An iconic Australian story of family, friendship and adventure, between a young boy and a scrappy one-of-a-kind dog that would grow up to become an Australian legend.
This Western has become a modest cult favourite since its release in 1993, when the film was met with mixed reviews but the performances of Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) and especially Val Kilmer, for his memorably eccentric performance as the dying gunslinger Doc Holliday, garnered high praise. The movie opens with Wyatt Earp trying to put his violent past behind him, living happily in Tombstone with his brothers and the woman (Dana Delany) who puts his soul at ease. But a murderous gang called the Cowboys has burst on the scene, and Earp can't keep his gun belt off any longer. The plot sounds routine, and in many ways it is, but Western buffs won't mind a bit thanks to a fine cast and some well-handled action on the part of Rambo director George P Cosmatos, who has yet to make a better film than this. --Jeff Shannon
A sweeping, historical epic set against the brutal backdrop of a stunning Australian landscape, SWEET COUNTRY follows the story of Sam, a middle-aged Aborigine man who becomes a wanted criminal after a violent altercation with a bitter war veteran. When Sam is forced to flee across the harsh desert country, pursued by a hunting party led by the local lawman, the true details of his supposed crime start to surface, and the community begins to question whether justice is really being served.
John Huston (The Maltese Falcon) directed this smart thriller about a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who holds a number of people hostage in a hotel on the Florida keys during a tropical storm. Humphrey Bogart is the returning war veteran who takes on the villains, and Lauren Bacall is on hand as one of the people on the wrong end of Robinson's gun. Somewhat similar in tone to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (which also featured Bogart and Bacall), Key Largo is a moody movie which captures a certain despair offset by the bond between individuals united by common purpose. Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for her part as Robinson's alcoholic girlfriend. --Tom Keogh
Offbeat French drama from director Fran�ois Ozon that explores the relationship between a literature student and the talented pupil whose gift for description he attempts to nurture. Germain (Fabrice Luchini) usually despairs about the quality of the creative writing his pupils produce so when he receives a piece from the previously unremarkable student Claude (Ernst Umhauer) that displays promise he is moved to pledge assistance to the boy. Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Clau...
History will place an asterisk next to A.I. as the film Stanley Kubrick might have directed. But let the record also show that Kubrick--after developing this project for some 15 years--wanted Steven Spielberg to helm this astonishing sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio, claiming (with good reason) that it veered closer to Spielberg's kinder, gentler sensibilities. Spielberg inherited the project (based on the Brain Aldiss short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long") after Kubrick's death in 1999, and the result is an astounding directorial hybrid. A flawed masterpiece of sorts, in which Spielberg's gift for wondrous enchantment often clashes (and sometimes melds) with Kubrick's harsher vision of humanity, the film spans near and distant futures with the fairy-tale adventures of an artificial boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), a marvel of cybernetic progress who wants only to be a real boy, loved by his mother in that happy place called home. Echoes of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun are evident as young David, shunned by his trial parents and tossed into an unfriendly world, is joined by fellow "mecha" Gigolo Joe (played with a dancer's agility by Jude Law) in his quest for a mother-and-child reunion. Parallels to Pinocchio intensify as David reaches "the end of the world" (a Manhattan flooded by melted polar ice caps), and a far-future epilogue propels A.I. into even deeper realms of wonder, just as it pulls Spielberg back to his comfort zone of sweetness and soothing sentiment. Some may lament the diffusion of Kubrick's original vision, but this is Spielberg's A.I., a film of astonishing technical wizardry that spans the spectrum of human emotions and offers just enough Kubrick to suggest that humanity's future is anything but guaranteed. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com On the DVD: A perfect movie for the digital age, A.I. finds a natural home on DVD. The purity of the picture, its carefully composed colour schemes and the multifarious sound effects are accorded the pin-point sharpness they deserve with the anamorphic 1.85:1 picture and Dolby 5.1 sound, as is John Williams's thoughtful music score. On the first disc there's a short yet revealing documentary, "Creating A.I.", but the meat of the extras appears on disc two. Here there are good, well-made featurettes on acting, set design, costumes, lighting, sound design, music and various aspects of the special effects: Stan Winston's remarkable robots (including Teddy, of course) and ILM's flawless CGI work. In addition there are storyboards, photographs and trailers. Finally, Steven Spielberg provides some rather sententious closing remarks ("I think that we have to be very careful about how we as a species use our genius"), but no director's commentary. --Mark Walker
A powerful story of love passion and religious conflict! Esther a young and beautiful Hebrew woman cousin to the cunning Mordecai charms Xerxes and the royal court to become queen. But Esther has hidden her religious and tribal background; when the king's chief treasurer devises a plan to persecute and kill the Jews Esther has to make some tragic life-altering decisions...
When there's murder on the streets everyone is a suspect. A gritty realistic adaptation of Richard Price's best-selling novel director Spike Lee examines the violent world of urban drug dealing through the eyes of Strike (Mekhi Phifer) a 19-year-old ""clocker "" short for round-the-clock pusher. Strike agrees to kill a fellow employee of his boss Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo) an influential popular drug lord. But when the hit goes down it is Strike's moral law-abiding brother V
The dramatic retelling of the life and loves of one of history's most feared and admired leaders, William The Conquerer.
The clock ticks again with 24: LEGACY, the next evolution of the Emmy Award- winning 24. From Emmy Award-winning executive producer Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24: Live Another Day). 24: LEGACY chronicles an adrenaline-fueled race against the clock to stop a devastating terrorist attack on United States soil in the same real-time format that has propelled this genre-defining series. Six months ago in Yemen, an elite squad of U.S. Army Rangers, led by Sergeant ERIC CARTER (Corey Hawkins, Straight Outta Compton), killed terrorist leader Sheik Ibrahim Bin-Khalid. But a recent attempt on Carter's own life makes it clear to him that his team has been exposed. To thwart further attacks, Carter enlists REBECCA INGRAM (Miranda Otto, Homeland), who quarterbacked the raid that killed Bin-Khalid. She's a brilliant and ambitious intelligence officer who has stepped down from her post as National Director of CTU to support her husband, SENATOR JOHN DONOVAN (Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Jimmy Smits, NYPD Blue, The West Wing), in his campaign for President of the United States. Together, in this fast-paced thrill ride, Carter and Ingram uncover a sophisticated terrorist network that will force them to ask: Who can we trust? As they battle Bin- Khalid's devotees, they are forced to confront their own identities, families and pasts.
The Flintstones in Rock Vegas sees best pals Fred (Mark Addy) and Barney (Stephen Baldwin) downing tools at Bedrock Mining Company to woo Wilma (Kristen Johnston) and Betty (Jane Krakowski) during a long vacation in Rock Vegas. All goes well until Fred's gambling addiction gets the better of him and he is framed for stealing Wilma's prized pearl necklace by love rival Chip Rockerfeller (Thomas Gibson) who oozes malice out of every prehistoric pore. Meanwhile Wilma's high fallutin mother Pearl (Joan Collins taking over from Elizabeth Taylor) thinks that Fred is too downmarket for her daughter and does everything within her power to push Wilma and Chip together...
Though adapted from a memoir by a British journalist, We Bought a Zoo feels entirely like a Cameron Crowe film, with clear parallels to previous crowd-pleasers like Jerry Maguire. Crowe introduces Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon in a role that recalls his Contagion character) six months after the death of his wife. Since everything reminds him of her, the California columnist decides to make a change, starting with a new location. His realtor (Curb Your Enthusiasm's J.B. Smoove), brother (Sideways' Thomas Haden Church), and sullen teenage son (Colin Ford) try to talk him out of it, but Mee falls in love with a country manor that comes with a strange stipulation: the tenant must manage the zoo that accompanies the property. With his daughter's blessing, Mee takes the plunge. Fortunately, he inherits an experienced staff, including MacCready (Angus MacFadyen), Robin (Patrick Fugit), Lily (Elle Fanning), and Kelly (Scarlett Johansson, lovely as ever in her least glamorous role to date). Mee's road to reinvention offers few surprises, but Damon makes him a sympathetic figure who finds the same kind of support system among the park personnel that Fugit's Almost Famous writer found in the rock world, except Mee's relationships have more staying power. If his detractors--a skeptical employee and an unctuous inspector--feel like screenwriter constructs, Zoo represents a return to form for Crowe after a series of missteps, including Elizabethtown. Better yet, the real-life park that Mee acquired continues to lead by example as a humane habitat for endangered species. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas, is a compelling love story about two people who never would have met in a perfect world.
Because of his tragic death on the set of The Crow, we'll never know if Brandon Lee would have turned one successful film into a popular series. But one look at this tepid sequel suggests that not even the charismatic Lee could have rescued The Crow movies from the burden of a lacklustre screenplay. Based on the popular comic books by James O'Barr, this sequel finds Vincent Pérez as a man named Ashe, who is murdered along with his young son by a gang of drug-running thugs under the employ of slimy kingpin Judah Earl (Richard Brooks). Ashe is resurrected with the help of a tattoo artist named Sarah (Mia Kirschner), whereupon he begins a campaign of revenge against his killers. More a rehash than a sequel, the film repeats the grungy, dark look of urban decay from The Crow, but its combination of violence, heavy-handed symbolism and tacky sentiment make this a film strictly for nihilistic teens. Then again, no movie in which veteran punkster Iggy Pop plays a slimeball can be considered a total loss. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.co.uk
The Karate Kid (Dir. John G. Avildsen 1984): Daniel (Ralph Macchio) arrives in Los Angeles from the East Coast and faces the difficult task of making new friends. However he becomes the object of bullying by the Cobras a menacing gang of karate students when he strikes up a relationship with Ali (Elisabeth Shue) the Cobra leader's ex-girlfriend. Eager to fight back and impress his new girlfriend but afraid to confront the dangerous gang Daniel asks his handyman Miyagi (N
For better or worse, David Mamet's hit play Sexual Perversity in Chicago is watered down into this romantic comedy about a couple (played by Rob Lowe and Demi Moore) who get together and then fall apart due to Lowe's character's inability to commit. Jim Belushi is on hand as the gratuitously swinish best friend who looks at women as meat, and Elizabeth Perkins is entertainingly arch as Moore's gal pal and Belushi's nemesis. There is nothing about this 1986 film by Edward Zwick (co-creator of TV's thirtysomething and director of Glory and Courage Under Fire) that is at all reminiscent of Mamet, but that doesn't make it bad or dull. While one can feel the script straining to fill in gaps where chunks of the original play have disappeared, Zwick often successfully tells the story without words at all, relying on the actors to convey pure emotion. Lowe is good, and the then-willowy Moore's understated performance reminds one of the actress she might have been before she became a spectacle. --Tom Keogh
Alan Bennetts renowned monologues are remade with an extraordinary British cast with two powerful new pieces added to the collection. Touching on universal themes such as guilt, grief and isolation, Bennetts masterful monologues have always had a timeless quality. But they feel particularly relevant today. Bennetts long-term collaborator, director Nicholas Hytner, heads up a superlative creative team. Actors including Jodie Comer, Martin Freeman and Kristin Scott Thomas bring Bennetts haunting work to life with darkly captivating performances. With the actors talking directly to the camera, this is an exceptionally intimate dramatic experience. As the characters unburden their souls, theres nowhere for the actors or audience to hide. Starring Jodie Comer, Monica Dolan, Martin Freeman, Tamsin Greig, Sarah Lancashire, Lesley Manville, Lucian Msamati, Maxine Peake, Rochenda Sandall, Kristin Scott Thomas, Imelda Staunton, Harriet Walter
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