Roundly dismissed as one of Steven Spielberg's least successful efforts, this very underrated film poignantly follows the World War II adventures of young Jim (a brilliant Christian Bale), caught in the throes of the fall of China. What if you once had everything and lost it all in an afternoon? What if you were only 12 years old at the time? Bale's transformation, from pampered British ruling-class child to an imprisoned, desperate, nearly feral boy, is nothing short of stunning. Also stunning are exceptional sets, cinematography and music (the last courtesy of John Williams) that enhance author J.G. Ballard's and screenwriter Tom Stoppard's depiction of another, less familiar casualty of war. In a time when competitors were releasing "comedic", derivative coming-of-age films, Empire of the Sun stands out as an epic in the classic David Lean sense--despite confusion or perceived competition with the equally excellent The Last Emperor (also released in 1987, and also a coming-of-age in a similar setting). It is also a remarkable testament to, yes, the human spirit. And despite its disappointing box-office returns, Empire of the Sun helped to further establish Spielberg as more than a commercial director and set the standard, tone and look for future efforts Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. --N.F. Mendoza
Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower's legendary farewell speech filmmaker Eugene Jarecki surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century's military adventures asking how - and telling why - a nation of by and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war. Why We Fight won the Grand Jury Prize (Documentary) at the Sundance Film Festival. It is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the AMerican War Machine weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a 'who's who' of military and Washington insiders. Featuring John McCain Gore Vidal William Kristol Chalmers Johnson Richard Perle and others.
After his latest mission goes disastrously wrong veteran CIA black ops agent Emerson Kent (John Cusack 2012) is given one last chance to prove he still has what it takes to do his job. His new assignment: guarding Katherine (Malin Akerman Watchmen) a code operator at a top-secret remote CIA 'Numbers Station' where encrypted messages are sent and received. When an elite team of heavily armed assailants lays siege to the station Emerson and Katherine suddenly find themselves in a life-or-death struggle against an unknown enemy. With the station compromised and innocent lives at stake they must stop the deadly plot before it's too late.
In 1954 four athletes across three continents were trying to run a mile under the milestone 4 minute mark - a feat then thought impossible. With two supremely gifted athletes emerging as front runners: England's Roger Bannister and Australia's John Landy a race into the history books was on...Based on Roger Bannister's sporting achievement this film is a story of dedication perseverance and glory.
The phrase Saturday Night's Main Event means the biggest WWE Superstars of the '80s and '90s fighting memorable battles along with humourous and unique vignettes! For the first time ever the greatest matches in its decades-long history come to DVD with The Best of Saturday Night's Main Event. This 3-disc set includes more than 30 matches as well as interviews and Superstar recollections of what the event meant to them. WWE Championship Match Hulk Hogan vs. 'Cowboy' Bob Orton Saturday Night's Main Event May 11 1985 Uncle Elmer's Wedding Saturday Night's Main Event October 5 1985 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper vs. 'Mr. Wonderful' Paul Orndorff Saturday Night's Main Event October 5 1985 A Trip to the Zoo Saturday Night's Main Event October 5 1985 Gene Okerlund - Field Reporting Halloween Contest Saturday Night's Main Event November 2 1985 WWE Championship Match Hulk Hogan vs. Terry Funk Saturday Night's Main Event January 4 1986 Randy Orton Reflects on his Dad Boxing Match Mr. T. vs. 'Cowboy' Bob Orton Saturday Night's Main Event March 1 1986 Gene Okerlund - Settling the Score Snake Pit Match Jake 'The Snake' Roberts vs. Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat Saturday Night's Main Event October 4 1986 Jake 'the Snake' Reflects on Saturday Night's Main Event WWE Intercontinental Championship Match 'Macho Man' Randy Savage vs. Jake 'The Snake' Roberts Saturday Night's Main Event November 29 1986 Gene Okerlund - The Steel Cage Match Steel Cage Match Hulk Hogan vs. 'Mr. Wonderful' Paul Orndorff Saturday Night's Main Event January 3 1987 Gene Okerlund - The 8th Wonder of the World Battle Royal Saturday Night's Main Event March 14 1987 Natalya Neidhart Reflects on her Dad Best 2 out of 3 Falls Hart Foundation vs. British Bulldogs Saturday Night's Main Event May 2 1987 Gene Okerlund - Insurance Policy WWE Intercontinental Championship Match Honky Tonk Man vs. 'Macho Man' Randy Savage Saturday Night's Main Event October 3 1987 Mega Power Formation Saturday Night's Main Event October 3 1987 The Union of the Mega Powers Piledriver Music Video Saturday Night's Main Event October 3 1987 'Macho Man' Randy Savage vs. Bret Hart Saturday Night's Main Event November 28 1987
Have you herd the news? Your favourite sub-zero heroes are coming at you in this holiday adventure - now in 3D! When Sid accidentally destroys Manny's heirloom Christmas rock and ends up on Santa's naughty list he leads a hilarious quest to the North Pole to make things right - and ends up making things much worse. Now it's up to Manny and his prehistoric posse to band together and save Christmas for the entire world!
Ruthless lawyer Henry Turner is left an amnesiac after being shot when caught up in a store robbery. Trying to rebuild his life Henry must learn to walk again tie his shoelaces and become a better husband...
Conceived by Dr Who's Terry Nation 'Survivors' is a groundbreaking and startlingly realistic television drama series. First aired in 1975 at the height of the Cold War the post-apocalyptic storylines immediately gripped the imagination of the British public and remains compelling viewing to this day. Episodes comprise: 1. Manhunt 2. A Little Learning 3. Law Of The Jungle 4. Mad Dog 5. Bridgehead 6. Reunion 7. The Peacemaker 8. Sparks 9. The Enemy 10. The Last Laugh 11. Long
Forget Me Not is a moving modern day love story set against a stunning London backdrop. Taking place over the course of one night and the following day the story centres on Will Fletcher a passionate musician and Eve Fisher a beautiful free-spirited woman who works in the local bar. Whilst struggling to cope with a tragic secret Will saves Eve from a drunken customer at closing time and their paths become inextricably linked. Intrigued by one another they journey through London not knowing what the night holds or what the day may bring. As dawn turns to light on the London Eye and the two draw ever closer can Will reveal the truth to Eve?
Liam Neeson stars as American sociologist and sexual pioneer Alfred Kinsey in this biopic.
The love life of a woolly mammoth - handled with U-rated delicacy - drives this sequel to the first computer-animated romp in the age of prehistoric mammals. While the first Ice Age took a delightful premise and suffocated it with a formulaic plot - in which a mammoth named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano, Everyone Loves Raymond), a sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo, Moulin Rouge!), and a sabre-tooth tiger named Diego (Denis Leary, Rescue Me) helped an abandoned human infant return to its tribe (basically, Three Mammals and a Baby) - the sequel takes the now-familiar setting, gives it a shapeless, episodic storyline, and yet somehow becomes pretty darn entertaining. Faced with the threat of a flood from melting ice, our heroic trio are on the run to escape from their blossoming valley. On the way, they meet a female mammoth (Queen Latifah, Bringing Down the House) who thinks she's an opossum and get menaced by some freshly defrosted carnivorous fish. Add into the mix a herd of lava-worshipping mini-sloths, some Busby Berkeley-style vultures, and more ingenious slapstick featuring the acorn-crazed Scrat, and Ice Age: The Meltdown will amuse even jaded adults. --Bret Fetzer
Sheathing itself in bad taste, this film flaunts its tackiness, its machismo, and its very stupidity, which of course makes for a lot of dopey fun. Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) returns to his roots, the LA of 1996 (the film was set in the near future, as it was made in 1991). Burbank has become an airport, a new drug called Crystal Dream is all the rage and Harley's favourite bar is being torn down. To save it, he and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson, at his most engaging) concoct an armed robbery that goes awry. Instead of cash, they end up with a shipment of Crystal Dream. Hunted by a drug dealer's goons, the two bark, fight, drink and squint at each other as they try to get themselves out of their mess. This is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the monster-truck crowd, with plenty of breasts, choppers, broken pool cues and empty bottles. It's impossible to blame this film for being so emphatically trashy; its creators would consider that a compliment, anyway. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com
David Beames and John Flanagan star in this 1981 BBC adaptation of H.E. Bates' war time drama Fair Stood The Wind For France. When John Franklin crash lands his Wellington bomber in occupied France at the height of the Second World War he is concerned for the safety of his crew and worried about his own badly injured arm. His crew escapes but the family of a mill owner risk their lives to Franklin in their home until he regains his health. during the following balmy summer months the pilot's situation is further complicated by his feelings for Francoise the daughter of the house. As German patrols move in his only chance of survival is to flee from France.
They made him... they raised him... then he came out to play! A journalist investigating the death of his girl friend at a fertility clinic where she worked uncovers a plot to create a new breed of human - based on crossing the genetics of a man and an ape.
As the failure of her chemotherapy sends her in search of a clinical trial that could save her life, Cathy Jamison (Laura Linney) returns to work and lands a job coaching the high school swim team. But just as she begins getting her life back on track and agrees to house a student whose family is moving to Africa, her husband, Paul (Oliver Platt), loses his job and their health insurance. Meanwhile, Cathy must confront a fellow trial patients difficult battle with cancer and the baby that her best friend is having with her mentally unstable brother, Sean (John B. Hickey), all while her son, Adam (Gabriel Basso), struggles with his emerging sexuality. And in the wake of a Thanksgiving dinner gone awry, a series of tragic events serves to underscore the harsh realities of the difficult road ahead for Cathy. Season two guest stars include Alan Alda, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Dancy and Parker Posey.
""Everybody's Favourite Shaggy Dog Story!"" Young Billy can't keep Digby the lovable sheepdog he brought home from the pound so he decides to leave him with animal expert Jeff (Jim Dale). But while Jeff's back is turned Digby accidentally drinks a top secret chemical which makes him grow... and grow... and grow! The gigantic Digby is soon being chased all over the country. The army think he dangerous and want to blow him up. Two thieves are trying to sell him to the circus! In this frantic and hilarious race against time Billy and the hapless Jeff must get to Digby with the antidote or lose him forever. With and all star cast including Spike Milligan and Victor Spinetti Digby The Biggest Dog In The World is a classic adventure story for the whole family. Available for the first time on DVD!
The monsters in Monsters, Inc. are just so incredibly cute--and they know it. Whereas Woody, Buzz and pals in the Toy Story saga were filled with self-doubt about just how much the children in their lives would continue to love them, here our heroic monsters and their impossibly lovable human ward Boo have no such worries, at least when it comes to the cinema audience. And that's why Monsters, Inc., for all its wondrous computer-animated artistry, its smart humour and its family-friendly appeal, doesn't quite capture the naïve charm of its predecessors. Nevertheless, John Goodman and Billy Crystal, as scare-champions Sulley and Mike, are a great double-act whose comedy never goes over kids' heads but still reaches up to make their parents laugh. The film's central conceit--that monsters in the bedroom closet are just doing a night's work in order to generate power from screams for the city of Monstropolis--is funny and cleverly worked out; and kids will of course love the fact that the monsters are mortally afraid of the very children they are trying to frighten. The animation is extraordinarily detailed (Sulley's fur is a marvel in itself) and the set-piece action sequences top anything that has gone before for sheer audaciousness. But overall Pixar play things very safe, from the hissable villain to the end credit "outtakes". A bolder film might have taken inspiration from The Nightmare Before Christmas; instead, a little of that Disney disease of knowing cuteness seems to have crept into the formula. --Mark Walker
Burt Lancaster's one and only feature as star and director, The Kentuckian, has a bedrock American folk tale at its core, but scarcely a clue how to tell it. For all his balletic control as an actor-athlete, Lancaster shows no sense of how a film should move and breathe over an hour and a half, or how to make the characters' growth or changes of mind credible. It's the early 18th century--Monroe is president--and buckskin-clad Lancaster and his son (Donald MacDonald) are lighting out for Texas. "It ain't we don't like people--we like room more." They plan briefly to visit Lancaster's tobacco-dealer brother (John McIntire) in the river town of Humility, and then move on. But there are complications from a long-running feud, and some nasty baiting from a whip-cracking storekeeper (Walter Matthau in his film debut); the need to replace their "Texas money" after buying freedom for a bondservant (Dianne Foster); also the matter of deciding who's prettier, her or the local schoolmarm (Diana Lynn). Lancaster aims for some quaint Americana--a sing-along to the tinkling of a pianoforte, a jaw-dropping riverside production number--and there's one nifty bit of action based on how long it took to reload a flintlock rifle. But mostly this film just lies there in overlit CinemaScope. --Richard T Jameson
An American Tail: Fievel is a young Russian mouse and he and his parents are on their way to America. Why? Well they believe that America is the land of no cats. On the journey to America though Fieval loses his parents and arrives in the New World all alone. To add further misery in Fieval America is not all what it is cracked up to be...there are cats there to! Fieval never gives up hope though and with his new found friends he begins a search for his parents all the time dodging the cats he thought he'd be long rid of. An American Tail 2: Look out pardners there's a new mouse in town! Some time after the Mousekewitz's have settled in America they find that they are still having problems with the threat of cats. That makes them eager to try another home out in the west where they are promised that mice and cats live in peace. Unfortunately the one making this claim is an oily con artist named Cat R. Waul who is intent on his own sinister plan. Unaware of this the Mousekewitz's begin their journey west while their true cat friend Tiger follows intent on following his girlfriend gone in the same direction.
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy