Disney sets a record for bringing out a direct-to-video sequel after the initial film. Stitch: The Movie arrives only a year after the enjoyable Lilo & Stitch and reunites the title character (otherwise known as Experiment 626) with his earth-bound family in the warm Hawaiian sun. The story has a nice set-up: since Stitch is Experiment 626, where are the first 625 invented by Dr Jumba Jookiba? Odds are the island paradise will soon be spaceport central for many more aliens. As with other made-for-video Disney titles, the animation is not as complex or rich. This hurts this sequel even more since the original film had such a unique, pastel beauty. Unfortunately, the other elements of the film are just as flat. Even though most of the original voice cast returns, the entire production lacks the same spirit and charm, and the story's theme is recycled (get ready for more "Ohana means family"). On the plus side, the film starts with an Elvis Presley song ("Slicin' Sand") and is only 64 minutes long. The movie sets up the Disney TV series The Adventures of Lilo & Stitch. --Doug Thomas
This Ophuls film noir classic is rich in suspense strikingly photographed and features career best performances from Joan Bennett and James Mason. Based on the story 'The Blank Wall' by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.
Another night falls over Gotham City and with the darkness out crawls the crime and villainy from the shadows. The days of The Batman and other noble super heroes are but faded memories; violence and despair are now the harbingers of our time. But one event will set a change into motion: when Harvey Two Face Dent shuns a former rehabilitated life for a descent into corruption, an aged and weathered Bruce Wayne dons the mask and cape once more. With a stellar voice cast headed by Peter Weller, Ariel Winter and David Selby, this gritty DC Comics legend comes to life with unforgettable battles, thrilling chases and the promise of a better tomorrow for humanity, because there is nowhere for criminals to hide when the Dark Knight returns. Special Features: More from DC Comics: DC Brand Trailer Imagination of DC Thundercats Trailer A Sneak Peek at Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Part 2 (Coming Soon) Superman/Batman: Public Enemies Her Name is Carrie... Her Role is Robin Two-Face Part One from Batman The Animated Series Two-Face Part Two from Batman The Animated Series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Digital Comic) The Dark Knight Rises Trailer Before Watchmen Trailer Batman and Me: The Bob Kane Story
With an ingenious script, engaging characters, nerve-shredding suspense, genuinely frightening set-pieces and laugh-out-loud funny bits An American Werewolf in London is a prime candidate for the finest horror-comedy ever made. Americans David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are backpacking in northern England when Jack is killed by a wild beast and David is bitten. Back in London David finds himself falling in love with a nurse, Alex (played with winning charm by Jenny Agutter), and turning into a werewolf. Adding to his problems, an increasingly decomposed Jack keeps coming back from the dead, and he is not a happy corpse. The Oscar winning make-up and transformation scenes still look good and rather than send itself up Werewolf plays its horror seriously, the laughs coming naturally from the surreal situation. Naughton is engagingly confused and disbelieving, desperately coping with the ever more nightmarish world, while Landis delivers one absolutely stunning dream sequence, an unbearably tense hunt on the London Underground and a breathtaking finale. Gory, erotic, shocking and romantic, this unforgettable horror classic has it all. Tom Holland's Fright Night (1985) remixed the formula with vampires, as did Landis himself in Innocent Blood (1992). A disappointing sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, followed in 1997. --Gary S Dalkin
With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets. "The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster. On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp
The exciting story of the hijack of an oil rig supply vessel and the subsequent holding to ransom of a drilling rig a production platform and the 700 men aboard.
George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead is quite terrifying and gory (those zombies do like the taste of living flesh). But in its own way, it is just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values. This time, we follow the fortunes of four people who lock themselves inside a shopping mall to get away from the marauding dead and who then immerse themselves in unabashed consumerism, taking what they want from an array of clothing and jewellery shops, making gourmet meals, etc. It is Romero's take on Louis XVI in the modern world: keep the starving masses at bay and crank up the insulated indulgence. Still, this is a horror film when all is said and done and even some of Romero's best visual jokes (a Hare Krishna turned blue-skinned zombie) can make you sweat. --Tom Keogh
Welcome to the slammer It's time to shower with the crims and gag on prison slop in this uncompromising no-holds-barred comedy about one man's hilarious fight to survive the nick.
Prime Suspect 1 (1991): When DCI Jane Tennison (Mirren) takes over the running of what appears to be an open and shut murder case her investigations lead her into a male dominated world and the hunt for a serial killer. Prime Suspect 2 (1992): DCI Tennison begins an investigation into the death of a young girl whose body is found in the back garden of a house in London. Prime Suspect 3 (1993): Chief Inspector Jane Tennison investigates the discovery of a male prostitute's charred body in the burnt-out flat of a transsexual... Prime Suspect 4 - Inner Circles (1995): Detective Superintendent Tennison investigates the mysterious death of a local country club manager and is led to a hidden political scandal... Prime Suspect 4 - Scent Of Darkness (1995) A series of brutal sex murders disturbingly similar to the pattern of Tennison's first major case leads to the awful suggestion that she may have caught the wrong man... Prime Suspect 4 - The Lost Child (1995): Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison's return to London's Southampton Row is complicated by personal upheaval and an investigation into the disappearance of a child... Prime Suspect 5 - Errors Of Judgement (1996): Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison has been transferred to Manchester and finds herself in a world she does not know surrounded by people she cannot trust and invloved with a man she cannot have. Her latest case is destined only to make things worse... Prime Suspect 6 - Last Witness (2003): Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) returns for a sixth investigation and another battle with the male establishment. Tennison is back in London heading a large murder squad dealing with numerous cases. She's facing the prospect of early retirement and has ambitious underlings snapping at her heels. When the body of a young Bosnian woman is found with evidence of torture Tennison takes personal charge of the case. Her investigation leads her to one possibly two Serbian war criminals eager to silence the last witness to a massacre a decade before. Prime Suspect 7 (2006): This tense uncompromising drama by distinguished dramatist and novelist Lynda La Plante has received critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic; winning 14 international awards including a BAFTA for Best Drama Serial and Best TV Actress (Helen Mirren). Retirement loom large for Detective Inspector Tennison but as her exemplary career draws towards its inevitable conclusion Jane is paying dearly for 35 years of repressed rage and loneliness. When the body of a missing schoolgirl is discovered the hunt for her killer begins. However as Jane and her team struggle to track down the brutal child murderer the world-weary Detective Tennison begins to unravel.
Stephen King's The Shining is a new adaptation from the author himself, made for American television, that bears very little resemblance to the 1980 Stanley Kubrick version. Which is not surprising since Kubrick practically threw out most of King's novel and presented his own version of the story. Here King redresses the balance in a mini-series that follows his original almost to the letter, and manages to be effectively creepy despite the budget and censorship limitations of the TV format. Stephen Weber takes over the role of Jack Torrance, the caretaker who slowly descends into madness in the haunted Overlook Hotel. His performance is as far from Jack Nicholson as you could get, with his insanity building slowly and menacingly rather than being virtually mad from the get-go. Rebecca de Mornay is superb as Wendy Torrance, struggling to hold her fragile family together amid the spooky goings on. Young Courtlan Mead plays Danny, whose unique gifts give the story its title, as one of those infuriating TV brats who overacts left right and centre. Fortunately, there are enough creepy moments and a fair few frights to hold the whole thing together: the woman in the bathtub scene being a stand out shocker. Sure, there is nothing quite like Nicholson's "Here's Johnny!" moment, but this is the story King wanted to tell and it still shines brighter than most of the other recent screen adaptations of his work. On the DVD: Stephen King's The Shining is a nicely packaged set, with the film spread over two discs complete with a commentary featuring Stephen King himself, instantly making this set a must-have for his fans. There are also several deleted scenes which add some interest to parts of the movie. The transfer is good, considering its TV origins, and the crisp sound captures every spooky moment on this well-thought-out and presented set. --Jonathan Weir
Life is Sweet, Mike Leigh's 1990 snapshot of the suburban family condition at the tail end of the Thatcher era, is often depressing and occasionally harrowing. It is also ultimately joyous, not just for the sharpness of Leigh's satire--the script was improvised with and by the cast--but also for the real affection that binds the family together. Through a series of minor crises, channels of communication silted up by the daily grind and terminal self-absorption are gradually eased open and the film ends on a note of genuine hope. As parents Wendy and Andy, Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent give virtuoso performances: two adults who use fantasy, mundane work and a stream of banal chatter to keep reality at bay before a freak kitchen accident forces them to stop and take stock. They have two daughters to perplex them: one a plumber (Claire Skinner) and the other an angry anorexic (Jane Horrocks, unsparing in a gut-wrenching bulimic scene). Timothy Spall is hilarious as family friend Aubrey, a would-be restaurateur whose efforts to establish a gourmet eatery in Enfield collapse in hopeless, drunken farce. This is not an overtly political film, but the sense of a stake being driven through the heart of the 1980s enterprise culture is unmistakeable. Inspiring. --Piers Ford
The quite terrifying and gory Dawn of the Dead was George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic 1968 Night of the Living Dead. But it is also just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values. This time, we follow the fortunes of four people who lock themselves inside a shopping centre to get away from the marauding dead and who then immerse themselves in unabashed consumerism, taking what they want from an array of clothing and jewellery shops, making gourmet meals and so on. It is Romero's take on Louis XVI in the modern world: keep the starving masses at bay and crank up the insulated indulgence. Still, this is a horror film after all and even some of Romero's best visual jokes (a Hare Krishna turned blue-skinned zombie) can make you sweat. --Tom Keogh
It's the early 60's and hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe played by James Caan is as cynical as ever but also a newlywed. Moving to the small desert town of Poodle Springs after marrying the daughter (Dina Meyer) of a billionaire Marlowe becomes immersed in deadly intrigue surrounding the murder of another investigator. Uncovering a sinister scheme to relocate the state border of Nevada that might involve his wealthy father-in-law the world-weary Marlowe encounters a web of greed lust and murder as dark and as deadly as he has ever seen. With a talent for attracting trouble Marlowe finds it in Poodle Springs in the form of bigamy gambling pornography and double identity
Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace star in this modern day tale about corporate takeovers and falling for your colleague's daughter.
An implausible plot doesn't prevent Harrison's Flowers from being a harrowing and moving depiction of the cost of war. Andie MacDowell stars as Sarah Lloyd, the wife of a photojournalist reported lost in the 1991 civil war raging between ethnic divisions in the former Yugoslavia. Refusing to believe her husband is dead, Sarah flies to Austria and then drives into the heart of the war, where she teams up with other photographers (Adrien Brody and Brendan Gleeson), who help her find a small town where her husband was last seen--while all around them rages one of the most horrific conflicts of the late 20th century. The story is barely credible, but the depiction of the war itself is stunning, and the depiction of the lives of photojournalists--partly thrill-seeking voyeurs, partly truth tellers--is complex and compelling. Though MacDowell isn't a great actress, all the performances are solid, and Brody is outstanding. --Bret Fetzer
The lowest point in Disney's opportunistic revisionism of source stories for its animated features in the 1990s, Pocahontas presents the title character (voiced by Irene Bedard) as a voluptuous Indian babe who falls for the British plunderer Captain John Smith (Mel Gibson). Half-baked if trendy paganism abounds in the film's depiction of nature as possessing consciousness (though talking trees certainly aren't new to cartoons). But the dubious legitimacy of the film's premise and characterisations calls everything into question. The songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz--while Oscar-winning--fall short of the standard Menken achieved in superior Disney predecessors including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. --Tom Keogh
Dex (Donal Logue) is a man who believes can charm any woman, with the help of quotes from his favourite philosophers. However when he meets his old college friend Syd he finds someone who doesn't respond well to his seductive techniques!
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