L'appartement is a fanciful and romantic tale of love and obsession. A blend of Gallic romanticism and Hitchcockian style this film is a delicious pastiche of five people's passions and lives. The story circles around Max on the verge of getting married who suddenly overhears the voice of Lisa his long-lost love arguing emotionally on the phone outside the men's room. He manages to track down her apartment but in it he discovers another woman who claims to be the Lisa he has overheard. She seduces him and manages to become the focus of his attention. However the story line is only beginning to twist... Switching between time women chic caf''s and beautiful Parisian apartments Mimouni's film makes the most of its deliriously romantic setting whilst effortlessly unravelling an intricate and unpredictable plot which carefully ties its lovelorn characters up in knots as it races along to a heady conclusion.
When Marc (Clovis Cornillac The Serpent) and Emma (Julie Depardieu Female Agents) move into their new home they discover it is haunted by ghoulish ghosts of the homosexual kind. Their penchant for feather boa flapping in the middle of the night while raising the roof with high-camp renditions of disco classics causes havoc in the household. How to put an end to these fiendish frighteners? Julie suggests that only a sexually confused Marc can bring about their demise... A box-office hit in native France 'Poltergay' will have your sides in stitches and your head rolling on the floor!
You've Got Mail: A modern to modem romance in which superstore book chain magnate Hanks and cozy children's bookshop owner Ryan are anonymous e-mail cyberpals who fall head-over-laptops in love unaware they are combative business rivals! City Of Angels: Nicolas Cage is Seth an angel who must decide if he'll forsake his immortality and become human - on the chance that the woman of his dreams might love him. That woman is Maggie (Meg Ryan) a pragmatic heart surgeon who doesn't believe in angels. Until she meets Seth. Will love be their mutual destiny? Will they take that shape that destiny? The choice is theirs to make... Addicted To Love: What would you do if that special someone dumped you? After seeing the delightful 'Addicted to Love' the better question is what wouldn't you do? Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick take a funny look at love's obsessive side as Maggie and Sam teaming for revenge when their former flames (Kelly Preston and Tcheky Karyo) team for romance.
Bruno Dumont's (Life Of Jesus) visionary and hauntingly powerful film tells the story of Pharaon De winter (Emmanuel Schotte) a police detective who lives with his mother in a working-class town in Northern France. With astonishing and raw sensitivity Pharaon agonizes over the evil he must confront every day during the course of his work. His latest case is the brutal rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl a crime so barbarous that Pharaon reels from the madness of it strug
A marriage that has fallen on hard times is further tested by the couple's implication in a murder. Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a music hall chanteuse married to her pianist husband Maurice (Bernard Blier). Keen to get ahead, Jenny leaps at the chance when an ageing wealthy businessman (Charles Dullin) offers her the chance of some gigs. However, when she agrees to a meeting at his home and he is found dead later in the evening - Maurice's untamed jealousy is in the frame. A Maigret-esque detective, Antoine, played by Louis Jouvet leaves no stone unturned in his exceedingly private investigations of the down-at-heel showbiz couple's sad, tempestuous life. Features: The Criminal Apogee Of Henri Georges Clouzot
Jacques Becker's Touchez Pas au Grisbi occupies a significant part in French cinema history. Max (Jean Gabin, La Grande Illusion) and Riton (René Dary) are two ageing gangsters who manage to pull off their final heist, a spectacular gold bullion robbery at Orly airport. All is well until Max's former girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau, Jules et Jim) tips off a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura). The latter kidnaps Ritton and threatens to kill him unless Max hands over the spoils from his robbery Helping to birth the French policier, a European transposition of the fantastic American gangster films of the 1940s, Touchez Pas au Grisbi exerted a huge influence on subsequent directors such as Jean-Pierre Melville.
Marie, a professor of English literature in a Paris university, has been happily married to Jean for 25 years. During their summer holiday he vanishes. Has he left her? commited suicide? drowned? With no clue she acts as if he is still alive.
Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as BARBARA STANWYCK (The Lady Eve)? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter RAYMOND CHANDLER, director BILLY WILDER (Ace in the Hole) launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this paragon of film-noir fatalism from JAMES M. CAIN's pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (The Caine Mutiny's FRED MACMURRAY) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from EDWARD G. ROBINSON and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer JOHN F. SEITZ (Sunset Blvd.), Double Indemnity is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told and the cynical standard by which all noir must be measured. Product Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary featuring film critic Richard Schickel New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment New conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 film by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with director Billy Wilder Shadows of Suspense, a 2006 documentary on the making of Double Indemnity Audio excerpts from 1971 and 1972 interviews with cinematographer John F. Seitz Radio adaptations from 1945 and 1950 Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Alice is a 30 year-old sailor, in love with Félix who waits for her ashore as she unexpectedly sets off as second mechanic on the Fidelio, an old freighter. On board, she discovers not only that she replaces a recently deceased mechanic, but also that the Captain is none other than her first great love, Gaël. In her cabin Alice comes across the diary of the former mechanic, and by reading its content accounts of technical problems, sexual conquests and lovelorn emotions she finds, oddly, that they echo her own journey. As the ship calls at various ports, Alice deals with life aboard with an all-male crew, the notion of desire in such an environment and the swings of her romantic feelings, while trying to stay the course.
What do you do when your 28 year old son won't leave home? He leaves his washing on the floor brings girls home all the time and treats the place like a hotel. Every time you see him you feel sick. Still you love him. You can't ask him to leave so what to do? Drive him out! Hoover at 4am. Put smelly fish behind his radiator. Have sex in the lounge. Cut off the electricity while he is working. Make him want to move! A riotous French comedic farce from Etienne Chatiliez.
A beautiful female disc-jockey is mistaken for the girlfriend of a geriatric millionaire by the millionaire's grandson. Includes the songs: 'The Turntable Song' 'Happy-Go-Lucky and Free' 'You Gotta Keep Your Baby Lookin` Right' 'Something In The Wind' 'It's Only Love' and 'Il Miserere'.
Yoga: Power Stretch And Tone
One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery
Bertrand Blier's Csar Award winning surreal comedy in which Gerard Depardieu stars as a suspected serial killer pitted against an ageing police inspector.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is Leon a French legionnaire who has no choice but to go A.W.O.L. after hearing that his brother is mortally wounded. Arriving penniless in New York Leon is forced to enter the underworld of bare-knuckle boxing under the control of 'The Lady'. However after Leon goes against her will she matches him against the formidable champion. Will Leon find the inner strength to take the championship or will he die like his brother?
Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as maverick cop Lou Burke, the only lawman tough enough to go undercover in a prison recently plagued by suspicious deaths. Posing as a prisoner, Burke encounters brutal inmates, corrupt guards, death and betrayal at every turn. But when he unearths the shocking secret behind the penitentiary's inner workings, Burke must attempt a daring escape that pits him against not only hundreds of murderous inmates...but also a deadly enemy from his own past.
Gladiator: The great Roman General Maximus (Russell Crowe) has once again led the legions to victory on the battlefield. The war won Maximus dreams of home wanting only to return to his wife and son; however the dying Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) has one more duty for the general - to assume the mantle of his power. Jealous of Maximus' favor with the emperor the heir to the throne Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) orders his execution - and that of his family. Barely escaping death Maximus is forced into slavery and trained as a gladiator in the arena where his fame grows. Now he has come to Rome intent on avenging the murder of his wife and son by killing the new emperor; Commodus.... Spartacus: Stanley Kubrick's film tells the tale of Spartacus the bold gladiator slave and Virinia the woman who believed in his cause. Challenged by the power-hungry General Crassus Spartacus is forced to face his convictions and the power of Imperial Rome at its glorious height. A classic inspirational true account of one man's struggle for freedom Spartacus combines history with spectacle to recreate a moving drama of love and commitment.
A drunken abusive tavern-keeper's adulterous wife uses the backward son of a rigid puritanical pharmacist who makes his entire family miserable.
An adaptation from maverick Alex Cox of Thomas Middleton's celebrated play from 1607 Revenger's Tragedy tells the story of a man whose wife is murdered on their wedding day and his desire to exact revenge on the murderer. In a post-apocalyptic Liverpool of the future Vindici (Christopher Eccleston) returns from a self-imposed exile to bring down those responsible for his wife's murder. While Vindici's family have fallen on hard times the murderer - known as the Duke (Derek Jacobi) - has become rich powerful and virtually untouchable. Employing all his wit and cunning Vindici sets out to gain the Duke's confidence and get close enough to kill him. Vibrant and pulsating with colour and style Revenger's Tragedy is a masterpiece of reinvention set to astound and astonish.
The unquiet twin spirits of Fritz Lang and Franz Kafka preside over Europa, Lars von Trier's sardonic, saturnine vision of just-post-WWII Germany. In 1945 Leo Kessler, a young American of German descent, returns to the shattered land of his forebears to help in its reconstruction. Through his uncle, who works for the huge railway network Zentropa, he gets a job as a trainee sleeping-car conductor and also meets the seductive Katharina Hartmann, daughter of Zentropa's owner Max. But acts of sabotage and murder are being planned by unregenerate young Nazis calling themselves Werewolves, and very soon Leo's hapless innocent abroad starts finding out that, in this time and place of shifting loyalties, nothing and no one are what they seem. As if to accentuate this mood of nervous ambiguity, von Trier constantly switches from black and white to colour, and from English to (subtitled) German dialogue, often right in the middle of a scene. The cast boasts several iconic figures of European cinema, including Barbara Sukowa (a Fassbinder favourite) as femme fatale Katharina, and Eddie Constantine (from Godard's Alphaville) as a manipulative American colonel, while a literally hypnotic voice-over is spoken by the great Bergman actor Max von Sydow. There's more than a hint that von Trier intends a mischievous side-glance at today's Europe, and today's European film industry, in resentful thrall to the might of Hollywood. And while Europa is gripping and richly atmospheric, it's never without humour. The long, final episode is a tour de force of tragicomedy, with poor Leo juggling the competing demands of love and loyalty, life and death, while being harassed by his uncle who, horrified that Leo has lost his official peaked cap, forces him to wear a knotted handkerchief on his head, as well as by a pair of punctilious railroad inspectors demanding to know how long it takes him to make up a sleeping-car bunk. Lang and Kafka, sure, but maybe a touch of the Marx Brothers, too. --Philip Kemp
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