Charles Jarrott’s 1980 Walt Disney Productions American children’s adventure film The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark stars Elliott Gould, Geneviève Bujold, Ricky Schroder

Director Charles Jarrott’s 1980 Walt Disney Productions American children’s adventure film The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark stars Elliott Gould, Geneviève Bujold, Ricky Schroder, Tammy Lauren, and Vincent Gardenia.

The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark is wholesome, sentimental, quality Disney fun, based on a story called The Gremlin’s Castle by Ernest K Gann, about employed pilot Noah Dugan (Elliott Gould) who is talked into flying a planeful of farm animals to a Pacific island by missionary Bernadette Lafleur (Geneviève Bujold).

Two of Lafleur’s pupils (Ricky Schroder, Tammy Lauren) stow away on the plane, which gets ...

Director George Amy’s 1940 Warner Bros black and white crime drama Gambling on the High Seas is a short and snappy though not very sharp semi-thriller remaking the 1935 Bette Davis-George Brent vehicle Special Agent.

This time Wayne Morris stars as Jim Carver or Carter, an investigative newsman discovering that gangster Greg Morella (Gilbert Roland), the boss of a crooked floating casino, is guilty of murder, while finding true love with Laurie Ogden (played by Jane Wyman in a strange blonde rinse).

The able performances of a good cast, the fast pace and atmospheric shooting help to overcome the rather sticky, predictable script by Robert E Kent, based on the story by Martin Mooney.

Wayne Morris’s character is called Jim Carver in the film, but Jim Carter in the credits.

Also notable ...

Director Henry Levin 1962 grounded Come Fly with Me tells the romantic tale of three empty-headed air hostesses (Dolores Hart as Donna Stuart, Pamela Tiffin as Carol Brewster and Lois Nettleton as ‘Bergie’ Bergstrom) looking for husbands during a flight over the Atlantic from New York to Paris.

Come Fly with Me is faded escapism, with a rather vacuous if harmless script by William Roberts, based on the novel by Bernard Glemser. But at least it looks a treat in Oswald Morris’s cinematography and there are a lovely tours of Paris and Vienna too.

Karl Malden (as recently widowed older millionaire Walter Lucas), Karlheinz Böhm [Karl Boehm] (as the diamond sumuggler Baron Franz Von Elzingen) and Hugh O’Brian (the plane’s womanising pilot, First Officer Ray Winsley) are the more interesting men...

Director Andrew Lau’s excellent, well-staged 2019 Chinese blockbuster real-life disaster movie The Captain [Zhong guo ji zhang] is based on a terrifying incident in May 2018 when a Sichuan Airlines flight cockpit’s windshield cracked and then shattered while the plane was flying 30,000 feet above the mountainous Tibetan Plateau.

Hanyu Zhang stars as The Captain, who keeps his nerve and his cool as his young co-pilot (Hao Ou) is sucked halfway out of the cockpit, while the second officer (Jiang Du) is in the main body of the plane with the 219 passengers, who start losing consciousness and their senses.

Lau’s impressive film looks pretty good and realistic, apart from a few too obvious process shots and some pointless trick shots that look like the bad old days of Seventies disaster movies...

Bud Cort stars as the likeably strange Brewster McCloud who learns to fly with his man-made wings inside the Houston Astrodome, Texas, in this appealing 1970 oddity from director Robert Altman.

It is easy to enjoy Altman’s attractively offbeat movie, which is an always interesting and usually highly amusing cult item. After soaring along nicely, it finally does take flight. Just in time, perhaps, because the police are surrounding the dome.

Cort gives a very strong turn, and Altman’s regular repertory company gang of good guys are here on soaring form: Sally Kellerman, Shelley Duvall, René Auberjonois and John Schuck.

It is written by Doran William Cannon, shot in Metrocolor by Lamar Boren and Jordan Cronenweth, produced by Lou Adler, and scored by Gene Page.

The precious Margaret ...

When there is an outbreak of polio in Rio de Janeiro, pilots offer to risk their lives in bad weather to fly the medicine over the dangerous Andes mountains. John Barrymore stars as Riviere, who operates a South American airline in the most un-airworthy sort of way, in MGM’s posh, entertaining, glossy vintage soap opera.

So, all aboard director Clarence Brown’s 1933 all-star adventure drama special, with the classy sextet of Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery and the Barrymore brothers Lionel and John (in their fifth and final pairing) in the first class passenger seats.

Oliver H P Garrett’s screenplay is taken from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel.

Other Barrymore pairings: Arsène Lupin, Dinner at Eight, Grand Hotel, Rasputin and the Empress.

Also in the cast...

‘Star-studded cast trapped in a plunging airplane… And only a death-defying rescue mission can save them!’ Director Jack Smight’s 1974 first sequel to Airport (1970) is preposterous and unintentionally funny but still quite exciting and enjoyable. It is all very brisk and professional, if uninspired.

This time a small private plane hits a Boeing 747 airline jet, whose stewardess Nancy Pryor (Karen Black) has to take over when the flight crew are killed and the pilot is blinded...