The Chase. The Desert. The Shack. The Girl. The Roadblock. The End. One man races against time against destiny against the road: the ultimate car chase movie. Kowalski is the last American hero. He's the lone stranger - a modern cowboy in a white Dodge Challenger who bets that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours. Loaded with amphetamines and a full tank he takes to the open highway. In his supercharged Challenger he breaks through every speed trap dragnet
Robert Morse reprises his stage role as J. Pierpont Finch in this big-screen version of the 1960s Broadway comedy musical. Finch, a lowly but ambitious window washer, gets his hands on a pamphlet entitled 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' and hatches a plan based on its morally dubious advice. He gets a job in the mail room of the World-Wide Wicket Company, where he quickly rises through the ranks using a variety of devious and treacherous methods to become the company's Vice President, despite the best efforts of his arch-nemesis Bud Frump (Anthony Teague) to sabotage his newfound success. Rudy Vallee and Michele Lee co-star.
The last desperate fight that changed the course of history. Five months after D-Day most American soldiers think the German army is broken. The Germans think otherwise. In an attempt to buy time to fill the skies with their invincible new jets they launch one fast furious offensive: the Battle of the Bulge. For this epic recreation of one of World War II's most crucial confrontations director Ken Annakin (The Longest Day) captures the explosive action of massive f
Tony Hancock has been voted Britain's best ever comedy performer thirty-five years after his premature death in 1968. This DVD contains the remaining episodes from Series 2 and Series 3 plus a Christmas Special. Episodes from Series 2: 1. The Alpine Holiday Episodes from Series 3: 1. Air Steward Hancock The Last Of The Many 2. The Lawyer: The Crown vs Sidney James 3. Competitions: How To Win Money And Influence People 4. There's An Airfield At The Bottom Of My Garden The Christmas
The heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons must deal with a world-devouring being called Unicron. This new two-disc edition of the fondly remembered animated tale boasts over five hours of extra features.
Hook is Steven Spielberg's most spectacular film of the 90s. It is also seriously underrated, arguably the equal of ET, (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, (1977). An unofficial sequel to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Hook adopts the startling premise of what happened after "the boy who never grew up", grew up. Robin Williams, in his career best performance, is the corporate suit forced to remember he once was "The Pan", returning to Neverland to battle nefarious Captain Hook (a splendid Dustin Hoffman), for his children's love. This is a ravishingly beautiful, stunningly designed film, at once highly imaginative and with a genuinely magical atmosphere which ranges from exquisite, delicate fantasy to slapstick tomfoolery. There is fine support from Maggie Smith, Julia Roberts and Bob Hoskins, and John Williams' rapturously romantic score is yet another career high. Slated upon release, and dubbed a flop though it grossed $200 million, Hook reacted against the "greed is good" 80s by upholding family values and responsibility while evoking a genuine sense of wonder. Only the somewhat pantomime final showdown disappoints, but alongside Legend, (1985)and Labyrinth, (1986), Hook is ripe for reassessment as a fantasy classic. The DVD transfer is superb and the disc, though not packed with additional features, has some interesting extras. --Gary S. Dalkin
Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt star in this lavishly produced classic about the enchanted paradise of Shangri-La where time stands still. Frank Capra's enduring masterpiece Lost Horizon (based on the best-selling novel by James Hilton) had a running time of 132 minutes upon its initial release in 1937. For a World War II re-issue 24 minutes were cut to tone down the film's pacifist message. Film preservationist Robert Gitt working over a period of 25 years has utilized footage fo
Ronald Neame directs this perceptive comic study of the struggle of artistic creation, based on the novel by Joyce Cary. Starring Alec Guinness, who also wrote the screenplay, the film tells the story of Gulley Jimson (Guinness), an ageing and impoverished London painter who is rude, uncouth, eccentric and obsessed with his work to the point where nothing and nobody can come between him and his artistic passion.
Perhaps no movie could capture F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in its entirety, but this adaptation, scripted by Francis Ford Coppola, is certainly a handsome try, putting costume design and art direction above the intricacies of character. Robert Redford is an interesting casting choice as Gatsby, the millionaire isolated in his mansion, still dreaming of the woman he lost. And Sam Waterston is perfect as the narrator, Nick, who brings the dream girl Daisy Buchanan back to Gatsby. The problem seems to be that director Jack Clayton fell in love with the flapper dresses and the party scenes and the jazz age tunes, ending up with a Classics Illustrated version of a great book rather than a fresh, organic take on the text. While Redford grows more quietly intriguing in the film, Mia Farrow's pallid performance as Daisy leaves you wondering why Gatsby, or anyone else, should care so much about his grand passion. The effective supporting cast includes Bruce Dern as Daisy's husband, and Scott Wilson and Karen Black as the low-rent couple whose destinies cross the sun-drenched protagonists. (That's future star Patsy Kensit as Daisy's little daughter.) The film won two Oscars--not surprisingly, for costumes and musical score. --Robert Horton
Humphrey Bogart is heartbreaking as the tragic Captain Queeg in this 1954 film, based on a novel by Herman Wouk, about a mutiny aboard a navy ship during World War II. Stripped of his authority by two officers under his command (played by Van Johnson and Robert Francis) during a devastating storm, Queeg becomes a crucial witness at a court martial that reveals as much about the invisible injuries of war as anything. Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Raintree County) directs the action scenes with a sure hand and nudges his all-male cast toward some of the most well-defined characters of 1950s cinema. The courtroom scenes alone have become the basis for a stage play (and a television movie in 1988), but it is a more satisfying experience to see the entire story in context. --Tom Keogh
An exercise in film noir fairytale, 1955's Killer's Kiss was Stanley Kubrick's second feature film (he had the first buried forever) and shows just how powerful a filmmaker he was right out of the gate. Followers of Kubrick's career will note the appearance of themes and images that recurred (a final axe-fight in a warehouse full of disembodied mannequin parts would not be out of place in The Shining), but this is also notably unlike later Kubrick films in its use of authentic locations and its 65-minute running time. The plot is a tiny anecdote about a washed-up boxer (Jamie Smith), a dance hall dame (Irene Kane) and a slimy hood (Frank Silvera) during one crowded weekend of brutality and romance. There's a sense of a young director playing games: the boxing match (a definite influence on Raging Bull) is all low-angle close-ups and subjective shots with plenty of thump and dazzle, and the traditional Expressionist look of noir is exaggerated with many a tricky shot or doomy plot twist. The three unfamiliar leads are all excellent as small-timers struggling with big passions, and there is already a potent use of raucous source music and subtle sound design to augment the stark, haunted black and white imagery. On the DVD Killer's Kiss on disc features no extras other than a blaring trailer ("a picture as brazen as the naked lights of Broadway, as hard as the New York streets in which it was shot!"). The black and white picture is 4:3, and comes with soundtracks in English, German, Italian and Spanish; subtitles in English, German, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish. --Kim Newman
Volume 1 of a collection of classic Marilyn Monroe movies including: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1956) Gentlemen may prefer blondes but this blonde bombshell prefers diamonds and lots of them! Glamorous showgirl Marilyn sets sail for France intent on marrying a rich yet boring beau. But anything can - and does - happen with the beautiful and fun-loving Jane Russell acting as chaperone. From celebrated director Howard Hawks this musical comedy classic features Marilyn's s
A brilliant, bizarre 1973 comedy-horror, Theatre of Blood pitches somewhere between a Hammer horror and the Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Vincent Price stars as the hammy, self-important and thoroughly psychotic Edward Lionheart, a veteran thespian who refuses to play anything other than Shakespeare. Piqued by a circle of critics, whom he feels were disrespectful in their notices and denied him his rightful Best Actor of the Year Award, he decides to murder them one by one in parodies of some of Shakespeare's grislier scenes. He's aided by his daughter Edwina (played by Diana Rigg, often in fake moustache and male drag) and a ghoulish company of dosshouse zombies. Some of the murders are quite extraordinarily gruesome, despite their camp, comedic overtones. Arthur Lowe's henpecked critic has his head sawn off while asleep (in a parody of Cymbeline) and Robert Morley's plumply effete dandy is force-fed a pie made from his beloved poodles, choking him to death (cf Titus Andronicus). Jack Hawkins and Michael Horden also meet unpleasant ends. Theatre of Blood is a genuine and underrated oddity in the annals of British cinema and especially uncomfortable for those who happen to be in the reviewing trade. On the DVD: Theatre of Blood on disc is not a triumph of digital enhancement, with sound blemishes unamended and hazy, faded visuals in places. The only extra is the original trailer. --David Stubbs
Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, Network is every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away. --Jeff Shannon
Available for the first time on DVD! Robert Mitchum Peter Falk and Arthur Kennedy star in the rivetting war drama Anzio a vivid portrait of one of the bloodiest WWII battles ever fought. After landing with Allied troops at Anzio Italy in 1944 war correspondent Dick Ennis (Mitchum) and buddy Corporal Rabinoff (Falk) tell Anzio commander General Lesley (Kennedy) that the road to Rome is wide open. But instead of heading to Rome Lesley attempts to build a coastal stronghold only
An Affair To Remember 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. Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing William Holden and Jennifer Jones star in one of drama's most endearing and intelligent love stories. Nominated for eight Academy Awards this timeless classic follows the passionate affair of an American correspondent and a Eurasian doctor whose love for each other must overcome racial prejudice and the outbreak of war in Korea. How Green Was My Valley Sixty-year-old Huw Morgan looks back on his life as a boy (Roddy McDowall) in a small Welsh mining town. His reminiscences reveal the disintegration of the closely knit Morgans and his devoted parents (Donald Crisp Sara Allgood) while capturing the sentiments and issues of their time.
Paul Reynolds is a Gatsby-like figure: owner of a magnificent house a host of great parties and a collector of interesting people. He persuades Lizzie Thomas a secretary in a local estate agent to come and work for him as his assistant to bring some order to his chaos. He inspires her with his enthusiasm and imagination and frustrates her with his apparent carelessness and destructiveness which culminates in her calling the police as a great party is turned over by local troubl
This gritty World War II action drama starring Gregory Peck Oscar winner Dean Jagger Hugh Marlowe Gary Merrill and Millard Mitchell is seen as one of the most realistic portrayals of the heroics and perils of war. Convinced an Air Force Commander is at breaking point Brigadier General Savage (Gregory Peck) takes over his struggling bomber group. At first resentful and rebellious the flyers gradually change as Savage guides them to amazing feats. But the stress of command soon
US Navy submarines bravely try to penetrate the heavily-mined entrance to the Sea of Japan in order to sink enemy shipping which is carrying coal food and iron from China to the Japanese homeland. Available for the first time on DVD!
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy