Monty Python's Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) directs this wild, wild version of the stories of Baron Munchausen, pushing the limits of 1989 special effects technology to bring us such sights as a horse divided in half and running around in two parts, and a giant Robin Williams with his head flying off his shoulders. Basically, this is a treat for Gilliam fans, as the sustaining idea of the film runs out of steam, and manic energy alone keeps the momentum going. Casual viewers might find it tedious after awhile. There are nice parts for fellow Python Eric Idle, as well as Sting, Alison Steadman, and Uma Thurman as a dazzlingly beautiful Venus on a half-shell. Gilliam had greater artistic and commercial success with Brazil, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys. --Tom Keogh
The title says it all--the abominable Dr Phibes Rises Again and he's as ruthless as ever. No longer content with merely avenging his wife's death, Phibes is now bent on her resurrection. With his mute assistant, Vulnavia, he sets off for Egypt, meting out bizarrely elaborate deaths--everything from clockwork snakes to a particularly severe exfoliation treatment--to all who stand in his way. This time Phibes has two competitors to race against: the trusty Inspector Trout and the renowned archaeologist Biederbeck, who has his own reasons for chasing Phibes. Like its predecessor, Dr Phibes Rises Again adds dark wit and imaginative art direction to the mix. Vincent Price is once again in high form, playing his organ with swooping arms and adding dry comic touches with a delicately cocked eyebrow. Watch out for cameos from a host of familiar faces, including Peter Cushing, Terry Thomas and Beryl Reid. --Ali Davis
Comedy duo Eric and Ernie become involved in the plots and counter-plots of international jewel thieves whilst trying to enjoy a quiet holiday on the Cote d'Azur...
Three armed robbers Harry Rawlins Terry Miller and Joe Pirelli die when the security van that they are robbing catches fire in the Kingsway Tunnel in London. Their widows Dolly Rawlins Shirley Miller and Linda Pirelli find their husbands' plans for the robbery and decide to stage it themselves.... Originally transmitted in 1983 this release contains all six episodes from the first series.
A collection of 5 films based on murder mystery novels by Mary Higgins Clark. Includes: 1. A Crime Of Passion 2. Before I Say Goodbye 3. Try To Remember 4. The Cradle Will Fall 5. I'll Be Seeing You
Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's tragic story of young impetuous love thwarted by a bitter Veronese family feud. Romeo heir of the Montague family attends a masquerade dance at the home of the Capulets where he meets Juliet the Capulets' daughter. It is love at first sight. Their love is torn asunder by the feud between their families. It is only after the double suicide of the young lovers that their long divided kinsmen are reconciled in sorrow.
From Terry Gilliam director of 'Time Bandits' and 'Brazil' comes 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen' a spectacular epic fantasy quite unlike any other film ever made. Just who is Baron Munchausen? Liar? Rogue? Madman? Or the greatest superhero ever to battle and triumph against unbeatable odds? Did he really ride through the air on a cannonball slay a three-headed griffin journey to the moon all before breakfast? Helped and hindered by a cast of quite literally thousands including Vulcan Berthold and many more the indomitable Baron succeeds in overcoming every obstacle to face his final greatest challenge: Death itself? There's never been a film remotely like this but then there's never been a hero to compare with the Baron...
Prince Alexei heir to the last Tsar is a hemophiliac. The Tsarina is persuaded to allow a mysterious monk Rasputin to use his powers of healing on the Prince. Against the wishes of the Tsar Rasputin tends to the young Prince - with frighteningly successful results. So begins a relationship which ended in Rasputin's murder and the eventual downfall of Imperial Russia...
In Aleksei Balabanov's powerful follow-up to his uncompromising Brother Chechen veteran Danila (Sergei Bodrov Jr) arrives in Moscow. There he meets an old army buddy Konstantin who tells him how his twin brother Dimitri has been forced into signing a crooked contract with a U.S. ice hockey team by the manager and his Russian partners. Soon after Danila finds Konstantin dead. Vowing to avenge the death of his comrade Danila sets out on a trail that leads him to Chicago and a
Sharon Stone stars as a convicted killer facing execution. After twelve years inside for a double murder she is now prepared to die. However she is not prepared for the relationship in which she finds herself entangled with the attorney assigned to save her life...
Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning, all set to Ron Goodwin's tongue-in-cheek music score. --Mark Walker In Press for Time Norman Wisdom offered his version of the crusading reporter movie, though by 1966 time was running out for Norman's style of big-screen comedy. Perhaps a sign of his growing frustration with the formulaic nature of his pictures was that he stretched himself to play not just his usual underdog hero, but also his own mother and his grandfather, the Prime Minister. Wisdom also cowrote the movie in which, as a reporter in a small seaside town, he causes chaos for the council, organises a beauty parade and dresses as a suffragette. Though now nearing the end of his years as a movie star, Wisdom shows himself to still be as polished as ever at his own brand of good-natured slapstick. --Gary S Dalkin
Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning. Wisdom's own brand of Jerry Lewis-inspired clowning, with mugging and pratfalls aplenty, is all good clean fun with little or none of the smutty innuendo that characterised the contemporary Carry On series. He carries this film, as he does all his others, solely on the strength of his winningly naïve charm: this is innocent comedy from the days before supermarkets really did wreck all the local businesses, not to mention from the days before The Godfather gave a whole new spin on the comedy value of going to bed with your horse. On the DVD: There are no extra features on this disc at all. Given Wisdom's household-name status and the longevity of these much-loved movies, this seems like a sadly missed opportunity. The 4:3 picture has not been digitally remastered and shows its age, as does the muddy mono soundtrack. Only Ron Goodwin's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek music score comes across reasonably well. --Mark Walker
In the sleepy little town of Fairwater, a monstrous evil has awakened - an evil so powerful, its reach extends beyond the grave.
Based on the cult mystery novels by author, journalist and royal biographer Tim Heald, this quartet of light-hearted whodunits stars David Horovitch as a bungling but diligent Department of Trade investigator. Featuring guest performances from Patrick Troughton, John Le Mesurier, Glynis Barber, Peter Jeffrey and Elizabeth Spriggs, among many others, this set contains all four stories: Unbecoming Habits, Deadline, Let Sleeping Dogs Die and Just Desserts. John Steed, Simon Templar, Dick Barton... and Simon Bognor. Following in the footsteps of some illustrious predecessors, the principal agent of the Special Investigations Dept. of the Board of Trade ventures forth to take on wrongdoers wherever they may lurk! In Unbecoming Habits, he poses as a CID officer to investigate a friary suspected of passing agricultural secrets to the Soviets; Deadline sees him lowering journalistic standards as he goes undercover to probe the murder of a gossip columnist; in Let Sleeping Dogs Die he trails ruthless pedigree dog smugglers; Just Desserts finds him uncovering deadly intrigue in the world of haute cuisine. But will the assignments throw up more clues than Bognor can handle?
He's 16. She's 22. All he wanted was her picture. What he got was... no small affair. Director Jerry Schatzberg tries his hand at outright comedy with this lighthearted coming-of-age tale featuring Demi Moore in one of her earliest roles. Jon Cryer stars as Charles Cummings a 16-year-old dreamer whose life ambition is to become a photographer. He finds his world turned upside down when he meets and immediately falls for an older woman. Laura (Moore) a 23-year-old rock 'n'
This classic BBC period drama series follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Lacey family living peacefully in their Arnescote castle until the onset of the English Civil War in 1640. The head of the family Sir Martin Lacey is unswervingly loyal to the King. However the family is torn apart when his eldest daughter Anne weds John Fletcher son of a merchant family who support the forces of Cromwell. Featuring episodes 1 - 5: Gather Ye Rosebuds / This War Without An Enemy / T
Surprisingly light-hearted and witty, Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey (based on his off-Broadway play) was one of the first films to tackle the AIDS crisis without patting itself on the back or offering everything up in a sobering movie-of-the-week scenario. The titular Jeffrey (Steven Weber) is a happy-go-lucky gay man who suddenly comes face to face with the fact that AIDS has turned sex into something "radioactive". Paranoid in the extreme, he vows to become celibate--at just about the same time that hunky Steve (The Pretender's Michael T. Weiss) saunters into his life, eyes twinkling and hormones raging. The only problem is that Steve, for all his muscles and charm, is HIV-positive, thus setting Jeffrey's deepest fears into motion. When it was written in 1995, Jeffrey struck a nerve in mining the fear that a number of gay men felt during the height of the AIDS crisis. Even just a few years later, though, Jeffrey's paranoia (what, he's never heard of condoms?) seems dated, and his behaviour more self-damaging than self-aware--basically, he needs a slap upside the head as opposed to therapy. Still, Rudnick (who went on to pen the more mainstream In and Out) is never one to pass up a witty one-liner or an opportunity to poke fun at anyone, and Jeffrey now stands as a hilarious, sometimes poignant portrait of gay single life and the perils of dating in a paranoid time. Weber's Jeffrey is simultaneously open to the possibilities of life and fearful to embrace them, and Weiss is, well... gorgeous and funny and sexy beyond belief. Still, it's Patrick Stewart, as Jeffrey's interior decorator best friend, who effortlessly steals the film with his cutting wit; in his mouth, Rudnick's lines are priceless gems. With a host of amazing cameos, including Sigourney Weaver as a conceited New Age maven, Kathy Najimy as her sad-sack follower, Christine Baranski as a high-society hostess for a roundup-themed charity dinner, and a top-form Nathan Lane as a gay priest who seems to have discovered the meaning of life--literally. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com
Johnny Handsome (Mickey Rourke) is a small time crook with a grotesquely deformed face. When thrown in prison for a crime he did not do he befriends a kind doctor (Forest Whitaker) who believes that Handsome would change his ways if he had a normal face. Handsome undergoes plastic surgery and reappears unrecognisable to anyone who knows him. When given parole it seems that Johnny plans to live a straight life... until the past catches up and shows that he only has one aim: to ful
Peter Sellers's third go-around as the prideful but bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Return of the Pink Panther is funny enough, but this 1975 Blake Edwards revival of the Sellers-Clouseau connection is a little weak in comparison to predecessors The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark (both made in 1964). Co-star Christopher Plummer actually gets some of the most interesting screen time as a retired cat burglar whom Clouseau accuses of getting back into the business. (If it sounds like there might be a To Catch a Thief vibe mixed in here, you're right.) Herbert Lom is hilarious as Clouseau's psychologically eroding boss, and Clouseau's ritualistic collisions with valet Cato (Burt Kwouk) are great examples of Edwards' delicious comic timing. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
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