Tony Kushner's prize-winning play Angels in America became the defining US theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theatre-goers. Post-9/11 would seem to be too late for a film version--philosophy and politics don't always age well--but this 2003 HBO adaptation, ably directed by Mike Nichols, provides a time capsule of the '80s and reveals the deep emotional subcurrents that will give the play lasting power. The story centers around Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a gay couple that falls apart when Prior grows ill as a result of AIDS. But cancer is not the only thing invading Prior's life: He begins to have religious visions of an angel (Emma Thompson) announcing that he is a prophet. Louis, who doesn't cope well with disease and suggestions of mortality, leaves and starts a relationship with Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn (Al Pacino)--the real-life right-wing lawyer, notorious for his ruthless behind-the-scenes machinations. Add in Joe's depressed and hallucinating wife Harper (Mary Louise Parker), his determined but open-minded mother Hannah (Meryl Streep), a fierce drag queen/nurse named Belize (Jeffrey Wright, reprising his celebrated performance from the Broadway production), and you've still only begun to discover the wealth of characters and storylines in Kushner's ambitious work. The powerhouse cast (also featuring James Cromwell, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow) is uniformly superb. The script has its weaknesses--some of the fantastic elements, including Prior's journey to Heaven towards the end, fall flat--but even what doesn't work is bristling with ideas and a ferocious desire to capture human existence in this time and place. --Bret Fetzer
The writing-directing team of Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers (Father of the Bride) made this sweet satire about a high-powered yuppie executive (Diane Keaton) who unexpectedly becomes a mom and finds she can't successfully integrate the role into her busy life. Typical of the Shyer-Meyers films prior to Myers taking the director's reins on the wonderful Parent Trap, Baby Boom is a little wooden and more sentimental than genuine. But there are entertaining moments, for sure, and Keaton is a delight. --Tom Keogh
A Passage to India, David Lean's adaptation of EM Forster's mysterious tale of racism in colonial India, turned out to be the master director's final film. Subtle and grand at the same time, Lean's adaptation is faithful to the book, rendering its blend of the mystical and the all-too human with exquisite precision. Judy Davis plays a young British woman travelling in India with her fiancé's mother. While visiting a tourist attraction, she has a frightening moment in a cave--one that she eventually spins from an instant of mental meltdown into a tale of a physical attack that ruins several lives. Lean captures Forster's sense of awe at the kind of ageless wisdom and inexplicable phenomena to be encountered in India, as well as the British tendency to dismiss it all as savage, rather than simply different. --Marshall Fine
Al Pacino cuts a noble figure in this very enjoyable drama by director Brian De Palma (Scarface), based on a pair of books by Edwin Torres. Pacino plays a Puerto Rican ex-con trying hard to go straight, but his loyalty to his lowlife attorney (a virtually unrecognisable Sean Penn) and enemies on the street make that choice difficult. Penelope Ann Miller plays, somewhat unlikely, a stripper who has a romance with Pacino's character. The film finds De Palma tempering his more outlandish moves (think of Body Double or Snake Eyes) just as he did with the popular Untouchables and Mission: Impossible. But while Carlito's Way was not as commercially successful as those two movies, it is a genuinely compelling work graced with a fine performance by Pacino and a surprising one from Penn. --Tom Keogh
Collection of action films starring martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. In 'The Big Boss' (1971) Lee stars as immigrant worker Cheng Chao-an who takes a job with his cousins in an ice factory and discovers all manner of suspicious activities. When he begins to investigate a series of disappearances - the latest of which has seen his own cousin go missing - he can't help but display his formidable martial arts skills. Taking on one opponent after another, Cheng will not stop until he has fought his way to the truth and the inevitable confrontation with the man known only as The Big Boss (Han Ying Chieh). In 'Fist of Fury' (1972) Lee stars as martial arts student Chen Zhen whose mentor dies in suspicious circumstances. Whilst he is mourning his old friend, members of a rival school arrive and taunt Chen and his friends, who do not react at first. Chen later humiliates his adversaries by beating every single one of them, but this causes bloody repercussions and begins to uncover the real reasons behind his master's death. In 'The Way of the Dragon' (1973) Lee stars as martial arts expert Tang Lung who travels to Rome to protect a family friend's restaurant from a powerful Mafia man. A violent altercation between Tang and the mobster's heavies persuades the gang boss to call for reinforcements, an American martial arts assassin (Chuck Norris), who challenges Tang to a fight to the death within the walls of the Colosseum. In 'Enter the Dragon' (1973) Lee plays the role of a secret agent who is sent to infiltrate a martial arts tournament presided over by a one-handed supervillain. His mission: to destroy the villain's opium-smuggling racket. Finally, in 'Game of Death' (1978) a successful martial artist who refuses to join a crime syndicate has a contract to kill put out with his name on it. The assassination attempt fails but his death is broadcast to the world to throw the criminals off his trail. Unfortunately, the hoods do not believe the stories and make him face a series of adversaries in one-to-one fights to save the life of his girlfriend (Colleen Camp).
Critically hailed as 'a modern masterpiece' (The Observer) the series is a darkly humorous and often violent look at a New Jersey family whose patriarch happens to be a mob boss. The pace is fast the conflict fierce and the humour bitterly dark The Sopranos takes hold and doesn't let go.
Six of your favourite Western Classics in one box set! Disc One Geronimo! Chuck Connors stars in the title role as the Indian Chief who, having reluctantly surrendered to the US forces in return for food and land, finds the white man's promises broken as their land is revoked. He leads the Apache tribe in all-out war against the Americans, which they can never hope to win. However, as his tribe is depleted, Geronimo continues to hold his ground. Disc Two Hour of the Gun Guns don't stay in their holsters long when vigilantes Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday meet outlaws in the Wild West. With the dust settled at the OK Corral the notorious Clanton brothers unleash their revenge. One by one they gun down Wyatt Earp's brothers - but they won't have the last shot. Using his US Marshal's badge as his authority and Doc Holliday (Jason Robards) as his deputized right-hand man Earp (James Garner) begins a zealous pursuit of vengeance that the West will never forget. ...Hour of the Gun Disc Three Man of the East By his dying father's last wish Joe is sent to the Wild West to become a real guy. The dreamy young man despises guns and fights, likes poems and prefers bicycles to horses. Now his three teachers, footpads all of them, shall teach him otherwise. This doesn't work, until Joe has to defend himself against gunman Morton, who's jealous of Joe's love to rancher Ohlsen's beautiful daughter. Disc Four The Spikes Gang Will (Gary Grimes), Les (Ron Howard) and Tod (Charlie Martin Smith), teenage farm boys living near the Mexican border, stumble upon Harry Spikes (Lee Marvin), a local bandit near death in the middle of nowhere. After helping bring the aging man back to health, the trio decides to escape their humdrum lives by becoming outlaws themselves. Failing at their first attempt to rob a bank, the boys convince the gruff Spikes to teach them the ways of the desperado. Disc Five The Way West Senator William J. Tadlock (Kirk Douglas) enlists the help of veteran scout Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum) to lead a wagon train of settlers from Missouri to Oregon in this plodding, routine western. A scared settler accidently shoots an Indian boy who is mistaken for a wolf, prompting Summers to order newlywed triggerman Johnny Mack (Michael Witney) to be hanged to avoid an Indian attack. The highlight of the film is the expert cinematography. Watch for Sally Field in her first big-screen role as the slatternly Mercy McBee. Disc Six Comanche In 1875, near Durango, Mexico, Renegade Comanche leader Black Cloud (Henry Brandon) attacks a Mexican village and kidnaps the beautiful Margarita Alvarez (Linda Cristal). Fleeing to the United States, they come across a band of scalp hunters and are prevented from massacring them by the Comanche chief of the Antelope tribe, Quanah (Kent Smith). Despite the efforts of frontier scout Jim Read (Dana Andrews), turmoil erupts between the whites and the rebel Comanche, and Quanah and Read struggle to restore peace.
When a double homicide happens in a Florida community, the chief of police finds himself in a race against time to solve the murders before he himself falls under suspicion in this modern noir thriller.
The complete third season of undercover adventures with Starsky and Hutch as they use their iconic Gran Torino to bust criminals following tip-offs from coolest informer on the streets Huggy Bear... Episodes comprise: 1. Starsky & Hutch on Playboy Island (a.k.a. Murder on Voodoo Island) (1) 2. Starsky & Hutch on Playboy Island (a.k.a. Murder on Voodoo Island) (2) 3. Fatal Charm 4. I Love You Rosey Malone 5. Murder Ward 6. Death in a Different Place 7. The Crying Child 8
The smallest member of The Little family returns in this blockbusting sequel. Alongside fellow family pet Snowbell the cat he sets of on a journey through the streets of New York in search of a missing friend.
The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own nouveau riche brood. The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his midlevel capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers, and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get. Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful, and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed. The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive, and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what's not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com
Russell Crowe stars as "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, who pits his crew of the HMS Surprise against a much better armed and ruthless enemy in a chase that takes him all the way to the far side of the world.
By any rational measure, Alan Parker's cinematic interpretation of Pink Floyd's The Wall is a glorious failure. Glorious because its imagery is hypnotically striking, frequently resonant and superbly photographed by the gifted cinematographer Peter Biziou. And a failure because the entire exercise is hopelessly dour, loyal to the bleak themes and psychological torment of Roger Waters' great musical opus, and yet utterly devoid of the humour that Waters certainly found in his own material. Any attempt to visualise The Wall would be fraught with artistic danger, and Parker succumbs to his own self-importance, creating a film that's as fascinating as it is flawed. The film is, for better and worse, the fruit of three artists in conflict--Parker indulging himself, and Waters in league with designer Gerald Scarfe, whose brilliant animated sequences suggest that he should have directed and animated this film in its entirety. Fortunately, this clash of talent and ego does not prevent The Wall from being a mesmerising film. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof (in his screen debut) is a fine choice to play Waters's alter ego--an alienated, "comfortably numb" rock star whose psychosis manifests itself as an emotional (and symbolically physical) wall between himself and the cold, cruel world. Weaving Waters's autobiographical details into his own jumbled vision, Parker ultimately fails to combine a narrative thread with experimental structure. It's a rich, bizarre, and often astonishing film that will continue to draw a following, but the real source of genius remains the music of Roger Waters. --Jeff Shannon
Experience the Star Trek Universe like never before! The first original 10 films remastered plus over 8 hours of special features. For the first time in Star Trek history nearly every frame of the final frontier is brought together in one brilliantly re-mastered motion picture DVD box set. Discover the Star Trek Universe and experience every unforgettable moment from Kirk's triumphant return to the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Picard Data and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E's final battle for control of the universe in Star Trek Nemesis. The spirit of the Enterprise lives in the heart-stopping action and unforgettable characters of this one-of-a-kind collection. Special Features: The Original Series Star Trek: The Motion Picture Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Daren Dochterman Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Deleted Scenes Trailers TV Spots BD -Live - Star Trek I.Q Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Commentary by director Nicholas Meyer Commentary by director Nicholas Meyer and Manny Coto Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Theatrical Trailer BD-Live - Star Trek I.Q. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock Commentary by director Lenoard Nimoy writer and producer Harve Bennett director of photography Charles Correll and Robin Curtis Commentary by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Theatrical Trailer Easter Egg: That Darn Klingon Dog BD-Live - Star Trek I.Q. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Commentary by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy Commentary by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Visual Effects Original Interviews Tributes Theatrical Trailer BD-Live - Star Trek I.Q. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Commentary by William Shatner and Liz Shatner Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Daren Dochterman Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Deleted Scenes Theatrical Trailers TV Spots Easter Egg the Gag reel BD-Live - Star Trek I.Q. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Commentary by director Nicholas Meyer and screenwriter Denny Martin Flinn Commentary by Larry Nemecek and Ira Steven Behr Library Computer The Perils of Peacemaking Stories from Star Trek VI The Star Trek Universe Original Interviews Farewell Promotional Material BD-Live - Star Trek I.Q. The Next Generation Star Trek: Generations Commentary by director David Carson and Manny Coto Commentary by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore Library Computer Production Visual Effects Scene Deconstruction The Star Trek Universe Deleted Scenes Archives: Storyboards Production Gallery Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer Star Trek I.Q. (BD-Live) Star Trek: First Contact Commentary by director and actor Jonathan Frakes Commentary by screenplay writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore Commentary by Damon Lindelof and Anthony Pascale Library Computer Production Scene Deconstruction The Star Trek Universe The Borg Collective Archives: Storyboards Photo Gallery Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer Star Trek I.Q. (BD-Live) Easter Eggs Star Trek: Insurrection Commentary Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe Creating The Illusion Deleted Scenes Archives: Storyboards Production Gallery Advertising Star Trek I.Q. (BD-Live) Easter Eggs Star Trek: Nemesis Commentary by director Stuart Baird Commentary by producer Rick Berman Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda Library Computer Production The Star Trek Universe The Romulan Empire Deleted Scenes Archives: Storyboards Production Galleries Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer Star Trek I.Q. (BD-Live) Easter Eggs Bonus Discs: Star Trek Summit Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Evolution of the Enterprise Villians of Star Trek I Love the Star Trek Movies Farewell to Star Trek: The Experience Klingon Encounter Borg Invasion 4D Charting the Final Frontier
John Travolta (Face/Off Phenomenon) gives another brilliant performance in a suspenseful true story that's been praised as the greatest legal thriller of all time! Jan Schlichtmann (Travolta) is a cynical high-priced personal injury attorney who only takes big-money cases he can safely settle out of court. Though his latest case at first appears straightforward Schlichtmann soon becomes entangled in an epic legal battle...one where he's willing to put his career reputation and a
Experience the dazzling story of cinematography as seen through the lenses of the world's greatest filmmakers and captured in classic scenes from over 125 immortal movies. Discover Gordon Willis's secrets of lighting Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Greg Toland's contributions to Citizen Kane. Hear William Fraker on filming Rosemary's Baby; Vittorio Storaro on his use of colour and light in Apocalypse Now; and much much more. From black and white to Te
Brand New Doctor! Exciting New Adventures! Episodes Comprise: 1. The Eleventh Hour 2. The Beast Below 3. Victory of the Daleks 4. The Time of Angels 5. Flesh and Stone 6. The Vampires of Venice 7. Amy's Choice 8. The Hungry Earth 9. Cold Blood 10. Vincent and the Doctor 11. The Lodger 12. The Pandorica Opens 13. The Big Bang
Robert Redford stars as a wrongly convicted five star General who turns his fellow inmates into an army and threatens to take over the prison.
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