This extraordinary tale of hope, friendship and survival inside a maximum security prison celebrates the decade since its release with a new three disc special edition.
What's the worst that could happen? Probably being forced to watch What's the Worst That Could Happen? from start to finish without a pause button: it's more lame than a three-legged dog. The plot is straightforward enough: two men, each as crooked as the other, come into conflict when petty thief Kevin Caffrey (Martin Lawrence) breaks into the apparently unoccupied beach house of wealthy and unscrupulous businessman Max Fairbanks (Danny DeVito). The house turns out not to be empty: Fairbanks calls the cops, claims that Caffrey has stolen his ring and coolly claims it back in front of his uniformed audience. It's a ring that Caffrey values because it has just been given to him by his new girlfriend Amber (Carmen Ejogo). He's so desperate to get it back that he hounds Fairbanks through the rest of the film, breaking into various Fairbanks properties as he goes. Words like "zany" and "madcap" could be used in the interests of charity, but actually the film falls flat on its face. Lawrence is certainly no Eddie Murphy and the plot would need an injection of major talent to give it a chance. DeVito yet again relies on his stature to provide the laughs. John Leguizamo plays Caffrey's sidekick as best he can but the fake sheikhs-in-tea-towels scene induces more groans than laughs. This is one for diehard fans of the lead actors only. On the DVD: What's the Worst That Could Happen? comes to DVD with a choice of two spoken languages (English or French) and many subtitle options. There's also a generous selection of outtakes, an alternative ending, a music video ("Music" by Erick Sermon) and the original theatrical trailer. It's just a shame that the film itself isn't better. --Harriet Smith
Bogus Bandits Ollie and Stan play Olio and Stanlio a pair of incompetent bandits who are hired as servants to Fra Diavolo (The Devil's Brother) a real bandit played by Dennis King who in his other guise is known as the Marquis de San Marco an aristocrat who uses his position to discover the whereabouts of the treasures worn by the ladies in high society... March Of The Wooden Soldiers Stannie Dum (Stan Laurel) and Ollie Dee (Oliver hardy) are well-meaning but bra
Director Jack Hill (COFFY SPIDER BABY) launched both a cycle of women-in-prison films and the stardom of Pam Grier with this sexy funny thrilling exploitation classic. At a prison farm in the Philippines new girl Collier (Judy Brown) is locked up with bitter lesbian Grear (Grier) rebel girl Bodine (Pat Woodell) tough blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins) and Harad (Brooke Mills) a strung-out junkie. The girls race cockroaches fight in the mud shower and get it on while the sadistic head guard (Kathryn Loder) conducts nightly torture sessions for the pleasure of the mysterious Colonel Mendoza. Eventually the girls escape and all hell breaks loose as they race to join the rebels their machine guns blazing a path through the jungles.
When Jimmy sees Dek's failed marriage proposal on national TV he rides into town with only one thing on his mind: to win back the woman and child he left behind...
Vertical Limit is the film for all those mountain-climbing aficionados who devoured Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and similar books. It attempts to translate man-against-the-mountain adventure into compelling, albeit fictional, drama. But while the climbing action is pretty darn breathtaking, somebody forgot to put the brakes on the cliché machine while penning the screenplay. Two siblings (Chris O'Donnell and Robin Tunney) are mentally scarred by a climbing accident in which their father died to save them. She becomes a famous mountain climber; he never climbs again. On one of her climbs an avalanche leaves her stranded and only her determined brother can bring her back, along with a ragtag team of rescuers. It's easy to pick out the rest of the story from here, but Vertical Limit is less about the hackneyed plot than it is about putting its characters into increasingly dangerous situations and hanging them precariously over various mountainsides. It's a credit to director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye) that the impressive action keeps the film moving along past the bordering-on-absurd plot twists. O'Donnell tosses his mane of fluffy hair admirably, but it's still disheartening to see this once-promising actor turning into a pretty-boy stand-in; only Glenn manages to overcome his character's predictability. Mountaineering enthusiasts will recognise a cameo by world-renowned climber Ed Viesturs, who as an actor proves that he's... a very good mountain climber. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com
A musical vehicle for 'Mr Bojangles' Bill Robinson which pays tribute to some of the greatest jazz stars of all time. Hit songs include: 'Stormy Weather' 'Jumping Jive' and 'Ain't Misbehavin'.
Life in Medieval Britain is the perfect introduction to everyday life during the Middle Ages. Featuring realistic reconstructions filmed at a working medieval village this DVD helps explain the habits and customs of a people living through a turbulent period of history. Dr Martin Lowry Dr Robert Swanson and Andrew Brown provide expert commentary and analysis on a time of great upheaval.
An international expeditionary force set off for the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti...
Hypnotic and Haunting! A hothouse of sexual tension and secret longing that is hard to shake. -Peter Travers ROLLING STONE Andrew Birkin's chilling adaptation of Ian McEwan's (The Comfort Of Strangers) novel is a disturbing tale of childhood survival in a moral wasteland. Fearing foster homes and adoption four recently orphaned siblings decide to keep their mother's death a secret burying her in a cement locker in the basement. The Lolita-like Julie (Charlotte Gainsbourg of Jane Eyre and The Little Thief) quickly adapts to the role of surrogate mother caring for the younger children and picking up a thirtysomething boyfriend. Fifteen-year old Jack however is only concerned with his developing sexuality and his increasing infatuation with his sister. When the intrusive curiosity of Julie's boyfriend threatens to expose their secret Jack finally assumes the mature role of family protector. As he slowly wins Julie's respect their gentle flirtation results in a devastating and forbidden consummation. Fraught with sexual tension and suspense The Cement Garden is a chilling look at unrestrained adolescent desire.
The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." True, set beside Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or even The Trial, The Stranger is as close to production-line stuff as the great Orson ever came. But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. The shadow of the Second World War hangs heavy over the plot. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi, Franz Kindler, to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. The script, credited to Anthony Veiller but with uncredited input from Welles and John Huston, is riddled with implausibilities: we're asked to believe, for a start, that there'd be no extant photos of a top Nazi leader. The casting's badly skewed, too. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. What's more, Spiegel chopped out most of the two opening reels set in South America, in Welles' view, "the best stuff in the picture". Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clock tower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: not much in the way of extras, except a waffly full-length commentary from Russell Cawthorne that tells us about the history of clock-making and where Edward G was buried, but precious little about the making of the film. Print and sound are acceptable, but though remastering is claimed, there's little evidence of it. --Philip Kemp
The script for Fast Times at Ridgemont High is based on filmmaker Cameron (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) Crowe's time as a reporter for Rolling Stone. He was so youthful looking that he was able to go undercover for a year at a California high school and write a book about it. The film launched the careers of several young actors, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates and, above all, Sean Penn. The story line is episodic, dealing with the lives of iconic teen types: one of the school's cool kids, a nerd, a teen queen and, most enjoyably, the class stoner (Penn), who finds himself at odds with a strict history teacher (a wonderfully spiky Ray Walston). This is not a great film but very entertaining and, for a certain age group, a seminal film experience.--Marshall Fine, Amazon.com On the DVD: Amy (Clueless) Heckerling and Cameron Crowe's commentary is revealing and indicative of a time where nudity on celluloid was shocking rather than the norm as they talk about the issues which contributed to the film's original X-rating, as well as all the actors who originally auditioned for the roles. The transfer quality is high with little grain, and although the soundtrack is in mono rather than Dolby 5.1 it is not detrimental to the film. There's a retrospective documentary called "Reliving Our Fast Times at Ridgemont High" featuring new interviews with most of the cast and crew, plus a highly original feature about the locations used in the film, how they looked in 1982 and how they look now. For fact buffs there's the usual mix of biographies, theatrical trailer and production notes.--Kristen Bowditch
A glimpse into the often misunderstood world of the strip club that follows the lives of five dancers and the lives of those around them as they all converge over a single week.
The original and hippest version of Shaft cruised onto cinema screens in 1971. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is an African-American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) seems fond of certain detective genre clichés (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft produced a couple of sequels, a follow-up television series, and a remake starring Samuel L. Jackson, but none had the impact this movie did. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com Shaft's Big Score is the first sequel to the super-hip 1971 original. When a pal of detective John Shaft is murdered in a bombing, New York's coolest private eye finds himself caught in the middle of a power struggle between black and white gangsters over the numbers racket in Queens. Directed by Gordon Parks (who does a brief cameo as a croupier in an illegal casino) and written by Ernest Tidyman (both of whom made the original Shaft), this film lacks the pacing of its progenitor. Roundtree is at his best when he's questioning a woman he's just met about a suspect while at the same time beguiling her into the sack (ah, those lazy, crazy days of the sexual revolution). The finale--a shootout in a cemetery, followed by a car-boat-helicopter chase through Queens and up the Harlem River--is preposterously drawn-out: Shaft, impervious to machine-gun fire, winds up tripping, spraining his ankle, and limping while running from the chopper; two shots later, he's sprinting like a halfback. Look for late Muhammad Ali trainer Drew Bundini Brown as a wise-cracking mobster. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.comShaft in Africa, the second sequel to the original hit, foreshadows itself early on when Shaft, asked to go undercover in Africa to halt a modern-day slave trade, claims that he's not James Bond but strictly Sam Spade. Bond, however, is the operative model here, with John Shaft masquerading as an Ethiopian to infiltrate the slave business and bring it down. Yet everyone he encounters seems to know who he is and wants to kill him--but the string of dead bodies he leaves in his wake across two continents proves that no one is able to stop everyone's favourite hip private eye. Written by Stirling Silliphant, the film is long on action set pieces that are filmed with more energy than the previous movie, Shaft's Big Score. Given contemporary practices involving smugglers of illegal Chinese and Mexican immigrants, the plot isn't all that far-fetched. Roundtree, as usual, is the picture of unflappable cool--but don't get him mad. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com
When it comes to matters of the heart, keeping her man happy and committed is all in a day's work for Shante Smith.
Five sexy college friends venture out on a road trip. A detour to Lisa's uncle's house leads them into the Galloway Forest which is known for mysterious disappearances and rumours of cannibalism. Uncle Marty does not appear to be home as Lisa finds a hidden key which unlocks the door to a night full of terror. As Lisa experiences bizarre visions she wonders about her darkest family secrets. The mysterious Uncle Marty has a taste for beauty and blood. Nothing is as it seems as th
Coach Carter (Dir. Thomas Carter 2005): Inspired by a true story Samuel L. Jackson and Ashanti star in this inspirational account of a high school basketball coach (Jackson) who received high praise - and staunch criticism - for benching his entire undefeated team due to their poor academic performance... Shaft (Dir. John Singleton 2000): Crooked cops on the take small-time drug lords sleazy informers and sadistic rich kids ready to kill: for police detective John
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy