A young girl attempts to deal with her mother's death from a heroin overdose.
Even under the heavy censorship of 1946 Hollywood, Lana Turner and John Garfield's libidinous desires burn up the screen in Tay Garnett's adaptation of James M. Cain's torrid crime melodrama. Platinum blond Turner is Cora, a restless sexpot stuck in a roadside diner married to mundane middle-aged fry cook Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway) when handsome drifter Frank (Garfield) blows her way. It's lust at first sight, a rapacious desire that neither can break off, and before long they're plotting his demise--but in the wicked world of Cain nothing is that easy. Garnett's visual approach is subdued compared to the more expressionistic film noir of the period, but he's at no loss when he films the luminous Turner in her milky-white wardrobe. She radiates repressed sexuality and uncontrollable passion while Garfield's smart-talking loner Frank mixes street-smart swagger and scrappy toughness with vulnerability and sincere intensity. Co-star Hume Cronyn cuts a cold, calculating figure as their conniving lawyer, a chilly character that only increases our feelings for the murderous couple, victims of an all-consuming amour fou that drives their passions to extremes. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
'Gregory's 2 Girls' is part thriller, part romantic comedy and finds Gregory still dreaming his way through life and still looking for romance.
For better and for worse, The Old Grey Whistle Test was probably the most resolutely serious music programme ever broadcast on television. During its 16-year run it showcased only the most earnest exponents of whichever musical style was currently popular, and given that the programme's heyday coincided with the early 70s, some of the footage included here will provide mirth as exquisite as only unintentional comedy can. The absurd prog noodlings of The Edgar Winter Group and the belief-beggaringly awful Focus now seem as unfathomable in retrospect as trench warfare or child labour. However, the good stuff collected here is very good, both in terms of performance (Tom Petty snarling "American Girl", a pre-irony U2 whooping up "I Will Follow") and historical interest, notably a shockingly youthful Elton John crooning "Tiny Dancer" and reminding us, in the process, of a time when he was regarded as a cool and hip singer-songwriter, rather than understudy to the Queen Mother. --Andrew Mueller On the DVD: Wonderful performances all captured in remarkably pristine picture and extraordinarily vivid sound, regardless of vintage (it doesn't even crackle during "Hocus Pocus"!). However, the menu is pretty clunky and won't allow direct access to the individual songs (other than selecting the "Random play" option). Instead, you can only jump into the programme year by year, not song by song. The track listing itself is unhelpfully hidden behind the discs in the gatefold packaging. --Mark Walker
Katie Elder Bore Four Sons...and the day she is buried they all return home to Clearwater, Texas, to pay their last respects. John Wayne is the eldest and toughest son, the gunslinger. Tom (Dean Martin) is the gambler and good with a gun when he has to be. Matt (Earl Holliman) is the quiet one nobody ever called him yellow twice. Bud (Michael Anderson, Jr.) is the youngest. Any hope for respectability lies with him. Directed by Henry Hathaway (True Grit ), an acknowledged master of the Western, the story has a dual theme; not only is this a he-man's story, but it is also a drama of the maternal influence of Katie Elder, movingly portrayed from beginning to conclusion.
Powerful, disturbing and moving in equal measure, 2006's acclaimed "Kidulthood" took us deep into London's unseen underbelly - now it's time to grow up.
Stained with the blood of the innocent. In the aftermath of a massacre by the Cheyenne only two survivors remain: Honus a private in the army dedicated to his responsibilities and Cresta a woman who had been living with the Cheyenne for two years. As they journey back to the Cavalry's base Honus finds himself torn between his growing attraction to Cresta and his revulsion towards her anti-government views. However he will soon learn the truth...
From master-of-horror Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes Piranha 3D) comes this supernatural offbeat thriller starring beloved British actor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter franchise The Woman in Black) and the talented Juno Temple (Magic Magic Sin City: A Dame to Kill For). Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) is accused of the murder of his girlfriend Merrin Williams (Juno Temple). After a hard night of drinking Ig awakens hung-over to find horns growing out of his head; they have the ability to drive people to confess sins and give in to selfish impulses. Ig decides to use this effective tool to discover the circumstances of his girlfriend's death and to seek revenge by finding the true murderer. Daniel and Juno lead an all-star cast with strong support from David Morse (The Green Mile The Hurt Locker) and Heather Graham (The Hangover I and III Boogie Nights). Horns is based on the dark fantasy novel of the same name from New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart Shaped Box) with a screenplay by Keith Burnin. Alexandre Aja Riza Aziz Joey McFarland and Cathy Schulman produce.
Series 2 of Hetty Feather' builds on the many strengths of the first series; the vivid, exciting characters; the deep emotional layers; the high-action plots and set-pieces; the wonderful textural details of the period the candlelight, the corridors, the rooms in the rafters, the ink and paper, staircases and dorms: the Victorian world will come alive for a contemporary audience. Across ten episodes of this BBC series, the Foundlings engage in sleuthing to unravel mysteries; they meet an explorer from outside who offers them a path for the future; they discover football; a snake goes on the loose; the Foundlings are spooked by ghosts; they have to keep their own personal meetings hidden from Matron and her side-kicks, particularly when one of the meetings is in a big house across the City.
The American President is behind in the polls and is looking to increase his popularity. His advisors launch an 'anti-Canadian' campaign which inadvertantly results in bumbling U.S. sheriff Boomer (John Candy) and his hair-trigger deputy Honey (Rhea Perlman) leading their troopers to invade Canada!
Whilst on holiday, young timid ladies companion (Joan Fontaine) meets handsome and wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) whose wife Rebecca has recently died in a boating accident.The two fall in love and marry. However, her joy is short lived when she returns to the de Winter estate and soon discovers that Rebecca still has a strange, unearthly hold over everyone there.
Sean and Beverly Lincoln are a happily married English couple, who are also the creators of a hit British TV show. Their life seems complete. That is until a hugely powerful and charismatic US network president persuades them to move to Los Angeles to recreate their show for American television. Things begin to unravel as soon as Sean and Beverly arrive in LA. It soon becomes clear that the network president has never even seen their show. To make matters worse, he insists that they replace their brilliant lead actor, an erudite Royal Shakespeare veteran, with Matt LeBlanc!
Joe 90 was Gerry Anderson's penultimate puppet show of the 1960s, following Captain Scarlet (1968) and preceding the little-known The Secret Service (1969). In 2112 professor Ian McClaine has invented the BIG RAT (Brain Impulse Galvanoscope, Record And Transfer), a machine for copying knowledge and experiences from person to person. WIN (World Intelligence Organisation) uses this to prime their top undercover agent before sending him into the field on missions which range from foiling international terrorists to recovering a nuclear weapon from beneath the polar ice. So far so good, but in perhaps the most mind-boggling concept ever to reach children's TV, that agent is McClaine's nine-year-old adopted son, Joe. Somehow even as it stays true to the Gerry Anderson techno-fantasy formula of secret organisations, gadgetry, and action-packed adventure full of spectacular explosions and violent death, Joe 90 remains blithely unconscious of its own implications. The missions are as globe-trotting as anything in Anderson's classic Thunderbirds series, and sometimes Joe does save lives, performing a risky brain operation or rescuing trapped astronauts. Yet even then his criminally irresponsible father brainwashes the lad each episode before placing him in a highly dangerous adult situation. Though the production values remain way ahead of anything else being done on British TV at the time, the question remains how did this ever seem like a good idea? On the DVD: Joe 90 comes complete in a five-disc box set of the entire 30-episode series. Each disc contains six 25-minute episodes presented, as usual with Gerry Anderson DVDs, behind a lovingly crafted menu. As expected the 4:3 picture quality is superb and the mono sound is full, detailed and without a trace of distortion. Each disc contains several pages of character biography and background information on the show, a photo gallery and varied extras such as location stills or a gallery of promotional images. --Gary S Dalkin
Bionic Showdown
Ole Bornedal's thriller about a young law student who takes a job as a night watchman in a creepy morgue is long on style but comes up a little short on quality of storytelling. Bornedal sets things up in high style as Martin Bells (Ewan McGregor doing an American accent) makes his rounds in the middle of the night, with only corpses and his own paranoia for company. When bodies start coming in, the prostitute victims of a grisly serial killer, the imposing detective on the case (a hulking Nick Nolte) begins to suspect that Bells is the killer, as all clues start pointing to him. Coscripted by Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight) and adapted from Bornedal's 1994 Danish thriller, Nightwatch forsakes out-and-out thrills for a more moody approach with flickering lights, menacing shadows and echoing footsteps down long hallways. If only there was a little more energy before the highly effective denouement, which does get scares, even after the killer is revealed. Still, McGregor is supported by a stronger than average cast: in addition to Nolte, Josh Brolin does an amusing turn as McGregor's out-of-control best friend, Patricia Arquette fares well in the standard girlfriend role and the always creepy Brad Dourif makes the most of a sinister and funny bit part as the on-call doctor. You won't jump out of your seat but by the end of Nightwatch you will find yourself remarkably tense. --Mark Englehart
A middle-aged wife and mother has an unexpected and torrid affair with a handsome younger man. After her husbands discover they must face the consequences of their actions...
Steve Austin (Lee Majors) now a disenchanted loner is persuaded out of seclusion by his old friends at O.S.I. in order to help them put a stop to a group of international terrorists known as Fortress. His former lover Jamie Somers (Lindsay Wagner) is also begged to join in the struggle. Austin and Somers not only find their old powers are rusty they must also learn to overcome their personal suspicions of each other and work together especially when Austin's son is badly injured and then kidnapped by Fortress.
Humphrey Bogart is heartbreaking as the tragic Captain Queeg in this 1954 film, based on a novel by Herman Wouk, about a mutiny aboard a navy ship during World War II. Stripped of his authority by two officers under his command (played by Van Johnson and Robert Francis) during a devastating storm, Queeg becomes a crucial witness at a court martial that reveals as much about the invisible injuries of war as anything. Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Raintree County) directs the action scenes with a sure hand and nudges his all-male cast toward some of the most well-defined characters of 1950s cinema. The courtroom scenes alone have become the basis for a stage play (and a television movie in 1988), but it is a more satisfying experience to see the entire story in context. --Tom Keogh
Controversial upon its release, Ralph Nelson's Soldier Blue follows Honus (Peter Strauss) and Cresta (Candice Bergen), the only remaining survivors of a Cheyenne Native American attack, as they travel across the unforgiving wilderness of the American frontier in search of refuge. Their journey reaches a tragic climax as they witness the brutal and cold-blooded slaughter of the Cheyenne tribe at the hands of the U.S. army.Reflecting the political climate of the time, Soldier Blue is uncompromising in its anti-war stance and in its extremely graphic depiction of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. By shedding light on America's dark history and the inhumane actions of the U.S. army, this revisionist western is one of the most radical films in American cinema's history. NEW Interview with actress Candice BergenAudio commentary by film critic Steve Mitchell and Howard S. BergerNEW Trailer
The final series of Steven Knight's beloved BAFTA® award-winning drama based in Birmingham between the two world wars.
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