Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead aspires to be a cross between Home Alone and Risky Business, with Christina Applegate as an inadvertent scam artist who gets in over her head and somehow pulls it off. When her mother goes to Australia for two months, Sue Ellen (Applegate) thinks she's going to be in charge--until an elderly tyrant of a babysitter arrives. But on the very first night the old lady has a heart attack and keels over. Sue Ellen and her siblings leave the body at a mortuary, only to discover afterward that all the money their mother had left for the summer was in the babysitter's clothes. So Sue Ellen has to get a job. Thanks to a trumped-up resume, she ends up as an executive assistant at a clothing manufacturer. For a while she keeps her head above water by skilfully exploiting a friendly coworker, but her brothers and sisters are running amok at home and a venomous receptionist has it in for her at work. The role-reversal humour of Sue Ellen having to mother her siblings is unsurprising, but Applegate is unexpectedly appealing; her scenes with Josh Charles have a sweet chemistry. Joanna Cassidy plays Sue Ellen's boss and a young David Duchovny is a weaselly clerk. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
With war approaching a new flight surgeon and a Navy pilot overcome personal differences to work on solving the problem of altitude sickness which causes blackouts at high altitude...
Ralph Richardson and Roland Young head the cast in this film in which a group of heavenly observers decide to bestow magical powers on a mild mannered draper's assistant George Fotheringay (Roland Young) with amazing results. At first George doesn't realise the extent of his gift and uses it to play tricks to impress and woo Ada Price (Joan Gardner). When others try to exploit George's gift for their own ends he is dismayed by their selfishness and takes it upon himself to assert moral authority. When things start getting out of hand the celestial beings decide it is time to intervene. Based on the novel by H.G Wells.
The title says it all--the abominable Dr Phibes Rises Again and he's as ruthless as ever. No longer content with merely avenging his wife's death, Phibes is now bent on her resurrection. With his mute assistant, Vulnavia, he sets off for Egypt, meting out bizarrely elaborate deaths--everything from clockwork snakes to a particularly severe exfoliation treatment--to all who stand in his way. This time Phibes has two competitors to race against: the trusty Inspector Trout and the renowned archaeologist Biederbeck, who has his own reasons for chasing Phibes. Like its predecessor, Dr Phibes Rises Again adds dark wit and imaginative art direction to the mix. Vincent Price is once again in high form, playing his organ with swooping arms and adding dry comic touches with a delicately cocked eyebrow. Watch out for cameos from a host of familiar faces, including Peter Cushing, Terry Thomas and Beryl Reid. --Ali Davis
The powerful reworking of Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai in to a seminal Western and its three sequels, The Magnificent Seven collection contains every second of gun slinging action in glorious High Definition.The Magnificent Seven: Spectacular gun battles, epic-sized heroes and an all-star cast that includes Academy Award Winners Yul Brynner and James Coburn, together with Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach and Charles Bronson, make The Magnificent Seven a legend among westerns!Return of the Magnificent Seven: Once again, Yul Brynner rides tall in the saddle in this sensational sequel to The Magnificent Seven! Guns of the Magnificent Seven: The Seven take up the reins again in this fast-moving western starring Oscar Winner George Kennedy as the revered - and feared - gunslinger Chris Adams!The Magnificent Seven Ride!: This rousing conclusion to the legendary, hard-hitting Magnificent Seven series stars Lee Van Cleef as the strong and silent Chris Adams.
How far would you go to unlock the truth? Set in Cairo during World War II, The Key to Rebecca follows a German spy as he tries to infiltrate the British high command during General Rommel's advance on Egypt. The stakes are high as the relentless struggle for victory is at hand. Based on the best-selling novel.
Captain America: The First AvengerCaptain America leads the fight for freedom in the action-packed blockbuster starring Chris Evans as the ultimate weapon against evil! When a terrifying force threatens everyone across the globe the world's greatest soldier wages war on the evil HYDRA organization led by the villainous Red Skull (Hugo Weaving The Matrix). Critics and audiences alike salute Captain America: The First Avenger as the best superhero movie of the year (Box Office Magazine). Captain America: The Winter SoldierAfter the Cataclysmic events in New York with The Avengers Marvel's 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' finds Steve Rogers aka Captain America living quietly in Washington D.C. and trying to adjust to the modern world. But when a S.H.E.I.L.D colleague comes under attack. Steve becomes embroiled in a web of intrigue that threatens to put the world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow Captain America struggles to expose the ever-widening conspiracy to while fighting off professional assassins sent to silence him at every turn. When the full scope of the villainous plot is revealed Captain America and the Black Widow enlist the help of a new ally The Falcon. However they soon find themselves up against an unexpected and formidable enemy - the Winter Soldier. Based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series first published in 1941 Marvel's 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' is produced by Kevin Feige directed by Anthony and Joe Russo from a screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and stars Chris Evans Scarlett Johansson Sebastian Stan Anthony Mackie Cobie Smulders Frank Grillo Emily VanCamp and Hayley Atwell with Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce and Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury.
Its Christmas Eve, and Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is determined to get his son (Jake Lloyd) the years most popular toy, the Turbo Man action figure. But everywhere he goes, its sold out. Soon, Howard finds himself in a crazed battle against time, crowds and a maniacal postman (Sinbad) whos as determined as Howard to fnd Turbo Man! Also starring Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson and James Belushi, Jingle All The Way is a holiday tradition that will have the whole family laughing! Jingle All The Way 2: Two desperate dads compete in a no-holds-barred battle to be the best father and make this the best Christmas ever! Fun-loving, laid-back dad Larry (Larry The Cable Guy , Cars and Cars 2) is having a tough time finding the perfect Christmas gift for his eight-year-old daughter, Noel. The seasons hottest toy, The Harrison Bear, is all sold out, and Noels new stepfather wants to keep it that way so he can be the one to make her holiday wish come true. When Larry learns all Noel wants for Christmas is the bear, he'll stop at nothing to make his little girl happy and get her the toy of her dreams. Co-starring WWE superstar Santino Marella, Jingle All The Way 2 is heart-warming and hilarious fun for the whole family!
The citizens of Key West in Florida get the fright of their lives when horror genius Lawrence Woolsey brings his latest low-budget movie to town.
Rosamunde Pilcher - The Complete Set Best-selling novelist Rosamunde Pilcher is renowned for her storytelling. Her rich romantic tales and their beautiful settings are captured perfectly in this special seven disc DVD boxed set which contains five sumptuous adaptations based on Pilcher's books: Coming Home Nancherrow Winter Solstice Summer Solstice and The Shell Seekers. The films feature a star-studded cast which reads like a who's who of great actors including Joanna Lumley Peter O'Toole David McCallum Honor Blackman Jacqueline Bisset Jean Simmons Sinead Cusack Peter Ustinov Robert Hardy Maximilian Schell and Vanessa Redgrave. Coming Home introduces the glamorous and wealthy Carey-Lewis family and Judith Dunbar. Judith is at boarding school and her family is in Singapore at the outbreak of the Second World War. When she loses touch with her family the Carey-Lewis's welcom her into their home.This story is continued in Nancherrow when the family must struggle to come to terms with post-war Britain. Winter Solstice is an entrancing story of shattered lives and broken hearts. When Elfrida Phipps moves she soon befriends her new neighbours. Tragedy strikes and they all decamp to a house on a Scottish Estate. Set in the beautiful wild Highlands of Scotland the saga is continued in Summer Solstice. The Shell Seekers is the story of love family life and an exquisite painting that has captivated millions and which tears a family apart.
Episodes Comprise: 1. Plenty to Grouse About 2. Charity Begins at Home 3. Every Dog His Day... 4. Hair of the Dog 5. If Wishes Were Horses 6. Pig in the Middle 7. Be Prepared 8. A Dying Breed 9. Brink of Disaster 10. Home and Away 11. Alarms & Excursions 12. Matters of Life and Death 13. Will to Live 14. Big Steps and Little 'Uns
The point of a good production of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia is to have a Rosina and a Figaro who will knock your socks off in their respective arias, while holding back enough in all those crescendo ensembles in which the farce plot reaches its several culminations that the other stars get a chance to shine too. Cecilia Bartoli and Gino Quilico give full-blooded enough performances when on stage by themselves that self-effacement seems far from imminent, yet both are capable of less, and give it when it is needed. Of the others, David Kuebler is an attractively raffish Almaviva, while Robert Lloyd turns Basilio into a memorable cameo. Gabriele Ferro is one of the most intelligent of Rossini conductors--he understands the relationship between the pulse of the music and its dramatic function, and he is also outstanding in the delicacy of phrasing, even in climaxes, that ensures that every voice, every instrument, gets the moment of glory Rossini intended. Michael Hampe's solid reliable unfussy production keeps everything moving without drawing attention to itself. The DVD has subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as trailers for other Arthaus Musik discs. --Roz Kaveney
All is not well for the Munsters. Their peaceful home in Transylvania is under siege from confused and bigoted local peasants. The Munsters are misunderstood and it's time to leave Europe and head to the land where anything goes. The great US of A! So Grandpa, Herman, Lily, Eddie and the adorable fire-breathing dragon Spot decide to pack their bags and head off to visit Aunt Elsa and Uncle Norman in America. Once they get there however, they find that all is not well with the relatives. Uncle Norman has mysteriously disappeared and Aunt Elsa has fallen into a catatonic state. Young cousin Marilyn (sadly a very ugly girl) has been left to cope alone. As if this wasn't enough, the nosy neighbours take offence at the tourists and the police are called.
My Family: Series 9
Cult American horror film from 1997 directed by Robert Kurtzman and executive produced by Wes Craven (Scream). Telling the story of a djinn (evil genie), an omnipotent, supremely evil entity who is released from a jewel and seeks to capture the soul of the woman who discovered him, thereby opening a portal and freeing his fellow djinn to inhabit the earth. The film stars Andrew Divoff and Tammy Lauren.
You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, The Twilight Zone.
When released in 1997, The Gingerbread Man was the only John Grisham movie that did not use one of the popular novelist's bestsellers as its inspiration. Rather, it's based on an original screenplay by Grisham that displays the author's familiar flair for Southern characters and settings within a labyrinthine plot propelled by his trademark narrative twists and turns. Sporting a spot-on Georgian accent, Kenneth Branagh plays a Savannah attorney who comes to the assistance of a troubled woman (Embeth Davidtz) and finds himself enmeshed in a scenario involving the woman's father (Robert Duvall) that grows increasingly complex and dangerous, where nothing, of course, is really as it seems. It's a totally absorbing movie made in the modern film noir tradition; what's most interesting here (and most underrated by critics at the time) is the combination of Grisham's mainstream mystery and the offbeat style of maverick director Robert Altman. Despite a battle with executives that nearly caused Altman to disown the film, The Gingerbread Man demonstrates the director's skill in bringing a fresh, characteristically offbeat approach to conventional material, especially in the use of a threatening hurricane to hold the plot in a state of dangerous urgency. Unfortunately overlooked during its theatrical release, this intelligent thriller provides a fine double bill with Francis Coppola's film of Grisham's The Rainmaker. --Jeff Shannon
Season Two, the 1994-95 run, of The X Files was the one where creator Chris Carter, having had a surprise hit when he expected a one-season wonder, started trying to make sense of all the storylines he had thrown into the pile in the first year. Moreover, he had to cope with Gillian Anderson's maternity leave by having Scully get abducted by aliens (back then, a pretty fresh device) for a few episodes and come back strangely altered. The season also inaugurated the tradition of opening ("Little Green Men") and closing ("Anasazi") with the show's worst episodes, both pot-boiling attempts to keep the alien infiltration/government conspiracy balls up in the air while seeming to offer narrative forward-thrusts or revelations.But it's also a show noticeably surer of itself than Season One, with its stars reading from the same page in terms of their characters' relationship and attitudes to the wondrous. Scully's no-longer-workable scepticism finally starts to erode in the face of Mulder's increasingly cracked belief. There are fewer marking-time leftover-monster-of-the-week shows--although we do get a human fluke ("The Host"), vampires ("3"), an invisible rapist ("Excelsius Dei") voodoo ("Fresh Bones")--and the flying-saucer stories at last seem to be going somewhere. The powerful two-episode run ("Duane Barry", "Ascension") features Steve Railsback as Mulder's possible future, an FBI agent burned out after a UFO abduction who has become a hostage-taking terrorist, which climaxes with Scully's disappearance into the light. The standout episode is also a stand-alone--"Humbug"--the first and still most successful of the show's self-parodies (written by Darin Morgan, who had played the Flukeman in "The Host"), in which the agents investigate a murder in a circus freakshow, allowing the actors to make fun of the mannerisms they have earnestly built up in a run of solemn, even somnolent, explorations of the murk. Other worthy efforts: "Aubrey", about genetic memory; "Irresistible", a rare (and creepy) straight psycho-chiller with little paranormal content; and "The Calusari", a good ghost/mystery. Rising deputy characters include Nicholas Lea as the perfidious Krycek and Brian Thompson as the shapeshifting alien bounty hunters. Notable guest stars: Charles Martin Smith, C.C.H. Pounder, Leland Orser, Terry O'Quinn, Bruce Weitz, Daniel Benzali, John Savage, Vincent Schiavelli, Tony Shalhoub. --Kim NewmanOn the DVD: The individual episode discs have a small selection of deleted scenes, foreign language clips and behind-the-scenes footage, but the bulk of the extra material is on the final disc. There's not a lot to get to grips with, but what there is consists of a 14-minute documentary about the making of Season Two, with contributions from Chris Carter, various directors, writers and actors (but not the two principals); Carter talking briefly about each episode in turn; a series of short TV spots and pieces about the show's FX and secondary characters; and three very short behind-the-scenes glimpses, one of which has the self-explanatory title "Gillian eats a cricket". There's also a DVD-ROM utility with Web links and a game. --Mark Walker
Having made his reputation as one of the most prolific and gifted horror writers of his generation (prompting Stephen King to call him "the future of horror"), Clive Barker made a natural transition to movies with this audacious directorial debut from 1987. Not only did Barker serve up a chilling tale of devilish originality, he also introduced new icons of horror that since have become as popular among genre connoisseurs as Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman. Foremost among these frightful, Hellraiser visions is the sadomasochistic demon affectionately named Pinhead (so named because his pale, bald head is a geometric pincushion and a symbol of eternal pain). Pinhead is the leader of the Cenobites, agents of evil who appear only when someone successfully "solves" the exotic puzzle box called the Lamont Configuration--a mysterious device that opens the door to Hell. The puzzle's latest victim is Frank (Sean Chapman), who now lives in a gelatinous skeletal state in an upstairs room of the British home just purchased by his newlywed half-brother (Andrew Robinson, best known as the villain from Dirty Harry), who has married one of Frank's former lovers (Claire Higgins). The latter is recruited to supply the cannibalistic Frank with fresh victims, enabling him to reconstitute his own flesh--but will Frank succeed in restoring himself completely? Will Pinhead continue to demonstrate the flesh-ripping pleasures of absolute agony? Your reaction to this description should tell you if you've got the stomach for Barker's film, which has since spawned a number of interesting but inferior sequels. It's definitely not for everyone, but there's no denying that it's become a semiclassic of modern horror. --Jeff Shannon
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy