Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is one of the year’s biggest surprises, a totally enjoyable sequel to a film whose popularity I never quite got.

While 2008’s Mamma Mia! from the Broadway hit was entertaining with its stolen plot from Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, it seemed little more than an excuse for its talented cast to sing songs from the Swedish singing group ABBA’s playbook. The sequel expands on the original plot to explain how Meryl Streep’s character met the Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard characters, one of whom is the father of Streep’s daughter, Amanda Seyfried. Here we go back in time as spirited Lily James winningly plays Streep’s younger self who meets and falls in love in quick succession with the younger versions of the three men played by Jeremy Irvine, Hugh Skinner, and Josh Dylan, all of whom prove to be excellent singers and dancers. The plot weaves back and forth between the past and the present as Seyfried gets ready for the grand opening of the hotel that Streep, whose character died sometime between the two films, had spent years planning.

Brosnan, Firth, and Skarsgard have all come for the opening as have Streep’s friends Julie Walters and Christine Baranski and Streep’s mother, played to the hilt by Cher. Streep herself appears as a ghost in the film’s finale in which she sings a ballad at the baptismal font of the church in which Seyfried and Dominic Cooper’s baby is being christened.

Yes, it’s campy but charmingly so. Co-written by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually) and Ol Parker (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), it was directed by Parker.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Gus Van Sant, the Oscar-nominated director of Good Will Hunting and Milk, hasn’t had a hit film in some time, which is a shame. His latest, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, which was nominated for Best Film at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, is one of his best.

Joaquin Phoenix gives one of his most insightful performances as John Callahan, a real-life alcoholic who began drinking at the age of 12. At 21, he was injured in an auto accident after a day of bar-hopping with another alcoholic who was driving, leaving him a quadriplegic. He started drawing as therapy by holding a pen between his two hands, only one of which he had the full use of. His black humor cartoons were first published in his local Oregon newspaper, then spread out nationally and eventually appeared in the New Yorker.

The heart of the film is Phoenix’s relationships with the people in his life, most notably Jonah Hill as his AA sponsor, Jack Black as the friend who was driving the car that caused his disability, and Rooney Mara as a paid caregiver.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

From Shout! Factory come two hits from the 1990s, both of which have been given sparkling 4K restorations on new Blu-ray releases loaded with extras.

Writer-director Randall Wallace’s first directorial film, 1998’s The Man in the Iron Mask, given a 20th Anniversary Edition, has plot elements that differ from Alexandre Dumas’ oft-filmed classic that are not dissimilar from the variations he brought to 1995’s Braveheart for which he received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. Whereas those variations in Braveheart were problematic because they contradicted an allegedly true story, Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask itself was already a variation on the real-life adventures in the 17th century court of France’s Louis XIV.

Leonardo DiCaprio, in a dual role fresh from Titanic, is both the young king and the titled man in the iron mask. Gabriel Byrne, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, and Gerard Depardieu are the four musketeers in what was Dumas’ second sequel to the even more often filmed The Three Musketeers. It’s great fun from start to finish if you don’t take it all that seriously.

Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 film Get Shorty, given a Collector’s Edition, scripted by Elmore Leonard from his terrific novel, is one of the best comic gangster films of all time. Cast before his comeback in Pulp Fiction but filmed after it, John Travolta has never been better than as the Florida-based mobster who goes to Hollywood to collect a debt and stays to become involved in the movie business with schlocky producer Gene Hackman. Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, and James Gandolfini shine in major supporting roles while a delightful Bette Midler, along with Harvey Keitel and Penny Marshall, provide entertaining cameos.

Criterion has released 4K restoration Blu-rays of two long-requested titles.

1988’s Distant Voices, Still Lives was the first film of Terence Davies who is still producing British films such as last year’s A Quiet Passion. Freda Dowie and Pete Postlethwaite star in this free-associative profile of a British working-class family in the 1940s and ’50s. The first part focuses on the death of the mean, nasty father while the second part focuses on the life of the family after his passing. The best part of the film for many will be the soundtrack consisting of recordings of popular songs of the day and the cast’s own singing of others.

With touches of Rear Window and Psycho, Brian De Palma’s 1973 film Sisters was his first obvious Hitchcock tribute film. Margot Kidder stars as recently-separated conjoined twins, one of whom is a murderer. Jennifer Salt co-stars as an investigative reporter who sees the murder from her window on the other side of the courtyard. The supporting cast includes Charles Durning, William Finley, Lisle Wilson, Dolph Sweet, Barnard Hughes, Mary Davenport (Salt’s real-life mother playing her on-screen mother), and an unbilled Olympia Dukakis. Hitchcock’s once favorite composer Bernard Herrmann wrote the score. He would later write the score for De Palma’s Obsession but died before he could compose the score for Carrie.

This week’s new releases include Mandy and Slender Man.