In 1941 Barbara Stanwyck was offered two screwball roles equally suited to her tart intelligence deft comic timing and undeniable sex appeal and it's a photo finish as to which was funnier; showgirl-on-the-lam Sugarpuss O'Shea the title character in Howard Hawks's 'Ball of Fire' or con artist Jean Harrington a.k.a. Lady Eve Sidwich the delirious fulcrum for this classic Preston Sturges comedy. Under Sturges's typically antic microscope the collision between the gold-digging
THE COMPLETE EPIC SAGA DRAGONHEART 1 Long ago, when majestic firebreathers soared through the skies, there lived a knight who would come face-to-face and heart-to-heart with the most remarkable creature that ever existed. Dennis Quaid stars with the voice of Academy Award® winner Sean Connery* in director Rob Cohen's heroic adventure that blazes with fantasy & humour. Co-starring David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Julie Christie and Dina Meyer, this epic adventure will move and thrill the entire family. DRAGONHEART 2 When an ambitious stable boy named Geoff stumbles upon a young sheltered dragon named Drake, a deep friendship is forged. But in Geoff's quest to become a knight, he soon finds himself having to defend the life of his friend from the King's illwilled advisor; who seeks to use the dragon's heart to become invincible. DRAGONHEART 3 When aspiring knight Gareth goes in search of a fallen comet rumoured to contain gold, he is shocked to instead find the dragon Drago (voiced by Academy-Award® winner** Ben Kingsley). After Drago saves Gareth's life the two become intricately bonded and must work together to defeat an evil sorcerer and stop his reign of terror. Along the way, Gareth learns the true meaning of being a knight in this fantasy actionadventure for all ages! DRAGONHEART 4 Drago the dragon must find an heir to the throne when the king, who shares Drago's heart, dies. The king's potential heirs, twin grandchildren who possess the dragon's unique strengths, use their inherited powers against each other to vie for the throne. When Drago's source of power known as the Heartfire is stolen, more than the throne is at stake; the whole country may fall if the siblings' rivalry with swords and sorcery doesn't end.
It's been nearly 100 years since Earth was devastated by a nuclear apocalypse, with the only survivors being the inhabitants of 12 international space stations that were in orbit at the time. Three generations later, the survivors number 4,000 -- and resources are running out on their dying Ark (the 12 stations now linked together and repurposed to keep the survivors alive). Capital punishment and population control are the order of the day, as the leaders of the Ark take ruthless steps to ensure their future -- including secretly exiling a group of 100 juvenile prisoners to the Earth's surface to test whether it's habitable. No one has set foot on the planet in nearly a century -- until now. Among the exiles are Clarke, the teenage daughter of the Ark's chief medical officer; Wells, son of the Ark's Chancellor; the resourceful Finn; and brother/sister duo Bellamy and Octavia, whose illegal sibling status has them flaunting the rules. Technologically blind to what's happening on the planet below them, the Ark's leaders -- Clarke's widowed mother, Abby; the Chancellor, Jaha; and Jaha's shadowy second in command, Kane -- are faced with difficult decisions about life, death and the continued existence of the human race. For the 100 on Earth, however, the alien planet they've never known is a mysterious realm that can be magical one moment and lethal the next. With the survival of the human race entirely in their hands, the 100 must find a way to forge a new path on a wildly changed Earth that's primitive, intense and teeming with the unknown.
Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, Harriet tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.
Innerspace is assured a place in the Hollywood history books as the movie which brought Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan together as one of cinema's most famous couples. The film itself belongs among a series of feelgood fantasies presented by Steven Spielberg in the 1980s, including Back to the Future (1984) and from the same director, Joe Dante, Gremlins (1983). Innerspace offers Dante's usual mixture of comedy, exciting action and fantasy, the plot being a variation on Fantastic Voyage (1966). Test pilot Quaid is miniaturised and as a result of a bungled attempt to steal the new experimental technology, accidentally injected into the body of a deeply stressed and insecure Martin Short. Quaid is charismatic and commanding, Ryan gives an early demonstration of her patent romantic comedy persona, but it's Short's picture as he delivers a perfectly nuanced performance pitched between slapstick and paranoia. The Oscar-winning special effects enhance rather than dominate the story, which, though it gets a bit too silly in places, is generally inventive and sufficiently action packed to sustain the almost two-hour running time. Jerry Goldsmith's muscular score is a major asset, while in-joke spotters will have fun picking out everyone from Chuck Jones to William Schallert (the doctor in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1! 957)). On the DVD: Innerspace on disc has a group commentary with director Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren and actor Kevin McCarthy. This is engaging if far from riveting. The original trailer is anamorphically enhanced and there are two perfunctory pages listing cast, crew and the film's Oscar for special effects. The original Dolby Spectral soundtrack has been remixed into Dolby Digital 5.1 and is bold, clear and powerful. The picture is presented at 1.78:1 and is a virtually flawless transfer: colours are rich, detail levels are high and the only trace of grain is in a few particularly high contrast shots.--Gary S. Dalkin
While Soylent Green may be one of the many dystopian visions of the future, the film stands out because it's one of the few titles that addresses current environmental issues head on. Adapted from Harry Harrison's novel Make Room, Make Room, it gives us a nightmarish vision of an over-populated, polluted future on the brink of collapse--a vision that gets uncomfortably closer every year. Charlton Heston as police officer Thorn investigates a murder in between suppressing food riots and uncovers the nightmarish truth about Soylent Green, the new foodstuff being sold to the poor. The film neatly combines police procedural with conspiracy thriller. Heston's scenes are counterpointed by more elegiac ones in which the centenarian Edward G Robinson as his friend Sol broods on the world he has outlived--his death in a euthanasia chamber is a gloriously lachrymose moment, which he plays to the hilt. Heston, too, is good as Thorn, a morally equivocal cop who loots the apartments of the victims whose deaths he investigates--he's a man just getting by in an impossible world. On the DVD: Soylent Green on disc comes with a commentary from director Richard Fleischer, the highpoint of which is a memorable description of what it was like to work with the brilliant ailing, entirely deaf Robinson. He is joined by Leigh Taylor-Young whose work on the film as heroine led to years of serious environmentalist commitment. It has a useful contemporary making-of documentary and touching shots of Robinson's 100th birthday party with telegrams from Sinatra and others. The feature itself is presented in anamorphic widescreen with its original mono sound. --Roz Kaveney
After the success of 1950's Destination Moon and 1951's When Worlds Collide, visionary producer George Pal brought the classic HG Wells story of a Martian invasion to the big screen, and it instantly became a science-fiction classic and winner of the 1953 Academy Award for Best Special Effects. It's a work of frightening imagination, with its manta-ray spaceships armed with cobra-like probes that shoot a white-hot disintegration ray. As formations of alien ships continue to wreak destruction around the globe, the military is helpless to stop this enemy while scientists race to find an effective weapon. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson play the hero and heroine roles that werede rigueur for movies like this in the 50s, and their encounter with one of the Martians is as creepy today as it was in 1953. It finally takes an unseen threat--simple Earth bacteria--to conquer the alien invaders, but not before War of the Worlds has provided a dazzling display of impressive visual and sound effects. This is a movie for the ages, the kind of spectacle that inspired little kids such as Steven Spielberg (not to mention Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, whose Independence Day is a remake in all but name) and still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Martin Cruz Smith's bestselling mystery novel seemed ideal material for a movie version, but in Gorky Park director Michael Apted and the usually reliable writer Dennis Potter couldn't quite solve the problem of taking the story from page to screen. William Hurt plays Renko, a Cold War-era Moscow police detective who must cope with both crooks and Communist party protocol as he tries to solve a murder case in the middle of one of Moscow's public parks that leaves three faceless corpses. The strands of the mystery involve corruption, American money and the fur trade and, ultimately, take Renko to New York. But the tension is never all there, despite a deliciously menacing performance by Lee Marvin as the bad guy and Brian Dennehy as an American cop who becomes Renko's ally. --Marshall Fine
Adam Sandler vaulted into the US$20-million-salary stratosphere with this, his second US$100-million hit in 1998--a movie that further shows just how deeply embedded he is in the Jerry Lewis tradition of idiot comedy. He plays Bobby Boucher, a backwoods Cajun and a mentally challenged individual with a fixation on water: specifically, on serving the coolest, most refreshing H2O available to the college football team he has served since he was an adolescent. But when he's fired from his position, he takes up a similar job with a lowlier college team coached by neurotic Henry Winkler. One day at practice, Bobby loses his temper and delivers a bone-shaking tackle to the starting quarterback; before he can say, "blackened crawdads", he's the star of the team and leading it to a bowl game. But it's all against the wishes of his overprotective mother (Kathy Bates), who wants to keep her Bobby to herself--and that includes keeping him away from the floozy girlfriend (Fairuza Balk) who's sweet on him. There are two kinds of people in this world: People who find Sandler funny and people who view him as a neon-lit symbol of the decline of popular taste. You know who you are and, based on that, you can decide whether this is a movie for you. --Marshall Fine
A star-studded World War II drama about the great air and naval battle in which the underdog Americans - outnumbered by the huge Japanese flotilla - won American military supremacy in the Pacific. Leading them to their heroic victory is Admiral Nimitz and Captain Matt Garth (Heston) the latter a junior officer whose life is complicated by his son's romance with a Japanese-American girl...
Based on an unpublished novella by John Steinbeck (written on commission expressly to provide treatment material for Hitchcock's screen scenario), Lifeboat found the Master of Suspense navigating a course of maximal tension - in the most minimal of settings - with a consistently inventive, beautifully paced drama that would foreshadow the single-set experiments of Rope and Dial M for Murder. After a Nazi torpedo reduces an ocean liner to wooden splinters and scorched personal effects, the survivors of the attack pull themselves aboard a drifting lifeboat in the hope of eventual rescue. But the motivations of the German submarine captain (played by Walter Slezak) on the eponymous craft might extend beyond mere survival... With a cast including Shadow of a Doubt veteran Hume Cronyn and the extraordinary, irrepressible Tallulah Bankhead, this picture of characters, as Franois Truffaut aptly termed the film, oscillates dazzlingly between comic reparte and white-knuckle suspense - a perfect example of the Hitchcock touch.
Dreamlike and nightmarishly surreal, Vertigo is Hitchcock's most personal film because it confronts many of the convoluted psychological issues that haunted and fascinated the director. The psychological complexity and the stark truthfulness of their rampant emotions keeps these strangely obsessive characters alive on screen, and Hitchcock understood better than most their barely repressed sexual compulsions, their fascination with death and their almost overwhelming desire for transcendent love. James Stewart finds profound and disturbing new depths in his psyche as Scotty, the tortured acrophobic detective on the trail of a suicidal woman apparently possessed by the ghost of someone long dead. Kim Novak is the classical Hitchcockian blonde whose icy exterior conceals a churning, volcanic emotional core. The agonised romance of Bernard Herrmann's score accompanies the two actors as a third and vitally important character, moving the film along to its culmination in an ecstasy of Wagnerian tragedy. Of course Hitch lavished especial care on every aspect of the production, from designer Edith Head's costumes (he, like Scotty, was most insistent on the grey dress), to the specific colour scheme of each location, to the famous reverse zoom "Vertigo" effect (much imitated, never bettered). The result is Hitch's greatest work and an undisputed landmark of cinema history. On the DVD: This disc presents the superb restored print of this film in a wonderful widescreen (1.85:1) anamorphic transfer, with remastered Dolby digital soundtrack. There's a half-hour documentary made in 1996 about the painstaking two-year restoration process, plus an informative commentary from the restorers Robert Harris and James Katz, who are joined by original producer Herbert Coleman. There are also text features on the production, cast and crew, plus a trailer for the theatrical release of the restoration. This is an undeniably essential requirement for every DVD collection. --Mark Walker
On June 6 1944 the Allied Invasion of France marked the beginning of the end of Nazi domination over Europe. The attack involved 3 000 000 men 11 000 planes and 4 000 ships comprising the largest armada the world has ever seen. Presented in its original black & white version 'The Longest Day' is a vivid hour-by-hour re-creation of this historic event. Featuring a stellar international cast and told from the perspectives of both sides it is a fascinating look at the massive
This American classic based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows Tom Joad (Henry Fonda in an Oscar- Nominated role) and his family as they escape the Depression-era Oklahoma dust bowls for the promised land of California. But the arduous trip and harsh living conditions offer little hope, and family unity proves as daunting a challenge as any other they face.
Some missions are not a choice. On a dangerous assignment to recover stolen plutonium, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) chooses to save his team over completing the mission, allowing nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of a deadly network of highly-skilled operatives intent on destroying civilisation. Now, with the world at risk, Ethan and his IMF team (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson) are forced to become reluctant partners with a hard-hitting CIA agent (Henry Cavill) as they race against time to stop the nuclear fallout. There's never been a threat more destructive or stunts more jaw-dropping than in this film that critics are calling the best Mission yet (Jamie Graham, TOTAL FILM). Product Features Disc 1: 4K UHD and Disc 2: Blu-ray Special Features Commentary by Director Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise Commentary by Director Christopher McQuarrie and Editor Eddie Hamilton Commentary by Composer Lorne Balfe Disc 3: Blu-ray Bonus Disc Behind the Fallout Deleted Scenes Montage with optional Commentary by Director Christopher McQuarrie and Editor Eddie Hamilton Foot Chase Musical Breakdown The Ultimate Mission Storyboards images Theatrical Trailer
The Book of Acts takes you on a journey with the physician Apostle Luke (Dean Jones - Herbie the Love Bug Other Peoples Money Clear and Present Danger Mandie and the Secret Tunnel) as he tells the enthralling story of danger struggles and triumph that marks the birth of the Christian Church. The Book of Acts vividly shares the mystery and wonder that follows the resurrection of Jesus. Walk with the risen Lord. Watch as He is taken up to heaven. Experience the transforming power of Pentecost and be inspired by the passion of Peter (James Brolin - Nailed Last Chance Harvey) and John (Andre Jacobs - Invictus In My Country) as they send a flame of faith throughout Jerusalem and the world.
A box-office hit when released in 1994, this sprawling, frequently overwrought familial melodrama may get sillier as its plot progresses, but it's the kind of lusty, character-based epic that Hollywood should attempt more often. It's also an unabashedly flattering star vehicle for Brad Pitt as Tristan--the rebellious middle son of a fiercely independent Montana rancher and military veteran (Anthony Hopkins)--who is routinely at odds with his more responsible older brother, Alfred (Aidan Quinn), and younger brother, Samuel (Henry Thomas). From the battlefields of World War I to his adventures as an oceangoing sailor, Tristan's life is full of personal torment, especially when he returns to Montana and finds himself competing with Alfred over Samuel's beautiful widow (Julia Ormond), whose passion for Tristan disrupts the already turbulent Ludlow clan. Under the wide-open canopy of Big Sky country, this operatic tale unfolds with all the bloodlust, tragedy, and scenery-chewing performances you'd expect to find in a hokey bestselling novel (in fact, it's based on the acclaimed novella by Jim Harrison), but it's a potent mix that's highly entertaining. Not surprisingly, John Toll won an Academy Award for his breathtaking outdoor cinematography. --Jeff Shannon
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