Due respect to the Masters of Cinema guys but Robert Aldrich‘s The Flight of Phoenix (’65) isn’t Bluray material. It’s mainly about a crew of older guys arguing about how best to survive being stranded hundreds of miles from anywhere in the middle of the Sahara desert, and finally deciding to build a new plane out of the wreckage of a crashed one. I’ve seen it two or three times on the tube, and as best I can recall it’s nothing more than a decently framed desert-locale thing, shot in color & 1.85 by longtime Aldrich collaborator Joseph F. Biroc, who also shot It’s A Wonderful Life. I certainly don’t remember any mesmerizing visuals. Pic runs 142 minutes, but it has only one truly gripping scene: “Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger) panics when four cartridges fail to start the engine and Towns (James Stewart) wants to use one of the remaining three cartridges just to clear the engine’s cylinders. Dorfmann objects, but Towns ignores him and fires one cartridge with the ignition off. The next cartridge succeeds.” And that’s it! Nothing else pops. I didn’t even see John Moore’s 2004 remake. Did anyone?