Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads was actually a revival, in 1973, of the successful Dick Clements/Ian La Frenais 1960s comedy The Likely Lads, so notable for its fibrous but sympathetic treatment of life for two young men coming of age in North East England. This "Very Best of" collection brings together classic episodes from the 1973 series. Although tinged with nostalgia--the décor and styles of the early 1970s are almost pungently evocative--the quality of the writing defies the passage of time. Seven years on from their initial adventures, Rodney Bewes (upwardly mobile, self-improving Bob) and James Bolam (feckless, chippy Terry) meet by accident on the train. Bob is about to marry Thelma and move into modern semi-detached heaven, while Terry is just out of the army and drifting back home without a great deal of purpose. The relationship between the two men, basically sound but frequently compromised by their very different aspirations, is very cleverly drawn and played so that your sympathies never stay on one side for very long. Best of all, Brigit Forsyth's Thelma, a dragon in the making, adds an astringent dynamic. She is, says Terry, "so stuck up she thinks her backside's a perfume factory". The insecurity he generates in her is responsible for much of the comedy. On the DVD: The Very Best of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads comes to disc with no extras, simply standard 4:3 picture format video production and episode selection. But it's still fresh as a daisy all the same. --Piers Ford
When it comes down to naming the best Western of all time, the list usually narrows to three completely different pictures: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, Hawks' Red River and John Ford's The Searchers. About the only thing they all have in common is that they all star John Wayne. But while The Searchers is an epic quest for revenge and Red River, a sweeping cattle-drive drama, Rio Bravo is a much calmer film. Basically, it comes down to Sheriff John T Chance (Wayne), his alcoholic friend Dude (Dean Martin), the hotshot new kid Colorado (Ricky Nelson), and deputy-sidekick Stumpy (Walter Brennan), sittin' around in the town jail, drinkin' black coffee, shootin' the breeze, and occasionally singin' a song. Hawks--who, like his pal Ernest Hemingway, lived by the code of "grace under pressure"--said he made Rio Bravo as a rebuke to High Noon, in which sheriff Gary Cooper begged for townspeople to help him. So, Hawks made Wayne's Sheriff Chance a consummate professional--he may be getting old and fat, but he knows how to do his job, and he doesn't want amateurs getting mixed up in his business; they could get hurt. If the configuration of characters sounds familiar, it should: Hawks remade Rio Bravo two more times--as El Dorado in 1967, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and James Caan; and as Rio Lobo in 1970, with Wayne, Jack Elam, and Christopher Mitchum. The film achieved additional notoriety in the 90s when Quentin Tarantino revealed that he uses it as a litmus test for prospective girlfriends. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com
Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon star as two former rock groupies from the 60s reunited in the present day. One is a waitress, nostalgic for the old days, and the other is a prominent socialite eager to forget her past.
Inside Llewyn Davis follows a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates New York City's folk scene of 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac Drive) is at a crossroads. Guitar in tow he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles - some of them of his own making. Living at the mercy of both friends (Justin Timberlake The Social Network; Carey Mulligan The Great Gatsby) and strangers Llewyn scares up what work he can find. His misadventures take him from the basket houses of the Greenwich Village to an empty Chicago club - on an odyssey to audition for music mogul Bud Grossman - and back again. Written and Directed by Academy Award -winners Joel and Ethan Coen (O Brother Where Art Thou? No Country for Old Men) and brimming with music performed by Oscar Isaac Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan Marcus Mumford and Punch Brothers Inside Llewyn Davis is infused with the transportive sound of another time and place.
Fourteen-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry - a housewife and a golf pro - living a seemingly idyllic life in 1960s Montana. His family s carefully constructed façade is about to come crashing spectacularly down however, when Jerry loses his job and his sense of purpose. In an attempt to restore his pride, Jerry takes off for the summer to help fight the wildfires raging near the Canadian border, a life-threatening job, for very little pay. An angry and bereft Jeanette must quickly learn to fend for herself, and does so with gusty, challenging cultural expectations and taking a quietly bewildered Joe along for the ride. An elegant adaption of the Richard Ford novel of the same name, Wildlife is an impressive directorial debut from Golden Globe nominee Paul Dano, starring Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go, An Education, Shame, Suffragette), Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler, Brokeback Mountain, Donnie Darko), Ed Oxenbould (The Visit, Paper Planes) and Bill Camp (The Night Of, Loving, Midnight Special).
After her uncle dies unexpectedly, Elizabeth Balljanon inherits his sprawling castle. The walls are crumbling, the electricity doesn't work and there's a fully equipped torture chamber in the cellars but interior decoration is the least of her worries: a black-gloved killer haunts the halls at night and, even worse, the tales she's been told about the castle's ghosts might not be stories after all... Part giallo, part modern-dress Gothic, The Doll of Satan is a gloriously ripe slice of Italian horror, heady with atmosphere and steamy eroticism too. 88 Films are very proud to present this rediscovered genre gem in the UK for the very first time.
Season 1 Living in the same universe as The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead is a gritty drama that explores the onset of the undead apocalypse through the lens of a fractured family. Set in a city where people come to bury their pasts, a mysterious outbreak threatens to disrupt what little stability high school guidance counsellor Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and English teacher Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) have managed to assemble. The everyday pressure of blending two families while dealing with resentful children takes a back seat when society begins to break down, and as the necessary survival of the fittest takes hold, they must either reinvent themselves or embrace their darker histories. Season 2 After witnessing the burning of Los Angeles, Madison, Travis, Daniel and their grieving families board the Abigail', still unaware of the true breadth and depth of the apocalypse that surrounds them. But as Operation Cobalt goes into full effect and the military bombs the Southland to cleanse it of the Infected, the Dead are driven toward the sea. As the group head for ports unknown, they will discover that the water may be no safer than land
SUFFRAGETTE is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fought for the right to vote, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State. These women were not primarily from the genteel educated classes, they were working women who had seen peaceful protest achieve nothing. Radicalised and turning to violence as the only route to change, they were willing to lose everything in their fight for equality - their jobs, their homes, their children and their lives. Maud (Carey Mulligan) is one such foot soldier. The story of her fight for dignity is both heart-breaking and inspirational.
Following The Exorcist, Oscar-winner director Willaim Friedkin returned with another classic tale of supernatural horror in The Guardian.Phil and Kate are a young couple living an idyllic life in their LA home. When Kate become pregnant with their first child they begin the search for a nanny to care for their new born. The lovely young Camilla seems like the perfect candidate for the live-in role. She's a beautiful woman who devotes herself to looking after the baby, but it soon becomes apparent the nanny is not all she seems... Bonus Features: Return to the Genre: An interview with director William Friedkin The Nanny: An interview with star Jenny Seagrove Don't go in the Woods: An interview with Co-Writer Stephan Volk
One of Walt Disney's most beloved film classics So Dear To My Heart brilliantly blends live action and animation to tell a heartwarming story the whole family will cherish. The fun begins when Danny a rejected and mischievous black lamb is adopted by a determined young boy named Jeremiah (Bobby Driscoll). While drawing a picture of Danny in his scrapbook Jeremiah daydreams of winning first prize in a local contest. Then from his drawings Danny and other animal pictures magica
Timothy Dalton's second and last James Bond assignment in Licence to Kill is darker and harder-edged than anything from the Roger Moore years, dropping the sometimes excruciating in-jokes that had begun to dominate the series in favour of gritty, semi-realistic action. When CIA colleague and close friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison) gets married immediately after arresting villainous drug baron Franz Sanchez (with a little help from Bond), the crime lord's retribution is swift and terrible. Bond goes on a personal vendetta against Sanchez after his licence to kill is revoked. There are plenty of spectacular stunt scenes, of course, but the meaty story of revenge is this film's distinguishing feature. Dalton's portrayal of the iconic hero as tough but flawed was a brave decision that the producers subsequently retreated from after Licence to Kill's relatively poor box-office showing. On the DVD: Timothy Dalton's insistence that Bond was a man not a superhero, and "a tarnished man" at that encouraged the producers to redefine Bond with a tougher edge more in keeping with Fleming's original conception of the character. Licence to Kill is Bond's darkest assignment. The production team experienced their usual difficulties in bringing it to the screen, the "making-of" documentary reveals, including a haunted road in Mexico and a mysterious flaming hand that appeared out of the fire during the climactic tanker explosion. There are two commentaries here, both montage selections of interviews from cast and crew. The first features director John Glen and many of the actors; the second has producer Michael G Wilson and the production team. Gladys Knight pops up in the first music video, Patte La Belle in the second ("If You Asked Me To"). There are the usual trailers, gallery of stills and a feature on the Kenworth trucks specially adapted for the movie's stunt work. --Mark Walker
Billed as an updating and retelling of an Irish folk legend, Lord of the Dance is less Erin Go Bragh than Hooray for Hollywood. Michael Flatley gives us the old razzle-dazzle, fashioning a Celtic-influenced spectacular that wanders far away from its Riverdance roots. The light-show presentation is closer kin to another contemporary Irish musical group, U2. Flatley himself has gone designer chic, too: with close-cropped haircut, earring, buffed abs and tight black pants he bears more than a passing resemblance to Bono. But you have to hand it to the guy--he works hard for the money, as does his attractive corps. The one maddening aspect of this glitzy, entertaining 90-minute festival is the overzealous editing. No image remains on screen for more than a few seconds. Neither Flatley nor his talented troupe deserves to have such craftsmanship sliced and diced like an MTV music video.--Richard Natale, Amazon.com
4 classic Jim Carey comedies featuring Ace Ventura, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber and The Mask
Academy Award nominated director Lee Daniels' (PRECIOUS) epic drama tells the story of White House butler Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), who serves during seven presidential administrations between 1957 and 1986.
Noel Coward's great British war film made at the height of World War II in 1942 tells the story of a naval destroyer and its crew as they fight for their lives in a life raft after their ship is sunk.
Titles Comprise: Wall Street: From the director of Platoon Oliver Stone comes a new battle set in the greatest jungle of them all Wall Street: a place where honour is traded for power and peace of mind for a piece of the action. Against this background two men form a dangerous friendship - one a ruthless multi-millionaire corporate raider the other a newly minted power hungry young broker. Two men trading their women families and each other against all odds and every rule in the book... Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps: As the global economy teeters on the brink of disaster a young Wall Street trader partners with disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko on a two-tiered mission: To alert the financial community to the coming doom and to find out who was responsible for the death of the young trader's mentor.
In this perceptive sidesplitting homage to Hichcock films director star and writer Mel Brooks plays the average American guy psychiatrist Richard Thorndyke (as in Roger Thorndike Cary Grant's character in North By Northwest) who's terrified of heights. He becomes the new chief of the Institute for the Very Very Nervous where things are not what they seem and it's not long before Richard finds himself embroiled in murder deception and other hilarious situations
Barney - Land Of Make Believe - Special
Among Stanley Kubrick's early film output The Killing stands out as the most lastingly influential: Quentin Tarantino credits the film as a huge inspiration for Reservoir Dogs and just about any movie or TV show that plays around with its own internal chronology owes the same debt. This sort of convoluted crime caper had really kicked off with John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. From then on, nouveau noir scripts kept trying to find new ways of telling very similar stories. Here the novel Clean Break is adapted for the screen in a jigsaw-puzzle structure that caught Kubrick's eye. With a dry narration we're introduced to the key players in a racetrack heist as it's being planned, but the story bounces back and forth between what happens to each of them during and before the big event. All of this keeps the audience guessing as to exactly how it will go wrong, while the downbeat telling, the unsympathetic characters and the excessively dramatic score clearly foretell that it will go wrong from the start. The denouement is comically daft no matter how many times you see it. On the DVD: The Killing is a no-frills DVD transfer, in 4:3 ratio and with its original mono soundtrack. Criminally, just one trailer is all that's been dug up as an extra. --Paul Tonks
High Society: Beautiful aloof Newport heiress Tracy Lord (Kelly) is about to marry bland businessman George Kittredge (John Lund) but matters become complicated when her ex-husband C K Dexter-Haven (Crosby) moves to her neighbourhood determined to win back her hand. Things go from bad to worse for Tracy when journalist Mike Connor (Sinatra) arrives to cover the wedding for Spy Magazine. When Tracy is forced to choose between her suitors will she realise that ""safe"" doesn't a
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