New in October, Pt. 2: Something for Everyone

Now that we've gotten all those Woody Allen titles out of the way, what about the rest of this month's arrivals? They're actually a pretty extensive—and diverse—group and include a number of welcome returnees, some of which snuck back onto Instant in the final days of September. Among those are 1994's tear-jerking basketball doc, Hoop Dreams; arguably the best of the Merchant-Ivory productions, A Room with a View (1986); and the less well-remembered (except by avid '80s cable watchers), The Wild Geese (1978), a satisfyingly virile action yarn from director Andrew McLaglen, starring the Stallone, Statham, and Schwarzenegger of their day: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Roger Moore.

Harris, Burton, Moore

As fun as it violent and cool-headed, The Wild Geese is filled with real men doing manly things, and doing them the way God intended—without computer effects. See all those figures parachuting down into enemy territory? Those really are guys in parachutes, jumping out of real airplanes. And the explosions? Actual on-camera fireballs. I mean, yeesh, kids today with their fancy computer-generated men and airplanes and clouds and water that's never quite convincing. We're talkin' old school here, okay? Back when stars could actually be expendable. None of this mamby-pamby digital blood, or worse, fake animals (hire a deer wrangler already!) or talking dogs, or...

Sorry, um, where was I?

April Expiration Watch: Looking for Preston (2014)

As we begin this final weekend of April, it's time to once again take stock of the noteworthy titles leaving Netflix streaming. It's not the most painful list of deletions to come this blog's way, but some of them will sting, especially the handful of 1970s films that arrived only three months ago. Those titles, singled out here back in February, are Harold and Maude, North Dallas Forty, and Marathon Man, all of which contain the welcome grit and unpredictability that were hallmarks of 1970s cinema (and which seem so hard to come by amid today's endless sequels and remakes).

Other Me Decade flicks ascending to Netflix Heaven (or is it only Limbo?) are Paul Mazursky's touching and funny Harry and Tonto, which won Oscars for Mazursky's screenplay and Art Carney's lead performance; the original, made-for-TV, Brian's Song—the first movie to introduce my younger brother and me to cry-bonding when we were kids; and tough-guy director Don Siegel's Two Mules for Sister Sara, a western starring Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine.

Stanwyck, Fonda

Masters of Comedy

All of the above will be disappearing in the final seconds of April 30, as will a couple of bona fide classics from even further back: Preston Sturges' screwball gem, The Lady Eve (1941), and Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959). The Wilder film—which has streamed only since January—should be familiar to even casual classic-movie (or Marilyn Monroe) fans, but the lesser-known Sturges flick remains an essential entry among screwball comedies of the 1930s and '40s. In fact, the genre was all but played out by 1940, until the man who cut his teeth as a screenwriter in the previous decade convinced a wary studio to let him direct, giving him the chance to take his unique mix of verbal wit and physical comedy to dizzying heights.