Using a faulty thriller for his soapbox as an outspoken critic of China, a devout follower of the Dalai Lama, and an influential supporter of Tibetan freedom, Richard Gere resorts to the equivalent of propagandistic drama to deliver a heavy-handed message. In other words, Red Corner relies on a dubious strategy to promote political awareness, but director Jon Avnet appeals to the viewer's outrage with such effective urgency that you're likely to forget you're being shamelessly manipulated. Gere plays a downtrodden TV executive who sells syndicated shows on the global market, and during a business trip to China he finds himself framed for the murder of the sexy daughter of a high Chinese official. Once trapped in a legal system in which his innocence will be all but impossible to prove, Gere must rely on a Chinese-appointed lawyer (played by Bai Ling) who first advises him to plead guilty but gradually grows convinced of foul play. Barely attempting to hide its agenda, Red Corner effectively sets the stage for abundant anti-Chinese sentiment, and to be sure, the movie gains powerful momentum with its tale of justice gone awry. It's a serious-minded, high-intensity courtroom drama with noble intentions, but one wonder if it has to be so conspicuously lacking in subtlety. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ex-airline steward turned hoodlum, steals a car and heads to Paris. Discovering a gun in the car's glove department, he uses it to shoot and kill a cop who tries to wave him down. He wants to escape to Italy with his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), but the police are after him, and he is distracted by all the pleasures Paris has to offer.Story-wise, Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle (1960) (aka Breathless) is pretty thin, but as its director always proclaimed, you don't need much in the way of narrative to make a movie. Sometimes a girl and a gun are quite enough. The effortlessly cool and laconic Belmondo mirrors the director's mischief and flamboyance. With his fat cigarette stub perched on his bottom lip, his shades, his felt hat and white socks, he looks like a cross between a left-bank intellectual and an American gumshoe (perhaps his beloved Bogart). With her close-cropped hair and New York Herald Tribune T-shirt, his girlfriend (Jean Seberg) is equally stylish. A Hollywood star (she had appeared in the lead in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan in 1957 when she was still a teenager), the Iowa-born Seberg is turned by Godard into the lithe embodiment of European radical chic.The film has a spontaneity that studio-bound offerings of the time missed by a mile. Cameraman Raoul Coutard uses natural light and real locations whenever possible. Lots of the pet tricks in the movie--jump cuts, whip pans and improvised tracking shots--have been copied relentlessly by imitators ever since. A Bout De Souffle, though, is unique: anarchic, liberating and hugely stylish, "the best film around now", as its trailer proclaimed. It made Godard, almost overnight, into "the world's most discussed, interviewed and quoted filmmaker". --Geoffrey MacnabOn the DVD: Godard's greatest movie has been lovingly transferred to disc by Optimum, and comes with several extras including trailers and production notes and an old Godard short, Charlotte Et Son Jules, also starring the swaggering, arrogant Belmondo. --Geoffrey Macnab
From the lawless streets of Kinshasa Congo comes one of the most incredible stories ever committed to film. Five years in the making Benda Bilili follows a group of street musicians as they struggle to record their first album. Four of the group are paraplegics who get around Kinshasa in Mad Max/ Easy Rider style customized wheelchairs. The other three are homeless street children whose star is Roger Landau -a teenage prodigy who plays on a home-made single string guitar fashioned from a tin can. Prepare to lose yourself in the remarkable true story of Benda Bilili as we follow them from their first recording session to worldwide acclaim and stardom. Hailed as the new Buena Vista Social Club and brimming with humour in the vein of Anvil Benda Bilili is an inspirational infectious hilarious and life-affirming story of a dream that becomes reality.
Agent 007 (Roger Moore) blasts into orbit in this action-packed adventure that takes him to Venice Rio de Janeiro and outer space. When Bond investigates the hijacking of an American space shuttle he and beautiful CIA agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) are soon locked in a life-or-death struggle against Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) a power-mad industrialist whose horrific scheme may destroy all human life on earth!
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is both adored and detested for its combination of sumptuous beauty and revolting decadence. Few directors polarise audiences in the same way as Peter Greenaway, a filmmaker as influenced by Jacobean revenge tragedy and 17th-century painting as by the French New Wave. A vile, gluttonous thief (Michael Gambon) spews hate and abuse at a restaurant run by a stoic French cook (Richard Bohringer), but under the thief's nose his wife (the ever-sensuous Helen Mirren) conducts an affair with a bookish lover (Alan Howard). Clothing (by avant-garde designer Jean-Paul Gaultier) changes colour as the characters move from room to room. Nudity, torture, rotting meat, and Tim Roth at his sleaziest all contribute the atmosphere of decay and excess. Not for everyone, but for some, essential. --Bret Fetzer
Agent 007 (Roger Moore in his final outing as James Bond) races against time to stop a power-mad industrialist (Christopher Walken) who plots to kill millions in order to corner the world's microchip supply. From the Eiffel Tower to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge James Bond can't be stopped.
Only Fools and Horses is perhaps the last great and universally popular British sitcom. Series 4 reached 1985; Grandad has sadly passed on, to be replaced at Nelson Mandela House by Uncle Albert (Buster Merryfield). Only Fools and Horses improved with age and the fourth series was still confined to the half-hour format, is good but not vintage (that occurred during Delboy's "Yuppy" years). Episodes such as "It's Only Rock'n'Roll", in which Rodney joins a band, show all the failings sitcoms usually expose when getting to grips with such alien subject matter: the situations have yet to involve the full complement of the entire Nag's Head ensemble and there are still occasional disturbing racial references. However, Uncle Albert's introduction does bring the series up a notch, as his furtive brandy-swilling, yarn-spinning and doddery bungling swiftly get on Delboy and Rodney's wick (though he's not without some cleverly introduced pathos), while episodes such as "Watching the Girls Go By" and "As One Door Closes" build effectively up to the sort of big, laugh-out-loud final twists that would become the series' trademark. On the DVD: full screen, no special features, sadly, except scene selection. --David Stubbs
Series Two of BBC Two's darkly comic detective series starring Toby Stephens (Die Another Day, Jane Eyre) and Miranda Raison (Spooks). Created by Howard Overman (Misfits), Vexed takes a fresh approach to crime drama. D.I. Jack Armstrong (Stephens) has a new partner in the shape of D.I. Georgina Dixon (Raison). Armstrong is charming, disorganised and prone to laziness so it comes as no surprise that sparks fly when he's partnered with the ambitious and highly efficient Dixon. Jack's best friend, caf-owner and ex-cop Tony and colleague Naz complete the crime solving team. This two-disc set contains all six episodes of the second series. Special Features: Picture Gallery Subtitles
Director Wim Wenders' most corrosive statement on the art of filmmaking 'The State of Things' is a powerful journey into the underbelly of the American film industry. When his Hollywood producer disappears leaving the actors and crew on the Portugese set of a sci-fi thriller with no money or film director Friedrich Munro (Patrick Bauchau) travels to Hollywood to find him. What he uncovers is a shady world where criminals and moguls barely differ and the art of filmmaking is merely another money-making enterprise. The result is both visually arresting and one of the best films about filmmaking ever made.
The Story of Adele H is Francois Truffaut's dramatisation of the true story of Adele Hugo, the daughter of French author-in-exile Victor Hugo, and her romantic obsession with a young French officer. It's a cinematically beautiful and emotionally wrenching portrait of a headstrong but unstable young woman. Adele (Isabelle Adjani, whose pale face gives her the quality of a cameo portrait) travels under a false name and spins half-a-dozen false stories about herself and her relationship to Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson), the Hussar she follows to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Pinson no longer loves her, but she refuses to accept his rejection. Sinking further and further into her own internal world, she passes herself off as his wife and pours out her stormy emotions into a personal journal filled with delusional descriptions of her fantasy life. Beautifully shot by Nestor Almendros in vivid colour, Truffaut's re-creation of the 1860s is accomplished not merely in impressive sets and locations but in the very style of the film: narration and voiceovers, written journal entries and letters, journeys and locations established with map reproductions, and a judicious use of stills mixing old-fashioned cinematic technique with poetic flourishes. The result is one of Truffaut's most haunting portraits, all the more powerful because it's true. --Sean Axmaker
Three gorgeously Deranged Killers, Beretta, Blondie and Snowball, hole up in a small beachside community after their murderous actions attract the wrong kind of attention. But not all is as it seems in this small town. A few of the locals try desperately to warn them of the dangers of going into the water but these crazy vixens listen to no one and they brazenly take to the sea. Unbeknownst to them however, their seaside frolic has awakened a horrifying beast from the depths of the ocean. It isn't long before these sexy sirens are hip-deep in trouble as the sea itself rises in a tidal wave of blood and they face the fight of their lives against the Terrifying Kraken. Monstro! follows in the tradition of innovative and exciting independent cinema of the 60s and 70s golden era of exploitation and horror. Shot with practical effects and good old blood, sweat and tears, director Stuart Simpson has created an aesthetically polished and highly entertaining film to please all fans of cult cinema. Special Features: 2 Feature Length Audio Commentaries Cast Interviews Deleted Scenes Behind the Scenes Trailer Short Film - Acid Spiders Short Film - Sickie
One of David Cronenberg's most successful early films, Rabid features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a woman who becomes infected with a virus after an operation. As result she grows a kind of phallus with which she penetrates her victims as she sucks their blood and thus the disease spreads rapidly. The film displays all Cronenberg's usual horrified fascination with the human body and its sexual function. Looking back, it can be read as a kind of parable about AIDS, but it works perfectly well as an effective low-budget shocker. On the DVD: the widescreen image on the DVD is acceptable quality, as is the sound. The fairly routine extras consist of excerpts from a TV interview with Cronenberg, lasting about 10 minutes; a collection of stills from the film; some written notes by horror expert Kim Newman that give useful background, though in part reproduce what is said in the interview; full filmographies for Cronenberg and the three principal performers, including a long list of Chambers' porn credits. --Ed Buscombe
The Gauls have the chance to become the new masters of the Roman empire if they can solve twelve tasks set by Julius Cesar...
Sentenced to 23 years: he won't accept a day of it! This is the incredible true story of John McVicar - a man who took on the entire prison system and refused to surrender. Roger Daltrey gives a powerful performance as McVicar in a film that is shocking brutal and full of gritty violent realism. The film strongly depicts the brutal aspects of British prison life and follows McVicar into his eventual rehabilitation.
A ratings hit for eight seasons on CBS, the action-mystery series Magnum, P.I. makes its DVD boxed set debut in an impressive five-disc package that offers not only the entire first season, but some rarely seen episodes. Positioned in the old Hawaii Five-O time slot (Thursdays at 9) in December of 1980, Magnum quickly became a hit, thanks to the combination of smart and witty scripting, gorgeous locations, and the considerable charm of lead Tom Selleck as former Naval Intelligence officer Thomas Magnum, who gives up his position to become a private investigator on Oahu with the help of fellow Vietnam vets T.C. (Roger E. Mosley) and Rick (Larry Manetti). Magnum also provided security for the lavish estate of wealthy (and never-seen) mystery writer Robin Masters, which gave him access to the author's expensive vehicles (including a prized Ferrari), much to the disapproval of Masters's manservant Higgins (Jonathan Hillerman). A rare series that skillfully blended action, humor, drama, and suspense, Magnum, P.I.'s first season gets the boxed set treatment its fans have been hoping for, with all 18 first-season episodes (including the two-part pilot, "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii") included on four discs. The fifth disc contains four rarely shown bonus episodes, including season 3's "Ki'ls Don't Lie," which featured a crossover plot with Simon and Simon, as well as its conclusion ("Emeralds Are Not a Girl's Best Friend"), which kicked off S&S's second season; the latter episode has never been aired as part of Magnum's syndicated package, which is another reason for fans to pick up and enjoy this long-awaited set. --Paul Gaita
Soldier of fortune John Seeger (Steven Seagal) is the best in the business: the business of kicking 'A'!!! When you're a mercenary there's always going to be casualties but no job is too treacherous for Seeger who's blackmailed into orchestrating an impossible prison break leading a team of heavily-armed soldiers on a deadly mission to South Africa to rescue the son of a billionaire arms dealer. But when Seeger finds out he's been double-crossed it's payback time and now there's going to be hell to pay!
A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.
A comedy about an overbearing mother who becomes her son's partner in crime-fighting. Tutti Bomowski's visit to her policeman son Joe is extended when she witnesses a drive-by shooting and is required by the cops to remain in the area. Soon she's helping Joe apprehend criminals - and still finding plenty of time to interfere in his romantic affairs.
The second installment of classic episodes from series 1-7! Friday The 14th: The Trotters are off to Boycie's cottage for a spot of salmon poaching. Unfortunately for them so is an escaped axe murderer! Thicker Than Water: Del and Rodney's dad returns after 18 years. Rodney is keen to forgive and forget but Del isn't so sure... Hole In One: Rodney's investment in suntan oil during the worst British winter since the last Ice Age has left the Trotters clos
Hot Enough For June
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy