FILM FRENZY

David Corenswet in Superman (Photo: Warner Bros. & DC)

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.)

AIRPLANE II: THE SEQUEL (1982). Making a successful sequel to a comedy largely hailed as one of the funniest movies ever made would be hard enough, but making a successful sequel that didn’t have the participation of the original writer-directors might be nigh impossible. At least that was the case with Airplane II: The Sequel, which found itself pilotless once the ZAZ team (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker) decided to pass on orchestrating a sequel to their 1980 global smash Airplane! Instead, it was big-screen newcomer Ken Finkleman who Paramount tapped to write and direct Airplane II (the studio also had the poor guy script an even bigger ’82 flop, Grease 2). Alas, this follow-up is nowhere near as funny as Airplane!, and its $27M stateside haul fell fall short of its predecessor’s $83M windfall. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty return as former pilot Ted Striker and former flight attendant Elaine Dickinson — he’s now an inmate at the Ronald Reagan Hospital for the Mentally Ill, she’s now the computer officer on the first lunar shuttle. Escaping the facility, Striker finds himself again taking charge once the shuttle malfunctions due to faulty wiring and a HAL-esque computer. Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves are back, Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack are not — newcomers include William Shatner as the lunar base commander, Chuck Connors as a macho ground-crew chief, and Sony Bono as a mad bomber. Expect a decent amount of smiles but not much in the way of belly laughs.

4K extras include podcaster audio commentary and the trailer.

Movie: ★★½

THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS (1982). This adaptation of the Broadway hit did well at the box office — $69M, enough to take the #9 slot on that year’s top 10 moneymakers list — but earned rather unenthusiastic reviews. Nevertheless, it’s a movie that never fails to entertain me, with its bright performances, amusing musical numbers, and a soundtrack that still has a place in my CD collection. Dolly Parton plays Miss Mona, who runs the title establishment, while Burt Reynolds is cast as her paramour, Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd. All’s fun and games at Miss Mona’s place until zealous TV personality Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) sets his sights on closing it down. Among the musical highlights are “A Lil’ Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place” and “Texas Has a Whorehouse in It,” but the highlight is easily Parton’s gorgeous rendition of her 1974 hit “I Will Always Love You” (it’s irksome that the song is best known because of Whitney Houston’s adaptation when Parton’s version is perfection). Charles Durning is a hoot as The Governor, hoofing and singing to “The Sidestep” — he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his efforts.

Blu-ray extras include a pair of film historian audio commentaries; a making-of featurette; outtakes; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other films on the Kino label.

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 and Caine also on board in a small part.

Reissued on Blu-ray a few months ago, Get Carter now makes its 4K debut, featuring restoration done in 2022 (just before Hodges passed away at 90) by the British Film Institute. Extras include vintage audio commentary by Caine, Hodges, and Suschitzky; a 2022 introduction by Caine; and a 2022 interview with Hodges.

Movie: ★★★½

M3GAN 2.0 (2025). While the lively 2022 hit M3GAN sampled some DNA from The Terminator, M3GAN 2.0 fully drains Terminator 2: Judgment Day to such a clumsy degree that it more accurately brings to mind the title of MAD’s T2 spoof: Interminable Too: Misjudgment Day. The first film was a nifty horror yarn in which a life-sized AI doll called M3GAN (“Model 3 Generative Android”) is given by roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) to her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) — the humanoid robot bonds so completely with the little girl that she will resort to anything, including murder, if she feels that either of them is being threatened. Unlike Child’s Play’s Chucky, who had no loyalties and therefore could continue to travel and maim and murder in numerous sequels and spin-offs, M3GAN’s rapport with Cady limited the expected direction a sequel could take. So M3GAN is now no longer the villain but rather the heroine(!), bravely protecting the human race from an even more diabolical creation known as the T-1000 — excuse me, AMELIA (“Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android”). Packed with softball gags, wrestling with vague messaging (the filmmakers can’t seem to decide if this is pro-AI or anti-AI), and hindered by the least surprising “surprise baddie” in recent memory, this short-circuits any hopes for a new franchise.

The Blu-ray edition offers both the PG-13 theatrical version as well as an unrated cut that offers a bit more blood ‘n’ guts. Extras include a making-of featurette and a piece on the visual effects.

Movie: ★★

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975). Already a worldwide sensation thanks to their BBC series Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974), the Monty Python troupe — Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin — next tried their hand at cinema, with two of the resultant films eventually achieving cult status as well as routine mentions on various publications’ “all-time best comedies” lists. One is 1979’s Life of Brian (my pick as their finest film); the other is this deranged send-up of medieval tales, specifically the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. There’s a semblance of a plot — Arthur (Chapman) and his knights must, you guessed it, find the Holy Grail — but this is really just an excuse for the lads to engage in their unique brand of humor, which includes mimicry, dress-up, dry wit, slapstick, and glorious non sequitors. The classic bits are numerous: Arthur’s gruesome battle with the Black Knight (Cleese); Lancelot (Cleese again) slaughtering everyone who gets in his way as he attempts to rescue a damsel in distress; the Knights Who Say “Ni”; the “three questions” at the Gorge of Eternal Peril; the killer rabbit (hilarious); and many other vignettes which fans know by heart.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Gilliam and Jones; audio commentary by Cleese, Idle, and Palin; a 2015 Q&A session with the Python gang (except Chapman, who passed away from cancer back in 1989); and extended scenes.

Movie: ★★★½

PEKING OPERA BLUES (1986). The latest title in Shout! Studios’ new line Hong Kong Cinema Classics is truly a treat, and it’s regarded by many (including, naturally, Quentin Tarantino) as one of the finest examples of the martial arts genre. Yet Peking Opera Blues isn’t merely an action flick (although what action!) but also a deeply involving drama rife with political intrigue and personal vendettas. Directed by Tsui Hark, one of the most revered of all practitioners of Hong Kong cinema, this is set in China shortly after the 1911 revolution that ended the royal dynasties but jumpstarted the power plays between competing military factions. At its center are three dissimilar women, one (Brigitte Lin) the rebellious daughter of a complicit general, one (Sally Yeh) the daughter of the head of an opera troupe, and one (Cherie Chung) a jewel thief whose acquisition of some pretty baubles is responsible for bringing all of them together. Align the three with a dashing revolutionary (Mark Cheng) and a sweet soldier (Cheung Kwok Keung), and the stage is set for a breathless tale that finds room for familial tensions, shocking bursts of violence (the whipping scene, complete with salt water splashed over the gaping wounds, is a cringer), and clever visual gags in the service of the storyline.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Chinese Visual Festival director James Mudge; an interview with Cheng; an archival interview with Yeh; and a discussion of the cinema of Tsui Hark.

Movie: ★★★½

SOMETHING BORROWED (2011). Based on Emily Giffin’s novel, this gruesome romantic comedy stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson as Rachel and Darcy, lifelong best friends both in love with Dex (Colin Egglesfield). Dex and Darcy are set to be married, but a drunken tryst between Dex and Rachel causes complications. Should they tell Darcy about their dalliance? Or should Rachel hold her tongue and allow Darcy to abscond with the only man she’s ever loved? As in most formulaic rom-coms involving a love triangle, the filmmakers attempt to make things as easy as possible for the viewer by presenting one of the players as the “bad guy” — in this case, it’s Hudson’s shallow, self-centered ditz. But here’s where this ruse backfires: Practically all of the characters are odious, insufferable twits, meaning we don’t care about the fates of any of them. Especially unlikable is Dex, who’s presented as the most desirable man in all of New York even though he’s a hypocritical, indecisive, insensitive, and unobservant dullard (Egglesfield’s bland performance doesn’t help). Only John Krasinski, as Rachel’s sarcastic best friend, provides any spark. True to its generic, genetic code, Something Borrowed also features a rainstorm during a climactic confession as well as the sight of our leading ladies engaging in a torturous living-room dance of an oldie but goodie. Yet as they gyrated their way through Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It,” all I could think was how much I wanted to take this movie and shove it.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★

SUPERMAN (2025). The best Superman movie in 44 years offers everything that was lacking in 2013’s dismal Man of Steel: humor, humanism, heart, and a charismatic leading man who’s up to the demands of the role. David Corenswet won’t erase memories of Christopher Reeve, but he’s quite ingratiating as Superman / Clark Kent in a film that skips the origin intros and joins a story already in progress. Brainy billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) suffers from Supes envy and does everything to bring him down, including filling social media with falsehoods and sending superpowered goons to pummel him. Luckily, Superman has his allies, even if some aren’t (to misquote The Dark Knight) the heroes he deserves but instead the heroes he needs. From his start at Troma through today, writer-director James Gunn has slathered humor over nearly all of his projects, and while this approach generally works, it ofttimes results in a sense of smarmy, self-congratulatory overkill (e.g. The Suicide Squad). Given the go-for-broke nature of some of the comic overtones here, Superman could easily have failed in this department, but the nyuks work surprisingly well, particularly in the characterizations of Krypto as the most unruly dog imaginable and Guy Gardner / Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) as a narcissistic clod. But drama also has a seat at the table, with Gunn tackling such hot-button issues as the vilification of immigrants, the ceaseless cycle of misinformation, and the inherent dangers when a petty, bullying tyrant feels threatened by peaceful, progressive values.

Blu-ray extras include a making-of piece; a look at the Justice Gang; and the Krypto cartoon School Bus Scuffle.

Movie: ★★★½

TIM BURTON’S CORPSE BRIDE (2005). A fine mix of rot and romance, this Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature finds Johnny Depp providing the voice of Victor, a shy Victorian lad who’s set to marry Victoria, a shy Victorian lass (Emily Watson). Instead, he accidentally ends up wed to Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a lovely (if decaying) young woman who died on her wedding night and has been waiting ever since for her true love to come along. Against his will, Victor is dragged into the Land of the Dead, which resembles a jazz joint populated by beer-swilling skeletons, men with hacked up bodies, and a buck-toothed maggot who sounds like Peter Lorre. Yet even as Victor plots his escape, he finds himself growing increasingly sympathetic to Emily’s plight. Corpse Bride is a marvel of craft and imagination — I especially liked the manner in which one skeleton’s single eyeball kept rolling back and forth between sockets, depending on which way he tilted his head — and while the movie is light on boisterous laughs, its visual wit never ceases to delight. Yet what’s most surprising is its ability to make us care about the fate of Emily, a lovely woman who suffered a cruel betrayal she didn’t deserve — we learn the circumstances behind her death, and its grisliness is right in line with an era that produced the factual Jack the Ripper and the fictional Mr. Hyde.

Extras in the 4K edition include numerous short pieces on various aspects of the film’s production (vocal casting, effects work, Burton’s directorial decisions, etc.) and a preproduction art gallery.

Movie: ★★★

THE WRONG ARM OF THE LAW (1963). Bless the Kino label for continuing to release early Peter Sellers titles, movies he made while still in England and before his superstar status took hold. These pictures are full of rich regional flavor, delicious Cockney slang, and riotous humor built around cockeyed house-of-cards schemes. The Wrong Arm of the Law shares the same studio, producer, co-scripters, and top-billed stars as 1960’s Two Way Stretch, and it offers the same degree of cheeky entertainment. This one casts Sellers as “Pearly” Gates, a criminal kingpin whose more respectable profession finds him serving as the head of a West End haute couture house. Three Australian crooks arrive in London dressed as coppers and begin robbing the robbers under the pretense of making arrests — once the ruse becomes evident, Pearly and fellow mob boss “Nervous” O’Toole (Bernard Cribbins) form a truce with the police, working together until the trio is apprehended. Unfortunately, the inspector put in charge of the operation, Fred “Nosy” Parker (Lionel Jeffries), is a bumbler whose incompetence invariably mucks up the sting operation. Thanks to such hits as Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther series, Sellers was able to show off his incredible physical prowess and wide range of accents, but, 1979’s Being There excepted, it was in these earlier comedies that he best demonstrated his ability to offer slyer and more subtle expressions of humor.

Blu-ray extras include film journalist audio commentary; an interview with co-scripter John Antrobus; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

COCKTAIL (1989). During his meteoric career ascendancy, Tom Cruise wisely paired himself with established legends by teaming with Paul Newman in The Color of Money and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. In between, though, he made Cocktail, a bubblegum movie that was strictly eye candy for those fans still swooning over Top Gun. A Razzie Award winner for Worst Picture (over Burt Reynolds’ non-nominated Rent-a-Cop? Please.) and Worst Screenplay (more deserving), this unintentional howler stars Cruise as Brian Flanagan, an ambitious young man who becomes nothing less than the hottest bartender in all of New York — maybe the world! His lecherous mentor is Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown), whose daft advice Brian repeatedly takes to heart; after Doug betrays him, Brian moves to Jamaica (cue the movie’s smash single, the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo”) and meets a beautiful and sincere woman (Elisabeth Shue) who might be right for him if he doesn’t screw things up. The dialogue is priceless, filled with such gems as Doug telling Brian, “When you see the color of [the women’s] panties, you know you’ve got talent. Stick with me, son; I’ll make you a star.”

Movie: ★½

DEATH HUNT (1981). With its crisp running time and lean, mean storytelling, Death Hunt is the type of undemanding fare made for a midnight viewing session in a living room environment. Loosely based on a true story, this casts Charles Bronson as Albert Johnson, a trapper living an isolated life in the snow-packed Canadian wilds in 1931. Stumbling across a dogfighting ring led not by Michael Vick but by an unsavory character named Hazel (Ed Lauter), Johnson saves the animal while drawing the ire of the rubes involved. After killing one of them in self-defense, Johnson is forced to take it on the lam, with the sympathetic but duty-bound Edgar Millen (Lee Marvin) and his fellow Mounties on his trail. To further complicate matters, a serial killer tagged the Mad Trapper is also on the prowl, leading many to speculate whether that might also be Johnson. There’s always intrinsic pleasure to be had from watching a taciturn action star like Eastwood or, in this case, Bronson roughly manhandle rednecks; couple that with the sight of Bronson and Marvin trying to out-snarl each other, and the result is a modest bit of macho cinema.

Movie: ★★½

THE DESTRUCTORS (1974). I first saw this gritty crime flick back when I was a mere lad in the 1970s — its original title in Europe (where I was living at the time) was The Marseille Contract, so are we to assume its name was changed stateside to The Destructors to avoid confusion with The French Connection? If so, that would be against the grain, as the filmmakers behind most crime flicks during this period were hoping their projects would be confused with the Friedkin Oscar winner. At any rate, it’s hard to ignore any picture with an above-the-title roster that consists of Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, and James Mason. Despite second billing under Caine, Quinn is the lead, portraying a US narcotics agent who, frustrated at his department’s inability to nail a drug kingpin (Mason), hires a contract killer (Caine) to take care of business. The movie offers some surprises among its familiar trappings, and the vehicular stuntwork is top-notch — plus, you have to credit any movie in which a playful car chase between a man (Caine) and a woman (Alexandra Stewart) can be categorized as foreplay. Even though he doesn’t appear until approximately the half-hour mark, Caine earns top honors as the smooth assassin.

Movie: ★★★

THE GANG’S ALL HERE (1943). Whether one views The Gang’s All Here as a kitschy, campy spectacle or merely another splashy musical from the Dream Factory largely depends on one’s tolerance for garish colors, kaleidoscopic set-pieces, and the sight of Carmen Miranda and her juicy fruits. Director and choreography Busby Berkeley’s first color musical finds a cocksure soldier (James Ellison) falling for a showgirl (Alice Faye), but never mind the wafer-thin plot. Instead, enjoy the musical numbers (Leo Robin and Harry Warren contribute such tunes as “Minnie’s in the Money,” “The Polka Dot Polka” and “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,” while Benny Goodman pops up for some swinging and singing), chuckle at the antics of vets Eugene Pallette, Charlotte Greenwood, and my favorite filmic fussbudget, Edward Everett Horton, and marvel at the sights presented by Berkeley, including the all-singing, all-floating heads, the strawberry fields forever, and those gigantic, phallic bananas rising and falling on cue. This deservedly nabbed an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction & Interior Decoration.

Movie: ★★★

THE LOST PATROL (1934). John Ford had already directed approximately 80 motion pictures (including dozens of silents dating back to 1917) by the time he helmed The Lost Patrol, which, while not as famous as multiple subsequent works, is nonetheless considered one of the key films from his early sound period. The story immediately grabs the viewer by the collar, as a British officer on desert patrol during World War I is shot dead by a single bullet and his second in command, a gruff sergeant (Victor McLaglen), realizes that the murdered man was the only one who knew their mission or even the way out of this sand-swept hellhole. The sergeant tries to lead the outfit to safety, but the members are slowly coming apart at the seams even as unseen Arab snipers continue picking them off one by one. Ford’s brisk direction, Max Steiner’s Oscar-nominated score, and a suitably manic performance by Boris Karloff as a religious fanatic all work in tandem to create an exciting (if relentlessly grim) adventure yarn.

Movie: ★★★½

THE RAVEN (2012). There have been so many good adaptations of works by Edgar Allan Poe — particularly the Roger Corman efforts starring Vincent Price — that few will work up much enthusiasm for this thriller in which the great author himself is put through the paces of an average serial-killer yarn. In 1849 Baltimore, in the final days of his life, Poe (John Cusack) is informed by detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) that someone is going around murdering people in bloody ways that can only be found in his stories (“The Pit and the Pendulum,” for example). Fields initially suspects that Poe might actually be the killer, but he soon tosses aside that theory and teams up with the temperamental writer in hopes of catching the lunatic on the loose. Faced with a threadbare script by Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston, director James McTeigue (who fared much better with V for Vendetta) is forced to rely too heavily on the requisite gore and effects work that overwhelm rather than complement the piece. As Poe, Cusack is effective when he’s allowed to tap into the character’s raging wit and less convincing when he’s wooing a high-society girlfriend (Alice Eve) who, naturally, gets abducted by the killer.

Movie: ★★

SPELLBOUND (1945) / ROPE (1948) / STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) / DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954). There are the capital-C Classic Alfred Hitchcock movies like Psycho and Vertigo, and then there are the lower-case-c classic Alfred Hitchcock movies like this quartet from the Master’s thematically rich run during the 1940s and 50s.

A critical hit as well as a commercial smash in its day — it was #3 on the list of the year’s top 10 moneymakers — Spellbound has seen its standing slip in the ensuing decades, as it’s never mentioned in any stories on Alfred Hitchcock’s best works. That’s a shame, because this fascinating thriller about a psychiatrist (an excellent Ingrid Bergman) who falls in love with an amnesiac (Gregory Peck, emerging as a superstar in just his second year in film) who might be guilty of murder has plenty to recommend it, including a tremendous Miklos Rozsa score (featuring an early use of the theremin) and a superb dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Supporting Actor (a hammy turn by Michael Chekhov as a curmudgeonly doctor), this won Best Original Score for Rozsa’s haunting — and influential — soundtrack. Bergman and Peck weren’t ignored, however, as she nabbed a Best Actress nom that year for playing a nun in The Bells of St. Mary’s while he scored a Best Actor bid for portraying a priest in The Keys of the Kingdom.

“Classic” might actually be too strong a word for Rope, which earns my vote as the most underrated of all Hitchcock flicks. It’s repeatedly dismissed in many circles as merely a gimmick, as The Master shot this as if the entire movie was filmed in one long take (camera switches were made at discreet moments in the action) and thus unfolding in real time. But beyond this clever sleight of hand, this actually stands up on its own (non-technical) terms. Based on a play that was itself loosely inspired by the real-life Leopold and Loeb “crime of the century,” this finds two bored playboys, the smug Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and the nervous Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), senselessly strangling a former classmate in order to see if they can get away with the “perfect murder.” They audaciously hide the body in the same room in which they end up hosting a social gathering, and they figure that, among the guests, only their former professor, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), stands a chance of uncovering their dastardly deed. Between the characters’ philosophical debates, the homosexual subtext, and the suspense surrounding that concealed corpse, this is an endlessly fascinating endeavor.

Strangers on a Train continues to work its way up into the major leagues — indeed, some critics (including the late Roger Ebert) have already placed it among Hitchcock’s very best works. It’s certainly one of the director’s most diabolical films, a startling piece in which a tennis player (Farley Granger) meets a peculiar man (Robert Walker) during a fateful train ride and dismisses the stranger’s suggestion that they “exchange” murders. It’s only after the athlete’s loathsome wife (Kasey Rogers) turns up dead that he realizes the plan was no joke — and that he’s expected to live up to his end of the bargain by murdering the other man’s domineering father (Jonathan Hale). Walker’s creepy performance ranks among the best found in any Hitchcock film, and several of the set-pieces — Walker’s immobile presence among an animated tennis crowd; a murder reflected in the victim’s eyeglasses; the shocking merry-go-round finale — represent the filmmaker in top form, aided in no small part by his regular cinematographer Robert Burks (who earned an Oscar nomination for his lensing).

Dial M for Murder, by contrast, is often dismissed as lesser Hitchcock, yet its intricate plot and sterling performances thrill me every time I watch it. Based on a popular stage play — yet so absorbing that its (for the most part) one-room setting never becomes a handicap — this finds a retired tennis pro (Ray Milland) scheming to murder his wife (Grace Kelly), who’s been having an affair with a mystery writer (Robert Cummings). Milland’s performance is so subtle that it rarely receives the praise it deserves, while Kelly was having a banner year, also co-starring in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and delivering an Oscar-winning turn in The Country Girl. Yet it’s veteran actor John Williams, as the cagey detective on the case, who pops up at the midway mark and proceeds to swipe the rest of the picture. Originally meant to be shown in 3-D before the public lost interest in the fad, this was feebly remade in 1998 as A Perfect Murder, starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen.

Spellbound: ★★★★

Rope: ★★★½

Strangers on a Train: ★★★½

Dial M for Murder: ★★★½