Two of the year’s most popular films are now both streaming and in release on home video

First up is Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, his first film since his Oscar-winning Parasite.

Filmed in late 2022 and early 2023, Mickey 17 is the film version of Edward Ashton’s 2022 science fiction novel Mickey 7 in which the protagonist is an “expendable” employee on an expedition to explore an ice planet for possible colonization.

Mickey and his fellow expendables have their bodies and memories reprinted when they die so that they can live multiple lives without fear of natural death. Each iteration is different in that they are not exact clones. Bong allegedly changed the name of the character so that he could kill him ten more times than in the book.

The narrative is told from the standpoint of Mickey 17, played by Robert Pattinson, who was supposed to die in a fall from which he couldn’t survive but somehow did. In the meantime, he has been reprinted into Mickey 18, also played by Pattinson. The film explores the rivalry between the two characters.

The film suffers from the unrealistic expectation that Bong’s next film would be an even better masterpiece than his last. Some fans were expecting a film on the level of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 hit, Brazil, a seriocomic take on the horrors of a not-too-distant future featured in George Orwell’s 1948 masterwork, 1984, which had been filmed not too successfully in 1956 and again in 1984. Mickey 17 is more reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, memorably filmed by George Roy Hill in 1972 than it is of Brazil.

Slaughterhouse-Five was a completely different tale. It was about a character unstuck in time who travels back and forth between a distant planet and the horrors of the 1945 bombings of Dresden, but like Mickey 17, it was an adventure-comedy, not a strict adventure film.

Pattinson is terrific as the two Mickeys and Naomi Ackie is quite good as his love interest, but the usually impeccable Steven Yeun is disappointing in the cliched role of Pattinson’s backstabbing friend. Even worse are Mark Ruffalo as a tyrannical leader clearly modeled after Donald Trump and Toni Collette as his equally obnoxious wife.

The film comes to a satisfying conclusion, but it’s rather rushed. Still, it’s worth seeing for its unique ideas and Pattinson’s excellent work.

An even better film is Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, a British spy thriller in the tradition of John Le Carré. Soderbergh has had more misses than hits over his long career, but this is one of his better efforts.

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett head the cast as husband-and-wife spies working for Pierce Brosnan. Fassbender has been tipped off that Blanchett is involved in the theft and sale of a top-secret software program, but is she?

Fassbender invites four other spies to join Blanchett and him in their home for an elaborate dinner in which they are invited to play a high stakes game of cat and mouse. Threats are made, people are killed, and the real villain is eventually unmasked but not before all the actors including Naomie Harris, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, and Regé-Jean Page are given their moments.

Newly available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, Charles Frend’s 1953 classic war film, The Cruel Sea has made its way across the pond from England where the Studio Canal release has long been a staple in the U.K.

The biggest box-office hit in England in 1953, and a major success in the U.S. as well, the film was nominated for BAFTAs for both Best Film and Best British Film and Best Actor for Jack Hawkins. It was nominated for an Oscar for Eric Ambler’s adapted screenplay from Nicholas Monserrat’s novel.

Donald Sinden, Stanley Baker, Denholm Elliott, and Virgina McKenna co-star. Donald Sinden (1923-2014) provides a delightful 33-minute reminiscence of the making of the film.

Also newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, Andrew Marton’s 1965 science fiction film, Crack in the World.

The flop film about a dying scientist’s project to tap through the earth’s magma layer to release trapped energy is only somewhat interesting but has developed quite a cult following over time. Dana Andrews, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, and Alexander Knox star. It’s enjoyable if you’re not expecting too much.

For a suddenly topical film, you might want to seek out 1974’s Airport 1974, still available as part of Universal’s Airport: The Complete Collection along with 1970’s Airport, 1977’s Airport ‘77, and 1979’s The Concorde: Airport ‘79.

This one combines two recent headline-making real-life airport stories – the inner workings of air traffic control and the mid-air crash of a small plane and a major passenger plane.

It begins in Washington, D.C. with the boarding of a 747 headed for Los Angeles. Heavy fog and storms force a detour to Salt Lake City where the private plane is also headed after being detoured from Boise, Idaho.

Charlton Heston as a legendary pilot and George Kennedy as the airline’s deputy chief engineer guide Heston’s girlfriend, stewardess Karen Black, in piloting the stricken airliner after pilot Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. is injured and the rest of the flight crew killed when Dana Andrews suffers a heart attack and flies his small plane into the 747.

The main plot may be absurd, but there are pleasures to be found in watching the film’s supporting cast playing passengers doing their thing while waiting to be rescued. Among them are Gloria Swanson as herself, Sid Caesar as a part-time actor, Myrna Loy as a tipsy old lady, Martha Scott and Helen Reddy as nuns, the latter a singing nun, Linda Blair as a young girl seeking a kidney transplant, Nancy Olson as her mother, and Susan Clark as George Kennedy’s traveling wife and Brian Morrison as their son.

Happy viewing.