Look on the back of the case of Eagles Over London (Severin) and you’ll see this Italian World War II action adventure identified as a “Macaroni Combat.” This rather clumsy moniker is a recently coined phrase in the “spaghetti western” vein but hardly expressive of this military caper thriller from Italian genre specialist Enzo Castellari (of the original The Inglorious Bastards fame). The plot is quite clever: a squad of Germans don British uniforms and identities and infiltrate Britain through the chaos of the evacuation of Dunkirk, while a British Lt. (a colorless Frederick Stafford with a thick European accent) stumbles upon the plot and tries to track them through London before they can execute their missions. Castellari is not an elegant director, but then that’s not what makes a World War II adventure like this work. Made in the shadow of The Dirty Dozen and The Battle of Britain, this film straddles both genres, delivering impressive spectacle—from the evacuation of Dunkirk (shot on the coast of Spain) to the air combat of the Battle of Britain (largely shot on soundstage in Rome)—and espionage action. There’s a lot  of dubbing (most of the Italians are replaced on the soundtrack) and a cacophony of unlikely accents (the aforementioned Stafford, whose accent is justified by his Hungarian origins, and Van Johnson as a British Air Marshall right out of middle America), but it’s still quite entertaining, like an energetic B-movie with a lavish budget (you can see the money poured into the Dunkirk scenes, with its epic vistas filled with extras and a strafing run by a German fighter) and energetic direction.

The Germans in London in "Eagles Over London"

Originally titled La battaglia d’Inghilterra (“The Battle of Britain”) and also known as Battle Squadron, this film never received an official American release according to Quentin Tarantino (a big fan of the film and of Castellari’s oeuvre). Severin took a cue from QT to give the film its American DVD and Blu-ray debut and they got Tarantino to participate in the extras: a 14-minute interview with director Enzo G. Castellari (the discuss the film and the oddities of the Italian movie industry of the time) and an appearance hosting a rare film screening in L.A. with Castellari, gushing on stage while a woozy handheld video camera records the occasion. Also features a brief deleted scene with the German High Command discussing the invastion (in German with English subtitles).

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Superhero movies have been a big-screen staple ever since Superman flew through his first animated adventure in 1940. But for all the glory of Richard Donner’s majestic Superman and the kooky, dark weirdness of Tim Burton’s Batman films, it took comic-book-fan-turned-fanboy-director Sam Raimi to capture the graphic thrills and eye-popping spectacle of a true comic book superhero. The film was Spider-Man, and superhero movies have never been the same.

Tobey Maguire is the shy science geek Peter Parker, buffed up from everyman to superman when the bite of a radioactive spider transforms the high school nerd into a mutant wall-crawling muscleman. The adrenaline charge of unbelievable abilities comes at a price, however, and he learns the hard way that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Suited up in a bright, web-laced body stocking, he battles muggers, thieves and his inevitable supervillain nemesis, the cackling, rocket-powered, Jekyll-and-Hyde gremlin Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). But out of costume he’s just as nerdy and nervous as ever as he struggles with his unrequited love of girl-next-door Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst under flaming red tresses). It takes a web-slinging rescue to get her attention and you can almost see the sparks when she plants a soft, slow kiss on her knight in red-and-blue skivvies.

Spider-Man is more than simply a faithful cinematic update of an iconic 40-year-old comic book character. With contemporary flair, Raimi translates the teenage melodrama of alienation and tortured secrets that redefined comic book heroes in the 1960s. He embraces the zip and zoom of modern moviemaking magic with a vengeance to send Spidey whipping through the steel canyons of New York like a spider monkey out of hell.

Raimi captures the ineffable quality that makes this misfit with muscles New York’s own blue-collar, working-man’s hero. He delivers high-flying whoosh, gymnastic spectacle and graphic comic book punch without losing the tragic weight of guilt and responsibility that gives Spider-Man his calling and his credo.

There have been slicker superhero films, but none with as much heart, unabashed charm and sheer kinetic thrill of whipping through the world in a state of high-flying gymnastic bliss.

Originally published as part of the “MSN Cadillac” series.