I see dead people," whispers little Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), scared to affirm what is to him now a daily occurrence. This peaked nine-year old, already hypersensitive to begin with, is now being haunted by seemingly malevolent spirits. Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is trying to find out what's triggering Cole's visions, but what appears to be a psychological manifestation turns out to be frighteningly real. It might be enough to scare off a lesser man, but for Malcolm it's personal--several months before, he was accosted and shot by an unhinged patient, who then turned the gun on himself. Since then, Malcolm has been in turmoil--he and his wife (Olivia Williams) are barely speaking, and his life has taken an aimless turn. Having failed his loved ones and himself, he's not about to give up on Cole. The Sixth Sense, M Night Shyamalan's third feature, sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Age-y, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, forsaking excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazingly emotional wallop when it comes, and will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days. --Mark Englehart
Framed for the murder of her husband, Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) survives the long years in prison with two burning desires sustaining her.
After the poor reception given to George Lazenby in Her Majesty's Secret Service, Sean Connery was no doubt lured back to the series with a gadget-stuffed briefcase full of cash (most of which he allegedly gave to charity) for this wry, snappily made seventh instalment in the series. Some of its secret weapons include a smart script, a Las Vegas setting providing plenty of neon reflections on windscreens for a memorable car chase through the Strip, and the comely Jill St. John as Tiffany Case, a diamond cut-above most of the preceding Bond girls. (Apart from Diana Rigg in Her Majesty's Secret Service, that is). Blofeld and his fluffy white cat are on hand to menace 007--it's the Nehru jackets and steely surface-look of this one in particular that the Austin Powers spoofs are sending up. Blofeld's initial cover as a reclusive Howard Hughes-like millionaire points to how the series was catching up with more contemporary figures and issues. Other highlights include two truly ferocious, karate-kicking female assassins and a sizzling moon-buggy chase across the dunes. --Leslie FelperinOn the DVD: The mind boggling possibility of casting Adam West (TV's Batman) as Bond was seriously mooted because the suits at United Artists wanted to Americanise the franchise, th e documentary reveals. Sean Connery was eventually persuaded to return but demanded a record fee to reprise his role, and then donated all the cash to his charitable foundation, the Scottish International Education Trust. The rags to riches story of larger-than-life producer Albert R Broccoli is told in the second documentary. The commentary is another in the series of edited selections from interviews with cast and crew, which are exhaustive in the wealth of detail offered but a little exhausting to sit through. Sundry trailers, radio and TV spots plus a few deleted scenes complete the comprehensive selection. --Mark Walker
On its theatrical release Thirteen Days was pummelled by American critics for taking liberties with the facts of the Cuban missile crisis and smothering its compelling drama with phoney Boston accents by its primary stars. But anyone who enjoys taut, intelligent political thrillers will find little to complain about here. Co-star and co-producer Kevin Costner drew criticism for fictionally enhancing the White House role of presidential aide Kenneth O'Donnell, but while Costner's Boston accent may be grating, his fine performance as O'Donnell offers expert witness to the crisis, its nerve-wracking escalation and the efforts of John F Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and Robert F Kennedy (Steven Culp) to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Russia. While Soviet missiles approach operational status in Cuba, director Roger Donaldson (who directed Costner in No Way Out) cuts to exciting US Navy flights over the missile site, ramping up the tension that history itself provided. Donaldson's occasional use of black and white is self-consciously distracting, and he's further guilty of allowing a shrillness (along with repetitive, ominous shots of nuclear explosions) to invade the urgency of David Self's screenplay. Still, as Hollywood history lessons go, Thirteen Days is riveting stuff. You may find yourself wondering what might happen if reality presented a repeat scenario under less intelligent leadership.--Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Wesley Snipes plays John Cutter, an anti-terrorist expert who is flying to LA to begin a new life after the murder of his wife during a supermarket robbery. On the same plane is Charles Rayne (Bruce Payne), a dangerous hijacker being transported to prison. His agents have been placed on the flight to enable his escape, but they hadn't banked on Cutter.
A member of the jury for an explosive trial against a gun manufacturer joins forces with a beautiful woman to manipulate the panel.
M Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Agey, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, one that forsakes excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Bruce Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Haley Joel Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazing emotional wallop when it comes; it will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days. --Mark Englehart
Sean Connery made his final - officially-speaking - appearance as 007 in this riveting adventure which would lay the groundwork for Mr Moore's incarnation as the suave super-spy. While investigating mysterious activities in the world diamond market 007 (Sean Connery) discovers that his evil nemesis Blofeld (Charles Gray) is stock-piling the gems to use in his deadly laser satellite. With the help of beautiful smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) Bond sets out to stop the madman - as the fate of the world hangs in the balance!
Jennifer Lopez marries her dream man, but soon discovers he isn't the man she thought he was. For her own safety - and that of her daughter - she decides to take drastic action...
A phobic con artist and his protege are about to pull one of the most lucrative swindles of their lives when the swindler's teenage daughter suddenly turns up unannounced.
Best known for making movies about men and violence, director Walter Hill scored a misfire with this ambitious but ultimately dreary remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo. The story's essentially the same but the setting has been switched to a dusty, almost ghostly Texas town in the 1930s, where two rival Chicago gangs are locked in an uneasy truce. Bruce Willis plays the lone drifter who allies himself with both gangs to his own advantage, working both sides against each other according to his own hidden agenda. The violence escalates to a bloody climax, of course, with Christopher Walken, David Patrick Kelly and Michael Imperioli as trigger-happy lieutenants in a lonely, desolate war. Fans of gangster movies will want to see this, and, if nothing else, Hill has brought his polished style to a vaguely mythic story. It's far from being a classic, however, and although its action is at times masterfully choreographed, the movie's humourless attitude is unexpectedly oppressive. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Within hours of his 1974 funeral, Hong Kong movie studios began to produce hundreds of unauthorized biopics, spin-offs and rip-offs starring a competing roster of Bruce Lee lookalikes. Over the next decade, ˜Bruceploitation' would become a staple of global cinema. Director David Gregory whose award-winning documentaries include LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and BLOOD & FLESH: THE REEL LIFE & GHASTLY DEATH OF AL ADAMSON now examines this fascinating phenomenon via interviews with Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Liang and Dragon Lee; martial arts legends like Angela Mao, David Chiang, Phillip Ko and Sammo Hung; and the producers, directors, distributors and experts along with copious clips from the films themselves that for the first time reveal the history, controversy and legacy behind one of the most bizarre genres in movie history.
It's Die Hard on a plane in this action thriller, starring Wesley Snipes as an anti-terrorist specialist whose early retirement is interrupted when his flight is overtaken by a bloodthirsty villain (Bruce Payne). Watching this at home is pretty much an excuse to order pizza and kick back, as the familiar rhythms of maverick-cop-versus-international-criminal take over and nothing new or fresh in the formula emerges. The supporting cast includes Elizabeth Hurley (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) as a gun-wielding, junior terrorist, which is fun simply for being unexpected. The release includes optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, Dolby sound, production notes and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. --Tom Keogh
Times change. Dangers remain. 10 years after he became President of the Interstellar Alliance Sheridan prepares for a fateful Babylon 5 reunion that could prevent Earth's impending doom...if he will also compromise his core principles. Meanwhile commander Lochley confronts an unexpected interloper on the way station - a being whose presence makes the B5 freeport the crossroads between heaven and hell.
Rancher Taw Jackson (Wayne) is dead-set on capturing an ironclad stagecoach belonging to the cattle baron who stole his fortune and tarnished his good name years before. To pull off the heist Jackson puts together a crew that includes an old character a half-civilized Indian a young drunk and a cocky gunfighter...
It's hard not to feel there's something wrong when Army of Darkness, the third entry in Sam Raimi's lively Evil Dead series, opens with a 15 certificate. And indeed, this is not quite the non-stop rollercoaster of splat we're entitled to expect. Like Evil Dead II, it opens with a digest-cum-remake of the original movie, taking geeky Ash (Bruce Campbell) back out to that cabin in the woods where he is beset by demons who do away with his girlfriend (blink and you'll miss Bridget Fonda). Blasted back in time to 12th century England, Ash finds himself still battling the Deadites and his own ineptitude in a quest to save the day and get back home. Though it starts zippily, with Campbell's grimly funny clod of a hero commanding the screen, a sort of monotony sets in as magical events pile up. Ash is attacked by Lilliputian versions of himself, one of whom incubates in his stomach and grows out of his shoulder to be his evil twin. After being dismembered and buried, Evil Ash rises from the dead to command a zombie army and at least half the film is a big battle scene in which rotted warriors (nine mouldy extras in masks for every one Harryhausen-style impressive animated skeleton) besiege a cardboard castle. There are lots of action jokes, MAD Magazine-like marginal doodles and a few funny lines, but it lacks the authentic scares of The Evil Dead and the authentic sick comedy of Evil Dead II. On the DVD: Army of Darkness may be the least of the trilogy, but Anchor Bay's super two-disc set is worthy of shelving beside their outstanding editions of the earlier films. Disc 1 contains the 81-minute US theatrical version in widescreen or fullscreen, plus the original "Planet of the Apes" ending, the trailer and a making-of featurette. Disc 2 has the 96-minute director's cut, with extra slapstick and a lively, irreverent commentary track from Raimi, Campbell and co-writer Ivan Raimi, plus yet more deleted scenes and some storyboards. The fact that the film exists in so many versions suggests that none of them satisfied everybody, but fans will want every scrap of Army in this one package. --Kim Newman
The rent is due and his car's been booted. Sean has to come up with some ends... and fast! With his best friend and roommate Dee Loc he gets a job busting suds down at the local car wash. The first order of business is impressing Mr Washington the gun-toting dominoes-playing owner of The Wash. Comic tensions fly when Mr Washington hires Sean as Dee Loc's supervisor. Then they start getting harrassed by menacing phone calls from a disgruntled ex-employee. Then Dee Loc begins to susp
What links The Beatles, Ken Russell, Peter Cook, Fairport Convention, The Goons, The Bonzo Doo Dah Dog Band and Turner prize-winning artists Grayson Perry and Jeremy Deller? The answer: Mr Bruce Lacey. A legendary figure on the British counter-cultural art scene during the 1960s, Lacey has enjoyed five decades of defining cultural moments, collaborating with all manner of filmmakers, musicans and artists (such as director Richard Lester, cartoonist Bob Godfrey and artist Jill Smith), and making appearances in such era-defining pop cultural experiences as Help! and Not Only... But Also.This indispensible two-disc collection finally brings together many of Lacey's rarely-seen films for the very first time, showcasing the rich and diverse talents of a seminal and thoroughly original British artist-filmmaker.Includes: The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film (Richard Lester, 1960), The Lacey Rituals (1973) and much more.
Get ready for the most hard-kicking, face-smashing, snake-fisting trailer collection of them all! From the golden age of kung fu cinema comes this insane tsunami of masters, mobsters, furious vengeance and incredible fighting styles, starring Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Lo Lieh, Sammo Hung, Angela Mao, Chuck Norris, Jimmy Wang Yu and Wu Tang, too. These are the most over the- top and rarely-seen original trailers for Hong Kong classics that include The Way Of The Dragon, Death Blow, Two Champions Of Shaolin, Daggers 8, Snake In The Eagle s Shadow, Shaolin Wooden Men, The Story Of Drunken Master, Enter The Fat Dragon, Brutal Boxer and many more, plus exclusive new bonus features that deliver unique historical and cultural perspectives on the amazing world of martial arts movies.
Bouton teaches proper use of the bar, foot pedals, knee levers and volume pedals, plus right-hand picking techniques and scales, chords and harmony lines that give the instrument its distinctive sound. Included are classic licks, intros and endings, and
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy