A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days. Their journey includes a variety of scary adventures (including a ferocious junkyard dog, a swamp full of leeches and a treacherous leap from a train trestle), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Set in the 1950s, the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and a kind of idealistic, golden-toned nostalgia (it's told in flashback as a story written by Wheaton's character as an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss). But it's delightfully entertaining from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young cast members and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family and the building of character and self-esteem. Kiefer Sutherland makes a memorable teenage villain and look closely for John Cusack in a flashback scene as Wheaton's now-deceased and dearly missed brother. A genuine crowd-pleaser, this heartfelt movie led director Rob Reiner to even greater success with his next film, The Princess Bride. --Jeff Shannon
Everyone knows who won. But not everyone knows how. The result of the Brexit referendum in the summer of 2016 caused a political earthquake that laid waste to the normally stable British establishment and sent political tremors across the world. This punchy and provocative feature length drama goes exclusively behind the scenes of the Vote Leave campaign, unpacking the personalities, strategies, and feuds of the winning side, and exploring the new world of data driven campaign tactics. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings and Rory Kinnear as Craig Oliver, BREXIT: THE UNCIVIL WAR is written by playwright James Graham, taking inspiration from All Out War by Tim Shipman (the Sunday Times political editor), Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit by Craig Oliver (former Number 10 Communications Director), and is directed by Emmy award-winning Toby Haynes. BREXIT: THE UNCIVIL WAR is not an analysis of who was right and who was wrong. It is the story of how it happened, and why - on the high street, in the campaign offices, and the darker corners of the internet. A drama of political ambition and personal betrayals with nation-changing results.
Daryl (Barret Oliver) is the kind of boy any youngster would love to be like - and any mother would want as her son. He is a whiz at school. brilliant at computer games and sports - and even tidies his room! To his foster-parents, he is the perfect kid - perhaps too perfect...What is Daryl's secret? Why can't he remember anything about his past... yet in the present, he goes beyond even genius levels of intelligence. The shocking truth is revealed the day his real parents turn up to claim him and his perfect, ordinary life is threatened by adults bent on his 'destruction'.
Its placid waters complement the pristine Maine wilderness it borders. This tranquil setting is probably the last place you'd expect a gruesome fatality.
A cult classic British film about late-fifties youth rebellion set against an intoxicating Beatnik backdrop. When divorced architect Paul (David Farrar) marries Parisian Nichole (Noëlle Adam), his teenage daughter, Jennifer (Gillian Hills), is less than pleased, and throws herself into the London beatnik scene and a music-fuelled life of juvenile delinquency. When she discovers that Nichole's past holds a dark secret, she uses this knowledge to shame her stepmother and embarrass her father. With an all-star cast including David Farrar (Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room), Shirley Anne Field (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Peeping Tom), Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings, Dracula) and a young Oliver Reed (Women in Love, Oliver!), Beat Girl is notable for its original music by composer John Barry, his first ever film commission, and the acting debuts of teen idol Adam Faith and actress Gillian Hills (Blowup, A Clockwork Orange, The Owl Service).
What could be better than The Three Musketeers? D'Artagnan (Michael York) has become a Musketeer. Protestants hold La Rochelle and the Queen loves Buckingham who'll soon send ships to support the rebels. Richelieu enlists Rochefort (Christopher Lee) to kidnap Constance (Raquel Welch) the Queen's go-between and D'Artagnan's love. The Cardinal (Charlton Heston) uses the wily amoral Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) to distract D'Artagnan. But soon she is D'Artagnan's sworn e
Longing for a romantic Hollywood film that will make your heart leap but not have you reaching for the sick bucket? Try Benny & Joon. Few mainstream US films manage to walk the thin line between emotion and schmaltz, but here is one film that pulls it off admirably. In the wrong hands the concept of marrying love and mental illness could have been a disaster but, as with the low-budget British film Some Voices, Benny & Joon manages to extract genuine humour and warmth from the subject. As the brother and sister of the title, the relationship between Aidan Quinn and Mary Stuart Masterson is central to the story, Benny desperately trying to keep home and job together while looking after the sick Joon. Their lives take an unexpected turn with the arrival of Sam, a brilliantly comic turn by Johnny Depp, as gradually the characters learn that the happiness that all thought beyond them is within their grasp. Depp adds yet another character to his liturgy of slightly odd outsiders but plays it with such panache, this time drawing heavily on Buster Keaton, that you cannot help but fall for him. Indeed, there is not a single character here that you would not wish well. On the DVD: The usual scene selection and a very clear audio track, given the film's musical moments a huge boost. Few will probably be able to resist The Proclaimers' "(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles" which opens the film. Excellent picture quality too. --Phil Udell
Cheated out of his rightful inheritance after being kidnapped young David Balfour joins forces with daring adventurer Alan Breck Stewart and together they flee across the Highlands to evade the King's redcoat forces...
Escape Room: Tournament of champions is the sequel to the box office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this instalment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive and discovering they've all played the game before.
The young D'Artagnan (Michael York) arrives in Paris with dreams of becoming a king's musketeer. He meets and quarrels with three men Athos (Oliver Reed) Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) each of whom challenges him to a duel. D'Artagnan finds out that they are musketeers and is invited to join them in their efforts to oppose Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) who wishes to increase his already considerable power over the king. D'Artagnan must also juggle
A gritty and hard-hitting coming-of-age story about one young man looking for answers in all the wrong places as he falls in with a violent gang
Escape Room: Tournament of champions is the sequel to the box office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this instalment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive and discovering they've all played the game before.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Dir. Ken Hughes 1968): Everything Caractacus Potts invents goes wrong - even his sweets are full of holes. So how can he have created a car that not only drives but floats and flies as well? Find out as the fantasmagorical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang takes your family on a magical musical adventure you won't forget. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has never looked or sounded better. With its catchy tunes including the Oscar nominated theme tune (Best Song 1968) marvelous cast and enchanting storyline this delightful film is first-class family entertainment and definitely far toot sweet to miss! Annie (Dir. John Huston 1982): A plucky red-haired girl dreams of a life away outside her orphanage and its gin-soaked tyrant Miss Hannigan (played to perfection by Carol Burnett). One day Annie meets the famous billionaire Daddy Warbucks and the pair share spectacular times in 1930's New York City. But Miss Hannigan and her zany villainous colleagues are determined to spoil the fun for America's favourite orphan... Oliver! (Dir. Carol Reed 1968): Young Oliver Twist (Mark Lester) is an orphan who escapes the cheerless life of the workhouse and takes to the streets of 19th-Century London. He''s immediately taken in by a band of street urchins headed by the lovable villain Fagin (Ron Moody) his fiendish henchman Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and his loyal apprentice The Artful Dodger (Jack Wild). Through his education in the fine points of pick-pocketing Oliver makes away with an unexpected treasure... a home and a family of his own.
This box set contains the following four titles: Skeleton Coast: Colonel Smith's son a CIA agent is captured by some bad guys involved in an african civil war. Smith puts together a group of military pros to save him. The Klansman: When a black man is arrested for the rape of a white woman a showdown between the law and the clan is inevitable. Massacre In Rome: In the last days of the Nazi Occupation a group of partisans plan an attack on a German 'police' column. Return From The River Kwai: One of the last untold stories of World War II in the Far East. Starving British and Australian POW's make an attempt to escape Japanese brutality.
Sandra Goldbacher's intense drama of friendship and betrayal Me Without You was not especially liked by UK reviewers, but opened in the US to rave reviews. Carrying the relationship between two teenagers through their student days and into adulthood, it shows the more obviously charismatic Marina (Anna Friel) as parasitic on her more intelligent friend Holly (Michelle Williams) and then utterly devastated when Holly tries to break away (a brief epilogue shows them still involved years later). Best known for her role in Dawson's Creek, Michelle Williams (whose English accent is impeccable) gives a finely nuanced performance; Anne Friel runs the gamut from drug-induced stupor to malice to hysteria with a staginess that is only partly the character's. There are solid performances from Trudy Stiler as the neurotic ex-croupier mother who is part of Marina's problem and Kyle McLachlan as the oddly passive lecturer whom both seduce. The film is good on the passage of time--it has a fine eye for the fashion disasters of 1970s to 90s Britain--yet it's somehow disingenuous in its avoidance of emotional subtext. It's overly partial, too: Holly is obviously a stand-in for the writer-director. On the DVD: Me Without Your is presented in a widescreen visual ratio of 2.35:1 with Dolby 5.1 digital sound that gives full weight and intensity to a soundtrack which revisits a well-chosen selection of obvious and obscure tracks from the period. It has no extra features. --Roz Kaveney
The return of the hilarious and often surprising comedy drama series that follows the adventures of a bunch of diverse characters living and working together in a bomb disposal detachment in Afghanistan. They may face danger on a daily basis but that doesn’t mean they can’t have some fun! Corporal Gordon 'Towerblock' House replaces Corporal Mills as Nick's second in command but it doesn’t take long for the new arrival to ruffle a few feathers and competitive Nick is soon regretting his tactics to prove he's just as good as Towerblock much to Bird’s amusement. The team is warned to be on best behaviour for a visit from the Minister for the Armed Forces who Mary takes a shine to; they push Simon to the brink of madness and join together to track down the new Taliban bomber who is targeting Nick.
Funny Bones, directed by Peter Chelsom (Hear My Song), is a weird but intriguing comedy with a particularly dark edge. Oliver Platt plays a would-be comedian, the son of a major comedy star (Jerry Lewis); dad's reputation even overshadows his son's Las Vegas debut. After that flop the son tries to go back to his roots and heads across the Atlantic for his father's launch pad in Blackpool. There, he meets his previously unknown half-brother (Lee Evans), a bizarre comedy savant who teaches him a thing or two about taking risks to get laughs, and discovers a secret about how his father got started. Platt is likably lost and Lewis is perfectly overbearing, but the real find here is Evans, making his cinematic debut as the rubber-faced, protean comic with always surprising material. --Marshall Fine
The story of Edinburgh's most famous four-legged friend comes to life.
Great Guns (Dir. Monty Banks 1941): Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy join the army to protect their country...but who will protect the army from them? In Great Guns the comic team play a chauffeur and a gardener whose hypochondriac employer (Dick Nelson) a wealthy young man with little experience is drafted. Convinced that he needs them in order to survive in the service they join up as well. Of course the Texas cavalry post to which they're all assigned is made far worse for the wear by the presence of these well-meaning troublemakers and there is never a dull moment in this classic featuring two of the cinema's most revered comic actors! Jitterbugs (Dir. Malcolm St. Clair 1943): Considered the best of the Laurel and Hardy projects filmed at Twentieth Century Fox this energetic musical comedy also introduces singer Vivian Blaine. Stan and Oliver star as a traveling two-man jitterbug band who operate out of a dilapidated jalopy and form an unlikely partnership with a likable con man (Bob Bailey). When the trio joins a carnival they meet Susan a naive young singer (Vivian Blaine) whose mother has been swindled by grifters. Suddenly chivalrous the three orchestrate a sting operation using disguises - with Laurel dressed as Susan's disheveled aunt and Hardy as a rich Texan - to get the woman's money back. Although things don't go as planned the inimitable comedy duo provide nonstop laughs from start to finish in this delightful caper. The Big Noise (Dir. Malcolm St. Clair 1944): The zany antics of legendary comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy come to life in this romp about two phony private detectives. The duo play janitors accidentally hired as sleuths to protect a new super-bomb destined for the War Department in Washington D.C. However the bomb's inventor has loaded his house with crazy contraptions that entrap and confuse the protectors. Meanwhile next door is the biggest threat of all - a gang of crooks determined to get their hands on the inventor's deadly creation. Through a series of crazy misadventures our heroes end up in a remote-controlled airplane along with the bomb and head straight for trouble.
A gritty and hard-hitting coming-of-age story about one young man looking for answers in all the wrong places as he falls in with a violent gang
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