ansara) to another fort, but Holloway is sent instead, only to be subsequently caught, tortured, and killed. Erroneously believing Lance to be behind the decision to send his romantic rival to his doom, the men hate their commanding officer even more than before, a treacherous position for Lance once he handpicks the worst of the worst to escort him on what’s sure to be a suicide mission to protect the fort from outside. Nothing really makes sense plotwise, but Western veteran Ward Bond (an integral part of John Ford’s acting troupe) and horror mainstay Lon Chaney Jr. both have fun whooping it up as, respectively, a drunken Irish Corporal and a brutish Arabian trooper.

Movie: ★★