The 15:17 to Paris may be minor Clint Eastwood but it’s the 86-year-old director doing what he does best, bringing contemporary real-life heroes into a film world largely filled with movies about imaginary superheroes.

Ever since 2006’s back-to-back Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, Eastwood has primarily focused on bringing real-life characters to the screen. His most recent films prior to this one, American Sniper and Sully, were like The 5:17 to Paris, about more recent real-life heroes.

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler, who play themselves in the film based on their book, are ordinary, unpretentious guys who seized a moment and saved hundreds of lives one fateful afternoon in 2015 aboard the 15:17 from Amsterdam to Paris. The film takes its time getting there, with the first section of the film an examination of the childhood of the three misfits who have been friends since the age of 8. The middle section plays like a travelogue with the boys, one of them now a soldier, one a marine, and the other working for a private company, having come together for a European vacation. The film has been so laid back up to this point that once it gets on the train it grabs you with its startling intensity and doesn’t let go until the train has pulled into the station, the terrorist taken into custody, the wounded given medical attention, and our heroes have been awarded the French Legion of Honor medal before going home to Sacramento and a ticker tape parade in their honor.

Fellow passengers Mark and Isabelle Moogalian also play themselves while Judy Geer and Jenna Fischer play Stone and Skarlatos’ mothers.

Most critics were tough on the film, giving it less than stellar ratings chronicled on the Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic websites. Contrast that with the absurdly high ratings many of the same critics gave Game Night, an incredibly stupid movie about stupid people doing stupid things that reduces the talents of usually competent actors to the level of chimpanzees mugging for the camera. Ironically, both films have been released by Warner Brothers on Blu-ray and standard DVD on the same day. Sadly, I suspect most audiences will ignore The 15:17 to Paris and yuck it up with Game Night.

Sebastian Leleo’s A Fantastic Woman, the Chilean film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 awards earlier this year, is a stylish melodrama about a young transgender woman whose older male lover dies suddenly after an evening out. Under suspicion by the police as having had something to do with his death until proven otherwise, she is verbally and physically abused by his family, thrown out of her apartment, and forbidden to attend his funeral, she comes out of the situation with her head held high.

Daniela Vega, a real-life transgendered woman, gives a strong performance as the woman who perseveres through her grief in a film that is long on character, but short on plot. It compares favorably to 2016’s Jackie from the same producers about Jackie Kennedy’s grief after the death of the president.

A Fantastic Woman is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

There is decidedly something off-kilter about any version of Little Women in which the actors playing Marmee and Laurie are the standouts, but that’s exactly the case with the recent TV miniseries of Louisa May Alcott’s oft-filmed masterwork.

Emily Watson, who plays the stalwart Marmee, gets top billing and earns it with her memorable performance. Michael Gambon and Angela Lansbury who play the benevolent Mr. Lawrence and testy Aunt March, respectively, figure heavily into the project’s marketing campaign, but are shadowy figures in this version. The four unknown actresses playing the title characters of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, are likely to remain unknown.

As with all versions of Little Women, the central character is aspiring writer Jo, the second oldest girl. Unfortunately for all filmed versions made since George Cukor’s 1933 version, no one has yet approached the incandescent fervor of the young Katharine Hepburn in the role. June Allyson in the 1949 version, Susan Dey in the 1978 miniseries, and even Winona Ryder, despite an Oscar nomination, were all serviceable at best. 19-year-old Maya Hawke in the current version is too modern and too strident. She reminded me of no one so much as Uma Thurman who I didn’t realize until I checked the cast credits on IMDb is Thurman’s daughter from her marriage to Ethan Hawke.

Another one who is too modern, as well as insufferably bratty for much of the miniseries’ three-hour running time, is Kathryn Newton as Amy, the youngest of the four. She was more memorably played in all four previous versions by Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann Dusenberry, and a combination of Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis.

Better are Willa Fitzgerald and Annes Elwy as the sensible Meg and tragic Beth, previously given screen immortality by Frances Dee and Jean Parker in 1933, Janet Leigh and Margaret O’Brien in 1949, Meredith Baxter and Eve Plumb in 1978, and Trini Alvarado and Claire Danes in 1994.

Theodore “Laurie” Lawrence, the boy next door, was movingly played by Douglass Montgomery in the 1933 version, diffidently played by Peter Lawford in the 1949 version, nicely played by Richard Gilliland in the 1978 version, and Christian Bale in the 1994 version but given his best incarnation since Montgomery by Jonah Hauer-King in the new version.

Professor Bhaer, the hero of the last section of the story, has been played to various effect by Paul Lukas, Rossano Brazzi, William Shatner, and Gabriel Byrne, but Mark Stanley plays him now to such little effect, he might just as well have been left out of the teleplay.

Marmee is a part that calls for strong motherly warmth and Spring Byington, Mary Astor, Dorothy McGuire, and Susan Sarandon all supplied that, but Emily Watson brings even more to the part, almost breaking your heart in several scenes with her soulful eyes and sorrowful countenance.

Wealthy Mr. Lawrence calls for a formidable older actor to bring authority to the part and Henry Stephenson, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Young, and John Neville certainly supplied that, as does Michael Gambon now despite the brevity of his performance.

Rich, cantankerous Aunt March is a role that Edna May Oliver was born to play, and she played it to the hilt in the 1933 version, so much so that as memorable as they were in other roles throughout their lengthy careers, Lucile Watson, Greer Garson, Mary Wickes, and Angela Lansbury couldn’t be considered more than place-holders in their later interpretations.

The 1994 and current versions of Little Women are available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. The 1933, 1949, and 1978 versions are available on DVD only.

This week’s new releases include The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and the Criterion Blu-ray edition of Midnight Cowboy.