Layer Cake: Based upon JJ Connelly's London crime novel 'Layer Cake' is about a successful cocaine dealer (Daniel Craig) who has earned a respected place among England's Mafia elite and plans an early retirement from the business. However big boss Jimmy Price (Cranham) hands down a tough assignment: find Charlotte Ryder the missing rich princess daughter of Jimmy's old pal Edward (Gambon) a powerful construction business player and gossip papers socialite. Complicating matters are two million pounds' worth of Grade A ecstasy a brutal neo-Nazi sect and a whole series of double crossings... The title 'Layer Cake' refers to the layers or levels the dealer has to go through as he painstakingly plots his own escape. What is revealed is a modern underworld where the rules have changed. There are no 'codes' or 'families' and respect lasts as long as a line. Not knowing who he can trust he has to use all his 'savvy' 'telling' and skills which make him one of the best to escape his own. The ultimate last job a love interest called Tammy and an international drugs ring threaten to draw him back into the 'cake mix'. But time is running out and the penalty will endure a lifetime.. (Dir. Matthew Vaughn 2004) Snatch: In the heart of gangland two novice unlicensed boxing promoters Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham) get roped into organising a bare-knuckled fight with local kingpin villain and fellow boxing promoter Brick Top (Alan Ford). But it all goes wrong when Brick Top's fighter who is rigged to win is suddenly knocked out by the boys' wildcard Irish gypsy boxer One Punch Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt). Unfortunately things go from bad to worse as Mickey starts playing by his own rules and the duo find they are heading for a whole lot of trouble. Meanwhile en route to New York to deliver a stolen 84-carat diamond to head honcho Avi (Dennis Farina) Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) is robbed of the stone. Forced to jump on the next plane to London Avi is by no means pleased. He hires local legend Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) to find Franky and the diamond. The hunt for the missing stone launches everyone into a spiral of double-crossing vendettas as different parties pursue personal agendas some of them farcical most of them illegal and all of them destined to spin completely out of control... (Dir. Guy Ritchie 2000)
Just as he's about to get out of the game entirely, a drug dealer gets drawn back in to the doublecrossing world of the London mafia in this refreshing British thriller.
A consumate con-man, Jake Vig (Edward Burns) has just pulled his biggest trick yet. But then he finds out he's conned an eccentric crime boss Winston King (Dustin Hoffman) and there'll be more than hell to pay.
It will lift you up where you belong. Richard Gere stars as Navy recruit Zack Mayo while the stunning Debra Winger is his love interest. Lou Gossett Jnr. won an Academy Award for his brilliant portrayal of a tough drill instructor. David Keith plays Zack's struggling fellow candidate. Zack Mayo is a young loner with a bad attitude. Tempted by the glamour and admiration of the life of a Navy pilot he decides to sign up for Officer Candidate School. After thirteen tortuous weeks under Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley (Gossett Jnr.) he slowly begins to learn the importance of discipline love and friendship. Foley warns Zack about the local girls who will do anything to catch themselves a pilot for a husband but despite this Zack finds himself falling in love with Paula (Winger). An Officer And A Gentleman is a rich and satisfying story with moving performances that will stay with you long after the film has ended.
Ex-Navy Seal Bobby Kaliinowski lives a quiet peaceful life as a landscape architect in an LA suburb with his wife Dawn and 16 year old daughter Brianna. Tonight they are invited out for an evening on the town by new neighbors Clay and Elise Freeman to a happening club downtown. Little did they know that this would be the start of a life or death ordeal for the group.
An underrated little picture, Real Genius offers a rare college comedy that doesn't rely on gross-out humour as well as a look at Val Kilmer before he turned into a star. A high school whiz kid (Gabriel Jarret) arrives at a brainy college, where the crème de la crème of the science students are marshalled under an ambitious professor (expert villain William Atherton). Unbeknown to them, the kids are working on a weapons system that the prof. plans on selling to the government. The star student and chief rabble-rouser is played by Kilmer, in good early form as a cocky genius who hasn't lost touch with his goofy side. The director is Martha Coolidge, whose Valley Girl was one of the brightest (and most unexpected) of 1980s comedies; she keeps the movie perking along and never worries about dumbing down a film that just happens to be about smart people. --Robert Horton
This charming romantic comedy tells the story of three American secretaries and their search for love in Rome. After throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain and making a wish each of them eventually finds what they are looking for. For Frances (Dorothy McGuire) it is waspish author Clifton Webb. For Anita (Jean Peters) there's office romeo Rossano Brazzi. And for Maria (Maggie McNamara) a real-life handsome prince Louis Jourdan. Exquisitely photographed amidst the splendours of the
Monkey Business (Dir. Norman Z. McLeod 1931): The madcap Marx Brothers stowaway on a luxury cruise ship in this fast-paced laugh-filled farce. While they manage to elude capture by the ship's captain and crew by staging impromptu puppet shows and hiding in herring barrels getting off the boat is another matter. Before long they're all impersonating Maurice Chevalier in order to disembark and begin their new careers as mob bodyguards. Horse Feathers (Dir. Norman Z. McLeod 1932): Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) is the new President of Huxley College. In order to stay in charge he must somehow get the college football team to win their annual Thanksgiving game against arch-rivals Darwin - a bit of a tall order since Huxley haven't won a match since 1888! Needless to say playing it by the rules is the last thing on Wagstaff's mind... Duck Soup (Dir. Leo McCarey 1933): A pointed political satire Duck Soup is the Marx Brothers' funniest and most insane film! Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly the hilarious dictator of mythical Freedonia. Harpo and Chico are commisioned as spies by Groucho's political rival the calculating Trentino. The film contains many of the brothers' famous sequences: the lemonade stand the Paul Revere parody the ""We're Going To War"" number (a beautiful spoof of 30's musicals) the hilarious mirror scene and a final battle episode that has been copied by everyone including Woody Allen!
Titles Comprise: The Hitcher (2007): The open highway becomes a terrifying battleground of blood metal fear and murder when a young couple Grace and Jim (Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton) hit the road and encounter the mysterious hitchhiker John Ryder (Sean Bean) during a violent storm. The initial encounters with Ryder escalate rapidly as he transforms into a deadly racing psychopath and the stakes are raised further when he frames Grace and Jim for a horrific slaying that makes them fugitives from the law. As the carnage mounts and the action pushes you to the edge of your seat Grace and Jim must fight for their lives and face their fears head-on. Vacancy: When David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox's (Kate Beckinsale) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere they are forced to spend the night at the only motel around with only the TV to entertain them... until they discover that the low-budget slasher movies they're watching were all filmed in the very room they're sitting in. With hidden cameras now aimed at them... trapping them in rooms crawlspaces underground tunnels... and filming their every move David and Amy must struggle to get out alive before whomever is watching them can finish their latest masterpiece. The Marsh: A young beautiful but stressed out children's writer seeks out a holiday in the country but becomes the lead character in a supernatural mystery she must solve to save her life...
Based on the Agatha Christie novel Ten Little Indians. Ten strangers are invited to a lonely mansion on a remote island. One by one they are accused of past murders and one by one they die. From one of the world's best-selling crime novels by the world's best-selling author Agatha Christie this is the critically acclaimed original screen adaptation of the quintessential who dunnit.
Porn: Louis strips off and plunges into the world of porn. From the glossy high end productions to the sleazy gonzo flicks he gets intimate with the men and women who bang for kicks. But is it all as fun as it seems? And what happens if you can't get wood? Survivalists: Louis travels to the American North West a place where survivalists white seperatists and paranoid freedom fighters are arming themselves against the New World Order. Meet the radical nuts and noodles who shoot first and ask questions later...
A young woman is questioned by a detective (Jean-Louis Trintignant Trans-Europ-Express The Conformist) a repressed judge (Michael Lonsdale Moonraker) a curious nun a sexually-obsessed priest and her lawyer all of whom suspect her of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead bound to the posts of her bed a pair of scissors impaled in her heart. Does the woman have the powers to make all around her fall prey to her spell forcing them to slide progressively into desire lust and ultimately the unknown? This erotic drama from one of the most ground-breaking and daring of the post-war French filmmakers Alain Robbe-Grillet (writer of the classic Last Year in Marienbad) is presented here in a beautiful High Definition transfer complete with revealing and comprehensive exclusive extra features including a richly detailed audio commentary by Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas. Features: Fully uncut and uncensored version Video introduction by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (2013 6 mins) Filmed interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet by Frederic Taddei (2013 33 mins) Exclusive full-length audio commentary by cult film authority Tim Lucas
Among the late Rohmer's finest films the fourth in the 'Moral Tales' series tells the story of a chaste and conservative thirty-something (Jean-Louis Trintignant Three Colours Red) who unwittingly spends the night at the apartment of the worldly and spirited divorc''e Maud (Fran''oise Fabian) throwing the moral certainties of his life into question.
Even a criminal can serve his country. As a new election time approaches Triad Boss Lok attempts to seek re-election for himself while Jimmy tries to build a legitimate business empire on the mainland and escape the Triads...
La Grande Illusion (1937): During WWI three French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life. They meet other prisoners from various backgrounds as Rosenthal son of wealthy Jewish bankers. They are separated from Rosenthal before managing to escape. A few months later they meet again in a fortress commanded by the aristocrat Van Rauffenstein. De Boeldieu strikes up a friendship with him but Marechal and Rosenthal still want to escape... One of the very first prison escape movies La Grande Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Le Crime De Monsieur Lange (1936): A man and a woman arrive in a cafe-hotel near the belgian frontier. The customers recognize the man from the police's description. His name is Amedee Lange he murdered Batala in Paris. His lady friend Valentine tells the whole story : Lange was an employee in Batala's little printing works. Batala was a real bastard swindling every one seducing female workers of Valentine's laundry... One day he fled to avoid facing his creditors and the workers set up a cooperative to go on working. But the plot is less important that the description of the atmosphere just before the Popular Front. La Bete Humaine (1940): Severine and her husband Roubaud kill their former employer in a train. Engineer Jacques watches them but doesn't tell the police because he's in love with Severine. But in an epileptic attack he kills her... Boudu Saved From Drowing (1932): Michel Simon stars as Boudu a vagabond who attempts suicide by throwing himself into the Seine grieving over the loss of his dog. But Eduaord Lestingois (Charles Granval) a humane bookseller rescues him and takes him into his home hoping to reform the shaggy bum. Shortly thereafter anarchy reigns as the household is turned upside down by the antics of this large three-year-old. Spitting in first editions using silken sheets to polish his shoes sleeping in the hallway and similar breaches of etiquette do little to endear Boudu to Lestingois. However once Boudu has had a bath and shave in order to please the maid Mrs. Lestingois (Marcelle Hainia) becomes surprisingly responsive to his overtures. The maid (Severine Lerczinska) who is Lestingois's mistress also seems to feel the tramp's mysterious charm. Granval an exemplary bourgeois now has more than one reason to envy the man he saved from drowning.
In 1987 The Gate was at the forefront of what came and went as a purely 80s genre: Kiddie Horror. Just like The Lost Boys or The Monster Squad of the same year, the idea was to let a couple of younger-than-teenage kids loose in a well-worn horror scenario and play it for as many laughs as scares. Its 15 certificate (PG-13 in the States) meant The Gate had an enormous opening weekend, and a considerable shelf life. The kids in question here are a very young Stephen (Blade) Dorff as Glen and his best friend Terry. After some tree felling in Glen's seemingly miles-square back yard they discover a hole full of precious rock. This is of course the Gate to a demonic dimension. As things start levitating, Glen's dog dies and moths get into the most awkward of places, it becomes obvious that the Gate is open! A teenage sister does little to help early on, but naturally the story develops into one about banding together under extreme circumstances. The make-up and stop-motion animation effects remain impressive in scope and there are a couple of frights still just on the right side of cliché. Since it was so successful, the writer and director went on to make an inferior sequel some years later. On the DVD: Viewers should note this is a very murky transfer that's in an unspecified widescreen ratio. There's also an unspectacular (equally unspecified) sound mix. But a gallery of 10 photos and the theatrical trailer makes up for that, right? --Paul Tonks
Gia is a made-for-TV HBO film that stars Angelina Jolie as supermodel model Gia Carangi, who went from high school to the cover of British Vogue in less than two years. Carangi appeared on many more covers of Vogue (French, British, Italian, and American) and Cosmopolitan before dying of complications from AIDs (she was an IV heroin user) in 1986. Jolie comes by her talent honestly: she's the daughter of veteran actor Jon Voight, and her own training as a model serves her well here--she has the moves. Throughout, she's heartbreaking--as no doubt the real Carangi was--effective, and stunning. With good source material (Stephen Fried's A Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia), Jolie's stunning performance, and strong directing by Michael Cristofer, the movie goes beyond the merely sensational. The script was co-written by Cristofer and novelist Jay McInerney, whose Bright Lights, Big City covers similar territory. As a cautionary tale, Gia works. But to watch Jolie in her character's tragic self-destruction is utterly compelling. --NF Mendoza, Amazon.com
Made in 1970, just as he was reaching the end of a three-year exile from boxing, AKA Cassius Clay is a documentary about Muhammad Ali's life and career. Produced by Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton--who would go on to manage Mike Tyson--it includes reams of Jacobs' vast collection of fight footage, some of it familiar, some quite rare, such as flickery images of his earliest bouts. The film intersperses an account of Ali's career with good natured, if combative, sections to camera featuring Ali and future Tyson trainer Cus D'Amato, who plays devil's advocate, arguing with the ex-champ that he would never have beaten Joe Louis in his heyday, or (more dubiously) his own protégé Floyd Patterson. Watching footage of his 1967 bout against Cleveland Williams here, it's hard to believe any champion before or since could have beaten Ali at his height. Ali's familiar story is competently related here (though narrator Richard Kiley has the mildly disconcerting air of a Bond villain): his 1960 Olympic triumph; his defeat of Sonny Liston who was expected to annihilate the young 22-year-old blowhard in 1964; his conversion to the Nation of Islam; and the plainly vindictive decision on the part of the authorities to revise his draft status and call him up for service in Vietnam. Ali refused and faced the possibility of a five-year jail sentence as well as being stripped of his title. The principle pleasure of AKA Cassius Clay is watching Ali in full verbal flow. His maniacal teasing of Liston was a psychological knockout blow. "The man's too ugly to be the world champ. The world champ should be pretty, like me!" On the DVD: extras comprise scene selections and the original trailer. The reproduction is visually adequate, with the sepia tones of the fight footage holding up well; but the dubbing in places is poor. --David Stubbs
This minor 1948 film by Alfred Hitchcock beats a familiar Hitchcockian drum: an attorney (Gregory Peck), in love with the client (Alida Valli) he is defending on a murder charge, implicates himself in her guilt by trying to put the blame on another man. The no-one-is-innocent theme may be consistent with Hitchcock's best films and world view, but this is one of the movies that got away from his crucial passion for the plastic side of creative directing. Stuck in a courtroom for much of the story, the film is fit to burst with possibility but is pinned down like a freshly caught butterfly in someone's airless collection. --Tom Keogh
In Price of Glory a promising young boxer is knocked out of contention thanks to a sleazy manager who cashed out on his potential by pushing him into a big-money fight before he was ready. Thirteen years later that very same boxer, Arturo Ortega (Jimmy Smits), has three sons whom he's training to be boxers too. His schoolteacher wife wants to make sure they get good grades, but Arturo is sure that boxing is their best chance to get out of the barrio. Flash-forward another 10 years, and the training is paying off. The three boys, Jimmy (Clifton Collins Jr.), Sonny (Jon Seda), and especially Johnny (Ernesto Hernández) have grown into smart and talented boxers. Obviously, Arturo is a good and a tough trainer, but the question of whether he's got his own or his sons' best interests at heart arises when a slick promoter (Ron Perlman) offers him big money first for his sons' contracts and then for a series of title fights. Price of Glory does an admirable job of riding that conundrum throughout, offering no easy answers. There is solid acting throughout and it's nice to see such a Latino-heavy cast, but at just over two hours the pace lags and the central themes are repeated one or two too many times. Aside from a late subplot about corruption and violence that comes across as a bit contrived, this is a good family film about boxing. --Andy Spletzer, Amazon.com
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