This loud and fast 1988 effort by director Tony Scott (Beverly Hills Cop 2, Top Gun) has much more style than substance but it does effectively depict the edgy and dangerous world of stock car racing. Tom Cruise plays yet another cocky loner trying to find success and happiness, this time as stock car racer Cole Trickle, a driver with raw talent but no discipline who is desperate for guidance and sponsorship. They both materialise in the visage of world-weary Robert Duvall, who despite his better instincts sees a second chance at victory in the young driver. Featuring supporting roles by Nicole Kidman, as Cruise's physician and love interest, and Randy Quaid, as a bombastic sponsor, and with a screenplay by Robert Towne (Chinatown), Days of Thunder is a slickly packaged entertainment best suited for die-hard Tom Cruise fans and those who want an intense visual experience. --Robert Lane
Twister was a mega-million-dollar blockbuster--helmed by a director (Dutchman Jan de Bont) hot off another scorcher hit (Speed)--that flaunted state-of-the-art digital effects and featured a popular leading actress (Helen Hunt) who would win an Academy Award for her next film (As Good As It Gets). But ask anybody who's seen it and they'll tell you who the real star of Twister is: the cow. Not to give anything away, but the cow is one of those inspired little touches (like, say, Bronson Pinchot's career-making cameo in Beverly Hills Cop) that adds a touch of personality to a gigantic Hollywood production. The story is blown out the window after an impressive prologue in which Hunt's character, as a little girl, witnesses her daddy being sucked into a tornado. Basically, Hunt and Bill Paxton are thrill-seeking meteorologists chasing twisters in order to study them (and help warn people of them, of course) with a new technology they've developed. If you thought the Kansas tornado in The Wizard of Oz was every bit as scary as the Wicked Witch of the West, then this may be the movie for you. --Jim Emerson
A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive
In this poignant and humorous love story nominated for four Academy Awards, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet on an ocean liner and fall deeply in love. Though each is engaged to someone else, they agree to meet six months later at the Empire State Building if they still feel the same way about each other. But a tragic accident prevents their rendezvous and the lovers' future takes an emotional and uncertain turn.
Screenwriter William Goldman's novel The Princess Bride earned its own loyal audience on the strength of its narrative voice and its gently satirical, hyperbolic spin on swashbuckled adventure that seemed almost purely literary. For all its derring-do and vivid over-the-top characters, the book's joy was dictated as much by the deadpan tone of its narrator and a winking acknowledgement of the clichés being sent up. Miraculously, director Rob Reiner and Goldman himself managed to visualize this romantic fable while keeping that external voice largely intact: using a storytelling framework, avuncular Grandpa (Peter Falk) gradually seduces his sceptical grandson (Fred Savage) into the absurd, irresistible melodrama of the title story. And what a story: a lowly stable boy, Westley (Cary Elwes), pledges his love to the beautiful Buttercup (Robin Wright), only to be abducted and reportedly killed by pirates while Buttercup is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck. Even as Buttercup herself is kidnapped by a giant, a scheming criminal mastermind, and a master Spanish swordsman, a mysterious masked pirate (could it be Westley?) follows in pursuit. As they sail toward the Cliffs of Insanity... The wild and woolly arcs of the story, the sudden twists of fate, and, above all, the cartoon-scaled characters all work because of Goldman's very funny script, Reiner's confident direction, and a terrific cast. Elwes and Wright, both sporting their best English accents, juggle romantic fervor and physical slapstick effortlessly, while supporting roles boast Mandy Patinkin (the swordsman Inigo Montoya), Wallace Shawn (the incredulous schemer Vizzini), and Christopher Guest (evil Count Rugen) with brief but funny cameos from Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, and Peter Cook. --Sam Sutherland
The franchise that refined the horror genre is back! With its unique take on visual and psychological scares, the SAW franchise centres on sick, twisted Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) a man who has made it his life's mission to lay traps for unsuspecting sinners. This Legacy Collection brings together all eight films from the terrifying SAW series. See the game from beginning to end with the pieces of the Jigsaw. Features: With new gruesome textured varnish sleeve. With hours of special features including: Commentaries from directors, writers, producers and cast Video Diaries, Music Videos, Deleted Scenes and more
One of the top five screwball comedies of the 1930s, this helped to cement a genre that waxed golden until the end of the Second World War. Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for Best Director for this 1937 romantic comedy--one of the most successful films of his career. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are a squabbling couple who separates because of supposed infidelities on both sides. They part, but cannot really keep away from each other. Grant finds himself hooked up with a socialite, Dunne becomes engaged to a millionaire hick played by the hapless Ralph Bellamy (as if he ever stood a chance as the "other" man!). When not dating others or baiting one another in a verbal war, Grant and Dunne wage a custody battle over their pathetic pooch. Gags, double entendre, witty remarks, snide comments, and fast-paced dialogue helped this to garner six Academy Award nominations. The Awful Truth was awfully good to Dunne and Grant, as both were breaking out of much more serious moulds and this secured their positions. --Rochelle O'Gorman
The franchise that refined the horror genre is back! With its unique take on visual and psychological scares, the SAW franchise centres on sick, twisted Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) a man who has made it his life's mission to lay traps for unsuspecting sinners. This Legacy Collection brings together all eight films from the terrifying SAW series. See the game from beginning to end with the pieces of the Jigsaw. Features: With new gruesome textured varnish sleeve. With hours of special features including: Commentaries from directors, writers, producers and cast Video Diaries, Music Videos, Deleted Scenes and more
Cary Grant is the screen's supreme man-on-the-run in his fourth and final teaming with Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock. He plays a Manhattan adman plunged into a realm of spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint) and variously abducted, framed for murder, chased, and in a signature set-piece, crop-dusted. He also hangs for dear life from the facial features of Mount Rushmore's Presidents. 4K: Commentary by Ernest Lehman North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style North by Northwest: One for the Ages A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock
In 4K Ultra-HD, Alfred Hitchcock's essential TO CATCH A THIEF comes with expanded special features and incredible HDR-10 and Dolby Vision. Cary Grant plays John Robie, a reformed jewel thief once known as The Cat. When he is suspected of new gem thefts in the luxury hotels of the French Riviera, Robie sees a plot to clear himself after meeting pampered heiress Frances (Grace Kelly). Romantic sparks fly as the suspense builds in this essential VistaVision classic, which nabbed an Oscar® for Best Cinematography, Colour (1955).
Director Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride is a gently amusing, affectionate pastiche of a medieval fairytale adventure, offering a similar blend of warm, literate humour as his Stand By Me (1985) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Adapted from his own novel, William Goldman's script plays with the conventions of such 1980s fantasies as Ladyhawke and Legend (both 1985), and with the budget never allowing for spectacle, sensibly concentrates on creating a gallery of memorable characters. Robin Wright makes a delightful Princess Buttercup, Cary Elwes is splendid as Westley and "Dread Pirate Roberts", while Mandy Patinkin makes fine Spanish avenger. With winning support from Mel Smith, Peter Cook, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane there is sometimes a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python feel to the proceedings, and the whole film is beautifully shot, with a memorably romantic main theme by Mark Knopfler. Occasionally interrupted by Peter Falk as a grandfather reading the story to his grandson, The Princess Bride is an elegant post-modern family fable about storytelling itself; a theme found in other 1980s films The Neverending Story (1984) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). A modest, small-scale work that manages to be both cynically modern and genuinely romantic all at once. As charming as you wish. On the DVD: The 1.77:1 anamorphic transfer is strong, if not quite as detailed as it might be. Colours lack just a little solidity and some scenes evidence a fair amount of grain. Released theatrically in Dolby stereo, the Dolby Digital 5.1 remix spreads the sound effectively across the front speakers but makes very little use of the rear channels indeed. Extras are limited to filmographies of five of the leading actors, and a 4:3 presentation of the theatrical trailer, which gives far too many of the film's surprises away.--Gary S Dalkin
From the producer of Get Out and Halloween, comes a timely take on a cult horror classic as a campus killer comes to face a formidable group of friends in sisterhood. Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. But as Riley Stone and her Mu Kappa Epsilon sisters prepare to deck the halls with a series of seasonal parties, a black-masked stalker begins killing sorority women one by one. As the body count rises, the sisters start to question whether they can trust any man. Whoever the killer is, he's about to discover that this generation's young women aren't about to be anybody's victims.
Hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson this family friendly series will explore how we discovered the laws of nature and found our coordinates in space and time. It will bring to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge and transport viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale.
Anybody who has written him off because of a string of stinkers--or anybody who's too young to remember The Goodbye Girl--may be shocked at the accomplishment and nuance of Richard Dreyfuss's performance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Here, he plays a man possessed. Contacted by aliens, he (along with other members of the "chosen") is drawn toward the site of the incipient landing: Devil's Tower, in rural Wyoming. As in many Spielberg films, there are no personalised enemies; the struggle is between those who have been called and a scientific establishment that seeks to protect them by keeping them away from the arriving spacecraft. The ship, and the special effects in general, are every bit as jaw-dropping on DVD as they were in the theatre (well, almost). Released in 1977 as a cerebral alternative to the swashbuckling science fiction epics then in vogue, Close Encounters now seems almost wholesome in its representation of alien contact and interested less in philosophising about extra-terrestrials than it is in examining the nature of the inner "call." Ultimately a motion picture about the obsession of the driven artist or determined visionary, Close Encounters comes complete with the stock Spielberg wives and girlfriends who seek to tether the dreamy, possessed protagonists to the more mundane concerns of the everyday. So a spectacular, seminal motion picture indeed (albeit one with gender politics that are all too terrestrial). --Miles Bethany
Hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson this family friendly series will explore how we discovered the laws of nature and found our coordinates in space and time. It will bring to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge and transport viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale.
Lord Rayden (Christopher Lambert) has rescued them, but he cannot fight for them. They a martial artist, an action film star, a soldier are the chosen three. And while the world's fate rests on their shoulders, the rest of us can enjoy the thrills as they compete to save us all in the body-slamming, mystical-tinged, full-tilt spectacle of creatures and conflict that is Mortal Combat. Paul Anderson (Resident Evil: Afterlife) directs this astonishing and trendsetting experience that showed how to turn a smash-hit video game into a movie smash.
The mother of all movies! Charlie Sheen Lloyd Bridges Cary Elwes Valeria Golino and Jon Cryer co-star in director Jim Abrahams' (Airplane Naked Gun) truly hilarious spoof of Top Gun. Recruited to join a top-secret mission for the Air Force a renegade pilot (Sheen) finds himself coping with an incompetent admiral (Bridges) and a carefully selected squadron of flyers who are either inept or half-blind. He also winds up in competition with the corps' model of military perf
This historical drama from acclaimed director Sir Trevor Nunn tells the true story of young royal Lady Jane Grey and how she was supplanted on the throne of England for a mere nine days by plotting ministers after the death of Henry VIII. Starring Helena Bonham Carter in her feature film debut and with a strong supporting cast including Patrick Stewart Lady Jane is a powerful and moving story of political corruption and the tragedy of love. Helena Bonham Carter gives a remarkable
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