Phone Call From A Stranger (1952)

We spend so much time with "The Four Musketeers", a self-named group of not terribly interesting - and in the case of Keenan Wynn's Eddie Hoke, a novelty salesman, downright annoying - plane passengers thrown together by chance, that it comes as a bit of a shock when the plane crashes, killing three and leaving the fourth, Gary Merrill's dullard lawyer, to take up the others' unfinished business - unfinished and very melodramatic business involving guilt, shame, love, betrayal and other overwrought stuff that only a movie-final appearance by Bette Davis can neatly, patly resolve.

★★★☆☆

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Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

It wasn't until the door-in-space title sequence that mum realised Phar Lap was showing in the other theatre of our local Twinplex and hurried me, seven or eight years old, across the foyer to the correct theatre, assuring me Dan Aykroyd's car passenger, the one who had just turned into the purple monster, was just the product of Hollywood make-believe and I was really going to enjoy the story of Australia's fastest racehorse "in here," but the damage was done - a glimpse of this four-story horror-fantasy compilation (actually a selection of trite fables that have since bored me, from big name movie men Steven Spielberg, John Landis, George Miller, Joe Dante) piqued my taste for the macabre....I struggle to recall anything about the racehorse!

★★☆☆☆

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

In this classic John Hughes comedy from the 80s, circumstances throw together an odd couple - a permed and incessantly jovial shower ring salesman (John Candy in a role that would be played these days by Melissa McCarthy) and an uptight and incessantly grumpy marketing executive (Steve Martin...(who, Ben Stiller? Sandra Bullock?)) - on a trip across America via planes, trains, and automobiles.

★★★★☆

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