After a six-year delay David O. Russell‘s…sorry, Stephen Greene‘s Accidental Love has begun streaming, and has been panned by a small handful. I saw it last night, expecting the expected. But I found it spirited, often amusing and even delightful in short spurts. I’m telling you at the very least that Rodrigo Perez‘s Indiewire pan is way too harsh. Accidental Love is far from a knockout but it’s no disaster either. It’s a minor Russell detour and obviously years out of date (it’s basically a “we all need decent health care!” piece) but portions of this incomplete governmental farce, previously known as Nailed, are far better than indicated by the subdued buzz, particularly in view of Russell having washed his hands of it years ago.

Now and then Accidental Love reminded me of the tone and attitude of Russell’s much-praised American Hustle. While Hustle is probably a better, more fully developed piece, certainly by the standards of most critics, I enjoyed the occasionally inspired Love a bit more. It doesn’t work all that well but it’s insane fun at times. Certainly if you watch it as a flawed thing that will kick into gear every so often and that’s all. I don’t need films to work all around the track if they’re got a few special fragments, and that’s more or less the case here.

No devotee of mind-bending, zeitgeist-reflecting cinema will deny that William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53) is one of the most essential sci-fi films of all time — a spooky, purposefully unreal, intensely nightmarish thing that used kid-POV storytelling, surreal dreamscape images and one of the all-time creepiest scores ever composed. (The stone genius behind the famous “sand choir” theme was Raoul Kraushaar.) Last night I thought it might be fun to watch Invaders again via Amazon HD streaming, but it’s not available. On any streaming service apparently. And there’s only one DVD left, according to Amazon, and it’ll cost you $177 dollars plus shipping. That’s because the last DVD release, courtesy of the long-defunct United American Video, came out 13 years ago and nobody has re-upped. A Bluray of Invaders From Mars, which is 18 or 19 times better than Tobe Hooper‘s 1986 remake (which is being being Bluray’ed in April), might not be economically feasible, but an HD version should be streaming at the very least.

The bad guy here. I’m told, is Kansas City-based rights-owner Wade Williams, who holds the rights to Invaders From Mars and owns the original elements. Williams apparently won’t let anyone do a digital HD upgrade without being paid an exorbitant, completely unrealistic fee. Williams is regarded as a notorious “rights squatter” who thinks and operates in the mule-headed tradition of Raymond Rohauer.

I reviewed Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper a little more than three months ago. I’m reposting in case any Academy members who’re reading this are thinking of putting Sniper in their #1 position for Best Picture: “American Sniper is a first-rate visceral combat flick — definitely a ride and a half in that respect — with a slight melancholy undertow and a not-so-hot domestic subplot. The several Iraq War combat sequences are major heartbeat accelerators — nervy, rousing, exquisitely shot and cut — and yet, oddly, Sniper never quite lifts off the pad. Well, it lifts off but then it comes back down. Up, down, steady as she goes, less up, down, up again.

“There’s something a bit rote and at times even flat about portions of it, and that means, no offense, that altogether Sniper is not quite blue ribbon. But it’s certainly good enough if you adjust your expectations and you’re not expecting something, you know, Oscar-baity.

“Sniper is basically one of those ‘guy grew up this way and then he met this girl and joined the military after 9/11 and then this happened and that happened” films. The subject is a guy-guy — the late, legendary Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle— who lived quite large in a sense, which is to say mythically by killing 160 enemy combatants during his four tours in Iraq. It tells an intriguing and at times suspenseful tale but not my idea of a great one, and while it ends on a tragic note it doesn’t deliver anything you could call a knockout finish — it doesn’t hit you on the side of the head like a waffle iron, which is how I felt at the end of Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.