Although Belgium's premiere sleuth Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) plans a spectacular Egyptian vacation aboard a glamorous river steamer, the trip turns into a terrifying search for a murderer after a picture-perfect couple's honeymoon is cut tragically short. Set against a sweeping landscape of pyramids and desert vistas, DEATH ON THE NILE features a stunning ensemble cast. Based on Agatha Christie's beloved novel, this tale of unbridled passion and jealousy is filled with wicked twists and turns that will have you guessing until the shocking finale.
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
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
Although Stepmom was dismissed as a contender in the 1998 Oscar race, it's worth giving a second chance to this rather cogent, sharp-tongued look at second chances. Susan Sarandon's performance as a mum about to be replaced by her ex-husband's new girlfriend (played by Julia Roberts) has a lot of bite, and it's a shame the script opted to trivialise her plight in its final reel. Initially, the rancour that passes between divorced mum Jackie (Sarandon) and trendy fashion photographer Isabel (Roberts) rings true, aided by the sincerity of Jackie's ex-husband Luke (Ed Harris) and the emotional plight of their children, who have the most to lose in their parents' divorce. As the drama makes clear, the children are the real victims in the agony that ensues between old and new love. Director Chris Columbus, who is adept at showing familial chaos (he directed Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone) with a sanitised minimum of lingering emotional damage, actually manages to dig a trifle deeper than usual in exploring the jealousy and hurt that occur when the baton is passed between a birth mum and the younger wife who steps into her shoes. Stepmom fortunately manages to touch on that chord--showing how an ambitious woman might feel hampered by the responsibility of children just because she's fallen in love with their dad--as well as the haunting grief that it causes their birth mum. It's an issue that haunts millions of second wives everywhere, and while Roberts conveys the confusion of being taken for granted in the melee that follows, it's Sarandon who walks off with the film. She's relentless in her fury, and everyone else in the film--the generally excellent Harris included--is sideswiped. It's just a shame that Hollywood once again wimps out in the end, solving the problem by giving Sarandon a terminal illness. Instead of allowing Jackie and Isabel's relationship to unfold on something less than a high note, the movie has to quell its best thing with a false payoff because it doesn't know what to do with real life. --Paula Nechak, Amazon.com
Based on Peter Carey s Booker Prize winning novel, Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang shatters the mythology surrounding Ned Kelly to reveal the essence behind the life of the notorious icon. Hero to some, outlaw to others, Kelly (played by George MacKay) throws a long shadow over a specific period of Australian history. Spanning his life from his younger years to the time leading up to his death, the film explores the story behind this legendary figure. Nurtured by the notorious bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother (Essie Davis), Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot a campaign of anarchy and rebellion that will grip the entire country. Youth and tragedy collide in the Kelly Gang, and at the beating heart of this tale is the fractured and powerful love story between a mother and son.
Erin Brockovich (Dir. Steven Soderbergh 2000): Erin Brockovich was never trained or indeed meant to work in a lawyers office. Circumstances take this down-on-her-luck twice-divorced mother of three into a legal practice. Here she discovers some legal files that don't add up... On investigation she discovers an injustice and decides against the odds to take on the bad guys on behalf of a poor and very ill community. Stepmom (Dir. Chris Columbus 1998): Jackie (Susan Sarandon) is a divorced mother of two. Isabel (Julia Roberts) is the career minded girlfriend of Jackie's ex-husband Luke (Ed Harris) forced into the role of unwelcome stepmother to their children. It is the universal dilemma of the 'non-traditional family' they all love the children but the complex interplay between parents step-parents step-children ex-spouses and significant others is decidedly tricky. But when Jackie discovers she is ill both women realise they must put aside their differences to find a common ground and celebrate life to the fullest while they have the chance. Steel Magnolias (Dir. Herbert Ross 1989): A beautiful bittersweet comedy set in deep south Louisiana Steel Magnolias unites talents of America's finest actresses as six very special friends bonded together by mutual triumphs and tragedies. Despite their differences beautiful Shelby (Julia Roberts) her strong-willed mother M'Lynn (Sally Field) beauty parlour owner Truvy (Dolly Parton) elegant wealthy widow Clairee (Olympia Dukakis) sharp tongued Ouiser (Shirley MacLaine) and mousey newcomer Anelle (Daryl Hannah) enjoy a friendship that spans the boundaries of age and status. Sharing each other's strength and loyalty they face their greatest fears and highest hopes with dry wit and a self-deprecating style...
John Wayne teams with William Holden and eminent western director John Ford for this frontier actioner. Written by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin this faithful representation of one of the most daring cavalry exploits in history is both a moving tribute to the men who fought and died in that bloody war and a powerful action-packed drama. Based on an actual Civil War incident The Horse Soldiers tells the rousing tale of a troop of Union Soldiers who force their way deep into Sou
The Enemy Below and Sink the Bismarck! form a double feature of semi-classic CinemaScope-era WWII naval dramas sailing from the Fox vault onto DVD for the first time. In The Enemy Below Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens are respectively captains of a US destroyer and a German U-boat whose vessels come into conflict in the South Atlantic. Both are good men with a job to do, the script noting Jurgens' distaste for Hitler and the Nazis and engaging our sympathy with the German sailors almost as much as the Americans. Made at the height of the Cold War of the 1950s, the film delivers a liberal message of cooperation wrapped inside some spectacular action scenes and a story that builds to a tense and exciting, moving finale. Sink the Bismarck! is a British film dating from three years later and adopts a more documentary style in recounting the race against time to track and destroy what was in 1941 the most powerful battleship then built, the Bismarck. Shot in gleaming black and white so as to make use of genuine WWII archive footage, the film is held together by the introduction of a fictional naval officer in overall command of the operation, played excellently by Kenneth More. To add some human warmth he is given a tentative romantic subplot with a WREN played by the luminous Dana Wynter. Though initially slow to gather steam, Sink the Bismarck! finally delivers an epic, thoroughly horrifying conclusion. On the DVD: The Enemy Below and Sink the Bismarck! come as a two-disc set with multiple language and subtitle options, including English for Hard of Hearing, but no extras other than the original trailers. These are presented at 16:9 and 2.35:1. Both are rather faded, but are fine examples of an era when watching the previews didn't guarantee a migraine. Both films are anamorphically enhanced in their original 2.35:1 CinemaScope, and, bar a little grain in some shots and the inevitably inferior archive footage, the picture quality is excellent. The Enemy Below boasts sturdy three-channel sound (left, front, right) while Sink the Bismarck! is in very well mixed stereo. --Gary S Dalkin
Directed by Ralph Thomas, Above Us the Waves (1955) tells of a Royal Navy mission to sink the "invincible" German battleship Tirpitz, off the Norwegian coast. John Mills is calm and confident as the mission commander, with strong support from John Gregson and Donald Sinden--all treated by the German personnel as fellow gentlemen when captured. Despite stirring music from Arthur Benjamin, the action sequences are visually no more than adequate, and the film is only a partial success.--Richard Whitehouse
Featuring all 13 episodes in the 1974 TV series starring Kenneth More Father Brown is the creation of the great British novelist G.K. Chesterton appearing in over fifty short stories. This Catholic Priest turned detective is both a rival and a partner in crime to such great sleuths as Hercule Poirot Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple further enlivening the English appetite for a little murder and mystery with its afternoon tea.
Based on Peter Carey s Booker Prize winning novel, Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang shatters the mythology surrounding Ned Kelly to reveal the essence behind the life of the notorious icon. Hero to some, outlaw to others, Kelly (played by George MacKay) throws a long shadow over a specific period of Australian history. Spanning his life from his younger years to the time leading up to his death, the film explores the story behind this legendary figure. Nurtured by the notorious bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother (Essie Davis), Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot a campaign of anarchy and rebellion that will grip the entire country. Youth and tragedy collide in the Kelly Gang, and at the beating heart of this tale is the fractured and powerful love story between a mother and son.
Leave a family of children aged between eight and 16 to run a flat on their own, and what happens? Can they cope without adult assistance? Should they be left to muddle through alone, or would they be happier and safer in the care of the local authority? Just how the Gathercole family - Jess (at 16 the matriarch), Binny (14), Willy (12) and George (9) - manages to survive in such circumstances is the premise of this major children's series broadcast in the early 1970s. Starting from the time...
Intelligent casting, strong performances and the persuasive chemistry between Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer prove the virtues in director Fred Schepisi's well-intended but problematic screen realization of this John Le Carré espionage thriller. At its best, The Russia House depicts the bittersweet nuances of the pivotal affair between a weary, alcoholic London publisher (Connery) and the mysterious Russian beauty (Pfeiffer) who sends him a fateful manuscript exposing the weaknesses beneath Soviet defence technology. Connery's Barley is a gritty, all-too-human figure who's palpably revived by his awakening feelings for Pfeiffer's wan, vulnerable Katya, whose own reciprocal emotions are equally convincing. Together, they weave a poignant romantic duet. The problems, meanwhile, emanate from the story line that brings these opposites together. Le Carré's novels are absorbing but typically internal odysseys that seldom offer the level of straightforward action or simple arcs of plot that the big screen thrives on. For The Russia House, written as glasnost eclipsed the cold war's overt rivalries, Le Carré means to measure how old adversaries must calibrate their battle to a more subtle, subdued match of wits. Barley himself becomes enmeshed in the mystery of the manuscript because British intelligence chooses to use him as cat's paw rather than become directly involved. Such subtlety may be a more realistic take on the spy games of the recent past but it makes for an often tedious, talky alternative to taut heroics that Connery codified in his most celebrated early espionage role. If the suspense thus suffers, we're still left with an affecting love story, as well as some convincing sniping between British and US intelligence operatives, beautifully cast with James Fox, Roy Scheider and John Mahoney. Veteran playwright Tom Stoppard brings considerable style to the dialogue, without solving the problem of giving us more than those verbal exchanges to sustain dramatic interest. --Sam Sutherland
Ex-maid of honour Eloise (Anna Kendrick) - having been relieved of her duties after being unceremoniously dumped by the best man via text - decides to hold her head up high and attend her oldest friend's wedding anyway.
You've never seen anything like it. An utterly engrossing story of rampaging neo-Nazi skinheads that may well be one of the most disturbing films. It's intoxicating violence and willingness to suspend moral judgement on its hypnotic characters make the film complex. Emotionally powerful and never afraid to portray the ugly destructive face of ignorance and prejudice 'Romper Stomper' excites disturbs and boldly challenges the viewer. Winner of 3 Australian Institute Awa
How does a nightmare begin? For architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) it begins when, alone at night on a country road, he witnesses the landing of a UFO. He attempts to warn the sceptical world, but no one believes him since the aliens look just like us. An intriguing combination of paranoid science fiction and dramatic thriller, this highly influential series focuses on one man's determined efforts to save the world. Produced by the legendary Quinn Martin (The Fugitive), The Invad...
Geraldine McEwan takes over the coveted mantle of the titular super sleuth in a box set of all-star cast adaptations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novels. Episodes Comprise: 1.Sleeping Murder 2.The Sittaford Mystery 3.The Moving Finger 4.By The Pricking Of My Thumbs
This pilot episode filmed in 1990 by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network stars Patricia Routledge as Hetty and John Graham Davies as DCI Adams. Nobody played Robert or Geoffrey. It wasn't until some years later that the series would get the go-ahead in 1996. In this episode Hetty decides to track down the long lost son of her friend's husband.....
What does a stray cat have in common with a radical technique to quit smoking the window ledge of a sky scraper and an evil goblin? Three of Stephen King's most imaginatively terrifying tales brought to life in this chilling trilogy of short stories...
Up Pompeii: A funny thing happens to Lurcio (Frankie Howerd) on the way to the rent-a-vestal-virgin market stall. A mysterious scroll falls into his hands listing the names of all the conspirators plotting to murder Emperor Nero. And when the upstart slave is elected to infiltrate the ringleader's den the comical ups-and-downs lead to total uproar. Up The Chastity Belt: A funny thing happened to Lurkalot serf to Sir Coward de Custard on the way to Custard Castle. Lurkalot sells lusty love potions and rusty chastity belts in the market place but on this day Sir Graggart de Bombast arrives to sack the castle and to get the lovely Lobelia Custard in the sack! Lurkalot must help Custard cream the knight in pining armour...
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