Before I (first) got married in 1994, one of my brothers drunkenly noted I should think about the fact I was “committing to one vagina” for the remainder of my years.

Or maybe I saw that in an ’80s comedy?

I’m not for certain. Either way, the advice represents men’s primary misgiving about marriage. It’s existed maybe one day fewer than the concept of matrimony itself — and arguably never used to better onscreen effect than Jim Cummings and co-conspirator PJ McCabe have in The Beta Test.

Cummings’ Jordan, an overstressed Hollywood agent, is engaged to the lovely Caroline (Virginia Newcomb, wonderful in The Death of Dick Long). While his heart may be (mostly) in it, his eyes certainly aren’t, wandering like a hobo with ADHD. So when an unmarked invitation arrives in the mail promising a 100% anonymous and discreet sexual encounter tailored to his every fantasy, he bites.

Too good to be true? Just the opposite — and then some. In fact, the sex is so mind-blowing, he not only can’t stop thinking about it, but about the machinations behind the temptation. Who was she? Who arranged it? Why him? Why at all? Is he one of a million or one in a million? Not knowing gets the best of him, which brings out the worst in him.

As we know from decades of watching thrillers, paranoia is never a good thing for anyone — except for those on our side of the screen. Just as Jordan can’t help but keep his one-afternoon stand top of mind, nor can I keep The Beta Test away from mine. It’s one of only two releases this year to stick with me.

Those of us young enough to remember the national conversation around Fatal Attraction can picture the same post-screening hubbub between spouses and significant others: “What would you do?” You’d not be out of line to peg The Beta Test as an update of the late-’80s erotic thriller for an evermore superficial and narcissistic America, but with a ruthless and acidic sense of humor.

Built on a premise original enough to avert audiences from getting a step ahead of it, The Beta Test charms with genre-bending verve and intelligence. From Thunder Road to The Wolf of Snow Hollow to this, Cummings’ work as a director gains more confidence — and mainstream accessibility, not that our country at large yet deserves him.

As an actor, he may play slight variations on high-strung, but every time I see him pop up in films — whether the absurdist Greener Grass or the bloody Halloween Kills — I’m assured delight. Considering Jordan is unquestionably an asshole, to revel in him squirming as I root for Cummings is an odd experience, and entirely pleasurable. —Rod Lott

A Technicolor template for the Airport franchise, The Crowded Sky gets its title from two planes headed straight for one another: a California-to-D.C. Navy jet and a D.C.-to-California airliner.

The two-man military jet is flown by Cmdr. Heath (Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Hot Shots!), shortly after his hot, estranged wife (Rhonda Fleming, The Nude Bomb) eschews accountability for the fact penises not attached to his body tend to make their way into hers. Add in that Heath was responsible for a midair collision a few years prior, and one understands why an enlistee (Troy Donahue, Palm Springs Weekend) is hesitant to take the passenger seat, but being pressed for time, has no other choice.

Piloting the Trans States flight is past-his-prime Dick Barnett (Dana Andrews, ironic considering his eventual plot function in Airport 1975), who’s none too pleased archenemy John Kerr (Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum) has been assigned co-piloting duties. Meanwhile, Kerr’s distracted by his affair with the lead stewardess (Anne Francis, TV’s Honey West), who’s pushing for a ring with rather unconventional, that-settles-that justification: “I’m the ex-champ of tramps, and ex-tramps make the best wives.” Incidentally, her name is Kitty.

While much of the movie is devoted to flashbacks detailing these turbulent relationships, Crowded Sky director Joseph Pevney (Man of a Thousand Faces) and writer Charles Schnee (The Bad and the Beautiful) make a choice to grant their most notable passengers a backstory as well — exposition via voice-over. A TV scribe (Keenan Wynn, Bikini Beach) hits on his seatmate (Jean Willes, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars) without realizing they used to be lovers. On the other side of the aisle, a sad sack (Louis Quinn, Superchick) wants to hit on his seatmate (Hollis Irving, Frogs), but has no game; she’d welcome the attention, but tells herself, “Too bad I’m a dog.” Rough!

Pevney moves among these internal monologues so quickly, they unintentionally carry comic beats, as if the characters are popping out of hidey-holes within Laugh-In’s “joke wall” just long enough to deliver their lines. Although Airplane! exists because of 1957’s Zero Hour! (which also plopped Andrews in the cockpit), the parody clearly cribbed its thought-bubble bit from the Sky.

Speaking of bubbles, this one’s full of soap — like Peyton Place at 20,000 feet, back when commercial air travel was considered a novel, even glamorous venture. So why not have a society’s worth of trouble play out above the clouds? With Airport a decade on the horizon, the disaster portion is secondary — if even that high — on The Crowded Sky’s ladder of importance; had Pevney and Schnee excised the threat of physical danger, audiences still would be left with an outmoded riot.

Having said that, wow, am I thankful they didn’t! With the movie making good on its titular promise in the home stretch, the collision and aftermath are a marvel of miniature work — a sequence well worth a rewind. Inside the cabin, preparing passengers for a crash landing, Kitty instructs them to remove their false teeth. As many periled-plane pictures as I’ve seen, I’ve never seen that. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

On Halloween night in New York City, TV news editor Jake (Eric Tabach, What We Found) races to complete an exclusive package on the high-profile death of former state attorney general (indie-horror icon Larry Fessenden, We Are Still Here) by a police officer who pulled him over in a routine traffic stop.

Or was it? As Jake’s almost-edited piece shows, conspiracy theorists believe the AG’s death was an assassination at the order of their vengeful governor. All Jake has left to do is drop in the police car’s dashcam footage, due to arrive in his inbox any moment. Once it does, it’s immediately followed by a second email — this one accidental and containing highly classified info, such as the officer’s bodycam footage, which the public was told did not exist. When Jake notes a discrepancy between the reported number of gunshots and what the secret video reveals, his Spidey sense tingles big-time.

Thus, Dashcam — the lower-profile of two concurrent films bearing that title — follows Jake as he clicks, copies, drag-and-drops, imports, enhances and other-action-verbs files on his Mac to forensically figure out the truth. Not unlike Unfriended or Searching, screen time gets lots of screen time, with Adobe Creative Cloud inadvertently something of an indispensable supporting player here.

Known for the buzzy short Unsubscribe, another desktop-based drama, filmmaker Christian Nilsson branches out to full-length features with Dashcam, fairly successfully, as he’s able to keep viewers engaged — albeit at a consistently low wattage — even though they’re literally watching his protagonist work a keyboard and mouse. That said, with the prodding of his girlfriend (Giorgia Whigham, MTV’s Scream: The TV Series), Jake hits the streets to find the answers he so desperately seeks. Where that lands underwhelms — not because of what occurs, but because it’s what you expect to occur. For the innovation Nilsson applies elsewhere, its absence from the conclusion can’t help but register as a letdown, even for the mildly invested. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

When I was a kid living in small-town Blooming Grove, Texas, my father would get two papers everyday: The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald. While he was usually concerned with the news part of the paper, he always pulled aside the entertainment section for me, offering a two-color invite to a world of movies I thought I would never experience.

Obsessed with the advertisements, I was intrigued by a Dallas theater known as the Inwood. Even though it was the exact definition of an arthouse theater, their ads always had a “no one under 17 allowed” line on each, making its films feel like something that would always be beyond my reach, with Mona Lisa being one I vividly remember.

Directed by Neil Jordan, this HandMade Film (produced by Beatle George Harrison!) was, I thought, a love story between a prostitute and her driver. Like many films from my youth, I had an absolutely dreamy version of it playing in my head; in reality, it’s a dank and dirty story of a recently released from prison Bob Hoskins and his unknowing entry into the world of realistic prostitutes and their pimps.

I can see why they wanted no one under 17 to view the film.

Playing the criminal opposite of his ganglord in The Long Good Friday, here Hoskins is the dull-witted George, an emotionally vulnerable criminal who is used, pathetically, by mob boss Denny (an outstanding Michael Caine). Needing a job, George becomes a driver to Simone (Cathy Tyson), a high-class call girl who, in their time together, he falls for.

She, however, needs his help to find her smack-addicted girlfriend. Even though he’s in love with Simone, he helps her find her; it leads to a bloody shootout at the beautiful British oceanside, both literally and — in the course of his explosive feelings for her — figuratively.

Masterfully filmed by Jordan, this film — much like Friday — cemented Hoskins as the British go-to guy for slovenly criminals in an absolutely career-defining performance that I feel I would have totally understood at the tender age of 8 or 9 — and one that I absolutely understand get at 43, perhaps more than I should. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Months from now, and even years from now, someone is going to ask if you’ve seen Small Engine Repair. I believe this because it’s exactly the kind of unassuming little film that takes time to find its audience — living through word of mouth, one conversation at a time. So why not just see it right now?

Written and directed by John Pollono, adapting his own 2011 award-winning play of the same name, the movie centers on one family — both biological and unofficial — in working-class Manchester, New Hampshire. Ex-con single-dad mechanic Frank (Pollono) is struggling with his only child, Crystal (Ciara Bravo, 2021’s Cherry), leaving home for UCLA. A tomboy writ large, she essentially has been raised by three dads, although not always simultaneously: Frank and his two lifelong best friends, macho Terry (Jon Bernthal, Sicario) and meek Packie (the ever-reliable Shea Whigham, Joker). Amid this flanneled trifecta of testosterone, it’s fun to watch Bravo so at ease, giving as good as she gets.

One night, the men’s iron-tight bond snaps. Months later, Frank reaches out to Terry and Packie, seemingly to make amends, but he has an ulterior motive: He needs a favor — for which he can trust no one else. Small Engine Repair is best appreciated if you go in with no more context than Frank gives his friends.

The second half of Small Engine Repair works as well as it does because Pollono invests so much time up front getting you invested in his characters. Relevant details of their complicated relationship and shared history, which have a way of helping determine their collective future, are skillfully peppered in versus dumped in lazy exposition. Only in first painting a realistic blue-collar portrait is Pollono able to throw the narrative into a new direction that threatens your blood pressure and keeps you along for the ride.

For Pollono (screenwriter of David Gordon Green’s Boston Marathon bombing drama, Stronger), this marks an exceptionally strong directorial debut. Obviously the man knows his own material inside and out, down to each and every well-placed “fuckin’,” and that confidence results in a work that continues to resonate with me weeks later. Like the William Friedkin/Tracy Letts collaborations Bug and Killer Joe, it proves that plays with turns of the perverse and felonious stand the best chance of generating sparks onscreen. —Rod Lott