Modern War
Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) tries gamely to recapture the exotic mysteries of spaghetti Westerns in this stylish but empty film, which stars Sharon Stone as a stranger who comes to the town of Redemption in time for an annual shooting contest. Her real motivations for being there are the stuff that might have found their way into a film by Sergio Leone--in fact, much of this film is a pastiche of Leone's greatest hits, including A Fistful of Dollars and Once upon a Time in America--but one can't quite believe Stone in the role. Gene Hackman gives a predictably solid performance as the town tyrant, and Leonardo DiCaprio is good as a lucky young gunslinger who gets to kiss the heroine. But not even the cast can help this failed project. Raimi brings a lot of razzle-dazzle to his camera work, but it doesn't make the film any more substantial. --Tom Keogh
A member of the jury for an explosive trial against a gun manufacturer joins forces with a beautiful woman to manipulate the panel.
Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe star in Mississippi Burning, a well-intentioned and largely successful civil-rights-era thriller. Using the real-life 1964 disappearance of three civil rights workers as its inspiration, the film tells the story of two FBI men (Hackman and Dafoe, entertainingly called "Hoover Boys" by the locals) who come in to try to solve the crime. Hackman is a former small-town Mississippi sheriff himself, while Dafoe is a by-the-numbers young hotshot. (Yes, there is some tension between the two.) The movie has an interesting fatalism, as all the FBI's best efforts simply incite more and more violence--the film's message, perhaps inadvertently, seems to be that vigilantism is the only real way to get things done. The brilliant Frances McDormand, here early in her career, is not given enough to do but still does it well enough to have racked up an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. (Hackman also received a nomination for Best Actor, and the film won an Academy Award for Cinematography). Mississippi Burning is ultimately unsatisfying--it is, after all, the story of white men coming in to rescue poor blacks--but it is beautifully shot and very watchable, featuring a terrific cast playing at the top of their games. --Ali Davis, Amazon.com
Classic westerns collection of 3 Blu-ray discs starring Clint Eastwood in 1080p High Definition.
John Travolta is the standout in this somewhat cartoonish adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel about a smalltime Miami enforcer (Travolta) who decides to get into the movie business in LA. The cast sparkles--Gene Hackman as a failing cut-rate-movie producer, Rene Russo as a failed actress, Danny DeVito as a vain thespian, Delroy Lindo as a mobster who wants a cut of Travolta's film action--and the script is clever. But not clever enough: this isn't Robert Altman's The Player, as far as satires about Hollywood go. But director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) keeps Get Shorty cute and brisk and that makes for an enjoyable experience. Travolta is great as a vaguely dangerous, supremely self-confident man whose love of movies makes him almost cuddly. --Tom Keogh
For the Superman completist a bumper collection of all five films in the Superman saga. Superman: The Movie - Special Edition sees the birth of a legend as we are introduced to the titular superhero and his Kryptonian origins. Also included is the expanded edition which features an additional eight minutes of screen time. This is followed by Superman II - Special Edition in which our boy in blue must do battle with three escaped super criminals bent on destroying the earth. Presented here in both its theatrical and director's cut versions the latter is expanded by an alternate beginning and ending as well as 15 minutes of restored footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El. In the third instalment in the franchise Superman III - Deluxe Edition Superman learns of his Achilles heel when he is exposed to kryptonite. The penultimate Superman IV - The Quest For Peace sees the Man of Steel take on Nuclear Man culminating in an explosive showdown of epic proportions. When the Super One returns to Earth in Superman Returns - Special Edition he discovers that the woman he loves Lois Lane has moved on with her life and must figure out how to protect a world that has learned to survive without him.
Hollywood favourite Will Smith stars with Gene Hackman in a high-powered suspense thriller where non-stop action meets cutting-edge technology! Robert Clayton Dean (Smith) is a successful Washington D.C. Attorney who without his knowledge is given a video that ties a top official of the Nation Security Agency (Jon Voight) to a political murder! Instantly every aspect of Dean's once normal life is targeted by a lethal team of skilled NSA surveillance operatives who wage a relentless ultrahigh-tech campaign to discredit him and retrieve the incriminating evidence! Get ready for the action to explode as Dean desperately races to reclaim his life and prove his innocence before it's too late!
Set in Wyoming in 1881 during the sunset years of the Wild West, 1992's Unforgiven was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood, and is generally considered to be the towering achievement of his twilight years. Eastwood plays William Munny, once a vicious, whisky-swilling bounty hunter, brought to heel by his marriage to a good woman. When she dies, he must raise two children and run a hog farm alone, something which we see him make a comically poor fist of doing. Then, in a twist of fate, a young outlaw called the Schofield Kid trots up to his farm and invites him to collect on a $1,000 reward raised by a group of prostitutes. However, Clint must not only face up to his own somewhat rusty skills as a gunslinger, but also to genial-but-psychopathic lawman Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman in superb form). Unforgiven ultimately conforms to the expectations of the genre, while subverting quite a few of them on the way. There's brooding on the consequences of violence ("It's a hell of a thing to kill a man"), as Munny's ineptitude with a rifle is matched by his feelings of penitence for his younger wrongdoings. Finally, however, Eastwood casts aside age and inhibition in a chillingly ruthless shootout, his powers miraculously (improbably?) restored, in what could also be seen as an assertion on the part of the ageing Eastwood of his own potency as a major player in Hollywood. --David Stubbs
Imagine being a hunter leading highly-trained bloodhounds in pursuit of a killer... and the trail leads directly to you! Starring Academy award winners Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman 'No Way Out' is a mesmerising look at Washington power. Capturing a well deserved four stars from critic Roger Ebert this taut and stylish thriller is fast-paced and powerful - a perfect nailbiter. In a fit of rage Secretary of Defense David Brice (Hackman) murders his mistress. To keep a lid on the
The Searchers: John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger thirst the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made. Unforgiven: an exciting modern classic that rode off with four 1992 Academy Awards. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey: Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper a colourful killer-for-hire called English Bob. Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of Law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless. Big trouble is coming to Big Whiskey...
Lawyer Jebediah Ward devoted to defending victims of large corporations and the State is fighting for compensation for the victims of automobile accidents involving defective cars. However it turns out that the manufacturer in his latest case is being defended by none other than Ward's daughter...
Hands down, this is the best movie (and was one of the first) to come out of the seemingly endless cycle of disaster movies that dominated box offices during the 1970s. It could even be argued that Titanic owes some of its success to the precedent set by this 1972 blockbuster starring Gene Hackman as a priest who leads a small group of survivors to safety from the bowels of a capsized luxury liner. From its stellar cast to its cheesy, Oscar-winning theme song, The Morning After, the movie has all the ingredients of a popular classic, beginning with a New Year's Eve celebration aboard the ill-fated Poseidon and ending as a pop allegory when the Hackman character becomes a Christ-like martyr. Filmed on spectacular sets where everything down is up and the ship's thick hull points in the direction of salvation, this is "a waterlogged Grand Hotel" (in the words of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael) that is as entertaining as it is unabashedly brainless. The Poseidon Adventure is filled with performances that rise above the limits of the screenplay. It's also the only movie--unless you count her underwater corpse in Night of the Hunter--that lets Shelley Winters strut her stuff as an aquatic heroine. Who could ask for anything more? --Jeff Shannon
Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) values his personal privacy and anonymity above all else. When he and partner Stan (John Cazale) are hired by a mysterious client known only as 'the director' (Robert Duvall) to follow a young couple, Harry deduces that the woman, Mary, is the director's wife, and the man an employee with whom she is conducting an affair. Harry becomes convinced that the director intends to murder the pair and, haunted by guilt from a previous assignment where the information he provided resulted in loss of human life, sets out to prevent the killing himself.
Royal Tenenbaum is a man who left his family twenty years earlier. All three of his children were young geniuses, but by the time they reach adulthood all talent seems gone. When the family finds itself unexpectedly reunited old animosities also return.
Tom Cruise delivers an electrifying performance in the box office hit stunningly remastered in 4K Ultra HD⢠with HDR-10 and Dolby Vision. Mitch McDeere is a brilliant and ambitious Harvard Law grad driven to bury his working-class past. When he joins a small, prosperous Memphis firm, it's a dream come true for Mitch and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn). But when he's confronted with evidence of corruption and murder within the firm, he's caught in a deadly crossfire between the Feds, the Mob, and a force that will stop at nothing to protect its interests. Based on the global bestselling novel by John Grisham and directed by Oscar® winner* Sydney Pollack, THE FIRM is a thrilling mystery with tense twists and turns.
A milestone film from 1971 and winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, The French Connection transformed the crime thriller with its gritty, authentic story about New York City police detectives on the trail of a large shipment of heroin. Based on an actual police case and the illustrious career of New York cop Eddie Egan, the film stars Gene Hackman as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, whose unorthodox methods of crime fighting are anything but diplomatic. With his partner (Roy Scheider), Popeye investigates the international shipment of heroin masterminded by the suave Frenchman (Fernando Rey) who eludes Popeye throughout an escalating series of pursuits. The obsessive tension of Doyle's investigation reaches peak intensity during the film's breathtaking car chase, in which Doyle races under New York's elevated train tracks in a borrowed sedan--a sequence that earned an Oscar for editing and was instantly hailed as one of the greatest chase scenes ever filmed. Produced on location, The French Connection had an immediate influence on dozens of movies and TV shows to follow, virtually redefining the crime thriller with its combination of brutal realism and high-octane craftsmanship. Boosted by the film's phenomenal success, director William Friedkin gained even more attention with his follow-up film, The Exorcist. --Jeff Shannon
Hands down, this is the best movie (and was one of the first) to come out of the seemingly endless cycle of disaster movies that dominated box offices during the 1970s. It could even be argued that Titanic owes some of its success to the precedent set by this 1972 blockbuster starring Gene Hackman as a priest who leads a small group of survivors to safety from the bowels of a capsized luxury liner. From its stellar cast to its cheesy, Oscar-winning theme song, The Morning After, the movie has all the ingredients of a popular classic, beginning with a New Year's Eve celebration aboard the ill-fated Poseidon and ending as a pop allegory when the Hackman character becomes a Christ-like martyr. Filmed on spectacular sets where everything down is up and the ship's thick hull points in the direction of salvation, this is "a waterlogged Grand Hotel" (in the words of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael) that is as entertaining as it is unabashedly brainless. The Poseidon Adventure is filled with performances that rise above the limits of the screenplay. It's also the only movie--unless you count her underwater corpse in Night of the Hunter--that lets Shelley Winters strut her stuff as an aquatic heroine. Who could ask for anything more? --Jeff Shannon
Christopher Reeve not only dons the title hero's cape for the fourth time but also helped develop the movie's provocative theme: nuclear disarmament. To make the world safe for nuclear arms merchants, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) creates a new being to challenge the Man of Steel: the radiation-charged Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow). The two foes clash in an explosive extravaganza that sees Superman save the Statue of Liberty, plug the volcanic eruption of Mount Etna and rebuild the demolished Great Wall of China. Product Features On Disc Special Features Commentary by Co-Screenwriter Mark Rosenthal Additional Scenes Theatrical Trailer
From acclaimed director Arthur Penn Target is an intense spy-thriller starring Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon as a father and son who attempt to rescue their estranged wife/mother who has been kidnapped in Paris. Chris Lloyd does not get along with his father. He is too cautious and never tries anything new and Chris had to live by the same standards when he was growing up. But when his mother is kidnapped Walter turns into a man of action. Suddenly Chris discovers something he nev
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