With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets. "The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster. On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp
Set in the Wild West era the worms are back in this hilarious roller-coaster of a prequel! When workers in the remote mining town of Rejection Nevada fall victim to an unseen predator the mine's owner Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross) hires a mercenary to destroy the carnivorous creatures before they swallow up his profits. What follows is an all-out assault that takes the battleground from deep in the earth to a suspense-filled showdown on the streets of Rejection! 'Tremors 4: Th
It's name is Quetzalcoatl... just call it Q that's all you'll have time to say before it tears you apart! It's just another monstrous day in New York City where window washers have their heads bitten off topless sunbathers are plucked from rooftops bloody body parts rain down onto the streets and small-time crook Jimmy Quinn (Moriarty) discovers an enormous nest in the spire of the Chrysler building. Meanwhile an NYPD detective (Carradine) investigates a series of ritual
The complete second series of this hugely successful television series starring John Thaw as the legendary Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as sidekick George Carter. Episodes comprise: 1. Chalk and Cheese 2. Faces 3. Supersnout 4. Big Brother 5. Hit and Run 6. Trap 7. Golden Fleece 8. Poppy 9. Stay Lucky Eh? 10. Trojan Bus 11. I Want The Man 12. Country Boy 13. Thou Shalt Not Kill
1947: the members of SADUSEA (Song And Dance Unit South East Asia) fall in and out of love while trying to dodge Malayan Communist bullets...
COMEDY (TRUE STORY) It's 1985 . and in a country dominated by Soccer, Rugby, Cricket, and Fish n' Chips, one man risks everything to play American Football. Derek Simmons is a dreamer and a loser. Determined to show the world he can succeed at something he forms an American Football team. Somehow the Crewe Railroaders are born and the dream becomes a reality even though the coach knows nothing about American Football, the team physio knows nothing about injuries and the cheerleaders haven't got a clue how to dance or cheer! Using money from a loan Shark, Derek starts funding the team behind his long suffering wife's back. Under threat of losing his house and his marriage, Derek gambles everything on the financial success of his team's first game.
A young man Kyle (Kley) is considered insane by everyone in town with the exception of his childhood girlfriend Caitlin (Caufield) and her younger brother Michael (Cormie). Kyle must confront his fears and his past to save Michael from the hands of a small town's legendary evil the Tooth Fairy.
When an architect and his wife move into a house with a bloody past a 100 year old ghost possesses the wife!
In 1956 the title of his latest film, Up in the World accurately described Norman Wisdom's career. This was the great British comedian's fourth hit in as many years, this time finding himself employed as window cleaner to Lady Banderville (Ambrosine Phillpotts). Apart from having hundreds of windows to polish, things would be going fine for Norman if it weren't for the endless practical jokes played by Lady Banderville's son, Sir Reginald (Michael Caridia). However, when the irritating Regie is kidnapped, Norman has the chance to prove himself a hero, and it just might impress Jeannie Andrews too, his beautiful co-star Maureen Swanson, then making a name for herself in A Town Like Alice and The Spanish Gardener (both 1956). By now Norman Wisdom was set on a winning formula, working with much the same team as on his three previous smashes, including Jerry Desmonde as Major Willoughby, who had starred in both Trouble in Store (1953) and Man of the Moment (1955). Later, in Carry On Regardless (1961) Desmonde would make a single appearance with another British comedy institution, and interestingly Ambrosine Phillpotts would be there in the same film. Norman meanwhile, would go on to his good fortune in Just My Luck (1957). --Gary S. Dalkin
One Last Thing
Three renegade cops unite to take on a Los Angeles crime lord....
Dezzie a young English boy raised on a tough Manchester estate becomes loyal friends with a young Chinese boy Yasin protecting him from local gangs and bullies until Godfather Kai Chang arrives to take the teenager back to Hong Kong. Ten years later Yasin returns to Manchester and offers Dezzie a lucrative position with him in the family firm but this is a firm with a difference; a Triad family business with unbreakable laws and a strict code of honour. As Dezzie rises through the Triad ranks he finds himself in a world of hate betrayal and gangland violence that will drive a wedge between him and his friend and lead to a violent showdown.
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